I’m a person who looks for signs everywhere. Not the “Eat Here” or “Gas Ahead” type, but little messages from the universe that I interpret to mean I am, or am not, on the right path. I know I’m being foolish, but like the fortune that comes at the end of a Chinese meal, I tuck away the ones I feel lend hope or meaning to my life and discard the rest. Lately, I’m questioning this practice. Because all the signs regarding our move to Yosemite National Park seem to be weighing in on the negative side and I’ve begun to wonder why we’re here.

A year ago, I felt like I could easily have been cast in a Boeing commercial. At the time, their “We know why we’re here” slogan was my daily mantra. We had moved to Yosemite for our daughter Karis and to feed my hunger for adventure. Tired of the noise and distractions of Los Angeles, both Karis and I needed time to regroup and quiet down—she in the classroom, me in life. We found that here. Amid the quiet and the beauty, I felt at peace.

Staying far away from the madness of Yosemite Valley, we settled in Wawona, a tiny hamlet at the southern end of the park where the year-round population hovers around 150. Our daughter started at the one-room schoolhouse and my husband and I tried to make a home . . . but that was not to be. We were so desperate to get up here and enroll our daughter in the local school, that I made a fatal calculation. I agreed to move into a house from which we had to move every time the owners wanted to use it themselves and/or whenever they could get more money from someone else—a “deal” which produced the odd sensation of feeling homeless while paying a rather sizable rent.

Now in the middle of our 17th move in 14 months, I realize how deeply this constant feeling of instability has colored our time in the park. I’m not calm. I’m not relaxed. And I’m looking everywhere for signs that it’s time to leave. Nature complied by dropping 28 inches of snow the day before our latest move, then sending temperatures plummeting to Arctic lows. Our daughter’s school complied by becoming, once again, immersed in the seemingly endless drama to keep its doors open. Our daughter even seemed to comply. Her lack of focus in the classroom was our main motivator for making this move, so my heart grew heavy as her teachers complained about her inability to stay “on task” (this in a classroom with nine children and three adults). Listening to them, something inside me broke and all I could think about was leaving.

Then, in the midst of it all, there appeared signs that maybe we belong here after all. On a Saturday morning, a friend offered to help us move our wood. Our soon-to-be new neighbor called to lend us his truck. One of the women I hike with declared a moving/cleaning/painting day at our new home in lieu of our usual rovings. Another friend emailed to invite us to live with them while we vacated one house and waited for the next one to be ready. Our beloved across-the-street neighbors (who were the very best part of where we have been living) let us store our things and took our daughter at a moment’s notice whenever we needed to pack. Every time we walked down the street, people stopped to ask if we needed help. Even the librarian offered her assistance.

On a day when the snow was constant and my mood at its lowest, the Seventh Day Adventist Camp staff (we are not Seventh Day Adventist ourselves, but they have been extraordinarily kind neighbors) called to say they wanted to help us paint and fix up the house we’re moving to (a lovely place but in much need of TLC). When I asked what it would cost, they answered, “It’s our Christmas gift. If you insist, you can make a donation to a worthy cause.”

That’s Wawona. That’s our home. In a place where being kind is a necessity, not an indulgence, once again community trumped all—my fear, my feelings of wanting to run, my deep dislike of snow, ice, and cold. (The next time I want an adventure, I’m opting for some place warm).

Every day last year a family of deer grazed outside our bedroom window. I came to think of them as neighbors, too, and was cheered by their daily appearance. This year they didn’t come, even once. Then, on our final day in our move-in/move-out house, there they were, led this time by the most magnificent buck I’ve ever seen. As I stood transfixed, he raised his head and stared directly at me. Was this a sign that we belong here? Or a last farewell before we move on?

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In May 2009, while hiking in Yosemite National Park, long-time Los Angeles resident Jamie Simons turned to her husband and said, "I want to live here." Today she and her family have made the move to live for one year in Wawona, where her daughter attends the one-room schoolhouse, Jamie writes, and her husband longs for noise, fast food, people, and the city.(Though he's learning to appreciate mountain life.)

Last week I collaborated with a sixth grade science teacher, Traci Fairbairn, to bring art into her students' study of the Chesapeake Bay. For drama, I began by printing an eight-pound carp. Though not Bay natives, carp print well because they have large scales that catch ink. They are also beautiful fish, especially the golden kind.

