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There's a total lunar eclipse this coming Thursday/Friday which favors the Western Hemisphere. But those in the most westerly parts of Europe and Africa may also see bits of it.

Except for the far west of Canada and the US, the totality portion of the eclipse won't start until after midnight.

The article above tells you everything you need to know including the possible color of this eclipsed moon.

One confusing thing about the timing is that everybody (within view of it) will see it simultaneously but at different local times according to their time zones.

Fortunately the site Time and Date has an interactive eclipse map which you can click and indicate the start and end times in your local time.

Total Lunar Eclipse on Mar 14, 2025: Map & Times

The most important stats which the map gives are the begin and end times of the FULL part of the eclipse. For example: the moon is fully eclipsed in Chicago between 1:26 AM and 2:31 AM CDT.

Again, keep in mind that it starts on the evening of the 13th in the western part of the eclipsed ares. So the good stuff happens in most places very early Friday but the process begins late Thursday further west.

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I never quite thought of Ian Fleming as a visionary before.

On a related matter, I think I found the first occurrence of a certain iconic phrase. It's from the 1953 book Casino Royale – the first Bond story. The chapter is called "Rouge et Noir".

If I'm in error, please correct me!

Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels haven't aged well. For example, Moonraker - published almost exactly 70 years ago in April 1955 - features a villain who's a super-rich industrialist and rocket-maker seeking to cause chaos because he's a secret Nazi. Such a silly idea!

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✶✶✶✶ Happy Birthday Chicago! ✶✶✶✶

Chicago was incorporated as a city on 04 March 1837.

It was incorporated as a town in 1833 but nobody can fix the exact date. The records were probably lost in the 1871 fire. Though it's generally agreed that it happened between late July and mid August that year.

Muddy Waters, Marc Chagall and Other Great Moments in Chicago Public Art

One of the first pieces of public art I ever noticed in Chicago was Marc Chagall’s The Four Seasons.

Its size and diverse palette always seem to invite the viewer in to consider something new as they approached the piece, ever closer, closer, and closer.

It’s even better when someone else near you is approaching the piece and they share their own thoughts with you——the community around a common experience in place and time.

In this latest installment of my series for the Chicago Public Library, I take you around some of my favorite public art works in and around the Loop.

Enjoy.

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A reminder that the International Festival of Owls takes place in Houston, Minnesota on March 7th through 9th.

Don't confuse Houston, MN with Houston, TX. The owl festival Houston is located in the southeastern corner of the "Land of 10,000 Lakes".

It's not far from La Crosse, Wisconsin.

If you're interested, click the link in the post heading.

Here's a poster associated with the event.

The International Owl Center is expanding from its current location (a former department store) to a $17 million state of the art facility. So support them as much as you can. 🦉

@hoot-alex

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^^^ Something to look for on Friday February 28th.

Mercury is difficult to see because it is so close to the sun. It usually gets lost in the sun's glare. But for a few days this weekend it will be perpendicular to the sun from our viewpoint and will be easier to spot for a short while after sunset.

On Friday the 28th the thin crescent moon will make it even easier to pick out. It will be the brightest object not far above the moon.

Mercury is cream color and not as bright as Venus or Jupiter. But it makes up for its blandness with its relative rarity.

So begin watching about 15 minutes after sunset and wait for the moon to fade in with the slowly increasing darkness.

If you have a good camera, try taking a picture of the moon with Mercury.

You will need a very clear view of the west; the eastern shore of a lake and just east of a big farm would be a couple of good spots. An upper floor of a building with no obstructions might also be good.

Of course mostly clear weather is a necessity as well.

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I don't see as many owls as I used to here. So I was happy to run into Marty.

If you like owls, check out the International Owl Center in Houston, Minnesota. It's not far from La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Welcome to the International Owl Center

They will be expanding from an old department store to a state of the art facility on 4.5 acres/1.82 hectares of land.

"Marty"

2025, watercolor and gouache

Marty is an education bird where I work. Unable to be released right now, Marty is used to go on trips to events to educate folks about wildlife.

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Happy Black History Month

And cheers to Ms. Wallace!

“Mary Wallace was the first woman bus driver with the Chicago Transit Authority in 1974. Her job applications were rejected for three years, but her persistence paid off. She was eventually hired under an affirmative action program. Wallace became one of the city’s most popular drivers over her thirty-three year career.”

Happy Black History Month!

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State Street is the heart of downtown Chicago. It's also the dividing line between east and west in the street numbering system. One internationally known landmark on State Street is the Chicago Theater.

State Street, That Great Street: We Know About The Past, But What About The Future?

I just hope this post finds you, period.

If you're well, I'm glad.

If you're struggling, I wish you the best.

If you're cold, I hope you find warmth.

Chicago's State Street is an intoxicating place for me, full of memories from my younger days and my not-so-younger days. It's the older brother/sister/mother/father/sister-in-law to the tonier Michigan Avenue and for me, it is also the home to one of my favorite non-public bathrooms in the city (hi Palmer House!) and the Chicago Public Library, where I've spent countless hours researching, writing, and from time to time, sleeping.

