Meeting dys is worth anything.
Meeting Diane has been mutual boost; we became sisters walking the pavement of new york, and are tight.
(I'll leave room that we'll all disagree sometime, but, so?)
It's wet cool/coldish here in north north - that just about does me in, re asthma. Eureka is in a small cool fog belt. Hardly ever gets over, say, 65. Lotta moisture...
But ne'er mind health issues. I'm moving for money...
Not kidding. But given that I am moving to large extent for financial reasons, the choice of place is all about being interested in where I am going, and that is heightened by not being totally alone there, in some kind of mental/emotional desolation.
In fact, I see life revving up.
as Dido rides the barge down the Rio Grande, clunk, clunk.
Pdog - thanks for the info - fascinating stuff!
Agreed. I have a new semi hero... what was his name again? Since I can't access the name without obliterating this quick reply, I'll say Ulagog. I know that's wrong...
Boy, was I off. Ulugbek, my new semi hero.
The only good hero is a decapitated hero.
Littlek, thanks for the link. I think it's the best I've seen of Chaco and the astronomical markings.
Osso, we will all get back to Chaco. It is a magical place that makes you so aware of the earth and sky, seasons and nature. It has a beauty and 'feeling' all its own.
I would love to be there for lunar markings. They knew the 18.6 year cycle of the moon, from souther to northern standstills. It must be extraordinarily beautiful to see the moon rise exactly along a wall over a thousand years old.
Diane, that would be good.
I am put to mind though, of certain landscape art that used this info. Back in a bit.
This re Nancy Holt
http://www.unm.edu/news/Releases/03-02-20holt.htm
She was the wife of Robert Smithson, with his own fame.
Good grief, I hadn't read the earlier posts. PatioDog, your link is amazing. Ulugbek should be sainted or martyred, or written up in every history book in the world for the work he did. How in the world did he escape the usual blood and gore lifestyle other rulers seemed (seem-thinking of the shrub-) to enjoy???
Quote:Exactness of observations of Samarkand astronomers is amazing because they were made without help of optical instruments, with unaided eye. Astronomic tables contents coordinates of 1018 stars. His catalog did not lose its value in our days. With amazing exactness made the calculation of the length of star year, which by Ulugbek's calculation is equal to 365 days 6 hours 10 minutes 8 seconds. Actual length of star year by modern data is 365 days 6 hours 9 minutes 9,6 seconds. Thus the mistake is only less that one minute.
Looking at the night sky in Chaco Canyon made me realize what it must have been like a thousand years ago--even a hundred years ago it would have been totally different than it is now. In the desert southwest, in a local as isolated as Chaco, there is so little light pollution that the stars seem almost touchable. The exquisite beauty is almost painful to observe.
oops, that wasn't all that useful. Back in a bit.
Here's a better link on Holt although not immediately apropo.
http://www.getty.edu/artsednet/images/Ecology/sky.html
This is not to set Holt up against the weight of history for some kind of prime time. I'm no judge on the issue of plumbing past observations.
It's just that when I, as an urban person, first heard about setting 'architecture' for various sitings... it was not about Chaco, but Nancy Holt.
I don't think she is the problem - it is the lack of information to the rest of us from other than sort of petrified sources.
Well, here's a packet of earth art, some of the most famous.
I am fairly cold to it myself, but am not sure I am right.
http://www.art.csulb.edu/StudioTalk/features/earth_art.html
Heh, the car at Thunder Mountain reminded me of Bisbee, AZ. If you haven't been to Bisbee, we'll have to get there after you have settled in. It is one of the funkiest, most free-spirited places I've ever seen.
As for the ecological art, all of it seems made for large spaces. I wonder if we could do something with plant arrangements within the garden to coincide with astonomical alignments?
Anyway, back to Chaco Canyon. Wanna go?
Diane wrote:Looking at the night sky in Chaco Canyon made me realize what it must have been like a thousand years ago--even a hundred years ago it would have been totally different than it is now. In the desert southwest, in a local as isolated as Chaco, there is so little light pollution that the stars seem almost touchable. The exquisite beauty is almost painful to observe.
Makes me miss my little growing-up town. In high school there wasn't anything to do, but anytime you could get in your truck and drive on up toward Sonora Pass, watch the stars at 8, 9, 10 thousand feet and no streetlights for 30 miles. So many stars.
Diane, I'm sure there must be a poem somewhere that takes advantage of that sense of stars being, how can we say it, palpable or tangible? Your prose statement comes very close to recreating the actual experience. You know, I'll bet a good haiku has done it.
er well, actually the lady Diane was drunk at the time, there were no stars shining because it was raining from huge black clouds til after dawn.
<laughing, with some level of dysbelief>
One of the ways I found out I was different than other people (we all are, it just differs re how exactly) was when I was in the mojave with a pal coming back from skiing in Mammoth (well, she was a top skier, I fell a lot) and we had two flat tires in an hour's time around three a.m..
As trucks whizzed passed us, whooosh, we gave up for a while and just talked. She pointed to all the stars.
'What stars?' said the nightblind one.
Ignoring the skinny, somewhat boorish cowboy, Patio Dog, where is Sonora Pass? Arizona? I like to talk to people who have had that experience. It is almost unbelievable to those who haven't been there.
JLN, if you come across a haiku with a message of starlight, please let me know. Have you ever written of palpable stars?
Dys, hmpf! Those blue eyes loved the stars, I could tell, no matter how you try to be, well, an incorrigible cynic.
That was thirty years ago. Thinking... last I heard was that she had moved to.... New Mexico. Hmmm, I'll noodle around on Google.
