I must confess that there are quite a few things that escaped my education, probably stuff that you all know; mostly everyone knows this stuff.
Deep breath…
🔳 I didn’t know that whales are mammals, I really didn’t, despite the fact that I love animals and took enough classes in college that should have made this a solid part of my knowledge base.
🔳 I also didn’t know that earth revolves around the moon.
🔳 I don’t know why we sometimes see the moon during the day. Like yesterday.
I know I’ve LEARNED these things, but apparently the facts didn’t stick in my gray matter.
The moon orbits around the earth, not the other way around, as I thought. The reason why we can see the moon at night because of the reflection of the sun’s rays and energy that bounce back to earth. This is what gives the moon the brilliant white glow. It’s important to also remember that the earth has a rotation and an orbit around the sun. The relationship between the earth and the moon is kind of like a slow dance.
The earth is tilted on an axis, all the while going around the sun and meanwhile, the moon is going around the earth. The light from the moon is bright enough to overpower the usual light that we see at particular times of the day. Most of the light that is visible to the human eye is in the blue color range and the moon’s reflected light, combined with its location gives us the chance to see it during certain daylight hours. Due to the rotation of the moon around the earth, it is actually above our horizon for about twelve hours out of our twenty four hour day.
We can only usually see the moon for about six hours during that time period, and then the bright light energy of the sun overpowers the reflection.
The moon orbits the Earth once every 27.322 days. It also takes approximately 27 days for the moon to rotate once on its axis. As a result, the moon does not seem to be spinning but appears to observers from Earth to be keeping almost perfectly still. Scientists call this synchronous rotation.
Earth spins on its axis once in every 24-hour day. You and me and everything else – including Earth’s oceans and atmosphere – are spinning along with the Earth at the same constant speed.
If the Earth suddenly stopped spinning, the atmosphere would still be in motion with the Earth’s original 1100 mile per hour rotation speed at the equator… This means rocks, topsoil, trees, buildings, literally everything–would be swept away into the atmosphere. (Info curated from Google, NASA, and Wiki)
Now I’ve entered a rabbit hole that’s really too much for me to comprehend. My head is spinning. Like Earth? The moon? The sun?
Too much. Now I wonder…are we really the only living beings? Is Earth the only inhabited planet? Shaking my head, it’s too much for me to absorb.
I’m not sure if ignorance is bliss, but my head’s going to explode if I continue to follow the pathways of deep existential thought.
Our existence on this planet is incredibly fragile. I feel an urgent need to step outside and place my bare feet on the grass and the rocks, to touch skin of the earth; to feel and be grounded.
Still no whales/mammals, but a pic of the beach tree all dressed up for the holidays.
Warning: This is a longer-than-normal read. There’s no way I could edit out more or the story wouldn’t make sense.
Sometimes I love the internet SO much.
I live a sort of quiet, uneventful life; mostly concerned with animals and my son and now his babies; not really any major excitement unless you count meeting the Dalai Lama as excitement, or being in a few films and doing a little modeling back in the day…seeing a coyote or a wolf counts as excitement in my world; as does experiencing a mountain etched against the sky or finding a special rock or seashell on a hike.
But there’s one certain time that I broke out of the mold. I guess I’m unpredictable. An enigma, you might say.
I suppose it all started when I was a young teenager and crushed SO HARD on Jim Morrison that I would use the old computer paper that my brother brought home –reams of it–to hand write story after story about how Jim and I would meet, fall in love, and marry. There was no reality to my desires; I was immersed in total limerence and fantasy.
Moving from the east to the west coast was a total culture shock I don’t think I ever recovered from.
On this particular day, I don’t have a memory about how I managed to get out of the house to attend this concert, but I did.
Here’s the backstory–two of them; intertwined:
On of my Twitter friends attempted to divert all of our stressed out political chatter to something more benign and queried,
“What was your favorite concert that you attended?”
My response was concerts with the Doors and Guns N’ Roses; one I saw in high school and GnR more recently.
I couldn’t remember exactly what year it was, so I Googled Doors concert San Diego and discovered it was August 22, 1970, which means I had just turned sixteen and when school started in September, I would be a senior. (I used to be very smart. That was a long time ago and I’m not so very smart anymore.)
