Carolyn Porco is head of NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn. As a teenager in the Bronx she saw Saturn through a friend’s telescope, and was immediately addicted to astronomy. So that’s what she did at university. After graduating, she knew she wanted to study planets. NASA was sending unmanned ships to Mars and Venus, and she wanted to be part of it, and did her Ph.D. on the dynamics of…
The people who lived here before the Spanish invasion in 1493 were called Benauaritas. Since they didn’t have writing, not all that much is known about them, and what there is comes from the invaders. Not exactly an unbiased source! Their technology was pretty basic, maybe because the climate in La Palma is kind enough not to encourage things like weaving. They wore skins, lived mostly in caves, herded goats…
My husband was telling me what Easter was like under Franco’s dictatorship. Catholicism was pretty much compulsory. From Good Friday to Easter Sunday, the one TV channel showed the test card and played solemn classical music. The one radio channel also played solemn classical music. It wasn’t acceptable to play pop music, either live or on cassette. You couldn’t even sing or whistle. Acting happy was a sin. He was…
The nexus is aglow with bio-feedback. Consciousness consists of frequencies of quantum energy. “Quantum” means a maturing of the psychic. Nothing is impossible. If you have never experienced this fusion of the creative act, it can be difficult to vibrate. Humankind has nothing to lose. Reality has always been electrified with dreamweavers whose hearts are baptized in inseparability. We are at a crossroads of nature and delusion. Only a being…
Yponomenta gigas caterpillars and web. I’d never heard of caterpillars that make cobwebs before, but these do. Like many others caterpilars in the family of ermine moths, they form communal webs. I suppose it discourages birds from sticking their beaks in. My book on Canarian insects doesn’t mention them at all, but then they aren’t easy to find unless you know where to look. They live on the Canarian Willow,…
It’s Holy Week, and in this Catholic country, a lot of people take it very seriously. The bigger churches hold processions, which look very exotic to my English eyes. Do try to see at least one. It’s not so much that they take the obviously-heavy statues along the street – most churches do that on the respective saint’s days. It’s the costumes. They remind me of the Klu Klux…