Quick Reminder - JLand Meet

As most already know, we've been planning a way for those who wish, to get together for a few days, meet and greet, all that good stuff.  The info is in Pharmolo's Northern Trip Journal, or go directly to Gina's place (Motoxmom72) for Convention info,  Input is needed! 

Please visit J-Land Convention Info for basic start of itinerary.  THANKS! 

Dedicated to Pharmolo For All His Help

                                      HURRICANES

A hurrican is a powerful, rotating storm that forms over warm waters near the Equator.  Another name for a hurricane is a Tropical Cyclone.  Hurricanes have strong, rotating winds, at least 74 mph (119 kph) a huge amount of rain, low air pressure, thunder and lightening.  The cyclonic winds of a hurricane rotate in a counterclockwise direction, around a central, calm eye.

If this type of storm forms in the western Pacific Ocean, it is called a Typhoon.

Hurricanes often travel from the ocean, to the coast and onto the land.  This is where the wind, rain and huge waves cause extensive destruction.

Generally, when it moves over land or warm waters, the storm weakens and quickly dies down, because these storms are fueld by warm water.

On average, there are 100 tropical cyclones each year, with 12 forming in the Atlantic, 15 forming in the Pacific, and the rest in other worldwide areas.

HURRICANE SEASON is the time when most Atlantic hurricanes occur, from June 1 to November 30.  In the eastern Pacific, it is from May 15 to November 30.

The weather symbol for a hurricane looks like a large, thick "S" shape.  Marine flags that alert boaters to a hurricane are two red flags with black squares in the center.

Thank you, Guido, for always keeping us posted about the when and where of these incredible forces of nature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Bit Of Help For Those In Pain

"I see that you have at last found the secret of true peace:  not to examine your present state, and to abandon the past and future entirely to God's mercy; to have a great idea of God's goodness, which is infinitely greater than you can express, and to believe, in spite of anything that tries to persuade you to the contrary, that YOU ARE LOVED BY GOD in spite of all your miseries."

                       St. Claude De La Colombiere

Prayer For All Souls

At the request of Jude from the previous entry, here is the prayer for departed souls, on the reverse side.  For anyone who's "lost" a beloved one, here are the comforting words:

Gracious God of Life, I am grateful for the saints and souls you have graced my life with.  My heart is touched as they pass into eternal llife.

With great confidence, I comend to You my loved ones, family members and friends, who are no longer here on this earthly journey of faith.

At times of sadness, when You call them home, may my sorrow be comforted by faith in Your goodness - that life is merely changed, not ended, even though they are unseen to me.

Lord Jesus, welcome me, and all those for whom I pray, into eternal life to share Your Resurrection with God in glory.

St. Therese, intercede for me.

St. Therese, welcome my loved ones.

St. Therese, strength my faith.

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St. Therese of Lisieux - Something Special

I was raised Roman Catholic and though many things have gone by the wayside, my faith is strong.  Over the years, my brother Chris likes to send me different interesting spiritual things, and I truly enjoy getting them.  The above is both sides of a Prayer for November using the intercession of St. Therese of Lisieux, who many of my online friends admire.  Not to be confused with the great St.Theresa of Avila, this is "The Little Flower of Jesus" known for her "little ways" of looking at and dealing with the foibles of life.  

Thanks Chris!   

Shine On, Harvest Moon

Tomorrow night just after sunset, the Full Harvest Moon will rise in all her glory and we're once again the fortunate humans who will witness the autumnal equinox as it shows off.  Thanks to the great Caesar, Julius, we have two extra months in the year so farmers had enough time to harvest their crop - hence the name "harvest moon".  For centuries untold, farmers worked by the light of Luna Maria, shining as if it were a great powerful beam of the softest, most ethereal heavenly glow.  There's nothing that comes close to the way moonlight looks on people and things, I say.  And to that, I'd like to add a few interesting facts:

Did you know that moonlight "steals" color from whatever it touches?  If you look at a rose under moonlight, it's brightly lit and casts a shadow but the red is gone, replaced by shades of pale gray.  The whole landscape is that way!

And if you stare at the gray landscape long enough, it turns blue.  The best places to see "blueshift" is in the countryside, far from artificial lights.  As your eyes become adapted to the dark, that's when the blue appears.  Film makers often use blue filters over their lens when filming night scenes to create a more natural feel.  Artists add blue paint for nightscenes for the same reason.  Yet if you look at the moon, it is certainly not blue. 

