Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!


Whether you are celebrating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead today, or honoring an older Deity like Eostre, may you have a blessed and lovely day.

The underlying message is the same either way. Both traditions speak of rebirth and renewal at this time when the earth is coming alive again. Both speak of hope, and of miracles existing in our lives.

I have felt the hand of winter very hard upon me this year, and spring is more welcome than I can say... I've never been one to make New Year's Resolutions. Spring Resolutions always seemed to make more sense to me. This year my resolution is to love more perfectly. To love those who have hurt me, and to forgive them. To approach every person with compassion and understanding, to never let myself be swayed by hurt feeling, or to react out of anger. As the world changes and awakens around me, I will be striving to make changes in myself, to foster a rebirth of my spirit. In the coming year I will love even those who have caused me incredible amounts of pain. I will recognize that there is something good, something lovable in them, even if I can not see it.

May the coming of spring, and the hope and renew of the season give you a reason to rejoice as well. Blessed be.

Because I'm suffering from cabin fever...

... here are some pictures of flowers that I took last spring.




















And ok, this one is from last summer, not spring, but I'm putting it in anyway!



If you want to see any of them in more detail, let me know. I'll give you the link to a higher resolution copy.

Earth and stars

NASA Earth Observatory

This is pretty cool. A lot of interesting photographs and animations of, well, Earth.

Some pretty cool satellite images of earth. I particularly like the Ancient Observatories section.

Need some perspective? Take a look at how small we are...

Feeling a bit destructive? Or just want to see if you can knock the earth off of it's rotation? (If you do, let me know!) Try playing around with the Earth Impacts Effects Program. It's "an easy-to-use, interactive web site for estimating the regional environmental consequences of an impact on Earth. This program will estimate the ejecta distribution, ground shaking, atmospheric blast wave, and thermal effects of an impact as well as the size of the crater produced." It's all text based, but so fun!

The photo gallery from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Lots of really cool pictures of space.

And they finally feel like they have a pretty good idea what causes the Aurora Borealis.