tuesday night on the high line

 

the astronomy club was out on the high line this evening. kendall, janine and i were walking back from celebrating kendall's birthday at hav and mar restaurant on 11th avenue when we saw them. "have you seen saturn," one of them called out. 

they're always so welcoming and friendly, and it's always exciting to see the rings of saturn.

thursday and friday adventures

 morgana was up early thursday morning feeling very tired. we met after she had a visit with friends in the neighborhood, to meet other friends who are in town from pittsburgh. we also stopped in fishs eddy and it feels like just yesterday that i was texting her from here when she was in austria, but it was really over a month ago.

our friends from pittsburgh who are in town to dance with the isadora duncan dance company at old westbury gardens on long island.

i think lucia's camera was broken . . she was having a difficult time getting it to snap.

 family dinner with morgana thursday night! we had vietnamese lettuce rolls . . 

 today is a day we have been looking forward to for a long time. today is the day we went to see the royal ballet company at lincoln center.

 we had originally purchased tickets for wednesday but had to change plans when we found out morgana was coming home that day.

 thankfully a friend of ours bought all three tickets and we were able to get new ones for tonight!

ooooohh, just a tad happy . . 

tonight's pieces were the dream, choreographed by sir frederick ashton and danced by natalia osipova and matthew golding; and song of the earth, choreographed by kenneth macmillan and danced by edward watson, lauren cuthbertson and ryoichi hirano. 

the cast of song of the earth: lauren cuthbertson is thanking the royal ballet's conductor, barry wordsworth, who conducted the new york city ballet orchestra (which looked wonderfully full this evening . . lots of times the orchestra looks very skimpy and i always figure it's because they don't want to pay too many musicians).

edward watson, lauren cuthbertson and ryoichi hirano . . mahler's music is incredibly beautiful, and the soloist singers they had were wonderful (katharine goeldner and thomas randle). i really enjoyed both pieces very much. oh! they also had the brooklyn youth chorus there! they sang beautifully! here's a link to an instagram pic of them happily watching a royal ballet rehearsal. 

 when we left the theatre, we found the astronomy club had set up.

 they were looking at saturn. you could see the rings so clearly! it never ceases to amaze me.

admiring the fountain late at night . . 

 getting impatient with me . . morgana just wanted to go home to sleep off the jetlag . . 

two very tired sisters . . 

and here's the freedom tower arrayed in the colors of the rainbow flag of the lgbt community. everyone is celebrating the supreme court ruling making same sex marriage a nationwide right. everyone is happy here in new york city. it's a wonderful feeling. love is in the air. and sunday is the gay pride parade when my neighborhood really goes wild . . and i usually hibernate! (though i once did march in the parade with my karate school . . ).

marble experiment, gravity and galileo

 we read about galileo today in robert s. ball's book great astronomers.

 it was in relation to an experiment we did from the "milestones in science" kit we got years ago. chanda rolled a marble down a sloping table, across which string was stretched: two strands at equal intervals, and then the next two at increasingly wider intervals. she was explaining the "law of falling bodies:" that a falling object accelerates as it moves. in order for the marble to roll at an even tempo, the strings it jumped over needed to be further apart. you could "hear" the rhythm of it as it rolled . . well, i couldn't . . but the girls could. galileo brought this concept forward in about 1590 by trying to slow down movement with an inclined plane.

 

 the astronomy club was out on the high line again tonight. or rather, janet and i happened to take a walk again on a tuesday night when the astronomy club was out. m and c told me a little of what they had read in bell's book about galileo: how he was motivated to improve on the telescope manufactured in holland, and was so successful that he was ordered to venice to show off his new device. there members of the venetian senate observed ships sailing on the sea fifty miles away as if they were only five miles. his telescope was popular, and he made several copies for influential people. the power of it's magnitude astounded all who gazed through it: rendering the silvery light of the milky way into stars, and bringing into view the first four moons revolving around jupiter (the ones we saw last week: io, europa, ganymede and callisto).

 morgana has been working on her medieval history lesson book. above is a plan of the cathedral of st.-sernin in toulouse, france, built along the pilgrimage route leading to santaigo de compostela in northwestern spain. it's an example of a romanesque church in the shape of a latin cross with a nave flanked by two aisles on either side, easily accommodating large crowds of people.

an essay on "towns, cities and cathedrals . . "

load in

 our dented car all packed up with black plastic bags of costumes.

 we were out at 9:30 this morning to help janet load in to the theatre.

 it was just us girls this year. lucien, janet's third in line, stayed home with the younger ones to make breakfast. we missed his muscle . . just a little . . j and company were up to the task. i stayed with the car.

 morgana hauled the steamer in . . 

 and then she and chanda set everything up while i drove janet to the art store for pearly paint for the pearly queen (she'll use half paint and half buttons . . )

 when we returned i hemmed a few garments while they started sewing the buttons on the pearly queen's costume. we stayed until noon, drove home for lunch (and for a parking spot), and then returned in the evening (chanda went to ballet).

 rehearsal went until 8:30. walking home via the high line we came across the astronomy club. one guy had his telescope focused on the moon. it was very large and you could view the craters and really see how the earth casts a shadow. the next telescope was aimed at jupiter and four of it's sixty seven moons. they angled off in a straight line to the left and down from the planet: io, europa, ganymede and callisto. these were the galilean moons, discovered in 1609/1610 by galileo.
 it was a beautiful night.

astronomy on the high line

we had such a fun evening. we went up to the high line with our telescopes to join the amateur astronomy club. jupiter was visible tonight, with four of it's moons, and our moon was full! the sky was wonderfully clear and the moon shone like a luminous pearl, especially when viewed through the telescopes, ours and the much more powerful ones of the club. (interesting tidbits: jupiter has 63 known moons! the largest four that we saw tonight are io, europa, ganymede and callisto. these moons are known as the galilean moons, as they were first observed by galileo galilei in 1610 . . i cannot tell you how exciting it is for me to think of him bending over his telescope and recording all his observations 400 years ago!

afterwards, janet, katie, camille and i sat at a table and listened to musicians from the new school perform john coltrane's jupiter. the others ran around and played tag and one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish (they played this at morgana's birthday party also). well, i didn't exactly sit. i became obsessed with yves' new ipod! i took the above movie, but thought i was taking a photograph! yves took the above first photo of morgana, lucien, and camille stargazing through their telescopes. it's a beautiful picture, isn't it? you can just see the moon off to the right side . .