Tag Archives: sunset

Sunset At Huffhines Park

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The sky, at sunset, looked like a carnivorous flower.”

― Roberto Bolaño, 2666

So, this weekend I’ve been fiddling around with some stuff – since I soon will have a lot of time on my hands I have been looking for things that are fun to do and don’t cost much money. One thing is I have built a little alcohol stove from a Fancy Feast cat treat can and a little empty can of tomato paste. What I want to do it to put together a kit that I can use to walk to some random spot, heat water, and make coffee.

This evening was a simple test of my idea – alcohol stove for hot water, AeroPress for the coffee. It all fit into a sling bag and I walked down to the park at the end of my block. It worked fairly well – though I had to make three trips back and forth for things I forgot or almost lost. I’m learning – next time will be better.

I sipped my (not hot enough) coffee, looked at all the folks out for a walk, and watched the sun set – it was so beautiful I pulled my phone out and snapped a snap.

Sun setting from Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas.

Pastel Moonrise

Posted on by Bill Chance

“She didn’t quite know what the relationship was between lunatics and the moon, but it must be a strong one, if they used a word like that to describe the insane.”

― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

Moonrise at sunset, over the parking lot at my work.

I slipped out of work an hour early, the sun was just then setting. The moon was rising in the east poking through the thin pastel clouds. A beautiful scene. I took it as a good omen. We’ll see.

The Year’s Earliest Sunset

Posted on by Bill Chance

“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

Morning Dallashenge from the triple underpass in Dealey Plaza.

Sometimes, because I go outside every now and then, I’m interested in the movement of the sun and the moon. When is sunrise? When is sunset? When do I need my lights on my bike?

And, up until Covid, some of us liked to ride our bikes in the Trinity River Bottoms and look at the new moon.

The moon rising over cyclists and the Dallas skyline. From the October Full Moon Ride.

It isn’t unusual, therefore, for me to look at a table of sunrise and sunset times. I was doing that today and discovered and odd fact.

The shortest day of the year is the winter solstice, of course. And that is December 21st, of course. December 21 is NOT the earliest sunset however. Here in Dallas, that occurs, well, about now, December 7… or a few days before and after. The sun sets at 5:20. On the 21st, the sun sets five minutes later.

And the winter solstice is not the latest sunrise, either. Here in Dallas, on the 21st, the sun rises at 7:25. But around January 10, it rises at 7:30. Pretty odd. Even though the 21st is the shortest day (nine hours, fifty nine minutes, thirty seconds here in Dallas) the sunrise and sunset are not symmetrically aligned with that date.

Why? This site seems to be the best at explaining it.

This is because of a discrepancy between our modern-day timekeeping methods and how time is measured using the Sun known as the equation of time.

Odd, yeah. Interesting? Well it is to me.

It Tolls For Thee

Posted on by Bill Chance

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

—-John Donne, Devotions on Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII

Sunset on the Caribbean, taken what feels like a long, long time ago

 

 

If You Believe In Me, I’ll Believe In You

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I always thought they were fabulous monsters!” said the Unicorn. “Is it alive?”
“It can talk,” said Haigha, solemnly.
The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said, “Talk, child.”
Alice could not help her lips curling up into a smile as she began: “Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too! I never saw one alive before!”
“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the Unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Winged Unicorn, Grapevine, Texas

Pay No Worship to the Garish Sun

Posted on by Bill Chance

“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Grapevine, Texas

The Color Of Love And Spanish Mysteries

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Water Tower, Grapevine, Texas

When We Stand Uneasy Before Our Own Childish Thoughts

Posted on by Bill Chance

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Herman Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

Tree, Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas, Reflected in water and inverted