When I was a young girl, I would sometimes sleep outside on warm summer nights. Living on the outskirts of a small city, I could see the vast array of stars and planets, and recognize a few of the constellations. There was nothing man-made out there until October 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, into orbit. One time my brother and I spotted a Sputnik satellite racing across the dark night sky like a wayward falling star.
A decade later, on December 24, 1968, William Anders, in the Apollo 8 lunar orbiting module photographed our earth as it rose above the surface of our moon. This image remains as proof to me of what is possible when a nation puts its collective energy and resources into research and education.
Three years later, in 1971 */John Lennon’s song Imagine was released. According to Wikipedia it was among the top 100 most-performed songs of the twentieth century. It remains one of my internal theme songs asking us to “Imagine all the people living life in peace,” a forever pipe-dream that helps me hold onto hope in desperate times. The image of Waldron and Saturna Islands bathed in a cloudy pink sundown personifies Imagine.
Climate change has been pooh poohed way too long. I still wonder where we would be as a nation (USA) and international community if Florida and its “hanging chads” had not cheated Al Gore out of the presidency in 2000. I’m pretty sure we would be in a much better position regarding our warming atmosphere. After 47 years living in the Pacific Northwest, the past two summers have confirmed that we are in the midst of the heat-up. The above temperature gauge from 2021 is witness to an unprecedented hot few days, and the average/mean temperature in the greater metropolitan (Vancouver WA/Portland OR) region for August, September and October 2022, were all record highs.
This is just how the sun looked through a veil of clouds as it set in the western sky. No filters used! Digital single reflex cameras was an invention that changed my creative pursuit of photography. Without worrying about how much it will cost to make copies, I can snap as many shots as I want in order to get the one that I like best!
Having a place at the beach that I can retreat to whenever I want, is another one of those fantastic notions I held in my heart for decades – and then it happened. I’ll close with this shot of Moon-down at Sunrise seen through the dune rye grass at Long Beach.
Lindy Low LeCoq 