The articles that popped up about the concert totally blew my mind. I wonder why I have no recollection of the concert, what happened, or later reading about it! (I was not into drugs, so that’s not the reason why I don’t remember.)
But not yet. This is a twisty windy story.
Before I share the info, the other piece of this story is that I hadn’t even remembered anything about that Doors concert until I attended the 2017 Womens’ March.
I was there with friends, caught up in the passion of the movement, and then, right in front of me, in the middle of the street on Harbor Drive, was a very familiar face that I hadn’t seen in thirty-plus years. In actual fact, we hadn’t seen each other since my son’s first birthday party in 1982. A LONG TIME AGO.
I yelled her name, she turned around, and we screamed and hugged each other. Apparently, I looked familiar, too. Always with the curly hair, lol.
Right then and there in the middle of the street with 25,00+ people milling around us, we caught each other up on the highlights of those lost decades.
That’s when she reminded me of something she could never forget; the day we went to the Doors concert together, and in total conflict to my normal personality, I jumped on the stage to try and touch/kiss/marry Jim Morrison.
I had totally forgotten.
There were no cell phones back then and hardly anybody brought a camera, so there was no documentation. Until now!
PROOF:
Crabby Appleton opened the show. (I kinda remember that.) The Doors setlist:
Roadhouse Blues
Back Door Man
Break On Through
When The Music’s Over
Soul Kitchen
Money
Little Red Rooster
Unknown Track (Poem)
Carol
Louie, Louie
The Celebration Of The Lizard
Heartbreak Hotel
Light My Fire
Post-concert article by unknown author:
“…The venue was the San Diego Sports Arena, used mainly for basketball and hockey games. ‘Festival Seating’ was in effect: no reserved seats, and no seats at all on the floor. Acoustics were poor.
Prior to the Doors coming out, a local DJ appeared on stage, and told the crowd how glad the Doors were to be back with ‘their people’. This was a reference to the fact that Morrison’s obscenity trial (stemming from a charge of indecent exposure at a Miami concert) had required them to spend a lot of time in Florida.
The DJ also read something that was getting quoted a lot around that time, due to demands from George Wallace and other conservatives for ‘law and order’ to suppress student protest and social unrest:
“The streets of our cities are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might and the Republic is in danger. Yes, danger from within and without. We need law and order! Yes, without law and order our nation cannot survive.”
This was attributed to Adolf Hitler, though in fact he probably never said it. Whatever its source, it served well as a statement of the sort of counter-cultural, anti-establishment militancy that seemed obligatory at every rock concert around that time.
Soon after that, The Doors came out. As Robbie Krieger launched into the opening riff of Roadhouse Blues, the spotlight fell on Morrison, who stood on the right side of the stage (the audience’s left) a bit apart from the rest of the band. He was dressed only in a white t-shirt and blue jeans. He had a full beard. As the song intro continued, Morrison remained stock still, eyes closed, his only movement being to wind the microphone cord, looping it over his left shoulder. This seemed to go on for quite some time; he must have wound at least 30 feet of cord.
******As he did so a girl from the crowd leapt onstage and wrapped her arms around him, only to be quickly taken off by a roadie. (This would happen several times more).
In the middle of Back Door Man or Soul Kitchen, Morrison ad-libbed something like “San Diego baby, gonna catch ya, gonna clean ya, gonna cook ya, gonna eat cha!”.
He drank frequently on stage, and I doubt it was water. At one point Morrison wandered to the side of the stage where amps were stacked, and placed his mike into the speaker cones, producing squeals of feedback. Also he came downstage and pointed the mike at several members of the audience, each of whom merely gave out inarticulate yells. When Morrison asked the crowd “What do you guys want to hear?”, the response came back: ‘Light My Fire!’
The San Diego gig was the Door’s fourth from last before Morrison died.”
And YES, in case you haven’t figured it out, I was one of those girls!!!! I don’t think I actually got close enough to touch him, but there it is; proof in black and white.
If my attorney dad had read those articles and put two and two together, I would have had a barrage of a trial-worthy interrogatory and would need to think fast. Thank goodness there were no pics of me! (No cell phones/a blessing??)
I can’t figure out how or where I conjured up the chutzpah to jump on the stage-but it happened. Was it a premeditated decision or one I made just prior to the actual act? I don’t have any answers.