If you've tried fish printing, or gyotaku, you know how much fun it is. And how easy--a fish, some Speedball ink, a piece of copy paper, and you've got a piece of art. Japanese fishermen invented the art of printing fish to document their catch in the days before photography. After they printed their fish with sumi ink, they washed and ate it. Today, using the technique of direct printing, I apply a thin coat of ink directly to the fish using my fingers. I plug the gills with paper towel so they won't leak fluid. When the fish is entirely covered with ink, I wipe off my hands, prop up the fins and tail, and lay a clean sheet of white paper on top of the inked fish. I gently rub the fish, taking care to avoid the eye and the spines in the fins. When the print is ready to be pulled off of the fish, the pattern of the scales and the shape of the body and fins show through the paper:



I chose the fish at a local Asian market, and I was able to find rockfish and spot from the Bay. Spot are fun to use because they have a great lateral line that prints clearly. I was secretly hoping to find shad, too, another fish that has recently returned to the Bay, and one that the students raise from eggs in the spring. But shad won't return to the Bay until April. These are large mouth bass:

I filled out the fish order with butterfish and squid. The butterfish have tiny scales, but they are flat-bodied and small, a tough little fish for student printing.

Squid were amazingly resilient and made great prints even after some boys swung them around by their tentacles when my back was turned. Because of the lively boys, I now use a rubber flounder in place of a real one. Flounder make fascinating prints because both eyes print on the top side of the fish. But one afternoon one flounder had been printed once too often...and the guts flew!

This year, we printed on rice paper and matted the prints for a student art show.

For more about fish printing and nature printing in general, check out these two books: "Nature Printing" by Laura Bethmann, and "Natural Impressions" by Carolyn Dahl. For videos on the technique from a Japanese master printer, see Mineo Yamamoto's work at this link.

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Sue Fierston paints and teaches just outside of Washington, D.C. in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. As a painter, she works in acrylics and watercolor and is in the middle of a series called "100 Flowers." As a teaching artist, she works with teachers to bring art into their classrooms in grades 4-8. Her posts focus on her nature-themed art collaborations. For a look at her paintings or more about her teaching, check out her website at suzannefierston.com.

Can you tell during what season this photo was taken? Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Did you know that by looking at a picture of the Big Dipper, you can tell what season it was taken?

One assumption we must first make is that the photo was taken sometime during the evening hours. Because the stars continue to spin overhead all night long (or, more accurately, Earth continues to spin), the Big Dipper will change appearance over the course of a night. However, if we assume that most photos are taken in the evening and not at 1 a.m. or 4 a.m., we can tell what season it was when the image was taken due to the Big Dipper’s appearance.

On fall evenings, the Big Dipper skims along the horizon. It can almost look like a spoon resting on the ground, with the mouth of the dipper exposed and facing up. To remember this, imagine that the Big Dipper is catching the autumn leaves as they fall.

On winter evenings, the Big Dipper is poised so that the handle dangles down from the spoon shape. Think of this handle as an icicle hanging off the bowl to remind you of how the Big Dipper looks in winter.

On spring evenings, the Big Dipper has seemed to have turned upside down. Any liquid that the imagined dipper might have been holding is spilling out onto the ground. Think of spring showers falling from the Big Dipper to remember its vernal appearance.

On summer evenings, the Big Dipper seems to be headed down toward the ground with the bowl first, as if an invisible hand were using the dipper in preparation to scoop a giant bowlful of water from the sea. Hot summer evenings can remind you of the need to get a cool drink as the Big Dipper dives down for a dip.

Now, looking at the photo above, if it was taken in the evening hours, you should be able to figure out what season the image was taken in. + + + + + + + + +

Do you need a sketchbook in order to draw? I'm here to tell you that you don't. When I don't have a sketchbook handy, I draw on the paper I can find. My scrap-paper drawings are rough, just moments in time. As I draw, I push myself to go quickly and focus on the essence of the scene. I say to myself, "This is just a tiny piece of paper! Go, go, go!"

