Paper Flowers

I went for a little afternoon walk around my neighborhood today and I saw one of the biggest dandelions I’ve ever seen. The plant was huge. The stem was huge. The flower was huge. Everything about it was huge. And it was just sitting in a patch of rocks. I didn’t get a picture of it, of course, but it was beautiful.

That got me thinking about paper flowers. For some reason, Mother’s Day brought out the ads for paper flowers in full force. Any force would have been surprising, as I had not known that this was a market until now. Then I saw an entire segment on paper flowers on Sunday Morning. These flowers are works of art. They’re gorgeous. The skill and time it must take to make them are not something I have the patience to replicate. But I couldn’t shake this one thought:

This is something I will never spend money on.

But why? On the surface it’s an extremely good deal. Expensive, but these are flowers that will never die. Never wilt. If you keep them from direct sunlight, they’ll never fade. Every week when I’m walking through the grocery store or farmer’s market I wish that I was the type of person who would buy fresh flowers for their home. But I’m not. I’m the type of person who buys fresh flowers once a year and then lets them rot in the vase for six months. These paper flowers should be a dream.

But I won’t buy paper flowers for the same reason I don’t buy silk flowers: It has all of the color, but none of the life.

I can’t smell a paper flower. Or, I can, but what would it smell like? I’m probably not going to find an ant crawling on the everlasting doppelganger. I’ll never notice them brown and whither. Never changing, eventually blending into the background so I don’t notice it at all.

Maybe I’m just mad at capitalism. If I had a friend who spent their free time crafting me a gorgeous facsimile flower, I would be over the Moon! I’d keep it forever. There’s love in that. There’s life in that.

Or, maybe I just like a mess. My home office wouldn’t certainly be evidence of that. Where I live is very…same-y. Houses look the same, yards look the same. I like a yard with very little grass in it. A yard that’s covered in native wildflowers. That’s home to gnarly shrubs and a tree or two that look a little wonky. I like it when a person can make their home a home for bees and butterflies and birds and moles. What else is that green patch of Earth for?

My family came to visit recently and noted that the town was very nice. And it is. Very well-kept.

On my way back from my walk, I walked by the ginormous dandelion. In the 20 minutes that had passed, it had been chopped down by a weedwacker. I saw the guy who did it. Just doing his job like he hadn’t cut down the most beautiful plant in the yard.

I could see the razed flower from the sidewalk. Still had all of the color, but none of the life.

You Need to See the Total Eclipse in April

In 2017, I was in Atchison, KS cursing at clouds.

It was Aug. 21, just before I was set to start my second year of graduate school at the University of Kansas. The first total solar eclipse to be visible from North America since 1979 and the first to be visible from anywhere close to where I lived since 1918. And here I was, living only an hour away from totality.

It was a big deal.

So my department chartered a couple of buses and hauled as many of us as they could cram to the campus of Benedictine College. Eclipse glasses in hand we traveled an hour northeast to hopefully see one of the rarest and breathtaking astronomical events humans can hope to see.

The clouds rolled in. Nothing leaves you feeling more powerless than when nature doesn’t follow your plans.

Because the plan was simple. It was summertime in Kansas. Hot and dry. A clear sky was not supposed to be an issue. We found ourselves on the baseball field with our lawn chairs and blankets, looking nervously up as the clouds started to pile up and get darker.

Then, a few hours before the eclipse was due to begin, the rain started.

Here we were, dozens of us, huddled in the dugouts of the Asher Sports Complex, waiting. Just waiting. And chatting. Blowing bubbles. Trying to make ourselves feel better about what was surely going to be a disappointing day. What else could we do?

Making the best of it.

——

This was my first - and so far only - eclipse. The only other time I could have possible seen an eclipse was May 10, 1994 when an annular eclipse swept across North America. I would have been 10 years old, and I have no memory of it. So whether I saw it or not, I guess I didn’t.

