whale talker

 

Kayaking into The Solstice Sun – what an incredible way to great the dawn on such an ancient celebratory day. A tradition going back 100, 1000, 10,000 perhaps even 100,000 years ago.

And just the next day the largest (closest in proximity to Earth that is) full moon of the year – HOOHAH!

                   

A couple of days prior to these events I was out at the WZ in my kayak and since it was so still and peaceful I did my Mer-Ka-Ba meditation while drifting slowly north. When I opened my eyes I saw a good number of Mobulas jumping nearby so I paddled over and joined the group. There were more than I thought so I rolled in and got these pictures with my new PlaySport camera. Not particularly good shots but fun.

                          

                        

While still out there I heard a whale blow to the east and paddled out another ½ mile or so but could not spot him. Heard him blow twice again but no luck spotting it’s blow or back. It must have been way out there because the blow was loud. I suspect that because the sea was so flat the sound carried and/or it may have been a blue whale - so hard to distinguish from the sea/sky.

Speaking of whales, my 2013 humpback data is now up on my website but best to access it from the title page of this blog.

About a week later I was out at The WZ and once again, after meditation, a group of about 20 Pacific Common Dolphin came by and I was able to swim with them for a spell – always a delight.

Saw this on FB the other day. So true, so true.

                           

Does anyone remember Errol Flynn in the classic “Captain Blood”. Sure had me running around the neighborhood with sword in hand for a while.

                                 

The protagonist is the sharp-witted Dr. Peter Blood, a fictional Irish physician who had had a wide-ranging career as a soldier and sailor before settling down to practice medicine in the town of Bridgwater in Somerset where events lead to his becoming a pirate.

It is well worth renting the movie just to see the ultimate sword play between Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone – extraordinary!

This morning, 7/6/13, Terry and I went kayaking and these two critters flew over, landed about 20 ft away and slowly drifted toward us to within about 5 ft.

                   

The larger is The Brown Pelican and the smaller is one of the gulls but out of my league to identify – anybody? What was so exceptional was their hanging out together and then choosing to fly over and hang with us. On our way in they made a second pass overhead and couldn’t have been more than 4 ft above Terry’s head as they flew by.

Also on a cosmic scale here’s a couple of developments in astronomy that are rather interesting:

For some time now we have been observing the star Gliese 667C. The reason being is that it is a nearby star (about 40 light years) and was one of the first to show signs of having planets orbiting it. No big surprise to anyone with a background in HS science but for the Creationists a real revelation. Well, there’s more to Gliese 667C than we had thought.

               

 The Gliese System

The three planets orbit a star called Gliese 667C, part of the triple-star system Gliese 667. They are between four and eight times the mass of the Earth, making them "super-Earths."

If you were standing on any of the potentially habitable planets in this system, that sun would appear as a bright red star. The other two stars in the system "would look like a very bright pair of stars providing as much illumination as the full moon on Earth," Anglada-Escude said. The planets are likely either rocky or water worlds, meaning they're entirely covered in water. These particular planets also appear to be "tidally locked," meaning the same side of a planet is always facing a star. That means one side of the planet always gets light and the other hemisphere is always in darkness.

"With three terrestrial-mass planets in the habitable zone, the likelihood of one of them actually being habitable is tremendous," Seager said.

And if that’s not cool how about this – there appear to be as many as four astronomical Black Holes in the center of Andromeda Galaxy (2.5 million light years away). Can you just imagine the Space-Time Warp in there!!

              

Andromeda Galaxy's core. 

By the way, you can see Andromeda with the naked eye if you know just where to look and if you have some 8X35 binocs it's no problem. Remember you are looking BACK in Time 2.5 million years ago!

More down to Earth, here’s a picture of my daughter Kersti (left) and her dear friend Michell. 

                

Michell just opened a store in Healdsburg containing items of her own design that she has had manufactured and imported from Italy where she now lives. I remember these two as bare bottomed little “hippy” girls swimming in The Eel River in Mendocino County back in The Days – what a time it all was!

I will leave you with this delightful painting by my dear friend Nantz Hensley.

               

And one little bit of proselytizing:

                 

Let us not forget that ALL of the western hemisphere, ALL that is north, central and south America was once inhabited by an indigenous people whose various CULTURES and NUMBERS rivaled anything in The Old World. They were intentionally almost entirely exterminated in the largest holocaust the world has ever seen - from 90 million to 1 1/2 million.