When I draw people on scrap paper, I try to capture their overall body position before they move; I know I won't be able to catch their faces. I did all of the drawings for this blog post in five minutes or less and the model always moved before I was finished. Last week, at the theater, I was thrilled to see that the back cover of my program was blank...and I drew during both 10-minute intermissions. The paper had a slightly bumpy texture, perfect for the colored pencil I added when I got home:

Over the weekend I came back from a hike with two of my favorite leaves. I put them beside me on the front seat of the car; I had a pen. But my sketchbook wasn't there. I found this old envelope under a flashlight in the glove box. It was getting dark fast, but I managed to get the shapes of the gingko and the chestnut oak leaves:

I wasn't sure if I should be drawing during a lull in a bar-mitzvah service, but the architectural detail of the setting was so beautiful that I couldn't help myself. I drew on the back of the program but I hid my drawings under the prayerbook when anyone glanced my way:

Here in Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Art is showing the paintings of Arcimboldo through early January 2011. You may know his work; he is the Renaissance artist who painted portraits, composite heads really, made entirely of fruit, flowers, or fish. His best surrealistic people have peaches for cheeks and peas-in-the-pod for teeth. As he aged, he used less fruit and more gnarled tree branches and trunks to portray his people, and his portraits become less charming and more disturbing.

The program itself for the Arcimboldo show had a wonderful, wide top margin that I pressed into use last night as I waited for my daughter's lesson to end. The paper was glossy, and I could simply wipe off the colored pencil to show the light from the overhead lamp:

If you do try drawing on scraps of paper, you'll soon discover paper that you prefer! I like the tooth of envelopes, and I love the laid pattern in the theater program.

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Sue Fierston paints and teaches just outside of Washington, D.C. in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. As a painter, she works in acrylics and watercolor and is in the middle of a series called "100 Flowers." As a teaching artist, she works with teachers to bring art into their classrooms in grades 4-8. Her posts focus on her nature-themed art collaborations. For a look at her paintings or more about her teaching, check out her website at suzannefierston.com.

First quarter phase reveals the moon’s pockmarked surface. Credit: John Chumack

One of the biggest differences between someone who has experience with a telescope and someone who’s never had a peek is what they expect to see. Inexperienced observers have seen gorgeous celestial photos from the Hubble Space Telescope and imagine similar views through a backyard telescope. With such high expectations, it is easy to be disappointed by all the faint, gray fuzzies that a telescope illuminates.

Patience at the eyepiece allows an observer to see more than they realize, however. Take the time to examine the extent of dark and light patches in nebulae and galaxies. How far out can you see the extension of the Andromeda Galaxy’s spiral form? Can you spot companion galaxies? Look for variations in cloud cover on planets; bright white patches on Mars could indicate clouds or polar ice caps, darker strips can be spotted Jupiter’s belly. Try using averted vision to make a difficult target suddenly pop into view by looking just off center from it.

Another way to have more appreciation for objects through a telescope is to learn more about what you are looking at. If you’re showing the sky to a newbie at the telescope, allow them to grasp how special each object is. For example, explain to them that the light that left the Andromeda Galaxy had to travel for a couple million years before reaching their eye, so in effect, they are looking into the past. Some stars that we see in the sky may no longer be there, having exploded in the interim. An interesting fact about the Big Dipper was that it was instrumental in helping slaves escape the south, as the “drinking gourd” taught them how to find the North Star and travel undetected at night. The more you learn about what you are looking at, the more fascinating it becomes.

And if all else fails, turn the telescope on the moon. The terminator, where the night side meets the day side of the moon, reveals the stark contrast of mountains and craters and never disappoints.

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It’s official. I am now a country girl. I know this because I just spent the last week in Los Angeles. My daughter Karis and I went down there for a few days and had an absolutely fantastic time. Because of Yosemite’s tiny population of year-round residents, my daughter’s friends are few and far between. In Los Angeles, she is wildly popular. For three days she had a play date with a different friend every couple of hours.

Ditto for me. I don’t know if I’m wildly popular but I do count myself lucky to have a large group of extraordinary friends. I had breakfast, lunch and dinner dates and still couldn’t get everyone in. That’s the great blessing of Los Angeles. Having lived there for decades, I’ve had the good fortune to create a family of friends where the bonds of love run true and deep. So why aren’t we hightailing it back to the city?