I have seen a couple of lunar eclipses. If a solar eclipse is when the Moon finds itself at just the right spot between Earth and the Sun, a lunar eclipse is when the Earth blocks the Sun from shining on the Moon. The Moon has no light of its own; we see the Moon because it reflects the light from the Sun. But when the Earth blocks that light, the Moon transforms its color from bright white to deep red. The Moon, rather than reflecting the light from the Sun, is reflecting back to us the light of every sunset on Earth.

In some ways, I prefer lunar eclipses to solar ones. They’re more accessible. There is not a narrow strip of Earth where a lunar eclipse is visible. If the Moon is up where you live during a lunar eclipse, you can see it. And you don’t need any special equipment to see it. You can watch it for as long as you like without fear with just your eyes.

While the blood red moon of a lunar eclipse is breathtaking, it also happens at night, often when people are sleeping. It’s an extremely ignorable event. With a solar eclipse, that’s not so.

During a solar eclipse, if you are in the path of totality, you are witness to the inescapable fact of the movement of the Universe. The temperature drops. Insects start to sing. And then when totality hits…silence. It’s a stark reminder that we are all evolved to live on this planet. Life on Earth has rhythms based on the Sun. We are dependent on it for our survival.

——

The rain came and went throughout the hours before the eclipse. I desperately wanted to lose hope. I thought the uncertainty and disappointment would be easier to deal with if I didn’t have hope. I’m not an optimist by nature, but that day, for whatever reason, I was. So I kept an eye on the weather app on my phone. This could clear, I unconvincingly said to whoever was next to me.

The eclipse started around 11:40 in the morning. The rain had stopped. The clouds were still in the way, but less so. There were pockets of sky that allowed for limited glimpses of the partial phase. Just enough to keep hope alive.

So there we were, dozens of us, out on a baseball field in the middle of the day, looking up at the silhouette of the Moon cross the disk of the Sun when the clouds would let us. All of us hoping that the clouds would break in time to see totality.

It was an excruciating 80 minutes. As the Sun approached 80 percent coverage, the air started to cool and birds and insects started to chirp. Then, the clouds parted. We could see it the Diamond Ring as the the Moon slipped right between the Earth and the Sun.

And then it was dark.

We took off our protective glasses and stared up at our completely obscured star. At 1:06 pm CDT, for 2 minutes and 19 seconds, the Sun was gone.

Those aren’t clouds! Just my terrible smartphone camera!

I’m not someone who experiences a lot of excess awe. I’ve never been moved to tears by a sunset or a painting. I didn’t expect to feel anything during totality. And that’s, maybe, what made the biggest impression. And it’s still, even years later, just a feeling. I didn’t see the eclipse. I experienced it. I had goosebumps, not just because of the temperature change, but from it was. It was unnerving and wonderful. The stress and uncertainty that came with the rain disappeared. It was just us the the sky.

The clouds rolled back in just before the last bit of partial eclipse was fading. I turned to my partner and said, “When’s the next one?”

We went to the cafeteria for lunch.

Watching totality.

——

Another eclipse crosses North America on April 8, 2024, and you should go see it in it’s path of totality if you possibly can. Not only because another total eclipse doesn’t even touch the continent until 2044, although that is true. This is a gift you can give yourself and your family and friends. It’s a chance to stop and be reminded of where you are and what that means. It’s an opportunity to feel something unexpected.

I wish I was a better writer so I could convince you that this is worth it. But go. If you can, go to totality. Take your friends and loved ones. You will never forget it.

My bike is not taking me on a weight loss journey.

I’d like to get something off my chest. It’s something I see pop up all the time regarding walkable or pedestrian- and cycling-friendly cities: This idea that you’ll be skinnier if you could just walk everywhere.

I got to thinking about this as I was reading Daniel Knowles book, Carmageddon. The title isn’t subtle, but in case you were confused, the subtitle is “How Cars Make Life Worse and What To Do About It.” So far, I’m on board.

It was an OK read; it has no notes, no bibliography, so not a book designed to help you learn more. But if you want to rip me right out of the argument that cars are bad for society, just start talking about health and weight.

