♥ the act of murmuring; a murmur.

images via google.

my friend and i were driving along in my car the other day,

when we noticed a good many birds taking flight into the evening sky.

she was startled by their seemingly synchronized movements and the way their 

bodies flashed erratically across the sky, creating one great undulating mass-

 but i have known birds to behave this way and even recalled a video 

i had watched before where they did the same thing. there was even a word for 

what they were doing. but what?

the word i was reaching for was... murmuration.

and thanks to the power of google, here is the video i happened

to watch on someone's blog, some time last year.

nature is beautiful, isn't it?

♥ the snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches.

   

in his homage to the original snowflake photographer, wilson. a bentley,

japanese photographer, yuji obata spent five years perfecting the art

of capturing the infinite & unique beauty of snowflakes in motion.

i can't believe i am saying this- but i'm kinda hoping

for a white christmas.

♥ i have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of night.

in college, i signed up for a freshman seminar class called: "night watch,"
which, as i recall, was described in a very beautiful manner which may or may
not have included a rather enticing emerson quote, and which i may or
may not have read fully to the end...

when it came time to actually take the class, i quickly realized that:
 a) it was a three hour night class ( duh, it was called night watch!)
b) it cut right into prime dawson's creek-watching time.
c) it required me to use a scientific part of my brain i hadn't exercised before.

and while i must admit that i didn't exactly succeed at mastering
the universe during that class- i can tell you with complete honesty
that i once knew the story behind each constellation.
i could look into a telescope and find saturn.
i could sort of grasp the idea of longitude and latitude.
i could tell you why the sky is blue and what meteor showers were.

and now all i can tell you is that i forgot it, but at one time, i loved it.
and this diy constellation kit from miniature rhino
reminds me of a time, not too long ago
when i looked at the stars
and i knew their names.

♥ goodnight moon.

did you catch the lunar eclipse last night? i didn't.

i was snuggled up with nick & talula on our brand new

tempurpedic mattress/cloud.

thankfully, photographer extraordinaire ryan marshall of

pacing the panic room stayed up all night to take these shots,

which are utterly amazing and quite magical.

have you ever witnessed an eclipse?

♥ shine a light.

i recently read about the portable light project

and was completely blown away by this non profit initiative

to shed light on those who do not have any.

over 2 billion people live without any electricity at all,

and so this project serves to empower and enLIGHTen these poverty stricken

areas by giving people access to solar powered textiles that can be

easily woven and integrated into their cultural fabric.

these solar panels, which can be fabricated into everything from bags

to blankets, can be used as a renewable source of energy that

provides enough light to read by, charge small electronic devices

and offer indigenous people from mexico to nicaragua,

the most basic luxury that most of us take for granted every day.

started by boston architect, sheila kennedy, the portable light project

has helped make some of the poorest people's lives a little bit brighter.

read this article or watch this video to see how the

fashion community is getting involved:

♥ q: what do you call a rainbow that appears only at night?

answer: a moonbow!

haha.

no, really.

did anyone else know that there is such a thing as a moonbow?

and even more fascinatingly- that there was a sighting of this

very rare astronomical phenomenon in hawaii just last week?

above is a recent picture captured by award winning photographer

wally pacholka, at the edge of a crater on the island of maui.

appearing as only a few white streaks to the naked eye,

a true moonbow can only be seen with the aid of

long exposure photography.

while rainbows are caused when sun light passes through water droplets

in the air to create thick bands of color, a moon bow occurs in the same fashion,

but with the light from the moon, that is reflected from the sun, shining down

through the rain showers. (if that makes any sense at all!)

a few things must come into play for a moonbow to appear:

it must be raining opposite of the direction of the moon.

the moon must be nearly full.

the moon cannot be higher than 42 degrees in the sky.

it must be dark.

and you must be crazy enough to stand in the darkness with your

camera poised on a tripod, with its lens open for hours at a time

attempting to capture a glimpse of the ever mysterious night time rainbow!