Moonlight won't let you read!  Open a book beneath the full moon - it seems bright enough.  Yet when you try to make out the words, you can't.  And if you stare at the page too long, the words may just disappear!  Moonlight blurs your vision and creates a little blind spot.

This is all very strange, yes?  Actually, moonlight is no more exotic than sunlight reflected from the dusty surface of the moon.  The only difference is intensity:  moonlight is about 400,000 times fainter than direct sunlight.  So why does this all happen?  The reason is our eyes:

The RETINA is like a digital camera.  We have two kinds of "pixels"called rods and cones.  The cones allow the eye to take in colors, like red roses, and fine detail, like words in a book.  This all works only in bright light.  After dark, the rods take over.  They are 1000 times more sensitive than the cones.  They allow us to see at night, yet rods are colorblind!  Thus, roses at night appear blue.  The basic principle is, when we think we see color, we're actually seeing the effects of light - reflected, refracted, absorbed, etc.  It is the explanation for what appears to be a "blue" sky or ocean, yet pick up a handful of the sea and it's colorless.  Just as our atmosphere is. 

I've left out alot of information about the composition of the eye and why things appear as they do, but the moon is still a very mysterious and incredible object which most believe was once part of planet earth.  Whatever our feelings about Luna Maria, she is still a wonder to behold!

Basic info courtesy of Skywatcher Alert, Sky & Telescope

CAVEAT LUNAR:  This is a generalization about how people perceive things under the full moon, but as with all things human, there are exceptions.  Some people can read by moonlight, others have no trouble seeing the red petals on a moonlit rose.  These people have "MOONVISION" which is caused by having extra rods or extremely sensitive cones.  Maybe YOU'RE one of them?  Find out tomorrow night! 

 

 

How To Kill A Penquin

Who alive could ever forget the great Captain Hazelwood, drunk as a loon, at the helm of the giant oil tanker "Exxon Valdez" as he steered it directly into the rocks off the Prince Edward Isles?  I can picture still those boomers put out into the far reaches of the ocean trying to contain the black tary slime before it went further out to sea.  But what will always stay with me is the image of self-less Greenpeace workers and many hundreds of volunteers out there cleaning rocks with soap and water and a scrub brush.  They were hearty.

Something that wasn't so wonderful, however, was the way they tried to save the water fowl, the penguins, all manner of sea life, which came ashore caked in oil and unable to fly or swim.  People got out their pails of soapy water and ever-so-gently washed away the oil from each creature, then setting it free in the unpolluted area set aside for that purpose.  It took many months (yes!) before marine ornithologists took to their alerts and explained that all this soap, no matter the good intent, was killing these animals, as it removed their most essential life-saving feature:  waterproofing.  That layer is what kept those animals from drowning, from hyperthermia, from starvation.  Once removed by this soapy mixture the water fowl would soon, within only a day or two, either freeze or starve to death.

It was when their little corpses started to wash ashore that the human animal realized their tragic mistake and though their intentions were of the most noble in orientation, the result was catastrophic, as many of us remember.  These good folk truly worked hard, for as we all know, oil and water don't mix, so they spent many hours using elbow grease (scuse the pun) scrubbing those penguins and sea otters - but removing their one source of survival in the cold waters off the sound.

The world learned from this lessen - it would seem. 

Just last week I saw something that brought all those memories back, and it boiled my britches.  The makers of "Dawn" Liquid detergent have a commercial out showing a woman and her daughter bonding (in suitable slow-mo) as they scrub a little penquin clean with a toothbrush and - need I say it?  That soapy ooze.  Either they have short memories or something's gone terribly wrong with the world, but when you remove the extremely valuable waterproofing of these fowl it's akin to removing our own skin - we'd die of infections within, what, hours?

I'm also adding a little medical info, just for frustration's sake:  The more you use these liquid "Anitibiodic" soaps, the more immune germs will become to any effectiveness they may have on your hands.  These liquid "anti" soaps are the biggest rip-off health hazards and no one cares since money flows and people think they're protecting themselves against germs.  They're actually making themselves more prone, more susceptible.  The best soap in the world is one with no color, perfume or added "anti" anything.  But we'll continue to help what are fast becoming "super-bugs" which hospitals all over the world have already seen developing for years.  Wide-spectrum antibiotic rounds do little to stave off the fevers and lesions associated with these germs.  And it's all because we thought we weren't CLEAN ENOUGH! 

I'm going to sleep, dream about mud puddles.