Photo shared by Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American - April 10, 2021

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

An intense band of zodiacal light is captured in this serene mountain and night skyscape from April 7. The panoramic view was recorded after three hours of hiking from a vantage looking west after sunset across the Pyrenees in southern France. At 2838 meters altitude, Mont Valier is the tallest peak near center. In the sky above, the familiar stars of Orion and the northern winter Milky Way are approaching the rugged western horizon. At the shoulder of Orion, Betelgeuse is one of three bright yellowish celestial beacons. It forms a triangle with fellow red giant star Aldebaran located below Betelgeuse and to the right, and the red planet Mars. Mars shines just under the band of the Milky Way, still immersed in the bright zodiacal light. Tournament Earth: Vote for your favorite image from NASA's Earth Observatory

Photo by Jean-Francois Graffand

The bed
squeaks,
as I rise.
Noisily,
for its size.
Quietly
I go down
the stairs,
Suddenly,
there she is.

The far side of heaven
is where I hope she will be,
standing by the Pearly Gates,
waiting there for me.
I hope she will wait there,
in case I'm running late,
for I may not be inside,
but outside the Pearly Gates.

The Colt was born,
in blazing Sun.
His legs all gangly,
wobbling as he
tried to run.
Always a joy,
with much delight,
to see a newborn
take steps; a new flight.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe - a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way. Along with a bright central core, this stunning galaxy portrait, a composite of image data from amateur and professional telescopes, highlights youthful blue star clusters and reddish stellar nurseries tracing the galaxy's spiral arms. It also shows off remarkable reddish jets of glowing hydrogen gas. In addition to small companion galaxy NGC 4248 at bottom right, background galaxies can be found scattered throughout the frame. M106, also known as NGC 4258, is a nearby example of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, seen across the spectrum from radio to X-rays. Active galaxies are powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole.

Photo by Robert Gendler

You have left, once again.
I know not where you go,
it's then I realize,
I'm no longer the one
who enjoys our past life,
which Dementia has undone.
I'm alone in this life,
though you are here with me.
My love is still strong
and strong it must be,
for you are the one
who God made for me.
I love you now and what's more,
I will love more than ever before.

I lay in bed
with a thought of Ewe
in my head.
For counting of sheep
is supposed to help you sleep.
I hear a neigh in my ear,
for I can't disappear,
as the evening is nigh.
Oh, wait. I need to explain,
I'm talking of reign;
not talking about rain,
for if I do there,
it will be pain (ful)
as I place my head through
the window pane.

Looking out the window pane,
the streets are wet
with a Springtime rain.
As I lookout I bet,
the newspapers
may be dry, hopefully not wet.

Enfrijoladas has roots in Oaxaca, though it’s popular throughout Mexico. It is made with corn tortillas and bean sauce and it is a quick and healthy dinner. Click the Image below to read Katie Morford's recipe at Simply Recipes

They knew the neighborhood would revolt. It was early May, and officials in this Northern California city known for its farm-to-table dining culture and pumped-up housing prices were frantically debating how to keep covid-19 from infiltrating the homeless camps proliferating in the region’s celebrated parks and trails. The number of people living homeless in Santa Rosa and the verdant hills and valleys of broader Sonoma County had surged, exacerbated by three punishing wildfire seasons that destroyed thousands of homes in four years....... Read more

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The multicolor, stereo imaging Mastcam-Z on the Perseverance rover zoomed in to captured this 3D close-up (get out your red/blue glasses) of the Mars Ingenuity helicopter on mission sol 45, April 5. That's only a few sols before the technology demonstrating Ingenuity will attempt to fly in the thin martian atmosphere, making the first powered flight on another planet. The historic test flight is planned for no earlier than Sunday, April 11. Casting its shadow on the martian surface, Ingenuity is standing alone on four landing legs next to the rover's wheel tracks. The experimental helicopter's solar panel, charging batteries that keep it warm through the cold martian nights and power its flight, sits above its two 1.2 meter (4 foot) long counter-rotating blades.

Last night you talked to me.
Your words got in the way.
You kept calling me Joe,
and then you said Scott,
then back to saying Joe.
I know I shouldn't have,
but it is what I did;
I asked you for my name
and you said, "It's Joe."
It isn't my name,
and I told you so
but you continued
to call me Joe.

From the cold waters of Lake Lenore,
come the voices from a bird haven.
Dark as night, not a Crow but a Raven.
A bird who will blot the Sun from the door,
saying over and over again, "Nevermore."
What sayeth now? I asked of him.
He wouldn't say but he looked grim.
"I have no words, to say to you,
for I know you always abhor,
a bird who talks, saying, Nevermore.?"

I don't give a dime
for your thoughts today
or any amount of money
to hear you say.
"I don't want any money,
just your input,
but at the end of your request,
you ask for more money.
Every request I hear
is stated as if its the
end of the World.
You need to understand,
the old fable of
"The Boy Who Called Wolf."
Too many urgent requests
loses the intensity of
being truly an emergency.

Sunlight drifting, near and far,
touching grass, across the yard.
Why does the Sun I see
bring forth a serenity?

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Found in far southern skies, deep within the boundaries of the constellation Dorado, NGC 1947 is some 40 million light-years away. In silhouette against starlight, obscuring lanes of cosmic dust thread across the peculiar galaxy's bright central regions. Unlike the rotation of stars, gas, and dust tracing the arms of spiral galaxies, the motions of dust and gas don't follow the motions of stars in NGC 1947 though. Their more complicated disconnected motion suggest this galaxy's visible threads of dust and gas may have come from a donor galaxy, accreted by NGC 1947 during the last 3 billion years or so of the peculiar galaxy's evolution. With spiky foreground Milky Way stars and even more distant background galaxies scattered through the frame, this sharp Hubble image spans about 25,000 light-years near the center of NGC 1947.

When our first sunny day,
slowly fades to night.
We'll see all the birds
leave, as they take flight.
The Sun slowly slides
down the edge of the sky
with a beautiful sunset
and I ask, "Why?"