Darkoshi

I bought some eclipse sunglasses on Tuesday. Seems like I did it in the nick of time, as they are becoming scarce around here. I got some cheap cardboard ones, and some slightly less cheap 2x magnification cardboard ones (I ordered the latter from Best Buy in the morning, and picked them up after work. When I checked the website in the evening again, they were sold out.) The glasses are neat! You can look at the midday sun while it's high in the sky! What you see is a nice orange disk. That may not sound special, but it's neat to be able to look straight at the sun without it being sunrise or sunset. I'm not sure I could see any sunspots or flares with these glasses, but they should be fine for watching the eclipse. As long as we are lucky and have clear skies. The forecast isn't looking good so far... a 50 to 60% chance of thunderstorms all day on the 21st till 8pm. But things may change, and even with thunderstorms, there might be a break in the clouds. (please, pretty please, at least during totality, please?)

I've been debating whether to work from home that day, or go in to work like usual and take my lunch break during the total eclipse. Now I think I'll work from home... that way I can occasionally check what is broadcast from the other parts of the country that experience the eclipse before we do.

I replaced the pull-chain light switch for the light fixture on Qiao's ceiling fan with a 3-way pull switch. Now we can turn on either 2 or all 4 lights, where before you could only turn on all 4 at once. Now while sitting on the sofa, we can turn on only the 2 lights which face towards the other direction, so that the room isn't uncomfortably dark, but without as much glare from above as before. When we want more light, we can turn them all on. Previously, I had replaced the lamp shades and bulbs, but it was still too bright for me.

One of the metal spines on my umbrella broke. I can't think of any simple way to fix it. It's a fairly new umbrella which my neighbors gave me recently, as thanks for looking after their dogs while they were on a trip. A nice lime-green color with reflective edging. I can't bear to throw it away. I couldn't even bear to throw away my old umbrella yet.. On it, the fabric had worn out and had holes. I cut the fabric off that one, and still have the metal umbrella skeleton. It's pretty useless, slightly dangerous, but looks neat in a goth-steampunk kind of way.

My dad has been researching his side of the family tree. It's amazing what you can find in old census records. This FamilySearch website is run by the LDS church, and lets you search records for free. There's an 1885 census from the state of Nebraska, with an entry for my grandpa's father and grandfather. We also found 1870 and 1880 census records which seem to match, but there are some discrepancies which we haven't been able to explain yet. We found that the Nebraska Historical Society has microfilms of church records from the area my grandpa's grandpa lived. Those records don't seem to be online anywhere. My dad contacted them, and they have a volunteer who will check the microfilms for us, even translating from Latin! How nice is that?

My aunt, whom it was I had gone to visit a few weeks ago, died this last week. She was 89. Two months ago, she had a stroke which left her partially paralyzed, bedridden, and no longer wanting to live. I am relieved for her sake that she did not end up slowly withering away for months or years in a nursing home bed. When she was in better health, she was an energetic, upbeat, and busy person.

So now, she is gone. Perhaps she is no more, perhaps she's in another realm, perhaps she is slumbering, waiting to be reborn, or perhaps her spirit has diffused and rejoined the great energy-spirit-magic-whatever of the universe. Or perhaps something else.

My aunt, whom I shall call K here, like the rest of that side of my family, came from the eastern part of Germany called Schlesien (Silesia). It is now (and was during various times in history) a part of Poland. She, like her father, was a dentist by trade. After WW2, most of the family fled west to avoid being under Soviet rule. But since K was a dentist, which was considered a valuable skill by the Soviet military, she was made to stay behind and work for them. After a while, she managed to leave too (I don't recall the story about how she got away), and rejoined the rest of my relatives in West Germany.

While I was a child living in Germany, I got to visit K fairly often. She travelled a lot, and we often went on trips together... within Germany, and to Spain, Bulgaria, Austria... Even when just visiting her at her home, she told me stories, and showed me photos and movies of her trips to even more faraway exotic places, like Indonesia and Africa. K was retired by the time I knew her, but she was always into various hobbies which kept her busy. She collected minerals and gemstones; she was into photography and developed her own photos... Later on, she became interested in painting, and was quite a good artist. She was the one who sparked my interest in cloth-painting. And maybe she sparked my interest in foreign languages, cultures, and places, too.

Here is one of K's photographs and some of her paintings...
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