Human health - what causes good and bad outcomes - is astoundingly complex. What we can say about the population at large isn’t the same as what we can say for individual people. Knowles, to his credit, doesn’t linger on health much. But I would like to quote a particular passage at length because it’s so smug and judge-y while ostensibly trying to not be smug and judge-y:

Walking and cycling are not only convenient, and often cheaper, but they are also much healthier than sitting still behind the wheel of a car. We live in increasingly sedentary societies. a 2010 survey by the Centers for Disease Control found that 38 percent of Americans say that they have not walked for more than ten minutes at a time in more than a week. At a typical walking pace, that means that more than a third of people have not walked half a mile in a week. The average Briton walks only around half a mile per day to get anywhere (so, not counting walking from the sofa to the fridge), or 181 miles a year, according to the Department of Transport. That is down by 83 miles since 1986. And so it should hardly be a surprise that we are getting fatter. Around 28 percent of Brits are clinically obese, and another 35 percent are overweight. In America, 41 percent of people are obese, a figure that is higher still in states like Texas or Iowa, where almost everybody gets around by car.

Driving everywhere is not only making out cities ugly and polluted, it is also making us fatter. It’s easy to moralize about that , but it is mostly not because people are lazy that [sic] they do not exercise enough. It is because they follow the incentives society creates. And those incentives are to drive everywhere, rather than walk. Our ancestors did not spend much time in the gym, or even eat especially healthy diets, but they stayed slim because their day-to-day habits involved walking. It would do us good to rediscover that.

Carmageddon, pp 184-185

Where do I even start? I guess start with the low-hanging fruit: that parenthetical in the first paragraph. The one about not counting the distance walking from the sofa to the fridge? Real nice. Makes the entire second paragraph look awfully disingenuous. But that’s not even the worst problem.

This is basically hand-wringing for 3/4 of a page about how fat people are. But so what? What is the harm here? I’m not going to reinvent the wheel and instead drop this episode of Maintenance Phase to get you up to speed on all things obesity, but suffice it to say that obesity doesn’t equal death. Or even guarantee bad health outcomes. It’s sloppy to equate being a certain weight with being healthy.

That is not to say that argument for more pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly streets should ignore health. Walking is good for everyone. It’s good for your heart and your muscles and your bones. There’s evidence that it supports your mental health. That’s ignoring the impact of pollution of vehicles and injuries from vehicle crashes.

I don’t meant to put this book in particular on blast. This bullshit is so common. Like a recent NPR story on NEAT, or non-exercise activity thermogenesis. The article is interesting! The gist of it is that you can’t change a lot about how your body uses calories, but if you’re active during the day - SURPRISE! - you burn more calories. Toward the end of the article they talk about other positive health outcomes, but it’s overwhelmingly about how many calories you can burn and, implicitly, how much weight you can lose.

I’m just so tired of this framing. When I lived in a walkable and bikeable city, I didn’t lose any weight, but I felt so much better. I slept better. This is anecdotal, but there are more lasting and important reasons to want to get out of your car than fitting into those size 2 jeans.

A New Blog! An Introduction

Hello. Hi. Yes. Welcome to my blog.

Put down the low rise jeans. You have not time traveled back to 2002.

I’m an astronomer, and there will almost certainly be astronomy content here. But it’s not an astronomy blog. In fact, I don’t expect it to even be a mostly-astronomy blog. Astronomy is fun, and I love helping people understand it and feel connected to it. But it’s also important to me that it not be my entire personality.

Because, look, in a lot of ways the world sucks. The effects of climate change sucks. The Supreme Court sucks. Car culture sucks. All of this suckage just puts pressure on my brain.

Writing is how I think. It’s how I process information. When I don’t write, I don’t think. At least not very well.

So what’s this blog going to be about? I don’t know. I read a book recently that I kind of like but also kind of have problems with. Maybe I’ll write about that? I also really want to learn how to make seed paper. Maybe we can go on that journey together? And I’ll write about those things that suck, but hopefully in a way that adds a little signal to the noise.

Maybe, over time, this blog will develop a theme. I’m not necessarily opposed to that. Or maybe it will peter out. Or maybe it will remain an eclectic mix of whatever is going on in my head at any given moment. That’s fine, too.

So welcome to my blog. I hope to see you again.