July 8, 2019 Night

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Good evening! Clear and 73 degrees in Delmar, NY. Calm wind. 🌟 The dew point is 56 degrees. Pleasant summer evening, sat out back for a while with a book.

I could have gone for my evening walk but I was tired and lazy. 🚶I did get the camping gear put back in the crawl space so I won’t be tripping on it come the morning. I’ll will want to get the cooler out for Saturday when I do the overnight in Schoharie County. It might be fun to check out the not so Old Blenheim Bridge then besides all the other activities I mentioned earlier.

Tonight will be clear 🌃, with a low of 57 degrees at 5am. Four degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around June 18th. Maximum dew point of 56 at 9pm. Calm wind. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 61 degrees. The record low of 41 occurred back in 1963.

Tonight will have a First Quarter with 57% illuminated with the moon setting at 12:43 am. The moon will set at 1:00 am. The First Quarter Moon will be tonight with partly cloudy skies. The Buck Moon 🌝 is next Monday. The sun will rise at 5:26 am with the first light at 4:51 am, which is 43 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 8 hours and 51 minutes of darkness, an increase of one minute and 7 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 86 degrees at 3pm. Four degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 57 at 8am. Should be another nice day. Light northwest wind. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 92 degrees. The record high of 103 was set in 1936.

Busy day at work. 🏢 But I’m getting caught up on things and I’m figuring it will make the week go fast. Two nights of Pine Bush events coming up followed by me going to John Wolcott house 🏡 for more Albany history files. 📂 Almost done with the project, maybe I’ll end up doing Schenectady next although I don’t know its been a laborous process.

Ordered another, actually two burners for the camp stove 🔥 although I only need to replace one now – oddly enough the one that gets the least use. I figured save on shipping and have the part handy. The old one just rusted through probably from all the liquids boiling over and causing rust plus I may have applied pressure to it causing the rust to lead to cracks. If one fails the second won’t be far away.

In four weeks on August 5 the sun will be setting at 8:10 pm,🌄 which is 24 minutes and 24 seconds earlier then tonight. Summer vacation will just be a distant memory then. In 2018 on that day, we had hot, humid, sunny, patches of fog and temperatures between 90 and 63 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 82 and 61 degrees. The record high of 99 degrees was set back in 1955.

My summer vacation is in two weeks. ⛺ Finger Lakes for the first half of the week then I want to camp in Allegany County in the state forest were the Harry Women of Canasserga hang out, do a day trip to Letchworth State Forest,⛲ camp at Rock City then Allegany State Park and then down to the Alleghany National Forest. 🏊

I am thinking about the week before Columbus Day this year for my autumn trip to Pennsylvania and West Virginia. 🍂This year the focus will be on those states, no trips to Virginia, but I’ll probably head farther south in West Virginia to see the big New River Gorge bridge 🌉 on the West Virginia coin. Plus maybe a few overnights in Dolly Sods. Maybe too early for peak color in places but who knows, Dolly Sods is quite high elevation.

Looking ahead, Cow Appreciation Day 🐂 is in 1 weeks, Work Like a Dog Day 🐩 is in 4 weeks, Last Sunset After 8 PM 🌆 is in 5 weeks, National Dog Day 🐩 is in 7 weeks, Labor Day 👨‍🏭 is in 8 weeks and Columbus Day 🛥️ is in 13 weeks.

Edge of Barnum Pond

Solar Panels Leave People High And Dry

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Abundant Sun, Yet No Energy: Solar Panels Leave People High And Dry

I am definitely a fan of renewable energy, but I do have a lot of questions about these grid-fed industrial solar facilities I see popping up in the country. I think there is a lot of wishful thinking and not a reality-based discussion of the climate crisis we as a society face. No, we aren't going to be taking our electric cars, powered by industrial solar fields to Walmart, regardless of what we think.

The Photographer Who Captured America’s Dark Side – Mental Floss

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The Photographer Who Captured America’s Dark Side – Mental Floss

On a hot September day in 1957, Jack Kerouac sat on a New York City sidewalk holding America in his hands. At least, that’s how it felt. In reality, he held a book of photographs taken by a Swiss photographer named Robert Frank. Like Kerouac, who had recently released On the Road, Frank had just completed a historic road trip across America. He had driven from New York City to Detroit to New Orleans to Los Angeles, photographing practically every big city and one-horse town along the way. He planned to publish the photos in a book and wanted Kerouac to write an introduction. So the two met outside of a party, plopped down on the sidewalk, and flipped through the pictures.

There were cowboys and cars, jukeboxes and tattered flags, cemeteries and shoe shiners, politicians and proselytizers. And, in one photo, a shining stretch of straight highway in New Mexico, darting like an arrow toward the horizon. Kerouac was sold. To him, the pictures did more than capture America: The black-and-white film had “caught the actual pink juice of human kind.” He agreed to write some text to accompany it. “What a poem this is,” he’d tell Frank. “You got eyes.”

It hadn’t been easy. Frank had driven more than 10,000 miles to capture those photos. Along the way, he used 767 rolls of film, filled uncountable tanks of 
gas, and endured two stints in jail. He knew the photographs were good. But he didn’t necessarily think they would change photography—or how people see the country.

The year of the deer fly

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This year has certainly had a bumper crop of deer fly in the Adirondacks. While deer fly have always been around and a nuisance with their bites that itch and cause swelling, I’ve never seen them in the numbers like this year – flying around causing havoc. I think it’s due to the extremely wet and cool spring that only recently turned hot and humid.

Twice this summer, day napping I’ve gotten painful bites on my lips from deer flies leading them to swell – once napping during the day in my truck. The deer fly figured out how to get Ina hole in the truck bed. I also got bit on the ear once – causing that to swell. That’s despite using a combination of Picardin on my shirt, shorts and neck, DEET and PMD on my face, legs and arms. By the amount of repellent I’ve used this past long weekend I swear there shouldn’t be bugs around for miles.

Getting Eaten Alive By Black Flies

A much needed change in the weather

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It looks like as we head into the mid-July, we are in for a change in the weather pattern, with some hot and sunny weather expected. I’m looking forward to hopefully having some nice weather for my trip out to the Finger Lakes followed by Western NY and Allegheny National Forest in two weeks. Now I’m just hoping the bugs will get less bad with the weather drying and improving.