Colors Of Fall Cranking Up!

The reds and yellows and oranges of the fall forest are coloring the world more and more every day, washing out the greens of the spring and summer. The maples and dogwoods, showy in the redness, are the most eye catching right now. The passage of a mostly dry cold front has not changed the temps much but the breeze has picked up and the leaf fall is increasing, as well. Today's high temp should be near or at 60, a little below average for late Rocktober but still comfortable for a stroll on the big planet, get out and do it!!
60 quakes in the last 24 hours with a couple of magnitude 6+ shakes. Both big quakes are slips along subduction zones, one off El Salvador and the other in the Drake Passage just off the southern tip of South America. The fact they are off shore, while potentially triggering tsunamis (they didn't seem to), really just means there is little damage onshore. Aftershocks continue in Greece and a 5.5 quake in Romania yesterday rattled that quake-prone region but I'm not seeing much in the way of damage reports. The quake was fairly deep so that may have lessened damage. Still, a quake in the middle of the night, in an earthquake zone, is unsettling but a reminder that more quakes are always coming, potentially bigger and stronger than the last. The Central Va. Seismic Zone, fortunately, remains quiet in our neighborhood.
The rattling in our neighborhood still centers around the insane idea of turning a peaceful ag/forest district into an industrial mega-site, with no plans for any industry to come. Just the idea that if you throw enough tax dollars at anything, something great will happen. And, pushed by republicans that I thought were against government control of the economy; that's what they claim on all their ads. Not what they practice though!

Pro-growth folks claim that your taxes won't rise

But, that should come as no real surprise

We, however, know they will

And, don't want to swallow that pill

Growth for greed, just a cancer in disguise!!

The moon continues its waning and rises later and later, brightest now in the wee hours of the night. The planet show continues to fade and shift from the evening to the morning hours and the dim constellations of fall make for a starry but not dazzling sky show. Prowl out late and you can catch the much brighter winter stars rising into view. But, after dark, the Great Square of Pegasus, high in the south and to the naked eye mostly void of stars, is a good Fall sky-mark to patrol the evening sky. Cassiopeia, the queen, sitting on an upside down chair but looking like a big W, is off to the northeast (but almost overhead) from the Great Square and in between the two, our nearest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. You can see Andromeda as a hazy patch between the Pegasus and Cassiopeia but binoculars will show you the haze as a shape, a spiral galaxy shape. You will be looking at light that left those stars about 2 million years ago. Our ancestors got a similar view back those 2 million years when they were just beginning to realize that food, cooked over fire, provided a lot more nutrition and energy for their bigger brains. An advantage that has us where we are now.
Just a little mental food for your big brain to mull over, as we race to grow and grow and grow on this small, still mostly, lovely planet. Our cancer-like spread totally curable by some simple, wise steps; the easiest: allow women to decide/plan how many kids to have and to have them when they, and the fathers, are fully prepared to raise one or two great kids. Get out and think about it, Today on Earth.