Stars!

Olga needed a quick trip outside in the middle of the night last night. She began scratching around and whining, so I let her out the back door and then stepped outside with her, only to look up and see this. Stars! In London! I never see stars in London. There's too much light pollution, and on top of that it's usually cloudy, or at least partly cloudy. But last night the sky was clear as a bell.

I initially thought that was the Little Dipper at right, but I believe (after some research) it's actually the Big Dipper (part of Ursa Major), which would make the bright star at left Arcturus, in the constellation Boötes. I am not at all sure that's right, but the position in the sky -- pretty much directly overhead -- seems correct.

I have never been good at constellations, even though, when I was growing up near Tampa, we could see the night sky in magnificent detail in our outer suburban neighborhood. I remember seeing the pale wash of the Milky Way, with thousands or maybe millions of nearer stars sprinkled across it like white pepper. Most of that is invisible to me here in London.

When I was a kid, my mom gave me H. A. Rey's book "The Stars," which included charts of all the stars and constellations. I tried to make sense of it, but all those Latin (or Greek?) names and rather vague shapes never quite registered with me. I can spot the dippers, and Orion, and the Pleiades, but that's about it.

On to something completely different. This is one of the photos on my iPhone, taken when blogger Sharon and I walked through central London last fall. I love this picture so much I use it as wallpaper, and I also love the way the phone displays the date and time behind the dome of St. Paul's. I just had to take a screenshot of the phone display!

Yesterday I began inventory, an annual task in our library. This is where I work my way through the collection, scanning every book, to see what's gone missing over the course of the year. I've done the short story collections, which is easy -- only about 100 books -- and I did the 700s and 800s in the non-fiction section. (Those are Dewey decimal ranges, for those of you familiar with the Dewey system.) There are about 2,480 books in the 700s, and 1,790 in the 800s. So that was a lot of scanning! So far, ten books are missing, but it's early days and they may show up on the shelves elsewhere.

I LOVE doing inventory. It's one of my favorite jobs, just working my way through books and scanning, scanning, scanning. Finding lost items, organizing as I go -- it's very satisfying. And no one talks to me! Bonus!

Now for a couple of flowers. This is one of our azaleas, a thankfully durable little plant that only ever looks like a bunch of twigs, except at this time of year when it miraculously bursts into bloom. We also have a pink azalea that has buds, but the flowers haven't opened yet.

And here are our two white orchids, which I photographed together to show off the differences in their flowers. At first glance they look very similar, but one has a greenish yellow center, and one has reddish orange.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, Nate Cohn wrote a column in The New York Times about why many of today's senior citizens tend to support Joe Biden. In short, it's because they've always supported more liberal candidates and causes, having been of the "hippie" generation themselves. He cites the fictional Mike and Gloria from "All in the Family" as examples of these voters. I am slightly younger than these so-called "Boomers," but I also grew up watching "All in the Family" and learning what NOT to be from Archie Bunker. I have no doubt that show shaped my politics as much as the relative liberalism of my parents. Anyway, it's an interesting column, so I've linked it above.