Well, today I leave once more for Hawai`i, off for my second year of studies. It's not much easier than last year, really. The inertia generated by three and a half weeks being home takes some serious force to move.
At least, this time I'm returning to familiar places and people rather than strange new ones, and my school schedule seems much easier compared to the hectic daze that was last semester. Tonight, the sound of crickets at night will be replaced by the sound of frogs, night will come a lot sooner (and quicker), and new constellations will rise tantalizingly above the southern horizon. The old ones, however, will still be there, merely shifted in position. The beauty of knowing the night sky intimately is that it is always there, no matter where you go.
And, thankfully, we have an understanding of electromagnetism born of Maxwell's Equations that makes communication at the speed of light possible (an incredible thing, when you think about it), so I don't have to be out of communication with those I care about any longer than I choose to.
Bring on the semester!
Showing posts with label coqui frogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coqui frogs. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
When worlds align...
Well, the frogs are chirping merrily away in the background, and for once there are no clouds in the sky, allowing me to see the close conjunction of Venus and the Moon, with Mars and Saturn nearby for good measure. It's a beautiful night in Hilo.
It almost makes me sad, knowing that Thursday I'll be on the airplane back home to California for a few weeks. By the time you're reading this, I may already be in the air. To be honest, I'm going to miss the lovely weather here. And the rain. I'll probably miss the rain.
In the almost 11 months I've been living here, Hawai`i has steadily grown on me, ever since I first got off the airplane. I love it here, and will be sad if or when I eventually have to move away.
But all good things tend to come to an end, and indeed, trying to hold onto a good thing too hard often ends up being counter-productive. It'll be good to see family and friends again, catch up, "talk story". And at the end of my vacation, I have the coming back to look forward to. So I guess it's not so bad after all.
Mentioning that conjunction reminded me I should try to go photograph it. As you can see below, it's quite the picturesque alignment:
Visible in the full-size picture but hard to see here, Saturn lies near the top of the picture with Mars to its lower right, while just to the right of the three-day-young Moon lies Venus. And the nifty part is, the alignments just get more interesting as we head into August! Saturn, Mars, and Venus will each take turns getting close to each other over the next few weeks, and are optimally placed for evening viewing. Check them out some time, if you get a chance. There's really no way you can miss Venus, as it's the brightest thing in the sky after the Moon, and Saturn and Mars will show up as fairly bright stars to its upper left, similar to the picture...for a few days, at any rate.
See you in California!
It almost makes me sad, knowing that Thursday I'll be on the airplane back home to California for a few weeks. By the time you're reading this, I may already be in the air. To be honest, I'm going to miss the lovely weather here. And the rain. I'll probably miss the rain.
In the almost 11 months I've been living here, Hawai`i has steadily grown on me, ever since I first got off the airplane. I love it here, and will be sad if or when I eventually have to move away.
But all good things tend to come to an end, and indeed, trying to hold onto a good thing too hard often ends up being counter-productive. It'll be good to see family and friends again, catch up, "talk story". And at the end of my vacation, I have the coming back to look forward to. So I guess it's not so bad after all.
Mentioning that conjunction reminded me I should try to go photograph it. As you can see below, it's quite the picturesque alignment:
 |
| Saturn, Mars, the Moon, and Venus. Click on the image for a larger view. |
Visible in the full-size picture but hard to see here, Saturn lies near the top of the picture with Mars to its lower right, while just to the right of the three-day-young Moon lies Venus. And the nifty part is, the alignments just get more interesting as we head into August! Saturn, Mars, and Venus will each take turns getting close to each other over the next few weeks, and are optimally placed for evening viewing. Check them out some time, if you get a chance. There's really no way you can miss Venus, as it's the brightest thing in the sky after the Moon, and Saturn and Mars will show up as fairly bright stars to its upper left, similar to the picture...for a few days, at any rate.
See you in California!
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Of frogs and fugues.
If you've ever heard a coqui frog and wanted to know what they look like, I happen to have a very nice photo of one:
(it's hard to get a sense of scale in this picture, but that frog is about two inches long)
If you don't know what I'm talking about, coqui frogs are several related species of frogs native to Puerto Rico that are named for their distinctive (and loud) calls. This facet of their biology has prompted much vigorous debate ever since they were accidentally released in the state of Hawaii, with many people finding their calls obnoxious at night (they are quite loud) and working to kill as many as they can, and just as many people defending them and working to protect them.
I tend to like them, myself. They fill much the same role as background crickets (if slightly louder), but are much more melodious than insects, to my ear. They also remind me of the spring peepers back in Northern California.
Oh. I guess I didn't really talk about fugues, did I? Simply put, fugues are a complex musical technique, considered by many musicologists to be the most complex of contrapuntal forms (unsurprisingly, the Baroque era was their golden age, especially in the hands of such masters as Handel and Bach).
Oversimplifying greatly, a fugue has as part of its integral nature a repetition of a musical phrase over and over in different voices and keys, often in a staggered fashion, with a whole lot of other, more complicated things happening as well. If you take the coqui frog's two-note co-QUI! as a phrase, they could be said to be playing a very simple, rather extended, and somewhat limited fugue all night long, to a gentle and pervasive backdrop of crickets, accompanied by the odd cadenza-like trill of a gecko, or two male coqui's engaging in a “singing duel”. That is all.
 |
| Coqui! Coqui! |
If you don't know what I'm talking about, coqui frogs are several related species of frogs native to Puerto Rico that are named for their distinctive (and loud) calls. This facet of their biology has prompted much vigorous debate ever since they were accidentally released in the state of Hawaii, with many people finding their calls obnoxious at night (they are quite loud) and working to kill as many as they can, and just as many people defending them and working to protect them.
I tend to like them, myself. They fill much the same role as background crickets (if slightly louder), but are much more melodious than insects, to my ear. They also remind me of the spring peepers back in Northern California.
Oh. I guess I didn't really talk about fugues, did I? Simply put, fugues are a complex musical technique, considered by many musicologists to be the most complex of contrapuntal forms (unsurprisingly, the Baroque era was their golden age, especially in the hands of such masters as Handel and Bach).
Oversimplifying greatly, a fugue has as part of its integral nature a repetition of a musical phrase over and over in different voices and keys, often in a staggered fashion, with a whole lot of other, more complicated things happening as well. If you take the coqui frog's two-note co-QUI! as a phrase, they could be said to be playing a very simple, rather extended, and somewhat limited fugue all night long, to a gentle and pervasive backdrop of crickets, accompanied by the odd cadenza-like trill of a gecko, or two male coqui's engaging in a “singing duel”. That is all.
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