OmegaMom

Last night OmegaDad and I finished watching our movie at 12:30 a.m. (there was a break at 11 p.m. to go pick up the dotter; she couldn’t quite do a full night away from home).  When I turned off the light in the office, which we were using as indirect light for the family room where we were watching the movie, it was dark.

Holy moly.  When did that happen?!

So here we are, a month past solstice.  At solstice, the sun set at 11:42 p.m. and rose at 4:20 a.m., and the sunrise/sunset calculator at my favorite site showed “light” for the start and end times of all forms of twilight.  Now, in last third of July, the sun is setting at 11:09 p.m. and rising at 5:02 a.m.  And we now have official start and end times for “twilight”, with “light” showing for civil and astronomical twilights.  According to this calculator, we will get civil twilight starting on August 6.

(The U.S. Naval Observatory has a nice discussion of the difference between “twilight”, “civil twilight”, and “astronomical twilight”.)

Anyway, the gloaming was noticeably less gloamy last night, which means we may actually get to see some stars in, oh, two months.

After the movie ended, we headed upstairs and piddled around, clearing away used dishes, turning off lights, closing blinds, and I went outside to the kitchen porch to have my last smoke of the night.  I leaned on the railing, and gloried in the dimness, then glanced down at the rose bush beneath me.  And there, flitting about in the twilight, were moths.

Flittering back and forth, silver, white and gray.  When had those moths appeared?  I didn’t remember them from a few weeks ago.  Did they need the dimness to avoid being eaten by birds?  If so, what did they do when there was more light around, just a few weeks ago?

Ahhhh…

All of these questions were prompted, actually, by my recent reading of a gem of a book called “In A Patch of Fireweed“, by Bernd Heinrich.  A few weeks ago I was left bereft by having read all my new science fiction books, re-read all my old SF and fantasy books, and needing something to keep me entertained while I sat by OmegaDotter’s bed when she fell asleep at night.  I started with OmegaDad’s copy of John McPhee’s “Coming Into the Country” (a great read, and very descriptive of the type of mindset that one finds amongst Alaskans), and then found myself needing another book.  So I browsed OmegaDad’s bookshelf and found this one, purporting to be an autobiography of a biologist.  It was a slender volume, so it seemed to be a fairly quick read, and the mention of fireweed appealed to me as the fireweed are beginning to bloom here.

It’s a lovely book.  It’s lyrical, it’s gently humorous, it describes a boy’s journey from a childhood in a war-torn Europe to adulthood as a biologist who spends his time studying insect thermoregulation by sticking thermocouples up the ass of hornets and bees.  And it does a splendid job of describing the constant babble of questions that prompt a biologist (or any scientist, I would think) to pursue his or her studies.  A glance at some ants emerging from a nest raises a quick question, which raises another, which leads to some study on a few consecutive days, which leads to yet more questions and some answers.  A few months later, looking at some bees foraging on a hot summer’s day leads to another set of queries, which circle back to the original questions.

It’s hard to describe how wonderful the book was.  I loved it.  It was his description of his endless curious observation of the world around him that led me to looking at those moths and asking those questions.

Later, as OmegaDad and I laid in bed trying to sleep, I mentioned the moths to him, and shared some of the things I had wondered, and we had a great little discussion, then snuggled up in spoon fashion, closed our eyes, and fell asleep.