PEOTS, PLUTO, and PLUOTS: What a Gezellig Trip Around the Sun!

     October 1st of last year was the official launch of Partial Ellipsis of the Sun or PEOTS. 

     I published the first post with terrible formatting, just one hand-drawn image, and a few mission paragraphs. Jan's was the only comment (thanks, jan!).

     The PEOTS logo was introduced ("Looks like a sun with three eyes" was RoRo's comment):

      Over 23,000 page views and nearly a year later, I am quite pleased with the growth and interest in PEOTS, astounded with your loyalty (especially jan, lego, Paul, Joanne, and David) and humour, and generally am much happier with the combination of formatting and images.

         The most popular post, about petrographic thin sections, was viewed over 800 times:

Petrographic Thin Sections, Deadlines, and Nature's Stained Glass

     It was written right after my trip to Kaua'i, Hawai'i. This blog has chronicled that trip, my unexpected trip to the playa that holds the Burning Man Festival in Nevada, 

as well as local trips to beloved Kunming Park in Denver with even more beloved Maizie:

    Thank you for traveling with me on these journeys, adding awe, humour, and encouragement. The gezellig nature of your company has warmed my heart, cooled my jets, humbled me, prodded me, and most importantly, made me laugh and learn every single day.

        I welcome this quizzical look and am happy to see both birding and Nevada Basin and Range extensional geology have resurfaced here at PEOTS more than once.

      We may not have Neil de Grasse Tyson and PLUTO:

Neil de Grasse Tyson says Pluto is "happier" not being a planet

                                                      .  .  .

but we do have plenty of PLUOTS:

    

          

as well as lots of untranslatable gezelligheit.

Thank you for being here. 

Gratefully,

Steph

        Summer Clouds Meet Autumn Clouds 9/22/14:

Radiologist "Selfie": Embedded True North Arrow?

I have wondered this (Here's hoping this week's PEOTS HEADLINE DID NOT FEEL LIKE YELLING!):

      And finally, even though there is no north arrow (!) on this map of Paris, I am quite fond of this thrift store find ($7.88 Euros). It is a 2002 reproduction, printed in Italy, and beautifully framed. Any idea of the vintage of the original map?

Detail:
Tour de 300 Metres (not referred to as Tour d'Eiffel)

Detail: well, look at that engraved detail at St. Ambroise. . .

And the entire map. . .

Merci!

Smith College West Mountain Day picnic, 9/29/14:

Playa-ble: An Unexpected Trip to Black Rock Desert and Burning Man

          An unexpected trip to the ending of the Burning Man festival, held on a gigantic gray/white playa called Black Rock Playa near Reno, Nevada

 resulted in a late Partial Ellipsis Of The Sun... but also in these wonderful images of the playa and the journey there. [Take the Fernley exit off I-80 in far northwestern Nevada and head north on a one-lane-each-way road.]

          The playa varies in elevation only .02 inches across the up to 12-mile wide, 40-mile long, desert feature:

     Being "on playa" is quite an experience. . .Keep your white/limestone-colored dogs close at all times out on the evaporative gypsum and selenite salts:

      Salt Lake and environs:

View from the Salt Palace:

      People at Burning Man are quite flexible; one might even say they are playa-ble.

    These words from John Mcphee's Basin and Range say it all:

     "This Nevada terrain is not corrugated, like the folded Appalachians, like a tubal air mattress, like a rippled potato chip.

       This is not--in that compressive manner--a ridge and valley situation.

        Each range here is like a WARSHIP standing on its own, and the Great Basin is an ocean of loose sediment with these mountain ranges standing in it as if they were members of a fleet without precedent, assembled at Guam to assault Guam. . .

     Animals tend to be content with their home ranges and not to venture out across the big dry valleys.The fauna in the high ranges are quite distinct from one another. Animals are isolated like Darwin's finches in the Galapagoes.

     THESE RANGES ARE TRULY ISLANDS."

     Ahh, such extensive, pulling apart, stretching, expansive writing, Mr. McPhee! 

       Those last words in capital letters resonated with me while at Burning Man. We were at this old, old beach, in a now-waterless expanse of alkaline salts, trying to find a way to "swim" to shore and out of isolation. . .

     Until next week and the fossil limestone "forests" near Kunming City, China, and in Denver, Colorado.

     Play-a-long, would you please?

     Here are three more images from the journey:

        Best night's sleep on this little cot on the playa!

Steph

Word Woman

Some of the art at Burning Man:

     

     And my art installation upon returning to Colorado: