So.
I read about the lunar eclipse and was amazed to find myself awake at 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning. I took the first shot through my study window. I checked the internet (see blurb below), then took myself, my flashlight and my camera outside for a better look (middle shot). I went back to bed and thought that if I was wandering around the backyard at 2:40 a.m., I might as well stay up for the Big Event at 3 a.m. (last shot).

I was joined by a my neighbor's sprinklers scaring me to death ( a sudden burst of sound while you're standing in your pink gingham nightgown and old sandals in the middle of the night, while using the handle of the barbeque as a photo rest is rather startling), as well a possum scurrying away from the beam of my flashlight.

(click to enlarge)

This is what I wish my camera could take.

(This one's an older one from the NASA website, with this caption: The March 3, 2007, lunar eclipse favored Africa, Europe, and Asia. Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.)

When I mentioned to my students that I'd been up for the lunar esclipse, they all looked at me with blank faces. And I'm trying to remember that ditty my dad used to quote to me. Something about "the cow going up to the moon but over; I don't know what made her so lunar a loon--all she'd been having was clover."

That echoed through my head as well, as I watched the moon turn a rusty orange color.

Don't even ask me where this came from. I have no idea.

But it all started when Barbara T. and I were talking about hard drive size, then I looked at the size of my hard drive, and started "getting info" on all my main folders to see where the memory hog was.

Photos.

So then I had to go into photos and see what I could get rid of, because of course, I'm supposed to be grading and this is what I do when I'm supposed to be grading, and I found all these random shots of weird things that would only open up OS9, the old Mac systerm which tells you how old they are. So I had to save a few in the new OSX, but now I'm really feeling like I need to get going on the grading, so I quit when I hit this one.

Organization or, rather, lack of it, is the key: Weinberger insists that "we have to get rid of the idea that there's a best way of organizing the world." Building on his earlier works' discussions of the Internet-driven shift in power to users and consumers, Weinberger notes that "our homespun ways of maintaining order are going to break—they're already breaking—in the digital world." Today's avalanche of fresh information, Weinberger writes, requires relinquishing control of how we organize pretty much everything; he envisions an ever-changing array of "useful, powerful and beautiful ways to make sense of our world."

As businesses go miscellaneous, information gets chopped into smaller and smaller pieces. But it also escapes its leash--adding to a pile that can be sorted and arranged by anyone with a Web browser and a Net connection. In fact, information exhibits bird-like "flocking behavior," joining with other information, creating swarms.

Obviously all my data has broken loose from its organization, which way is another way to say my room is a mess.
(Which also means I'm working on my Mary Poppins act today.)

Fascinating slide show today in the New York Times Online Edition about the redesigning of highway sign fonts. (I loved this graphic.) The new font is name Clearview. Head over to the New York Times, then the August 12 Magazine, then look for this article and the accompanying slideshow. If I had another life, I would want to live it as a graphic designer.

This site has been "dark" for some time, due to the fact that I've been involved in running a Young Women's camp up in our local mountains.

The picture below is me, when I went to camp (aruund 1969--the year the first man walked on the moon). I'm seated, on the right.

And the photo below was taken last week. I was the lead cook, as well as helping to organize and run the camp. When I was beset with other worries and commitments, the fine staff behind me took over. Others rotated in during the week, while some of these cooks left.
I'm in the front, in the lime green shirt.

Here are three other who helped (l to r): Liz, my secretary and Gal Monday-Thru-Friday; Lisa, who worked with the 16 year olds (the backbone of the camp) and kept them running; and Barbara, my daughter and Craft Woman Extraordinaire.

I'm now doing receipts, paying bills, cleaning out the 12 boxes in my front room, but it's over. O-V-E-R.