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I try to put
the words to paper
as music plays
in the background.
Hard to focus on
the task at hand,
when the background
music lyrics,
staccato beat from
Bruce Springsteen,
is ringing in your ears.
Need to reload.

I wrest the pain
from within my heart,
a collection of
personal failures.

A pain of witness,
watching my wife's
mental acuity,
in a slow decline
from Dementia
to Alzheimer's.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Ridges of glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds inhabit the turbulent, cosmic depths of the Lagoon Nebula. Also known as M8, the bright star forming region is about 5,000 light-years distant. But it still makes for a popular stop on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius, toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Dominated by the telltale red emission of ionized hydrogen atoms recombining with stripped electrons, this stunning, deep view of the Lagoon is nearly 100 light-years across. Right of center, the bright, compact, hourglass shape is gas ionized and sculpted by energetic radiation and extreme stellar winds from a massive young star. In fact, although digitally removed from the featured image, the many bright stars of open cluster NGC 6530 drift within the nebula, just formed in the Lagoon several million years ago.

Photo by Sameer Dhar

William Frederick Halsey Jr. or Bull Halsey (1882 – 1959) Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, was a fleet admiral in the United States Navy during World War II. He is one of four individuals to have attained the rank of fleet admiral, the others being Ernest King, William Leahy, and Chester W. Nimitz.

Disappointment appears
in her eyes,
when she tries
and realizes,
she can no longer
do most of her
daily routine.

Few artists have articulated the dance between this “divine discontent” and creative fulfillment more memorably than the poet, novelist, essayist, and diarist May Sarton (May 3, 1912–July 16, 1995). In her Journal of a Solitude (public library), Sarton records and reflects on her interior life in the course of one year, her sixtieth, with remarkable candor and courage. Out of these twelve private months arises the eternity of the human experience with its varied universal capacities for astonishment and sorrow, hollowing despair and creative vitality.

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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What's that green streak in front of the Andromeda galaxy? A meteor. While photographing the Andromeda galaxy in 2016, near the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower, a small pebble from deep space crossed right in front of our Milky Way Galaxy's far-distant companion. The small meteor took only a fraction of a second to pass through this 10-degree field. The meteor flared several times while braking violently upon entering Earth's atmosphere. The green color was created, at least in part, by the meteor's gas glowing as it vaporized. Although the exposure was timed to catch a Perseid meteor, the orientation of the imaged streak seems a better match to a meteor from the Southern Delta Aquariids, a meteor shower that peaked a few weeks earlier. Not coincidentally, the Perseid Meteor Shower peaks later this week, although this year the meteors will have to outshine a sky brightened by a nearly full moon.

Photo by Fritz Helmut Hemmerich

"A vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) design created at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has wound up in the hands of a Chinese company, which has since gone on to become the largest manufacturer of VRFBs in the world" The US, which owns the patent and invested $15 million of taxpayer dollars into its development, reportedly has no domestic production site for the novel VRFBs" ..... Read more at The Register

Up ahead in the fading light
appears a person, quite unlike
anyone I have seen before.
Eyes of blue, crooked smile,
a stranger, strolling, down
the path to Lord knows where,
it was then, I became aware,
she was tall and lithe,
so unlike those I know.
As I drew closer,
I heard a sound. Melodious
to my ear, a catchy tune,
in an Alto tone, which
reminded me of an old
friend of mine, who passed
away, some time ago.
I started to say hello,
but she kept walking like
she knew this land and
been here before.
I'll always remember this
sight for she was another
one who was looking around
to find her way, into the town.
Blue the eyes, gold the hair
I miss seeing you and your
bright smile.

I see the cracks
in the facade
of my true
loves face,
as her temperament
becomes more aggressive
towards anything,
especially me. She still
wants to be near me.
She doesn't know my name
and even "my husband" has
been scarce.

Original post, January 2018