Passing Thoughts

Northen Lights

Well, last night I finally saw the Northern Lights. Something I have wanted to see for as long as I can remember. About 11 O’clock I was trying to trick Roo (one of our cats) out of Abby’s room without waking her up so I could shut him downstairs for the night. When I had managed this I looked out of the window and the sky was streaked with this eerie green glow – shifting and twisting. Sadly there is huge amount of light pollution where I live but it was still very beautiful – I watched it for a long time. I can see a plan for going somewhere much further north and a lot darker emerging.

I am still working my way through (and enjoying immensely) Quicksilver. There is a fascinating parallel in reading about the early scientific explorations of the characters – Hooke, Lebnitz, etc. and watching the explorations of my son. He’s at the stage where he can begin to make connections between cause and effect and so is constantly experimenting to see what things do. A couple of weeks ago I was showing him something in the bath whereby you put an upturned cup into the water, let the air out underwater causing lots of entertaining bubbles and then quickly pull the cup out of the water upside down causing an interesting cascade of water and lots of splashes. He found this very funny and over the period of a number of baths has worked out how to do it himself by trial and error. Wonderful