all over again, as someone (Yogi Berra?) once famously said. Once again I find myself struggling up a steep learning curve, advancing an inch and sliding back a foot, trying to produce an acceptable color image of a deep space object, like a galaxy or planetary nebula. The further I get into the process, the [...]
I walk the neighborhood almost every day, and around about April Fools day the flora started to wake up from a long winter’s nap. Yesterday it was a bright, sunny, day, and I could stand it no longer and took my camera along and returned with 44 perfectly composed and exposed digital images.
I lie. I [...]
One outcome of viewing the Learning Company Understanding the Universe DVDs was a renewed interest in astronomy. In my earlier years I would have responded by purchasing a telescope and never learning to use it properly. Now, older yes and wiser maybe, I looked to the Internet to provide an armchair solution. I discovered [...]
Have you noticed there is an “in your face” aspect to Easter Sunday? We are challenged to choose what we will do with the Jesus Christ whose resurrection is so boldly proclaimed on this special day. Easter brusquely confronts believer and non-believer alike with this crucial choice: Do I believe in the resurrection or do [...]
News of the launch of Endeavor on the 32nd shuttle mission to the International Space Station probably did not land above the fold on many of the nation’s newspapers on February 8. Our thanks to James Vernacotola for this spectacular pre-dawn shot of the launch to orbit from about 115 miles away.
Thanks to NASA, here [...]
As in, “Once in a … ,” meaning a rare event. You no doubt remember that a Blue Moon is the second occurrence of a full moon during a calendar month. It happens every 2-1/2 years, or so. We got a beautiful view of this year’s Blue Moon last night, on New Year’s Eve. The [...]
We met at the Ayers condo at the Lake of the Ozarks in early October, bro Tom from the left coast, bro Don from Kansas City. Our mutual objective was to have better fishing than the last time we turned the condo into a bachelor’s pad in May, 2008. Three rapidly aging geezers wedged themselves [...]
Thanks to whoever gave me a little desk plaque that says:
God grant that I may live
to fish until my dying day.
When it comes to my last cast
I then most humbly pray.
When in the Lord’s safe landing net
I’m peacefully asleep, that in
His mercy I be judged
as big enough to keep.
Those simple words are either wise or [...]
Boy, does this shot bring back memories! When I was a boy we often visited our paternal grandparents on their farm near Iola, Kansas. The big evening event for us Ayers kids was going out with Grandfather Ayers to bring in the cows for milking, I think about a dozen, and watch him milk those [...]
Here’s another golden oldie, to me at least, from the web site predecessor to the Orlop. It was written in 2002 after my return from a medical mission trip to an indigenous Indian tribe high on a Costa Rica mountainside. As a postscript, similar missions in the following years, in which I was not a [...]
