A Very Peaceful, Nature-Filled, Astronomical Look At 2017

Look to the sky to find peace and beauty. A 2017 shot of
northern lights and the big dipper viewed
from Alberta, Canada.

Like most of us, I'm still trying to recover from a chaotic, angry, scary, mean, corrupt, despicable 2017.  

Plus, I'm afraid 2018 isn't looking much better.

Which means we need to look at the bright side. The peaceful side. Nature usually helps.

Nature gets an assist here from Adrien Manduit, who gives us some of his best and favorite time lapses from 2017. You can watch and breathe easy and relax with his video at the bottom of this post.

Most of the images in this video were shot in Iceland, Malawi and Canada. The time lapses go heavy on mesmerizing views of northern lights and intense views of skies filled with millions of stars.

The video closes with this message: "All you have to do is look up."

I guess that will be my talisman going forward. Whenever the world gets to be too much, when people and leaders and the news get to be too much, all I have to do is look up. I already do this, given my fascination with cloud photography.

I guess I was on to something. Manduit proved it. And you should try his recipe. If only to stay sane.

This video proved surprisingly moving for me. I hope it does for you. (H/T BoingBoing)

The Grinch's Heart Expands: I Actually LOVE This Too-Early Christmas Ad

Sam about to give his best friend, Monty the Penguin
his Christmas surprise in this perfect John Lewis holiday ad.  

People who know me know this rite of the Christmas Holiday Season, which started I think back on January 10:

I hate, HATE all the demands that we buy, buy, BUY our way to Christmas happiness.

If we don't brawl tooth and nail over some worthless electronic gadget at Walmart at 5 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving, then we're worthless human beings, goes the retail line.

That said, I stumbled upon an early Christmas ad for John Lewis, a British retailer.   Watch it at the bottom of this post.

In the ad we follow a boy named Sam and his best friend, Monty the Penguin.

I have to tell you right now I have a childlike fixation on penguins and actually wish I had one, so the fact the ad has a penguin got my interest.

The story in the advertisement, and how it's put together is so sweet. Sam and Monty, as I said, are best friends, but as the holidays approach, Monty is clearly longing for something. Sam notices and does something about it as a Christmas gift.

And like I said, the ad makes this Grinch's heart grow warm and sweet.  It's a nice antidote to the usual screaming and yelling about Christmas sales that we usually see.

It's really a wonderful ad. It'll go down as one of the all time classic Christmas commercials. But warning:  There is a MAJOR Kleenex alert before you watch this now totally viral video

Lots of people are getting weepy watching it.

Here it is:

Looking Back At This Year's Vermont Fall Foliage

Near Fairfield, Vermont.  

Fall foliage season is all but kaput in Vermont for the season.

There's still a few splashes of nice color, of course, especially in the warmer valleys and right in the heart of towns, cities and villages, where it tends to be a bit milder.

But stick season is upon us, that time of year before the snow but when the trees are all bare, all the leaves are brown and the sky is gray, and you want to go for a walk on an (almost) winters day. (Thanks, Momas and Papas!)

Near Bakersfield,

It was a great season here in Vermont, though. The foliage lasted a long time, because we didn't have a lot of wind and rain and hard frosts.

There were a a lot of sunny, warm days, and a slightly dry August and September seemed to bring out the reds and deep oranges in the trees when October came around.

As I always do, I'll post a few photos of what I came up with for images from this year's season. I'm fascinated by low evening sunlight, dark clouds and bright foliage, so we went heavy on that this year.

Enjoy! (Scroll down to see 'em all)

St. Albans, Vermont.

Pine needles and leaves floating on water,
 West Rutland Vermont 

Amazing Video As Drone Flies Into An Active Volcano Crater

I'm really getting sold on drones. Cameras attached to them can capture the most amazing things.

Magma and ash belch from the Yasur volcano.

The latest I found is a YouTube video uploaded in late January by Shaun O'Callahan.

