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Hello, I’m Veronica

The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.

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    Girl Crush

    The Goddess

    Last Sunday, our corner of the night sky was graced with a full moon called a “Tiny Hunter”. Tiny, because the moon was at the furthest point in its elliptical orbit. Hunter, because this time of year harvested fields leave few places for animals to hide. (Add a full moon and the hunting’s even easier). When our Tiny Hunter rose in the east that night, it was as if a giant flashlight switched on in the heavens, blotting out a typically starry night. But I know it didn’t blot out everything. Venus, beckoning brightly to the west, was saying hey, this is my party too.

    Next to the moon, Venus is the brightest bulb in the night sky. Even if you don’t know where she sits, you can find her by simply scanning the western horizon at dusk or eastern at dawn for the most brilliant pinpoint of light. As if outshining all of the stars isn’t enough, Venus is also the most vivid planet. Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter occasionally make an appearance, but Venus always seems to be there. Even in broad daylight.

    “Morning Star” or “Evening Star” – take your pick

    I’m not gonna lie; Venus gives me a bit of a girl crush. After all, she’s the Roman goddess of love and beauty. Now consider her other “outstanding” attributes:

    • She’s the only planet in our solar system to identify as female.
    • She’s referred to as our “sister planet”, not only because she’s our closest neighbor, but because she’s virtually the same size.
    • She rotates in the opposite direction of seven of the eight planets (including Earth).
    • She hosts two continents: Ishtar Terra (named after the Babylonian goddess of love), and Aphrodite Terra (named after the Greek goddess of love).
    • Her rotation is so slow, a day in her world is longer than a year in ours. But, a year in her world is shorter than that same day. Say what? You read that right: Venus completes a trip around the sun faster than she completes a rotation on her own axis.
    • Her orbit is closer to the shape of a circle (vs. an ellipse) than all other planets.
    • She has no moons or rings. Naturally, why would the goddess of love and beauty need adornments?

    No wonder the Babylonians referred to Venus as “bright queen of the sky”, eh?

    Given her allure, it’s a wonder our earthly culture hasn’t done more to embrace her. I went in search of homage to Venus and here’s all I could come up with:

    • Sandro Botticelli’s iconic “The Birth of Venus” (top left), with our girl posed unashamedly naked on a seashell.
    • Vincent van Gogh’s post-impressionist “The Starry Night” (top center), with Venus as the bright “star” just to the right of the cypress tree.
    • The Bible’s Song of Songs (fitting, if you know the book’s subject matter), Chapter 6, Verse 10.
    • John Gray’s bestselling relationship guide, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
    • Gillette’s “Venus” line of women’s shaving products.
    • The “Venus” women’s clothing line (catalog arrived for my wife just last week).
    • A nasty-looking fly-trapping plant.
    • Frankie Avalon’s adoring anthem “Venus” (Hey, Venus… oh, VENUS…).
    • Shocking Blue’s psychedelic rock hit “Venus” (I’m your Venus… I’m your fire, at your desire…).

    If that’s the extent of our tribute to Venus, no wonder we have the phrase “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. Venus shows her not-so-lovely side if she wants to. She’s the hottest planet in the solar system (including Mercury), with an average surface temperature of 863 degrees F (462 C). Her atmospheric pressure is 92 times stronger than Earth’s (which is why her surface is beautifully crater-free). She’s covered in a thick layer of sulfuric acid clouds. Her wind speeds are extraordinarily high. And she’s explosive, with a long history of volcanic activity.

    The second rock from the Sun… and the brightest of all eight.

    Scientists believe – 700 million years ago under drastically different conditions – Venus was temperate enough to host oceans of water and life itself. So…, what in God’s name happened to make her so nasty now? Whatever it was, even our most advanced spacecraft can’t land on her surface today (though we’re working on it).

    Considering this brief education on Venus, I suggest you ignore her siren song and simply admire her from afar. Even if you could speed your car along an interstellar highway, you’d need over forty years to get to Earth’s twisted sister. No; stay on her good side lest she show her surface temperatures and atmospheric pressures. That wouldn’t go well for you. I’d rather look Medusa in the eye and be turned to stone.

