#@pocketfulofposies

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Guilhem Merolle via LinkedIn 12/8/22

Superbe pendentif Art Nouveau en or figurant deux guêpes émaillées aux ailes en opales sculptées soutenant une aigue-marine taille ovale. L’ensemble retenant une perle. ✨✨ Travail signé Paul Brandt vers 1900. ✨ Photo : Christie's 🙏🏻

Superb Art Nouveau pendant in gold depicting two enamelled wasps with carved opal wings supporting an oval-cut aquamarine. The whole retaining a pearl. ✨✨ Work signed Paul Brandt around 1900. ✨ Photo: Christie's 🙏🏻

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I have something amazing to show you that you won’t believe.  These  are Natural Inclusions of Hematite in a Amethyst.  They are called  Nailhead Spicules . Yes they look like old nails but are amazing, bizarre natural Inclusions. Here greatly enlarged.

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Pink Halite Crystals

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From “Retro Moto Racing” via Tim Peck on Facebook

Aussie legend Peggy Hyde (Margaret Moorhouse's racing alias) - the first woman in the world to be given her open race licence - raced against the greatest of 70's motorcycle road racing, and kept right on racing for the sheer joy of it her entire life. Not only crossing finish lines, but barriers of sexism - Australia's First Lady of Motorcycle racing, Peggy Hyde.The following comes from a 2017 interview with The Senior;"... I had extreme difficulty obtaining the unrestricted licence I needed to race bikes bigger than 250cc."“In the end, my unrestricted licence was granted by the national, not the state, body with an apology because of my race record – a sweet moment indeed.”Margaret said she had no idea she had become the first woman in the world to be granted an unrestricted racing licence.Talking about motorbikes she again becomes Peggy Hyde.She won her first big race on Phillip Island in 1970 on an enormous Kawasaki Triple Mach111 500cc bike, often called “the widowmaker”.For a time the Mach111 was the most powerful production motorcycle in the world, and it was an event celebrated in the delighted, if incredulous, headline in the Melbourne Herald, “Girl beats 90 men”.Another special memory is of a five-circuit production race at Calder in 1970.“I was riding a Mach111. I love that huge bike, and I was out in front on the second circuit, flying, going for it, and not really noticing anything except out of the corner of my eye I saw colour on the grass.“I didn’t realise it, but colleagues had come off their bikes trying to catch me. I was riding for the sheer joy of riding, and I broke a lap record by two seconds.“Afterwards, I heard someone say, ‘That’s a woman’. That was magic, and also vindication.”While her successes on the racetrack led to her being lauded by the press, Margaret said she has always felt dogged by the frequent comments that she rode like a man.“I always felt I had an innate understanding of the machine, it was as simple as that. I loved the sport and still do. The fact that I am a woman is immaterial.”

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One Nineteen Seventy-Seven

And just when you think you’ve got it completely figured out Just when you know there aren’t any  more surprises When you’re sure you’ve seen, heard, and done  it all before  Someone shows up with a             smile and another dimension

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Reflections of the Ghost Nebula

Image Credit & Copyright:

Bogdan Jarzyna

Explanation: Do any shapes seem to jump out at you from this interstellar field of stars and dust? The jeweled expanse, filled with faint, starlight-reflecting clouds, drifts through the night in the royal constellation of Cepheus. Far from your own neighborhood on planet Earth, these ghostly apparitions lurk along the plane of the Milky Way at the edge of the Cepheus Flare molecular cloud complex some 1,200 light-years away. Over two light-years across and brighter than the other spooky chimeras, VdB 141 or Sh2-136 is also known as the Ghost Nebula, seen at toward the bottom of the featured image. Within the reflection nebula are the telltale signs of dense cores collapsing in the early stages of star formation. (does anyone else see the two women holding their hands up, as in an entreat, in the bottom of the photo? this is from NASA on Linked in 10/28/20)