September 11: Night light

This is a small town, but even here, living as we do across from a street light, we rarely get to fully appreciate the night sky in all its starry glory. So after dinner with friends who live on a farm out in the country, it was such a thrill to look up on the way to the car and enjoy such a wide, clear view of the night's stars.

 

Night sky above a dirt road--

we pick out Polaris,

now it all makes sense.

Posted with Blogsy

January 14: Thaw

The usual January Thaw is upon us, but it's difficult not to read into the melting snow, oozing mud, and prematurely budding shrubbery something more ominous. Global climate change is the giant elephant sitting in the middle of the room that is our planet. So we can't simply enjoy this brief reprieve from the bitter cold of last week, because we've lost our sense of what's normal anymore. Our climate compass needle is spinning wildly, even as the North Star poises above my house just as it always has. Even the simple love song of the chickadee gives me pause. I know chickadees sometimes sing in winter, but I couldn't help but feel anxious for some reason when I heard one sing today.

Chickadee's premature song--
is it the thought of love
or bad timing that concerns me?

December 3: Septentrional

I subscribe to wordsmith.org's Word.A.Day, which I highly recommend to anyone fascinated by words and language. As a linguistics minor in college (and a writer), I admit I'm kind of a word nerd, so am always delighted when each day's new word appears in my email In box. This week's theme is "words derived from numbers." Today's word--septentrional, which means "northern"--particularly struck me because it's not only unusual, it's also related to one of my favorite constellations, the Big Dipper.

Here's the etymology, according to Word.A.Day: "From Latin septentriones, literally the seven ploughing oxen, a name for the seven stars of the Great Bear constellation that appears in the northern sky. From Latin septem (seven) + triones (ploughing oxen). Earliest documented use: around 1400."

The Big Dipper goes by many names around the world: Ursa Major, the Great Bear; Charles' Wain or Wagon; the Plough; the Drinking Gourd; the Seven Wisemen; the Frying Pan; even the Salmon Net. As a circumpolar constellation, it wheels around Polaris, the North Star. To find the North Star, you trace a line in the sky up through the two stars that form the right side of the ladle. So its meaning of "northern" makes perfect sense, even while the backstory involving seven oxen might be a little less clear, lost in translation over time.

Seven stars, many stories.
We face north, align
with the heavens.