sungdog and moonbow

I captured some interesting cloud phenomena this week -- so here's a little meteorological info you can use to wow your friends.

Here's a sundog, which is also called a mock sun. It's "a colored, luminous spot or halo appearing to the side of the sun." The luminous spot is caused by the refraction of light through ice crystals in the atmosphere.


And on Halloween eve we saw this night rainbow, also caused by refraction of light through ice crystals in clouds. I guess it's different than an official moonbow, which is produced by light reflected off the moon...if you want to get all technical about it.

my daughter the ghoul

pembroke bees

Mom sent me a copy of this nice article on the work done by her quilting group the Pembroke Bees, making quilts and other items for hospice patients and injured soldiers. And here she is, hard at work on a piece of red work. Good job, ladies!

honorable

Thanks, all, for voting for my photo in the Boston Globe's September amateur photo contest. I came in 6th with an honorable mention! See the winners and the top 10 photos here:
http://www.boston.com/community/photos/raw/2009/10/the_september_jobs_contest_win.html

the haunted oak

A snippet of a powerful poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, together with a

layered photo technique I've been experimenting with.

photo joy

I've been entering the monthly photo contests on the Boston Globe's RAW amateur photo page for a few months, and this month I'm in the group of top 25 finalists -- yay! They have a theme every month, and September's theme was jobs. The first photo below is the one I entered in the contest, and the others are ones I took on the same theme. It's a challenge to ask strangers if you can take their picture and have it come out looking natural. Try it!

lucy speaks

Me, chatting to the Lothrops at the Lothrop Bible rededication (see previous post).

lothrop connections

The Sturgis Library got some press in the Cape Cod Times about our rededication of the Lothrop Bible in a ceremony yesterday that was attended by about 120 people -- inlucing many Lothrop (Lathrop, Lothropp, Lowthorpe) cousins, pictured above. Our library was built as John Lothrop's meetinghouse in 1644, which is how it gets its distinction as the oldest library building in the country.

This may not be of interest to most of you, except that I discovered in my research that we (the Loomis cousins, anyway) are, along with what seems like half the United States, descendants of a sort from John Lothrop. Our 5th great grandfather General Israel Putnam's second wife was John Lothrop's great-granddaughter.

This line goes -- for you all keeping score at home:

Rev. John Lothop
I
Samuel Lothrop
I
Samuel Lothrop 2nd
I
Deborah Lothrop Gardiner second wife of General Israel Putnam
I
Hannah Pope Putnam (Israel's daughter from first marriage) m John Winchester Dana
I
Israel Putnam Dana
I
Charles Smith Dana
I
Sarah Dana m Chester Loomis
I
Charles Loomis
I
Eliot Loomis
I
Lucy Loomis & siblings

Thus endeth the genealogical lesson for the day!

saturday nite

While Hannah was attending the Harwich High School homecoming dance last night,

I was out taking night photos around Brewster, killing time while I was waiting to pick her up.

To see photos from that night, click here.