It shows the view a camera on a drone had as it buzzed around inside the Yasur Volcano on Tanna Island in Vanuatu.

Yasur is one of the most active volcanos in the world, according to Volcano Discovery.

It's prone to frequent small to medium eruptions, not cataclysmic ones, so people do get fairly close to it.

Vanuatu is a collection of island way out in the South Pacific.

I found the music O'Callahan chose to accompany the video annoying, so turn the sound down (The video doesn't have the sound of the volcano.)

Still, this is one helluva fascinating video. It also made me extremely glad I wasn't there.

Here's the video:

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Starving For Spring, So Here's A Time Lapse Of Flowers Blooming

As I look out my window in St. Albans, Vermont, I see it's snowing a little on this cold, gray March morning.

We can dream of spring, can't we?  

A lot more snow is in the forecast this week. Much of the northern part of the nation is still locked in a winter that just won't quit, and forecasters say the cold, January-like regime will last into April.

It's enough to make you want to go to Siberia to warm up, as it's probably mild there.

To help a little, here's a video showing time lapses of flowers blooming. It's bound to help a bit.

Awesome Video: A Dolphin Stampede, And A Momma and Baby Whale

From Grist, we have an awesome video today of a dolphin stampede and a whale mom and her little kid. 

From the video: A whale mom and her child  

As Grist points out, drones get a bad rap. We associate them with murky military strikes and a whiff of scandal.

Do drones go over remote areas of Pakistan and bomb (sometime innocent) people? Do drones spy on people from the air, including spying on people nobody ought to be spying on?

The answer to those questions is "Probably."

However, it's not the drone that's the problem, it's how they're used. Sometimes, they give us some amazing views, like the dolphins and the whales in the video below.

The video was put together by Capt. Dave Anderson of Capt. Dave's Dolphin and Whale Safari in Dana Point, California.

So watch my version of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (though I should note I have no affiliation with Mutual of Omaha)

Anyway, enjoy!

Strange Art: Fire Ants and Molten Aluminum?

Admit it: Some of you, when you were little, mean as it was, used to focus the sun through a magnifying glass to fry ants skittering along the sidewalk.

This work of art, which kind of looks like
a silver Christmas tree, was created by
pouring molten aluminum into
a fire ant colony.   

Some people in Louisiana took this to a bizarre, huge new level that somehow resulted in a thing of odd beauty: They poured molten aluminum into a fire ant nest, dug up the results and had art.

I don't know where they came up with this idea. And pouring molten aluminium into the ant nest seems cruel, though admittably, fire ants are a terrible, painful pest and the world wouldn't suffer too much if we got rid of a lot of them.

Apparently, the people behind the video, below, have a little business called Anthillart.com and do this molten aluminum vs. ants thing fairly often.

Again, I have no idea how they came up with the idea to do this, but the sculptures that result look shiny, intricate, delicate, beautiful. Not the kind of ideas that come to mind when you think of fire or carpenter ants.

Here's how they do it. Watch the video to the end. You'll be surprised at how good the resulting work is.

Drones Aren't All Bad: Beautiful Photography From One

Yep, drones are a controversial topic: We use them to bomb shadowy places in and near Afghanistan and Pakistan, and civilians are getting killed.

A still from Clay Folden's beautiful videography
of footage taken from a drone  

And if drones really become popular, I'm sure we'd hate the loss of privacy as those damn things buzz overhead as we try to sit in the sun in our backyards and the drone cameras are watching our every move.

But there's benefits to drones, of course. Even if benefits don't outweigh the loss of life in overseas battles.

Drones can detect wildfires, find lost people in the woods, monitor crime scenes.

And they make beautiful videography.

Aerial photographer Clay Folden has been using a quadricopter equipped with a GoPro camera and other equipment to take some stunning videos.

As I noted, drones are controversial, and Folden told the Huffington Post he's gotten in trouble with the U.S. Coast Guard and some private citizens as he did his drone filming.

Still, he managed to string together pieces of several of his excursions into this beautiful YouTube video. Enjoy: