Dark Parks and Weatherballs

These are two things new to me until this fall. A dark park is an area in which you can view the stars without any competing light sources. There are several in Emmett County, Michigan, where we stayed in October.
Several towns have weatherballs which are beacons that most of the residents can view outside their windows and can forecast the weather tomorrow by decoding flashing colors. Grand Rapids, Michigan still has one. Now with the advent of smartphones, some communities are shutting theirs down. Who needs to look at flashing, colored lights to tell the weather?

I have been staying off this blog in order to concentrate on my last photobook for a while. My task has been complicated by some bug in the photo uploading program in this particular brand (which I won't use again!!!) that reduces my photos to unusable shadows of their former selves. This has happened before and some of my photos were permanently destroyed as I had not made copies. So I had to figure out which ones were wrecked, find the originals, make copies and upload again. I am almost done but this has taken way too long.

It is warm out. I will go on a long bike ride once the fog lifts. Naomi is excited about a new job but it means we will have extra Maya duty. Things are difficult for her but she remains optimistic about everything. Don't want to burst her bubble...

Moms' group was fun with good food and good friends. My pear dessert didn't turn out as well as I hoped as the pears did not ripen enough in time.

Not in a dark park but in my neighborhood. Maya and the lights

We had lunch with Josh yesterday. Things are still unsettled in his life. I wish I could solve all their problems but I have to step back.