A lot has changed in the thirty plus years that I've had a personal relationship with this retail corridor: the State Street pedestrian mall has been unpedestrianized, the Woolworth's where I bought a pet for my dorm room is long gone, and by the time you read this missive, the last department store (Macy-Field's) on That Great Street might be a pleasant memory, stripped of its clothes racks and stunning jewellery counters.

Retail corridors are in a constant state of upheaval and online shopping and the mercurial shopping habits of the American consumer are as fickle as a teenager's popular music tastes (hey, I was that teenager, so watch out!)

While we didn't profile it in this particular program, one of the newest arrivals on State Street is the Medieval Torture Museum (Tagline: "our product is emotion"----what?), gently tucked next to the Chicago Theatre and a Chick-Fil-A that used to be home to an off-track betting parlor where I once met a man who claimed to be Al Capone's son (he wasn't)

I have not paid the $39.97 to enter this 6,000 square foot chamber of horrors, but this physical manifestation of torture porn(ography) seems to recall another period in State Street history when there were dime museums, bump n' grind burlesque theaters, and adult bookstores scattered throughout the 300 and 400 blocks of south State Street.

There have been some other remarkable changes since we shot this program as well. One that sticks out to me is the complete closure of Pritzker Park directly north of the Chicago Public Library. Sure, this tiny bit of green and poured concrete wasn't a great public space, but it was one of State Street's only public outdoor spaces---perhaps the only one.

Honestly, I just wish you could buy a hot dog from a cart on State Street----something about that just feels so iconically Chicago.

That hasn't been possible since 1996 when the pedestrian mall went away, alas.

Of course you could just go to the "goth" Target (nee Carson Pirie Scott), buy a mini-grill, get some Vienna Beef(s) and set up shop AL FRESCO style at State and Madison.

Voila---your very own hot dog stand.

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Support Tumblr original artists!

@hoot-alex

A bunch of my rubber stamps are back in stock!

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Any Anglophone learners of French who would like to share errors?

Interested in your mistakes

For an exercise I'm planing, I'm looking for learners of French who could produce a text about different subjects that I could give to my learners. They will have to find mistakes in the text, correct them and justify them.

I'm not looking for an expertly crafted text, I'm interested in the mistakes that you could make. The point is for the text to be natural and representative of your proficiency in French

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With TikTok teetering in the US this weekend I was going to write about it. But since the drama is not exactly over, I decided to hold off.

While I was looking for something appropriate to post, I found this song by the VERY early U2. "11 O'Clock Tick Tock" may be spelled differently and totally unrelated but it's a good song.

This is a live recording in Sweden and the audience was amazingly polite – closer to what you'd experience at a classical concert.

So enjoy something totally off topic from what I had planned to write.

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Chicago is Chicago because it is a natural transportation hub.

The area got the attention of French explorers Marquette & Joliet and La Salle because the Chicago area provided a short portage from the Great Lakes to a tributary of the Mississippi River system. Canals later connected the two.

The western expansion of the US and the growth of the railroads made Chicago a natural focal point for the rail system. To this day, the Chicago area is crisscrossed with tracks and has an unusual number of ground level rail crossings and railroad yards.

If you like trains, a long stay in the area is something to consider.

All Aboard: Chicago’s Train Stations

One of my favorite jobs was working for Amtrak—I really got to see the breadth of the United States and the impossibly rich diversity of people from Portland, Maine to Garden City, Kansas.

When I began working on this series for the Chicago Public Library, I knew we had to talk about the vitality of Chicago’s historic train stations.

Not so very long ago, they were tremendously busy community spaces, offering fine dining, lounges, barber shops, and a vast array of trains arriving and departing seemingly almost every single minute.

That’s really why I wanted to highlight these tremendous hubs of activity—to let people know how tremendously vital these places were—and might be again.

Bonus: I read a poem from Langston Hughes.

Enjoy.

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Honestly can't say I've ever seen one in the city. Though I have seen peregrine falcons and hawks. In Elmhurst near Salt Creek I heard an owl once.

This would be our yard, with the brazen squirrel(s) thinking it/they can win a stare down with a bald eagle:

Excerpt from this story from the Chicago Tribune:

Many dream of waking up on Christmas to a mound of presents stacked around a tree. Others simply wish to glimpse a few snowflakes when looking out the window.

And then there’s Alexandra Greenberg, who walked onto her back balcony on the holiday and saw two adult bald eagles.

“They were fishing,” said Greenberg, 34, who lives with her husband along the North Branch of the Chicago River in the Lathrop Homes area. “We saw one first and then we saw the second. It was just magnificent.”

The bald eagle, a symbol of the power and the strength of the United States for more than 240 years officially became the country’s national bird on Christmas Eve. It once avoided Chicago like the plague.

But a light at the end of the tunnel appeared in the 1970s.

