Phil's Place: Memorial Day Weekend

Corporate Style

Cute Kits

May 30th is set aside as the national day to remember those who died fighting for their country. The last Monday in May is set aside to provide a 3 day weekend of barbeques, recreation, and other corporate revenue generating activities.

Painted Lady

I suppose people are still eating hotdogs at picnics in spite of knowing they are made of offal, salt and sawdust. Or, maybe they aren’t sure of what they are reading when they look at the label. Or, maybe they are just kids and are just eating what is popular.

Turtle Sunny Spot

Speaking of labels, I recently signed a letter to help stop a measure being considered that would allow aspartame, and other non dairy ingredients, to be in milk without saying so on the carton or label. I imagine some market research shows that corporation profits might not be as large if people know what is in their food. So, the big dairy corporate lobby is trying to undo the law that makes them tell us what else they might put into a container labeled, “milk”.

Lassen at 7:30pm

We had a little earthquake on Thursday evening. 5.7, near Greenville, California. I thought it was interesting that it was 0.0 km deep according to the USGS. It made me think of the shallow 5.7 magnitude quakes in the midwest that have been caused by fracking.

Most quakes are at least 5.0 km deep, with some in the hundreds of km deep, but the ones caused by the fracking process are close to the surface. (Note that I am trying to catch up to the rest of the world by learning to write in kilometers rather than miles)

I recently signed another petition for a moratorium on fracking in California. We can’t afford to poison our water table. This state needs every drop of fresh water we have and polluting it to extract oil, (that will be sold on the world market), is unacceptable, reckless behavior that must be stopped.

Mom and the kits

The waxing moon has been looking good this month. I have a few pictures, and even some video I hope to edit and show you. Maybe tomorrow, or Monday. There was a miniscule eclipse of the moon, Friday night.

I had to squint really hard to spot the irregularity in the spherical images I took, and even then I can’t be sure. Only an edge of the earth’s shadow, about the width of a Wheatie flake, affected the roundness of the moon.

Painted Lady on the inside of the butterfly tent

Our little town of Redding has some terrific attractions. Some natural, some well conceived. Turtle Bay Museum, river trails, Arboretum, Sundial bridge, and other associated historical and recreational points of interest are certainly among my favorite photo adventure activities.

I get to accompany my neighbor, Margaret, to enjoy and photograph the Turtle Bay Museum attractions, as her guest whenever possible. Thank you, Margaret.

The butterfly tent opened for the season this past week, and will be adding new varieties periodically. A third viewing of the wild animal show this coming week should provide the additional stills and video clips I think I need to complete a short video of that energetically performed, well written and informative program.