Cloud Appreciation

If you take the time to really look at them, clouds can be incredibly cool. You might see shapes in the fluffy ones. They can evoke emotion, such as dread in a darkened sky just before a big storm breaks. With experience you can read them to get clues about the coming weather, and scientists create man-made clouds with sounding rockets to study the upper-atmospheric winds.

Here's a website devoted to all the various types of clouds: The Cloud Appreciation Society. Click that link, look at their photo gallery and be prepared to be amazed.

Climbing the World's Tallest Tree

The tree is named Hyperion, and it's located somewhere in California. They keep the real location of the tallest trees a secret to keep people from damaging them. Ever see where someone carved their name or initials into a tree somewhere? Yeah, those people.

So how tall is Hyperion? It's twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty (minus the base). And scientists know exactly how tall because they measured it the old fashioned way, by climbing to the top and then dropping a tape measure to the ground. Check this out:



More info on Hyperion and other tallest trees can be found here. At the link is a composite photo showing the full height of one of these trees, including someone stationed at various points as they climbed.

The Winchester Mystery House

In San Jose, California, you can tour one of the strangest buildings in the world - the Winchester Mystery House. Sarah Winchester, the wealthy widow of arms magnate William Winchester, believed that the spirits of all those killed by her husband's rifle would haunt her unless she appeased them by constructing a home for them all. In 1884, she bought a farm in San Jose and began construction of a home, the likes of which the world had never seen before.

Construction on the mansion continued around the clock, every single day for 38 years, until the day she died. Often Sarah would hand her carpenters plans that she had drawn up the night before. There was no master plan to be followed, and eventually the house stood seven stories tall and was full of eccentric oddities like stairways and doors to nowhere. Some were supposedly designed to confuse the ghosts, hallways that dead ended and the like, to keep Sarah safe in her own home. Others were practicalities that only an incredibly rich eccentric could afford, such as a stairway with 40 steps, each only 1 inch tall, built late in her life because she had debilitating arthritis and could only raise her feet a few inches. Sarah was also obsessed with the number 13, and that number turns up constantly throughout the home. Newly hired servants were given maps of the house so they could find their way around without getting lost.

As odd as she may have been, Sarah Winchester had exquisite taste, and in many ways the house was ahead of its time. There were modern conveniences like a hot shower, forced air heating and electric lighting. During the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Sarah Winchester was trapped in her bedroom for several hours. After the earthquake, the top three stories were removed and today the mansion is only four stories tall.

Tours of the mansion are offered daily, and here's the official website of the Winchester Mystery House.

C & O Canal

Construction on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal began in 1828 in Washington, D.C., although the idea for a navigable waterway from the Potomac to the Ohio Valley was envisioned as early as George Washington's time. The 184.5 mile canal was completed in 1850, ending in Cumberland, Maryland, and for nearly 75 years it was a major route for moving coal (850,000 tons in 1871). Flooding was always an issue, however, and since the railroad had moved in by then, in 1924 the canal ceased operations following another flood.

In the 1930's, restoring the lower section of the canal was a Civilian Conservation Corps project, in anticipation of the canal becoming a national park. The canal itself only survived because of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, however. In the 1950's the plan was to turn the canal into a parkway to allow motor access through the park, and Justice Douglas, an avid hiker, wrote a letter to the Washington Post
arguing for preserving the canal:

One who walked the canal its full length could plead that cause with the eloquence of a John Muir. He would get to know muskrats, badgers, and fox; he would hear the roar of wind in thickets; He would see strange islands and promontories through the fantasy of fog; he would discover the glory there is in the first flower of spring, the glory there is even in a blade of grass; the whistling wings of ducks would make silence have new values for him. Certain it is that he could never acquire that understanding going 60, or even 25, miles an hour.

He even organized a hike of editors and conservationists, sucessfully swaying public opinion away from the road and back to nature. Time reported on April 5, 1954:

By the time he was ten miles from the city, Douglas had 50 followers, and was being paralleled in the canal by canoeists bearing such signs as SAVE THE CANAL and LESS CARS-MORE CANOES !