DDT was banned. After the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the eagles were listed as endangered or threatened throughout the lower 48 states. The eagles were bred in captivity and reintroduced to the wild. Nesting sites were protected.

By 2007, there were nearly 10,000 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the contiguous U.S., and they were removed from the list of threatened and endangered species.

Bald eagles seek out larger rivers and lakes because they eat primarily fish, so there’s much for the birds to love about Chicago: the Chicago River, Calumet River, Lake Calumet and maybe even the lakefront.

In the winter, there tends to be an uptick in bald eagle sightings when smaller bodies of water freeze over and the birds congregate around larger ones that stay unfrozen, Igleski said.

The birds are also nicer to each other in the winter. Once, Igleski saw 17 bald eagles perched together around Lake Calumet.

“You’ll see sometimes a dozen or so all together flying around or perched in trees fairly close to each other,” he said. “If it was the nesting season, they probably wouldn’t be that tolerant. They’d probably be chasing each other away.”

The clamor of the nation’s third largest city doesn’t seem to bother the eagles all that much, Igleski said. It’s possible that birds who come to the area from the north have to adjust to the noise, he said.

Just across the state line, there’s an eagle nest Igleski often sees right next to the Indiana Toll Road.

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Nobody would be in more trouble than Donald Trump if Biblical rules were strictly enforced.

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Libraries are cool. Look at how the Bayonne Public Library nurtured George R.R. Martin's writing career.

When making contributions to nonprofits in the final days of 2024, keep your library in mind. Libraries are institutions of knowledge. They preserve the learning of the past while encouraging forays of enlightenment seeking in the present.

More than ever, we need reality based institutions.

@newberrylibrary

George R.R. Martin honored by his hometown library in New Jersey.

George R.R. Martin grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey. Bayonne is located across a relatively narrow waterway from Staten Island – one of the five boroughs of New York City.

While Bayonne is in the shadow of NYC, its peculiar geography and GRRM's meager family income meant that he seldom ventured outside Bayonne. Growing up, young George did spend a lot of time at the Free Public Library & Cultural Center of Bayonne. He has often spoken with fondness about the institution which sparked his imagination.

A few months ago GRRM returned to Bayonne. October 15th was declared George R.R. Martin Day. And a new room at his old library was given the name the George R.R. Martin Room for Popular Fiction.

He wrote about the occasion at his non-blog...

A Day to Remember

For me, home was Bayonne, New Jersey, just south of Jersey City, on a peninsula sandwiched between New York and Newark. I was born in Bayonne in 1948, and spent my childhood there, most of it in the federal housing projects on First Street, with the lights of Staten Island across the waters of the Kill Von Kull. Bayonne was my world until 1966, when I went off to college at Northwestern, the first time I ever went beyond the borders of Jersey and NYC (except in books and comics, of course, where I could oft be found wandering Middle Earth, on Barsoom, Trantor, or Venusport, or slinking down the mean streets of Gotham City). [ ... ] I remember the library.  I always will. And it would seem that the library remembers me.    They have just completed some renovations, and did me the honor of naming one of the new rooms after me: the George R.R. Martin Room for Popular Fiction.  To mark the occasion, they declared October 15 to be George R.R. Martin Day. That is… so cool, so, so, so…  well, words fail me.   I have won a lot of awards over the course of my career: Emmys and Golden Globes, Hugo Awards and Nebulas, Lovecrafts and Stokers and Dragons. (I have lost a lot more, to be sure, but then that’s only fitting for a guy who helped found the Hugo Losers Club)… but I have never had a day before.   Few have.   After all, there are only 365 of them. James (Jimmy) Davis, Bayonne’s mayor, presided over the ribbon-cutting ceremony.   Old friends and new attended.

He talked about growing up in Bayonne, his early reading including comic books, and his early writing career. Watch his somewhat rambling speech on this vid. It's not exactly HD but don't let that deter you.

GRRM posed next to some epic art which he probably helped to inspire.

If you're passing through or near Bayonne, you can visit the library and see the George R.R. Martin Room for Popular Fiction and the mosaic art at 697 Avenue C.

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Happy Solstice!

Some people will claim that today is the "first day of winter". They would probably get an argument from people in the Southern Hemisphere.

There are also folks who will tell you that it is the "shortest day of the year". I checked last year and the day of the December Solstice was 1,440 minutes long just like the day before or after it (or the day of the June Solstice for that matter).

The December Solstice IS the day when the sun, as viewed from Earth, is at its southernmost position in the sky.

The December Solstice is an astronomy related event. here are a couple of astronomers talking about it.

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As somebody on the spectrum, I don't get how isolating already people who are already somewhat socially isolated is supposed to "cure" them.

At this point, people talking about cures for autism are to be viewed with extreme suspicion.

I'm rereading my old thesis on the diagnostic history of ASD and wow my (not-so-much) younger self had a bone to pick with some of the sources I was writing. Like, I can really pick up on my own seething contempt for Ole Ivor Lovaas and his contemporaries as I read back through this.