In a word: the quiet. Los Angeles may have hustle and excitement and great restaurants and gobs of endless entertainment, but it can’t begin to compete with Yosemite when it comes to silence. For whatever reason, my daughter and I can’t seem to get enough of it. We drink it in like ambrosia. It seems to calm our souls.

This is not what I thought would happen when we took up residence here. By nature, I’m social, chatty, and out-going. I never spent a moment in nature (aside from summer camp, which I loathed) until I was 22. I was in love with cities and everything they had to offer from shops to restaurants to museums.

My husband is at the other side of the spectrum. He’s quiet and calm, gracious to everyone but a loner at heart. He spent his childhood playing in the woods and now, surprisingly, he craves the noise and bustle of the city with exactly the same intensity my daughter and I feel for life in the park. This has come as a shock to anyone who knows us. Everyone was convinced that Jon would take to Yosemite like the proverbial fish to water and I would run back to the city within weeks. But the opposite has held true.

So here’s my theory. Contrary to what anyone would expect, I think ADHD people like me do best in a quiet setting. My mind has a tendency to bounce around like a jackrabbit, so there is something about the utter calm of this place that makes me feel alive. At last, the constant chatter in my head is forced to take a breather and I can concentrate—at least more of the time. The same holds true for our daughter. We moved here because by second grade the noise and constant movement in a typical big-city classroom were literally driving her to distraction. She could not focus and we were hearing about it from her teachers on a daily basis.

Still, much as I love it here, I feel a permanent sense of ambivalence. Living with someone who dislikes what you love is not an easy task. My husband and I have what I call a “Gift of the Magi” marriage. He’s forever giving up what he wants to make me happy and I, in turn, try to do the same. That leaves us with two loving people at cross-purposes.

On the final leg of our journey back to Yosemite, Karis started to talk about missing her L.A. friends. With my husband in mind, I said, “You know honey, we can always move back to the city.” “No way!” came the vehement cry from the back seat, “I need the quiet.” That afternoon it was rainy and dark on the drive home along Highway 41. The pine trees looked black in the deepening gloom. In and around them were luminous golden and red-leaved oaks and aspens, making the forest seem lit from within. Shocked once again by the startling beauty of this place, all I could say was, “So do I, baby. So do I.”

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In May 2009, while hiking in Yosemite National Park, long-time Los Angeles resident Jamie Simons turned to her husband and said, "I want to live here." Today she and her family have made the move to live for one year in Wawona, where her daughter attends the one-room schoolhouse, Jamie writes, and her husband longs for noise, fast food, people, and the city.(Though he's learning to appreciate mountain life.)

Some people paint on canvas, but I often paint on pizza boxes. Used or new, the cardboard has the right spring against my brush. Contemporary art is often painted on a square and, with pizza boxes, a square can range from 16 inches down to seven. Since I use acrylic paint on the boxes, I don't have to frame them, and they are tough. Everyone likes to touch a painting, and these playful creations can take it.

But my idea isn't original. If you've eaten at a California Pizza Kitchen, you probably have noticed the art -- all painted on pizza boxes! As we waited for a table one packed Friday night, I suddenly realized that the art was painted on boxes. That night I sped home, flung the leftover pizza onto the kitchen counter, and painted a color wheel shaped like a pizza. Here it is on my bookshelf:



The painting would have gone faster if I had primed the box first to tone down the lettering and logos. It was hard to paint my design over them. Any opaque color of acrylic paint will do for priming, but everyone has white. I don't paint the bottom of the box for two reasons: 1) If I did, I would not be able to set it down to dry because it would stick to the table and 2) the logo or box measurement on the bottom of the box is proof...that this really is a pizza box.



Here I primed the flaps and sides of the box, too, because they will show as part of the painting. (You can see that, above, on the left side of the color wheel.) I used a wide, two-inch brush. My own painting will cover up the faint logo on the top of the box.

I haven't exhibited these boxes in shows because I face a few technical difficulties. First, the sides of the box bow outward slightly, creating a shadow along three sides of the top. I have tried gluing these sides to the top, but it is tough to clamp the sides to the top without crushing the box. The second difficulty is framing. At CPK, several boxes are grouped together and framed under a two-inch-high sheet of plexiglas as one painting. That seems right for art in a commercial space, but bulky for a home. I like the fun of inviting people to touch a painting and the informality of standing it on a shelf for exhibit.

