Twelfth Night is a day of mayhem and madness and the first glimmers of the mornings becoming lighter. And the first stirrings of the new year getting properly underway with the putting away of Christmas decorations. What are my hopes for the new year? I would love to see more non-fiction, especially popular science on …
January Reflections
January Reflections
Blue Moon
There has been a lot of fuss in the press regarding the blue supermoon...and rightly so! The Moon is a fascinating object and an easy objec to get anyone interested in space and astronomy. I was fortunate to be interviewed on Radio Devon which gave me an opportunity of explaining the phenomenon. When there are …
New Year’s Day 2024
I enter the new year bemused by the reporting of global celebrations as we leave 2023 with wars, cost of living crises, and much uncertainty with forthcoming elections. The increasing commercialisation of bank holidays concerns me as there is always such a build up to Christmas Day with shoppers filling high streets...and then again on Boxing …
w/e 17 September
The week began and ended with a concert to raise funds for Ukraine and a school in Uganda. I described the earlier concert in my previous notes, with the latter a reprise of the first. And no less delightful. In fact, more so, as the pianist was able to use a grand piano rather than …
Exeter Library Stack
Following on from my epic reading marathon of Henry Williamson's awesome saga spanning the social changes from 1880 to 1940s, Jez from Exeter Library has said some kind words about the review I completed and the full version of my guest blog within his 'Sleuthing in the Stacks' blog is available on the Library website …
Reflections w/e 10 September 2023
I remember 10 September 2001 distinctly. It was a Monday and I was enjoying gardening in the warm sunshine. I had a phone conversation with my friend, Ulrike. Life felt good. How all that changed the very next day with the now so-called 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. And, …
There has been a lot of fuss in the press regarding the blue supermoon…and rightly so! The Moon is a fascinating object and an easy objec to get anyone interested in space and astronomy. I was fortunate to be interviewed on Radio Devon which gave me an opportunity of explaining the phenomenon. When there are two full moons in a month, the second one is called ‘blue’…origins of this are disputed, and the term is used as a catch all for anything rare. Two full moons in a month are not actually that rare but a blue supermoon is. A supermoon occurs when the moon is at its closest to Earth or perigee, and when it coincides with being low on the horizon, looms very large in the sky. It is the same size as always, but appears larger due to perspective and the extra brightness.
February can never contain a blue moon because the time it takes the Moon to make an orbit of Earth and for it to complete a cycle of its phases are both longer than there are days in that month. The Moon is full because it is directly opposite the sun, so it is fun …
Book Review of Henry Williamson’s Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight
This ambitious project has taken me a year to complete, and then not entirely as I skipped a couple of volumes in order to complete the reading and review. It was through Jez at Exeter Central Library that I came across this series and it deserves much wider recognition. Here it is: Book Review of …
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Karen Hedges 