A Knotty Situation

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Time Drawn: April 2010

You may recognize part of this picture from the header image above. (If I’ve changed the image by the time you read this, I used the top right corner of this picture, just a bit of sky, rocks, and flowers.)

I rather like this piece, though it was a touch experimental. I’d just finished taking a Chinese Painting class, and wanted to combine those skills with another of my artistic loves: Celtic knotwork. Here, I did it more directly, with Chinese-style cranes and Celtic-knotted fish. It’s not a perfect match (I could have incorporated more of the Celtic into the background to make it mesh better) but it was a joy to create.

I think I have to add both Chinese and Celtic art to my “I should do more of this” pile. I’m getting far more inspired than I expected from just putting up my art and talking about it. I am working on a dreamscape, like I mentioned two weeks ago, for instance. Now I just need to stop playing Minecraft and start making more art. Hmm… That may be a problem…

  

Dragonfly, Dragonfly, won’t you come for Dinner?

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Location Taken: Savage, Maryland
Time Taken: August 2010

A dragonfly came to visit my Mom’s pond one day. He did not stop for milk and cookies, alas. All he wanted was to sit on a cattail leaf and eat a mosquito or two.

This particular dragonfly is a male Blue Dasher, if I’m getting my insect identification correct. It is a fairly common species in this part of the world, but still, they do not make it to my Mom’s pond often. There’s a river nearby, but we’re a bit of a distance from it.

And my Mom loves dragonflies, so she was utterly delighted to see this picture, and to know that yes, they do come to visit.

It was a bit challenging to take this picture. I wanted a close-up, to see detail, but if I got too close, I risked it flying away. I had to use a careful combination of zoom and manual focus to reach the very small focal length required. It would not have taken much to be off. Especially since I wasn’t using a tripod, so I had to keep my hands steady too. Which makes me even happier to have gotten a picture good enough to easily see the veining on the wings and leaves.

In case you’re wondering why I didn’t put a location link for this photo, it’s because it was taken at my house. I’ve decided to tell you which town I live in, as it’s a rather interesting place with somewhat unique features. However, as reclusive as I am, I don’t want visitors. Thus, if it’s taken at my house, you’re not getting the coordinates. And with this photo, at least, you don’t get clues about where I live from the picture. I’ll be doing the same for photos taken at other people’s houses. Historic or locationally-interesting things in the area, like Savage Mill, will be getting coordinates, but that’s because I actually want people to visit them. Like Savage Mill, you should visit that. Especially the really nice Family Game Store. That’s where my parents and I head to play games on a regular basis. Awesome place.

  

Pyrite Spheres. No, not Pirate Spheres, this is Fool’s Gold!

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Location Taken: Dynamic Earth, Sudbury, ON, Canada
Time Taken: June 2010

I took this photo in the gift shop at Dynamic North in Sudbury.

They’re spheres of pyrite, commonly known as fool’s gold. I guess they do look somewhat like gold, and, well, if you’ve been mining for hours in a dimly lit cave, hoping to strike your fortune, anything’s going to look like gold. Pyrite’s actually iron disulfide (one iron atom, two sulfur atoms), with the iron making it metal and the sulfur making it yellowish. Gold’s got a more yellow-orange color and native gold has a very different appearance than pyrite, running more flaky than chunky.

I find pyrite beautiful in its own right. I even prefer it over gold! Gold’s too yellow and too shiny for me. And I’m really not to big on wearing jewelry. The main thing that intrigues me about gold is its chemical properties. (It’s very big on not interacting with ANYTHING. That’s right, gold is the snobby kid of the periodic table.)

Pyrite’s much more likely to interact. It breaks down over time when exposed to air, water, and an extremophile bacteria found in the acidic conditions of abandoned mine, producing iron and sulfate. This reaction produces acid, so it starts burning away at things around it, and needs to be either neutralized or contained, or it will pollute the runoff water from the mines. It’s also a strong exothermic reaction, which means it produces heat. A lot of heat. Which means mines with a lot of pyrite have to take measures to keep the walls from spontaneously catching on fire.

Chemistry: making mine walls catch on fire since the beginning of mining.

