kitties, mooses, noses and dwarves-astronomers are people-pt III

The last two astronomers I’m going to expound upon have a book written about them entitled Tycho and Kepler: The Unlikely Partnership that Forever Changed our Understanding of the Heavens. It’s written by a woman named Kitty Ferguson. (I love that name…Kitty Ferguson…what a terrific marriage of whimsy and pragmatism!) Usually I find historical non-fiction [...]

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michaelmas daisy.

(Aster Blooms photographed by André Karwath aka Aka) I’ve been seeing this pretty little flower all around town of late. How could I have missed this all summer long? I asked my 11-year-old what kind of flower it was because she has a memory like a steel trap when it comes to flowers. She told me [...]

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shakespeare was a fraud.

(William Shakespeare) Several years ago when I was in college writing a paper on something important involving things that had to do with my education, I distracted myself by reading an online dissertation on whether Shakespeare really wrote all those plays. This morning, for some weird reason, I woke up thinking about this topic, so [...]

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nuclear power is not the devil. maybe.

(photo courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) In the book Dreaming the Future, Clifford Pickover describes a few themes recorded during several future life progressions (as opposed to past life regressions): 21st Century-World peace is attained and lasts three thousand years. Hunger, greed and prejudice are reduced. 22nd Century-Solar power is part of daily life. [...]

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john dee: divination extraordinaire.

Once, when I was a kid, somebody told me about the fight between creationists and evolutionaryists. I looked up some information in my red Encyclopedia Britanica. I couldn’t figure out who was right. So I asked my mom, who usually knew the answers. She said both were right. Both. Can you believe it? Two totally [...]

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alchemical spagyric complete.

(etching by Durer: Knight, Death and the Devil) I nearly lit my kitchen on fire burning the plant feces (also called caput mortuum or dead head) in the last steps of my calcining process. Who would’ve known that the grain alcohol would explode with such ferocity? And who could’ve guessed how easily the trusty terry [...]

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suffering and bones.

A few weeks ago I became intrigued with Vincent van Gogh. I remembered a story that a teacher told me, about how van Gogh shot himself in the stomach (which is an excruciating place to be injured) and that it took two days for him to die. His last words were, “Who knew that life [...]

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solve et coagula: rip it open, let it heal.

The other day I was talking to my lady and I told her that sometimes I go through periods of feeling bad inside. I told her that I felt like I had wound inside me that needed to be cauterized. She winced a good deal at that revelation. Once when I was in high school [...]

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the addict’s mind.

Lately I’ve noticed myself thinking about how I work too hard and nobody really seems to recognize what an absolute gem I am (except my mom.) Here are few examples of a general lack of appreciation of my greatness: 1. My partner got upset at me for not wiping off the stove, even though I [...]

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alchemy, alcohol and addicts.

(engraving of Kepler’s Platonic Solids) I was talking with two colleagues this afternoon about movies which feature famous addicts and their life stories. We covered Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, and Crazy Heart. (I’m not really familiar with Crazy Heart. I thought he was a Native American Chief. Somehow I got away without being made fun [...]

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