    Some content sourced from the 9/22/19 Phys Org article, “Could Venus have been Habitable?”, “Venus Facts:…” from The Planets website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Agony or Ecstasy?

    Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    On a first visit to The Netherlands earlier this year, our plan was to traverse the quaint canals and bridges of Amsterdam, stand in the shadows of Kinderdjyk’s working windmills, and learn more about the country’s wartime era, perhaps through a stop at the Anne Frank House. I also looked forward to a field of their famous tulips, and Dutch treats like stroopwafels, poffertjes, and bitterballen.  Sure, I ticked the boxes on several of these items, but I was also blindsided by a group-tour-captive stop at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. 8,000 artworks covering 800 years of Dutch history (in what felt like 80 different rooms)?  Not my idea of a delightful morning in Holland.

    I’m not what you’d call a “patron of the arts”, though I’m about to contradict myself.  I love a classical performance by a symphony orchestra.  I’m drawn to the theater’s foremost stage productions (Les Miserables comes to mind).  I even enjoy the occasional visit to a museum, provided the subject is specific and of my choosing (ex. Amsterdam’s Dutch Resistance Versetsmuseum).  But endless rooms of paintings on walls and free-standing sculptures behind glass?  As the Dutch would say, nee bedankt ik zal slagen.  No thanks, I’ll pass.

    Here’s where I contradict myself a second time.  As I type this post I’m sipping morning coffee from the mug in the photo.  The mug is a souvenir from my “captivating” visit to the Rijksmuseum.  The painting on the mug is called “Children of the Sea” (1872), by Dutch artist Jozef Israels.  Go figure; I was able to blow past the throngs flocking to the Rembrandts and Vermeers and van Goghs; yet a small artwork in the corner of Rijksmuseum Room 118 captivated me enough to take a little piece of it home.  I probably spent as much time in front of that painting as I did the rest of the museum.

    Jozef Israels’ “Children of the Sea” (1872), Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands

    Naturally I had to learn more about “Children of the Sea”.  When I returned to Colorado, I read up on Jozef Israels.  Not only was he “… a leading member of a group of landscape painters known as the Hague School…”, Israels was “… the most respected Dutch artist of the second half of the nineteen century”.  Do I know how to pick ’em or what?  Maybe I have a little art appreciation in me after all.

    “Children of the Sea”, as you might expect, offers a deeper message than a group of kids playing on the beach.  Their simple clothing and toys hint at a life of poverty.  The eldest child is quite literally carrying his family on his shoulders.  The boat suggests the rigors of life at sea.  From that perspective, I find the painting even more enthralling.

    Anton Mauve’s “Morning Ride along the Beach” (1876), Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands

    Adjacent to “Children of the Sea” in Rijksmuseum Room 118, I also enjoyed a moment in front of the artwork shown above.  It is called “Morning Ride along the Beach”, and I mistook it for another Jozef Israels masterpiece.  Instead, “Morning…” was painted by Anton Mauve, another Dutch painter of the same era (and Hague School).  “Morning…” provides a contrast to the harsh existence of the poor fishermen of the time, by focusing instead on the “well-to-do bourgeoisie”: horses, elegantly dressed riders, bathing cabins – all on a pastel-colored sunny day.  No souvenir mug with this one, but equally compelling to the eye.

    Caravaggio’s “The Calling of Saint Matthew” (1699-1700), Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome

    Admittedly, the Hague School paintings weren’t the first artwork to stop me in my tracks, nor were they the last.  In my college year of architecture studies in Rome, the Renaissance-era paintings and sculptures were as impressive as the cathedrals that housed them (I could write an entire post on the stunning chiaroscuro works of Caravaggio).  Case in point, I was so taken by the life and work of Michelangelo I read all 700 pages of Irving’s Stone’s fictional biography, “The Agony and the Ecstasy”.

    John Dowd’s “Provincetown Summer” (1997), Provincetown, MA

             

     

    As for my latest artwork pause, my wife and I visited Cape Cod last month, all the way out to Provincetown at the tip.  One of Provincetown’s pier-side shops sold tiles of local artists’ paintings.  The tile above (left) – John Dowd’s depiction of a nearby Provincetown Cape house in 1997 – sits on our fireplace mantle now.  The photo above (right) is how the painter’s subject looks today.