I painted these persimmons on a seven-inch box.

Most pizzerias will give you a clean box if you ask, and CPK has them in 7, 10, and 14-inch squares.

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Sue Fierston paints and teaches just outside of Washington, D.C. in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. As a painter, she works in acrylics and watercolor and is in the middle of a series called "100 Flowers." As a teaching artist, she works with teachers to bring art into their classrooms in grades 4-8. Her posts focus on her nature-themed art collaborations. For a look at her paintings or more about her teaching, check out her website at suzannefierston.com.

Early evening darkness. Credit: Dane VanderLee

This weekend is all about darkness, as a new moon occurs on Saturday and daylight saving time ends on Sunday, ushering in early nightfall. The dark nights are particularly good for stargazing, with the absence of the moon eliminating the biggest source of natural light “pollution”.

A meteor shower occurs this weekend, with skies in perfect condition for viewing the dimmest of the burning pebbles. The south Taurid meteor shower peaks on the evening of November 5 but the shower is active from September 17 to November 27. The Taurids are not particularly vigorous, with about 7 meteors an hour at peak. This meteor shower is more like a bonus for those who are already out observing fall’s delights and happen to catch a meteor or two. If you spot one, follow its trail backward and you will find that it seems to come from the constellation Taurus, thus the name “Taurids.”

If you’re looking for a powerful meteor shower, next October might bring one. On October 8, 2011, the Draconid meteor shower might put on a huge display. The event is predicted to be best for Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa, with hundreds of meteors an hour. But if the shower lives up to predictions, it will still be a great sight anywhere on the globe. Read more about the possible Draconid meteor storm.

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It seems to me there are two kinds of fear—the real kind that warns us to fight or take flight and the kind that exists in our head. I excel at the latter. When my family and I moved to the village of Wawona in Yosemite National Park a year ago, we moved to a place that is the very epitome of serenity and quiet. Life—or what most people call life—seems far, far away. I don’t read the newspaper (at least when the news is happening), seldom watch television or listen to the radio. Instead I take walks, watch the wind in the trees that tower over our home, and escort my daughter to her various activities. But tranquility must be more than my mind can stand because I’ve found a way to be white-knuckle Blair Witch afraid. And it’s not from thoughts of anything or anyone jumping out at me from the forest. I’ve put all my fear eggs in one basket, a basket I call The Road.

Starting in the town of Oakhurst 22 miles south of us, and snaking its way through the park to the Valley floor 26 miles north is a two-lane highway the state calls 41 and I call pure hell. It twists and turns and presents endless blind curves and that’s just on the way going down. Coming back to Wawona from either Oakhurst or the Valley, there are numerous places where one could plummet off the side, if one chose to do so.

You would think that anyone with half a brain would keep their eyes trained on the road up ahead or at least on the double yellow line. But like all people who have a fear of roads with drop-offs, I don’t. I fixate on the gaps between the trees and imagine what it would feel like to careen off the side like a bird taking flight. And once my brain shifts into this gear, I stop dead with fright, usually on a blind curve. From an evolutionary standpoint, this is not a good move. In fact, my fear has rendered me more vulnerable and helpless than I would be if I weren’t afraid at all.

Since Oakhurst is where we have to go to get everything from eggs to hammers, like it or not, I’ve had to find a way to conquer my fear of driving at least that portion of the road. My first stab at doing this had me driving it daily with no one else in the car. I did this very badly. Every time my eyes would wander over to the part of the road where plummeting off into the forest is not out of the question I would slow to a ridiculously low speed (mind you everyone else was flying up and down this road at 50 miles an hour), or just come to a dead halt—a driving method that is only effective if you have a death wish. Over and over I’d try but I didn’t seem to get any better.

Then one day a miracle happened. One of the rangers had a knee operation, was in a cast, and couldn’t drive. So I offered to take her to her doctor appointment. We started out on the relatively flat roads of Wawona where she quickly pointed out that I was going 40 in a 25-mph zone, reminded me that she was a law enforcement ranger and told me that even though she was off-duty, if I didn’t slow down she was going to have to do something about it.

She needn’t have worried. When we hit the up and down hills and valleys of the road, I was crawling along, braking every time there was an oncoming truck or car and—according to my passenger—pulling the car to the right each time I hit the brakes.

