Paper calendars took a hit in 2020.  Typically, the scribble of spontaneous social gatherings would be wedged between the surety of long-range plans.  The printed layout would frame anticipated life, anchored seasonally by signature images-of-the-month. 

Six m...

In late December 2019, several people around South Bend, IN, used duct tape to secure 16-ounce aluminum cans lined with black and white photographic paper at their respective places.  Around the 2020 June solstice, they will recover their solargraphs, each a personal t...

When the streets are icy, don't slip and fall on the evidence of climate change.  It's underfoot all around you. 

An amazing NOAA video shows how CO2 levels have changed up and down over the past 800,000 years, with a significant spike recorded since the Industrial...

Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 in Michiana, including at Notre Dame, at Penn Harris Madison Digital Video Theater & Planetarium, and at multiple regional libraries.  Further afield, see NASA list of Apollo events.

EVENTS

July 7 , Sunday

Necks Craned 50 Years...

While we commemorate the first lunar landing fifty years ago, consider the view from Earth, too.  In the United States and around the world, people were gazing skyward at the waxing crescent moon, imagining what was happening a quarter of a million miles away.  You can...

July 20, 2019, marks the 50th anniversary of astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin landing on the moon.  Celebrate the achievement with a group reenactment of Apollo 11 landing, reprinted from 2012 blog post Kids Land on the Moon:

For an activity at a fifth-grade camp, kids s...

As Illinois celebrates its 200th birthday, find the Illinois Bicentennial Star in the winter sky. At 200 light years away, the corner star Scheat in the Great Square of Pegasus shines prominently.  Starlight that left Scheat in 1818 when Illinois became a state, after...

A new round of solargraph cans are capturing light at multiple sites, including Prairie Vista Elementary School, Rocco's Style Shop, St. Pius X Catholic Church, and Copshaholm.  Three other sites--Building 84, Four Winds Field, and St. Patrick's County Park--also launc...

If you are attending any Women's March on January 21, 2017, and you have a positive attitude or a willingness to look up, then I encourage you to seek a poignant moment reminiscent of an inauguration--that is, the second Presidential Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.  P...

I find value in a parallel between the Presidential Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and the Presidential Inauguration of Donald Trump in 2017.  Yes, there is a similarity, and it is cause to look up.

In 1865, poet Walt Whitman observed President Lincoln on the d...