    Someday I would love to return to The Netherlands for more adventures, but I assure you my itinerary would not include another trip to the Rijksmuseum.  However, I can’t claim I wouldn’t pause on the sidewalk if I walked past the museum’s massive entrance.  After all, in Room 118 there’s a very small painting, utterly captivating to this non-patron of the arts.

    Some content sourced from The Netherlands Rijksmuseum website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Supply Chain Reaction

    My neighbor to the north – the one with a mansion lording over the rest of the hood from the highest point around – hosts equestrian events on weekends. Whether reining or cutting competitions, or “quaint” social gatherings, his barn and surrounds burst with dozens of horses and riders just about every Saturday. His property is large enough we’re pretty far removed from the hubbub, except the convoy of horse trailers and trucks barreling down the street beforehand. The wheels rumbling over the washboardy dirt road and balloons of dust floating high overhead are hard to ignore.

    Maybe you don’t have a parade of horse trailers in your neighborhood (or a washboardy road), but guess what?  You do have a procession of vehicles making their way to your driveway, and the list of participants is growing.  Home delivery is the latest block party where everybody seems to have an invite.

    In the 1970’s the only vehicles coming up our driveway were the red, white, and blue jeeps of the United States Post Office (USPS) or the brown, boxy trucks of the United Parcel Service (UPS).  Then Federal Express vans (FedEx) joined in with a little purple and green, while DHL (the initials of the three founders’ last names) added a healthy dollop of yellow.  Taste the rainbow!

     That’s a pretty good line-up right there, but in the last decade or so home delivery (or “last mile delivery”, to use the trendier term) picked up several more players.  Amazon (black vans with a blue “swoosh” on the side) and WalMart (several colors) extended their supply chain by adding home delivery trucks.  Your pizza guy has been joined by restaurant delivery of all kinds, like DoorDash, Grubhub, and UberEats.  AmazonFresh is competing with your local grocery store to make sure you consider home delivery of products from Whole Foods.

    Here are a few of the more “colorful” entries coming soon to a driveway near you:

    • Postmates – Pizza, prescriptions, shoes, and tech products, just to name a few Postmates delivery favorites.  What makes Postmates unique?  They’re not affiliated with any business or product line.  If you need it, they’ll find it.
    • LuggageForward – Boasts “doorstep pickup”, so all you worry about is transporting you from your home to your travel destination.  LuggageForward guarantees your bags arrive before you do, and their “shipping experts” track your items every step of the way.
    • Piggybee – Just like LuggageForward, except you’re entrusting your luggage or other item to a random person who happens to be traveling to your destination anyway.  Sounds a little dicey, but isn’t the name great?
    • Entrusters – The opposite of Piggybee, but the same concept.  You find something you want to buy in a distant locale, and the random person who happens to be traveling to your city brings it to you.
    • goPuff – A “convenience store caterer”, tempting you with products like that pint of Ben & Jerry’s you don’t really need.  Perfect for college students?  Yes, and the company was started by college students.  “goPuff”?  No clue.
    • Drizly – Not only wine, beer, and liquor to your door inside of an hour, but also all the mixers, garnishes, and supplies you need to make your party tipsy.  Hopefully you’re not the only one at the party.  Hopefully your Drizly driver doesn’t partake in whatever he or she delivers.
    • Stitch Fix – A competitor to Nordstrom’s Trunk Club, Stitch Fix offers a stylist and all the designer clothes you could ever want.  Try them on and keep ’em or return ’em within three days.  Might as well close the doors on your local shopping mall.
    • Washio – Just what you would guess: home-delivery wash, dry, and dry-cleaning of your wardrobe.  Your hamper just moved to the front door!  Washio’s “ninjas” pick up and drop off inside of 24 hours, and even leave a cookie on top of the clean-clothes bag.  Sadly, Washio lasted less than three years; it’s founders claiming, “sometimes you make it, sometimes you don’t”.