Halfway to town, she was gasping, clutching the door handle and warning me that she was going to be late for her appointment. Finally, in desperation, she started slapping my leg when I applied the brakes while yelling things like, “Downshift, downshift,” or “There’s no reason to brake going uphill.” I thought she might be slapping my leg to keep from throttling me but she maintained she was doing it to save my life. “If you hit the brakes in snow and ice, you’re dead,” she’d say, slapping harder. “You’ve got to get over that NOW!”

By the time we got to Oakhurst, she had aged by decades and I was elated. Thanks to her instructions I felt I had my first glimmer of what it took to drive the road. She obviously had not reached the same conclusion. When I picked her up after her appointment, she insisted on driving us back to the park, cast and all.

Shortly later, she’s transferred to another park (I swear it had nothing to do with my driving) but I wish she’d come back to witness the finesse with which I now take those twists and turns. Most days I manage to go the speed limit. And there are even times people pull over to let me pass instead of cursing me for going too slow.

It’s autumn now and the leaves along the road from Oakhurst are turning to shades of orange and gold. Going up and down it sometimes five times a week, I’m surprised at how much I enjoy its beauty. With that 22-mile stretch conquered, I now have a new eggs-in-basket fright. Driving the L.A. freeways I used to move along with ease…and the road from the Valley. One year in I still haven’t managed to work up the courage to drive home from the Valley floor. A wise friend pointed out that no matter what’s going on around me, I still have to stay in my lane. True, but tell that to my fear-based brain and to the foot that loves the brake.

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In May 2009, while hiking in Yosemite National Park, long-time Los Angeles resident Jamie Simons turned to her husband and said, "I want to live here." Today she and her family have made the move to live for one year in Wawona, where her daughter attends the one-room schoolhouse, Jamie writes, and her husband longs for noise, fast food, people, and the city.(Though he's learning to appreciate mountain life.)

It makes me quite dizzy to stand in the garden. Each bloom has a resident bee or moth or fly, each buzzing at the edge of my hearing. Swallowtail caterpillars gobble the fennel, still in bloom as if it were May.

I grab a basil leaf and crush it. Frost tonight? How much longer will I have this late-October light, the mid-Atlantic's golden light of fall? Around me, blossoms vibrate with surreal intensity: orange, magenta, plum.

My favorite flowers, right now the salvias (but last week the lavenders and the week before that the sunflowers) clash: raspberry blooms against vermillion against salmon. In any other light, at any other time of year, I'd hate their clashing and move them apart.

But now, at the end of growth, I see the plants sending out their last hopes in a beautiful collision. No other house within my sight has a backyard so vibrant. I made this buzzing garden. How did it come to be? If I told you I loved the cool blue light of April even more, would you believe me?

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Sue Fierston paints and teaches just outside of Washington, D.C. in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. As a painter, she works in acrylics and watercolor and is in the middle of a series called "100 Flowers." As a teaching artist, she works with teachers to bring art into their classrooms in grades 4-8. Her posts focus on her nature-themed art collaborations. For a look at her paintings or more about her teaching, check out her website at suzannefierston.com.

Seeing the shuttle in the night sky will soon be history. Credit: NASA

With darkness surging earlier and earlier each night, observers no longer have to wait for the night sky; it has come to them. The fall constellations are rising in the East after sunset, such as Pegasus with its great square and Andromeda with its signature spiral galaxy.

The second-to-last space shuttle launch is scheduled for November 1. The space shuttle is visible as it travels overhead and docks with the International Space Station. After the shuttle has launched, you can check www.heavens-above.com for where and when to look to see it depending on your location.

Jupiter has been the most impressive sight in the October sky and will be in November as well. Jupiter is in the South, shining brightly near the border of the constellations Aquarius and Pisces. Through binoculars or a telescope, you can see the four largest satellites of Jupiter, called the Galilean moons. Some nights all four will be visible, scattered on either side or all bunched up on one side. Other evenings some of the moons will disappear and reappear from in front of or behind the planet. When a moon passes in front of the planet it is difficult to see because of the size and similarity in color; however, when a moon’s dark shadow passes in front of Jupiter it can occasionally be witnessed with good equipment.