It was a moment in time memorialized in a few old newspaper articles.
Memories.
Here’s a couple videos; not great quality, but there’s more on YouTube.
You probably heard on the news how windy it was here in SoCal. In the local mountains, one gust was clocked at 95 miles an hour!
Even at the coast, wind gusts were almost fifty miles an hour. A shared neighbor fence is just about completely down; it was well on its way before the wind event ‘cos their giant Bird of Paradise was relentlessly pushing it over, so I guess that might be something that will need to be addressed. One day.
Eucalyptus branches are everywhere, wires are down, smoke from a few local fires dot the sky, but the bigger and more dangerous fires are a bit to the north of me in Orange County.
I had to pick up my new glasses (huge and I love them) and make another trip to the dentist to confirm that yes, I do need a root canal, so next week should be a real treat. What a not very fun way to celebrate Hannukah, but I’m grateful the dentist saw it before it got really bad.
I drove home along the beach route and made a quick stop to look for whales. I wasn’t lucky enough to see any this time, but I took some pics. You can see forever, all the way to the ends of the earth.
Look at the sparkles!
No whales in sight, but I’m sure they’re out there in that vast ocean. It made me think of that iconic Linda Ronstadt song, Somewhere Out There. Seems about right for 2020, too.
The first few notes get me teary every single time. I never saw the film, An American Tail, but I might have to now.
And a windchime filled video of our windy morning.
Since the ash tree endured its yearly abscission, I raked fallen leaves for the very last time and have been enjoying this disrobed version until late afternoon when I noticed the branches were once again full; not of leaves, but of dozens of happy, chirpy little birds adorning every space.
So completely adorable.
One by one, they flew away, and the tree was once again barren.
I’m a day late, but couldn’t resist sharing my talented friend’s beautiful photo of the moon early this morning at sunrise.
Photo courtesy of Mick Yarbrough
November’s full moon was traditionally called the Beaver Moon by a number of Native Americans and colonial Americans. Many Native American groups used the monthly moons and nature’s corresponding signs as a calendar to track the seasons.
Why the “Beaver” Moon? This is the time of year when beavers begin to take shelter in their lodges, having laid up sufficient stores of food for the long winter ahead.
The November full Moon has also been called the Frost Moon and the Freezing Moon. Judging by the chilly weather that becomes more and more common at this time of year, it’s not hard to understand how these names came about! Another name, the Digging (or Scratching) Moon, evokes an image of animals scratching at the fallen leaves, foraging for fallen nuts or remaining shoots of green foliage—with the implication that winter is on its way.
Here in SoCal, it’s been warm and sunny during the day, but getting colder at night.
After I removed the messy, encroaching ficus tree, I decided to replace the empty space with something edible.
I selected a pomegranate, Valencia orange, and a fig. I chose the Diana variety because it looked so adorable, almost like it was decorated for the holidays.
I know you’re supposed to remove any fruit the first year because it’ll encourage stronger root growth, but I’m going to let these guys ripen first and eat them.
This golden fig is soft and ready to eat; incredibly sweet–tropical with hints of banana and pineapple.
What’s funny is that I learned that fig is a member of the ficus family, so to avoid any invasive root damage, I planted it about fifty feet away from the house. The guy at the nursery said that would be far enough away to be safe.
Extreme closeup. Interesting and sort of gross, too.
So yummy, not too crunchy with seeds like other figs. It was absolutely delicious and juicy. Dried figs are great, but this one fresh off the tree was such a treat!
This is the end of the month, almost the end of the year, and tomorrow’s full moon will beguile us with a spectacular lunar eclipse.
Evergreen; exactly like Jon. Relevant and funny with painful truths. Gratitude turns what you have into enough; stay safe and healthy, vegan or not! Happy Thanksgiving 2020!
He sat for the longest time on a volunteer Brazilian peppertree. The original tree was removed because it’s an invasive species, but also resilient and obnoxious, an aggressive woody weed which displaces native vegetation and rapidly invades disturbed sites.
To A Mocking Bird
The name thou wearest does thee grievous wrong; No mimic thou: that voice is thine alone. The poets sing but strains of Shakespeare’s song; The birds, but notes of thine imperial own.– Henry Jerome Stockard
Enchanted Seashells | Princess Rosebud 