Bugs, Stars And Tiny Pies
Sorry to be remiss in posting about the new season. I'll make up for it soon. In the mean time, I'll share these things:
I saw an odd thing at the White Hart stage twice over the first weekend. Once each day I saw a willow leaf flying gracefully through the air near the stage, and climbing UP(!) into the trees. Both times they were turned like a feather into the wind, but strangely vertically oriented. A falling leaf would fall flat. And then there's the whole upward falling part of the equation.
I wear contacts most times, but they sorta suck as far as fine details for me a fair amount of the time. So it was only on the second sighting that I understood that I was seeing katydids floating through the air, their wings immobile, as nearly invisible dark wasps carried them to their doom. Stung and immobilized; they were being airlifted back to hidey holes to be slowly feed on by the next oviposited generation of nearly invisible dark wasps grubs. I know this kind of thing goes on all the time, but in 20 years of playing at fair, I had never seen this insecty behavior.
WARNING [BUG-O-Phobes please Skip to the next topic] WARNING
In other buggy news I was asked to remove an intruder in the camp. As previously reported, there are some folks who don't deal well with spiders. I do not mock people's phobias unless they are really funny. Since arachnophobia is generally only a little funny, I do not mock them.
I was directed to the largest, most beautiful male golden garden spider I've seen. It had made a web from the handle of our ridiculously big wooden camp hammer. Long elegant black legs held in a dark "X" framed a bright yellow, white, and black body.
These are generally unaggressive spiders, and they do lots of insect eating, so I approve of their efforts. I moved it to a bush behind the tent, where it can happily take it's part in the great circle of life.
BUG-O-PHOBE WARNING OFF.
On the other hand, here's an image that's symbolic of, errr, symbolic stuff.
Cosmic Butterfly
The nebula is one of the first images released after the HST was revived from near death in May. It shows the final stage in the life if a star...gettin' blowed up. And we all know how cool it is to blow stuff up. Later, the various elements being thrown out by the death of this star will condense into other new stars. The scene is about 2 light years across.
Copy the image to some photo viewer and zoom into it. The deep center of the nebula is stunning. If you look carefully, you can see the whirlpool of destruction centered on the remains of the old star's heart.
That bit of cosmic art brings to mind an discourteously unheralded bit of perfection from the first day of the season. The beauteeeeeful tiny peach pielets donated to the hungru pyrates of Moldy Cove the first weekend. I'd share a photo but we ate all the cute little buggers up.
Nom-Namastastic, oh Ani, my goddess.
I saw an odd thing at the White Hart stage twice over the first weekend. Once each day I saw a willow leaf flying gracefully through the air near the stage, and climbing UP(!) into the trees. Both times they were turned like a feather into the wind, but strangely vertically oriented. A falling leaf would fall flat. And then there's the whole upward falling part of the equation.
I wear contacts most times, but they sorta suck as far as fine details for me a fair amount of the time. So it was only on the second sighting that I understood that I was seeing katydids floating through the air, their wings immobile, as nearly invisible dark wasps carried them to their doom. Stung and immobilized; they were being airlifted back to hidey holes to be slowly feed on by the next oviposited generation of nearly invisible dark wasps grubs. I know this kind of thing goes on all the time, but in 20 years of playing at fair, I had never seen this insecty behavior.
WARNING [BUG-O-Phobes please Skip to the next topic] WARNING
In other buggy news I was asked to remove an intruder in the camp. As previously reported, there are some folks who don't deal well with spiders. I do not mock people's phobias unless they are really funny. Since arachnophobia is generally only a little funny, I do not mock them.
I was directed to the largest, most beautiful male golden garden spider I've seen. It had made a web from the handle of our ridiculously big wooden camp hammer. Long elegant black legs held in a dark "X" framed a bright yellow, white, and black body.
These are generally unaggressive spiders, and they do lots of insect eating, so I approve of their efforts. I moved it to a bush behind the tent, where it can happily take it's part in the great circle of life.
BUG-O-PHOBE WARNING OFF.
On the other hand, here's an image that's symbolic of, errr, symbolic stuff.
Cosmic Butterfly
The nebula is one of the first images released after the HST was revived from near death in May. It shows the final stage in the life if a star...gettin' blowed up. And we all know how cool it is to blow stuff up. Later, the various elements being thrown out by the death of this star will condense into other new stars. The scene is about 2 light years across.
Copy the image to some photo viewer and zoom into it. The deep center of the nebula is stunning. If you look carefully, you can see the whirlpool of destruction centered on the remains of the old star's heart.
That bit of cosmic art brings to mind an discourteously unheralded bit of perfection from the first day of the season. The beauteeeeeful tiny peach pielets donated to the hungru pyrates of Moldy Cove the first weekend. I'd share a photo but we ate all the cute little buggers up.
Nom-Namastastic, oh Ani, my goddess.