Especially notable is when two shadows cross Jupiter at once, known as a double-shadow transit. One such occasion occurs this weekend. On October 30, starting just after 9:15 p.m. PDT, the shadows of Europa and Ganymede will both cross the face of Jupiter. Ganymede’s shadow is the larger one near the bottom. Ganymede itself will already have transited Jupiter and be visible with the black night-sky background behind it, just off the lower right of Jupiter’s limb. The total time for the shadows to transit will be approximately three hours.

Read the Night Sky Observing Guide for November 2010.

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When I first became a parent, countless people came forward with advice. Almost all of it was useful and appreciated but none of it had the enduring quality of what my brother calls his First Rule of Parenting—never leave home without a coloring book and a bagel. In other words, if you want happy children, keep them fed and entertained.

These days I think of this rule every time I drive in Yosemite National Park. Thanks to the nation’s tax dollars, the south end of the park is getting a newly asphalted, spiffed-up road, complete with gutters and freshly painted double lines. What that means for future visitors is smooth roads and easier driving. For now, what that means is weekday traffic delays and congestion, with stops sometimes totaling more than an hour.

Last year, when the snow came and the roads were more than I felt I could handle, I burrowed in like a hibernating ground squirrel and hardly ever left my den. This year that is not an option, especially on Thursdays—the day I take my daughter and three of her classmates down to Oakhurst for classes.

The reason? At the end of last school year, the local school district officially closed our one-room school. Thanks to the community’s largess, for this year at least, our kids are being educated in an unusual home school/charter school/public school/private school mix. Which is the reason I leave Wawona each Thursday morning at exactly 9 o’clock. The charter school they attend does not begin until 10:15 and it’s only 25 minutes away, but that’s without construction delays. And these days there is no telling how long the shortest trip might be. (Last week, the school secretary got caught in three different traffic stops within the same quarter of a mile).

To stay sane (I am not a morning person and four children ranging in age from 8 to 11 locked in a car for more than an hour is not necessarily a quiet way to start your day), I have reverted to my brother’s First Rule of Parenting. I bring food. And I try to keep them entertained. The first week, we played word games. Okay, but not stellar. We all got tired of them after a while and then boredom, and goofiness, set in.

The next week I tried word games and coloring books. Again, results were only so-so. But this week I hit the construction-zone jackpot. We listened to a book on CD. And we were so engrossed that when we pulled up to the school, everyone asked to stay in the car. After years of driving in L.A. traffic, how could I have forgotten the importance of books on tape to a commuter’s sanity?

I think it’s because, if I’m alone, I’ve come to like the traffic delays. Thanks to my brother’s advice, I’m always armed with water, a snack, and a book. And once the windows are up, and the roar of the machines is muted, it’s actually lovely to be where I can’t be responsible for a single thing. No returning phone calls. No answering emails. No cleaning the house. No cooking a meal. Just a beautiful view of the tree-covered mountains and peace…if I’ve remembered to follow my brother’s second rule—never leave the house without taking a bathroom break.

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In May 2009, while hiking in Yosemite National Park, long-time Los Angeles resident Jamie Simons turned to her husband and said, "I want to live here." Today she and her family have made the move to live for one year in Wawona, where her daughter attends the one-room schoolhouse, Jamie writes, and her husband longs for noise, fast food, people, and the city.(Though he's learning to appreciate mountain life.)

"Carving your own stamps? Why reinvent the wheel?" asked a friend. It's true, there's a pre-cut stamp for almost everything. On eBay you can find old lead slugs that lie heavy in the hand. In those stamps, dogs wait patiently by RCA Victrolas and mothers in aprons bake bread. I bought a lead and copper stamp, below, at a craft fair. It measures 2 1/2" square but weighs 1 1/2 pounds! Here is my print from that stamp:

But I needed original stamps for a fish-printing project that is inspired by the Japanese art of gyotaku. A gyotaku artist is often a fisherman too. In Japan, the art was begun by fishermen who wanted to document the size of their catch in the days before photography. The fishermen would catch the fish, rub sumi ink over one side of it, and press paper--usually newspaper--on top of the ink. Then they would rinse the fish off in the ocean and prepare it for dinner. At the Nature Printing Society, you can see examples of gyotaku artists who use red-inked seals or stamps in their designs.