This tendency to break down does have advantages. Some industries use it as a sulfur source, for all their acidic needs. Sulfate’s the salt version of sulfuric acid, which is the acid used in a very large array of modern industries, from fertilizers to printer ink to lubricants. And no, you can’t use it to season your food. Salt, as a generic term, is a product created by the combination of an acid and a base, forming a product with around neutral pH. These tend to be fairly stable, but water-soluble (though there are, of course, exceptions). Sodium chloride just happens to be the most common one, and the only one most people run into, so it gained the common name of salt. Well, more the other way around, really. People called Sodium chloride “salt”, and as chemistry developed, they discovered more and more compounds with salt-like attributes, and called them all salts. They tend to be rather useful compounds, really. The sulfate compound you might have heard of is Magnesium sulfate, better known as Epsom salts. It’s used for therapeutic baths. My mom uses Epsom salts all the time, to relax her muscles.

Ah, from spontaneous fires to calming baths in a few chemical transitions. Isn’t chemistry fascinating?

  

Pines and Sensibility

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Location Taken: Agewa Bay, Ontario, Canada
Time Taken: June 2010

Yes, it’s another from Agewa Bay. I rather like the photos I took there. That and I really need to continue sorting through my photos. I’ve only sorted a couple hundred or so, so all the ones I’ve posted are from around the same time. Ah well, such is life.

I like pine trees.

They’re such dependable trees, being coniferous and all. They’re adapted to northern climates, just like I am, so I feel a bond. They’ve got the thin leaves that don’t drop, the conical shape to shed snow, waxy coatings, and all sorts of anti-freezing mechanisms. I’ve got a genetic tendency to plumpness, a strong internal furnace, skin that’s highly cold resistant, and a system geared for cold temperatures and low sunlight.

You’ve heard of Seasonal Affective Disorder, right? Where people get mopey and don’t feel like doing much when winter comes around? Well, there’s rarer variants for all the other seasons, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got one for spring. I always get mopey and feel icky when the weather first hits the 60’s-80’s in the spring. My mood settles down some after that first spike, but I still feel lethargic until the temperatures start dropping in the fall. I’ve already dealt with some of that this year, since the weather pattern here was so odd. We seem to have skipped winter entirely (no significant snowfall and higher-than average temperatures, more fall-like conditions), and then had a heat spike in March, far earlier than usual. So to my body, it seemed like we went from Fall to Summer. This has confused the heck out of it. I always feel better in the winter, and it’s a time for me to recharge. And I always feel worse in the summer, since the temperatures and sunlight time are so much higher.

Did I mention I’ve got a form of heat- and light-sensitivity? If I’m exposed to high heat (and high to me means above 70°F/22°C), I melt. I get solidly lethargic and my brain doesn’t seem to want to function. And when I get too much light, I get twitchy and feel icky. And that’s set at a low tolerance level too. I’ve got a low light bulb in my room (I’d say 40 watt, but light bulbs have changed enough recently that that’s no longer an accurate label) and even that’s too much for me. I get twitchy after only 10-15 minutes of having that light on.

And sunlight combines both of them. If I take an hour walk in the day, even along shadier paths, I feel solidly icky for days afterwards. If I take an hour walk at night, on the other hand, I only have muscle and joint pains that work themselves out fairly easily. It’s, quite literally, night and day.

It’s no wonder I live in a cave-like environment, with sheets on the windows blocking most of the light. Maybe I should move into an actual cave. Then I could update this quite literally under a rock.

  

Beach Grass is Nifty, ya know?

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Location Taken: Agewa Bay, Ontario, Canada
Time Taken: June 2010

I don’t have too much to say about this piece, I just felt like posting a pretty picture of beach grass taken at Agewa Bay.

Do you know how important beach grass is?

There’s a lot of erosion at work at a beach, between the sea pushing and pulling, the wind changing direction, and the sun beating down and weathering the open land below. Beach grass helps keep that in check, letting beaches stay stable over the years.

It’s not just an irritatingly itchy plant that you walk past to get to the beach.

There’s a reason there’s signs up saying “Don’t Walk on the Beach Grass” at most public beaches. For beaches with sand, the grass usually has a very fragile hold at its margins, and can easily be destroyed by careless tourists. Beach grass lives in a place no other plant bothers with, slowly converting the sand to sandy soil. Then the other plants move in, and the beach grass gets displaced. Or the erosion forces win, and the soil the plants near the beach are living in gets turned back to sand, and the beach grass gets shoved back to there.

It’s tough being beach grass.

This beach, however, is a stone beach (it’s really obvious in this earlier post). This means it’s poor for swimmers and sunbathers, but great for beach grass. Stone doesn’t shift as easily as sand, so the grass can get a firmer foothold. And it takes a lot longer to convert it to soil. Beach grass actually has a somewhat stable home on the edge of stony beaches. And you can walk on it at such places. That’s how I got the photo.

I guess I did have something to say after all.