Earth Day at 50

EARTH DAY: For the past 50 years, April 22 has been celebrated as Earth Day.

We took the occasion to spend a little extra time with our seed starts.

Overall, they're super disappointing this year. Yes, we'll have cherry tomatoes for days, apparently, but not a single Roma tomato seed has shown itself above the soil line.

I am happy to report a whopping four of our dozen-plus eggplant seeds have finally sprouted. One lil' one is below.

We spent some time today checking out NASA's Earth Day offerings. 

The U.S. space agency has launched a cool video to commemorate 50 years of Earth Day. As they explain, "It’s been five decades since Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders photographed Earth peaking over the Moon’s horizon. The iconic image, dubbed Earthrise, inspired a new appreciation of the fragility of our place in the universe. Two years later, Earth Day was born to honor our home planet. As the world prepares to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, NASA reflects on how the continued growth of its fleet of Earth-observing satellites has sharpened our view of the planet’s climate, atmosphere, land, polar regions and oceans."

Astronaut Jessica Meir, who recently returned to Earth from a stay on the International Space Station, discusses the rare and spectacular views of our planet she had while on orbit.

This morning, facebook reminded me that the first ever Seattle Science March three years ago was held on Earth Day. That day seems like forever ago.

Maybe it seems like an eternity since we're currently gripped n a global pandemic, and after a few weeks of being 'forced' to social distance and stay away from large group or close quarters gathering, anti-science monsters are beginning to rear their ugly heads. Case in point: This 'lady' in Tennessee (below), who apparently thinks having the Cracker Barrel open is more important than elderly people or fellow humans with auto immune disorders.

Or how about these unmasked numskulls storming the Ohio state capital, definitely not practicing social distancing. Hope they aren't caught up in a COVID outbreak a couple of weeks from now.

Heavy sigh. 

LIFT OFF: At lunchtime today, we watched a SpaceX mission lift off from the Space Coast. It was their seventh Starlink mission. The rocket booster used was on its third launch, and it may see a fourth launch, as it nailed the landing on the ocean-anchored barge after successfully boosting the satellites into orbit. 

You can watch a replay of the launch below.


SPRINT TO THE FINISH: Annabelle recently finished a series of four writing classes compliments of Clarion West, a non-profit that hosts workshops for aspiring writers of all ages.

I'll have her tell you a bit more about the experience. ...

The Writing Sprint series of classes I took with instructor Tempest Bradford have been a really good way to expand my horizons in terms of writing with prompts and keeping motivation to write under a short time period. There were two ‘sprints’ per each 1 hour session, with each sprint being an assignment to write a scene or short story (around 300 words) based on one of the images provided to the class. I found these exercises very engaging and motivating, because the combination of a mental image and a short time constraint (between 10 and 15 minutes) really kicked my brain into gear when it came to putting words on the page so I had something to share once the timer was up. I usually have trouble deciding on a place to start and visualizing the scene in my head, so I found image prompts to be a really good way to generate fresh ideas. The second ‘sprint’ in each class always had some sort of gimmick to it, though the specific challenge varied based on the session. My personal favorite was the challenge to only use two senses when describing the scene around your character – I thought it was fun to portray just the senses of hearing and touch to describe a rainy city scene as a symphony of sorts. In conclusion, I find that the classes really helped me find out what kinds of stimuli get me in a good writing mood and how prompts or personal challenges can turn a blank page into a fully-fledged scene in just 15 minutes!