    As we speak, many of these deliverers are hopping the fence into each other’s domains.  Postmates is test-marketing convenience store items in New York City, sourcing from 150+ Walgreens and Duane Reades.  Doordash is trying out same-day grocery delivery in 22 states.  AmazonFresh distinguishes itself as food delivery with its lime-green (not black) vans.

    With so many entrants in the home delivery circus, it’s fair to say the concept is still in its infancy.  We’ll need several years to see who and what will ultimately come out in the wash (clearly, not Washio).  But mark my words, you can always count on someone to rain on the parade.  Amazon is already experimenting with “Prime Air”, a drone-service.  In other words, home delivery may be a little less grounded in the future.

    Some content sourced from the 10/2/19 Wall Street Journal article, “Postmates, DoorDash Want to Deliver Your Groceries, Too”.

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    Window Addressing

    My wife and I just returned from a trip to Boston. On the flight home, we took our seats as usual: she at the window and me in the middle. It was a peaceful journey, save for the rather chatty woman across the aisle. But then, as we began our descent into Denver, behold an uncomfortable moment. A glare of sunlight through my wife’s window struck Chatty Woman in the eyes, who immediately turned and snapped, “CLOSE THAT WINDOW!” I just smiled from the middle seat and assured her the glare would move on momentarily (which it did). Chatty Woman gave me a stare and a huff, and turned away. Gee, nice to meet you too.

    I’ve touched on the dynamics – er, politics – of airplane passenger seats before, in Flight of the Humble Bee (a taste of first-class), and Center Peace (life in the middle seat), but I always thought window-seat dwellers were far enough to the left or right to escape judgment. No longer. In fact, more than ever the spotlight shifts to them.

    Let’s review the powers held by the different seats on the plane. The aisle seat, some would argue, commands the most power because a) the occupant controls the freedom of all others on his/her side of the row, b) the occupant has the easiest access to everyone else and everything else on the plane, and c) the occupant can lean or leg into the aisle as he/she pleases (a power move in itself, albeit a weak one).

    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 211-photophobic-6.jpg

    The middle seat [or in larger planes, middle seats. To you, the occupant of the middle seat in a row of 5+, you have my utmost sympathy] has powers inversely proportional to the aisle and window seat occupants. That is, the more empathetic your seatmates with your middle-seatedness, the more likely you’ll get perks (i.e. the use of both armrests, requests to the flight attendants, the window shade setting to your preference).

    Speaking of the shade, that my friends, is the power-play of the window seat. Whether the shade is up, down, or somewhere in the middle is entirely up to the occupant (or occasionally directed by the flight attendants). Once upon a time the window shade was a minor prop; only down when the shared overhead movie screens (or sleeping passengers) demanded dark. Today? Every mobile phone, tablet, reading device, laptop, and in-seat movie screen is photophobic. Light sensitivity abounds.

    Here’s the change in dynamic you’re not aware of. The passenger in the window seat is not the person he/she once was. Before, people chose the window seat to enjoy the high-skies views, or more importantly, to keep their geographic bearings or avoid the claustrophobia of a closed-up cabin. Today, people choose the window seat to control the shade, for optimal lighting of all those handheld devices.

    To further complicate the matter we have the Boeing 787 airplane, which replaced the window shade with electrified gel sandwiched between panes of glass. The gel darkens or lightens depending on the amount of applied current. Cool tech, but also a compromise of power for the window seat occupant. The flight attendants (as they deem necessary), can darken all of the windows during sleeping hours or movie time or even hot days. Might want to check the type of aircraft before you board your next flight.

    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 211-photophobic-1.jpg

    I suspect if “CLOSE THAT WINDOW!” persists, the airlines might jump at another opportunity for profit. Someday you’ll find yourself choosing a seat in the “light” or “dark” section of the plane, with a fee placed on one or both types of seats. Not a fan. Then again, if the airlines would sequester crying babies, cell-phone talkers and other audibles into a soundproofed section, I’ll be the first one on-board.

    Some content sourced from the 9/18/19 Wall Street Journal article, “The Showdown at the Window Seat”.

About Me

The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.

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