The long walk ended at an old canal lock a quarter of a mile farther along. A National Park Service sightseeing barge, drawn by two mules, awaited the hikers. They climbed aboard to ride the last five miles to Georgetown. Their triumphal entry into the city, however, was just beginning. As the barge sloshed down the canal, hundreds of men, women & children hustled along the banks exchanging greetings with the expedition. Other well-wishers called greetings from overhead bridges. The escorting fleet of canoes grew. Automobiles jammed up along a parallel roadway.

The 12,000 acres, including the canal and towpath rather than a paved road, became a national park in 1971.

Here are a few pictures from the section of towpath closest to where I live:


This may be a reproduction, or perhaps a replacement, lockhouse. On the other side of the canal you can see the stone foundation of another building.


The canal at Lock 26.


The store at White's Ferry records the high water marks after the Potomac River floods. (This is the second story of the building.)


The Monocacy Aqueduct

The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling!

This weekend is a treat for skywatchers and amateur astronomers. The annual Perseid meteor shower should be beautiful because it arrives while a new moon is in the sky. As many as 60 meteors per hour may be visible, with larger ones leaving a streak across the night sky as they burn up in our atmosphere.

As a bonus, the planet Mars will be visible as a bright red dot in the sky to the northeast.

Unlike most astronomical events, meteor watching is done best without telescope or binoculars. Get comfortable, pick out a patch of black sky away from light pollution, and watch patiently. The closer towards dawn, the more meteors you might see. The peak number should be Sunday night into Monday morning, but they'll be visible for several nights afterwards too.

Every August at this time the Perseid shower occurs. Named for the constellation Perseus - because that's where the meteors appear to come from - their real origin is the comet Swift-Tuttle. When Earth crosses the path of the comet, debris from the comet's passing enters our atmosphere and gives us a light show.

The Seven Wonders

You've probably heard about the recent voting for the "new 7 wonders." The expressed aim of the project was to call attention to world heritage and I hope that it does this. We all have an interest in preserving the heritage of the world. It is important to note, however, the difference between these wonders and the canonical Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The Wonders of the Ancient World are initially due to Herodotus. He compiled his list of places he saw as he traveled around the Mediterranean. Destroyed with the Library of Alexandria, Callimachus of Cyrene compiled a collection of "Wonders around the World." They probably weren't finalized in what the wonders are now known as. It wasn't until the Middle Ages when the canon of the wonders were drawn to what it is known as now (they weren't, as the press releases of "The New 7 Wonders" suggest, decided by one man).

The Wonders of the Ancient World were, apparently (only one - The Pyramids at Giza - survives), truly wondrous to behold. A wonderful reference on the seven wonders is located here. They are:

1. The Pyramids of Giza
2. The Colossus at Rhodes
3. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
4. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
5. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
6. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia
7. The Lighthouse at Alexandria

I've traveled a decent amount and been to a lot of different places in the world. However, I have only been to one of the so-called "New 7 Wonders." In all honesty, two of them I don't think belong on the list at all. I find it interesting that none of them is built in modern times. I wonder about that - do we build physical wonders anymore (as a culture)? The same website has a list of seven modern wonders and seven forgotten modern wonders. I've seen seven of those fourteen and I just don't feel like those really rise to the level of wonder. What do you think? Any thoughts on what modern wonder you think will make it to the canon and be discussed 2000 years from now?

There's Old, and Then There's *Old*

In the White Mountains of California you'll find the oldest living things on planet Earth. Bristlecone Pine trees have survived there for thousands of years, including "Methuselah", which is over 4,670 years old! These trees were saplings when the pyramids in Egypt were being built. They were mature trees during the time of Christ, and they still live.

You can learn more about Bristlecone Pines by following the links here and here and there are some cool photos here.

Moon Trees

During the Apollo missions that landed on the moon, one member of each crew stayed in orbit while the other two descended to the surface. One of these Command Module Pilots was Stu Roosa, who was a smoke jumper before he became an astronaut. Besides photographing the moon from orbit and performing other scientific experiments, Roosa carried with him 500 tree seeds. The idea was to plant them when he returned to Earth and to watch over time to see what effect the trip into space might have on them.

Over 400 seedlings were grown from the seeds, and they were planted in various places around the US and the world. If you follow this link to the Moon Trees page, you'll find a list at the bottom showing where many of them are planted.

Maybe one is close enough to you to visit. After all, not every tree went around the moon and back!