But what material should I make my stamps from? I thought of floral foam, the green Styrofoam used by florists. It was cheap and soft, which would make it easy to carve complicated shapes with a sharpened pencil. It was easy to carve. In fact, after a few uses, it crumbled. I tried yellow balsa foam next. It was stronger, and it gave a lovely textured background to the stamps. These stamps say "dragon" in Japanese.

The gritty film the balsa foam left behind (on the prints, the table, my fingers) made me worry. I wondered if I should be breathing the dust. I did not try a potato (halving a baking potato lengthwise and carving into the flat side) because I couldn't face a printing surface that would soon turn brown and slimy. Out of desperation, I took the advice of my friend the art teacher and carved a stamp out of a vinyl eraser, which you can see below.

I had to use linoleum carving tools; a pen wasn't sharp enough. I had a friend write out the Japanese characters for the words I wanted to print, and I photocopied them to capture her graceful strokes. I flipped the photocopy over so the toner side of the paper faced the eraser and centered the characters on the eraser. Then I rubbed the back side of the photocopy, transferring the toner onto the eraser. I was able to carve the Japanese characters with ease, because the vinyl cut like butter. Because I had reversed the characters twice (once to rub the toner onto the eraser, and once to print) the Japanese words printed correctly. In the photo above, on the left is "dragon" again and on the right is..."wisdom."

Give this a try and use your stamp on your own artwork.

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Sue Fierston paints and teaches just outside of Washington, D.C. in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. As a painter, she works in acrylics and watercolor and is in the middle of a series called "100 Flowers." As a teaching artist, she works with teachers to bring art into their classrooms in grades 4-8. Her posts focus on her nature-themed art collaborations. For a look at her paintings or more about her teaching, check out her website at suzannefierston.com.

The bright light at the center of these stars is the North Star Polaris. Credit: Peter Michaud (Gemini Observatory), AURA, NSF

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, there are some constellations we can see regardless of what season it is. These are called north circumpolar constellations, because they circle the North Pole Star and never set below the horizon. The main circumpolar constellation is, of course, the one that contains the North Pole Star: Ursa Minor.

Ursa Minor, or the Little Bear, is also known as the Little Dipper. It’s easy to find using the end to stars in the Big Dipper’s bowl and following them to the North Star, Polaris. Polaris is the end of the handle of the little dipper shape. At magnitude 1.97, Polaris is the brightest star in the constellation, but not the brightest in the sky, which is a common mistake. Polaris’s importance lies not in its brightness but in its location. Long-exposure photos of the sky show the stars all seeming to circle around Polaris, because the Earth spins around its axis, which points toward Polaris.

Follow the star Polaris from the handle along some dim stars to the bowl of the Little Dipper. The next brightest stars after Polaris are the two end stars in the bowl. These two stars are Kochab, at the top of the bowl, at magnitude 2.0, and Pherkad below, at magnitude 3.0.

As you look at Kochab, ponder this: the star you see may no longer exist. It is at a stage of its life that it is ready to go supernova, and it may already have. But because Kochab lies 126 light-years away, the light you see now left the star 126 years ago, and in the time since then it may have exploded. Perhaps one day we will look up at Kochab and see a bright flare of light, outshining all others for a time, and then eventually see a bubble of stellar debris become a new nebula.

Other sky highlights happening now include Comet Hartley, which has just made its closest approach to Earth on the 20th. Comet Hartley has brightened but will probably still require binoculars or a telescope and a light-pollution-free location. The full Hunter’s Moon on Friday, October 22, will spoil the view because its bright light will overpower fainter objects. This is also true for the Orionid meteor shower, which peaked on October 21. The nearly full moon bathed the night with light, making it hard to spot the lighter flashes of meteors.

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Photo credit: Kenny Karst for DNC, Inc.

It’s hard to imagine someone wandering around Yosemite and apologizing for its appearance. But when a friend from Africa came for a weeklong visit, that’s exactly what I found myself doing. It’s not that the place didn’t look breathtaking. It did. It’s not that I felt Yosemite couldn’t hold up against Zimbabwe (her birthplace and the most beautiful place I’ve ever been). It does. It’s just that, like most people welcoming visitors to their home, I wanted mine to look its best. But at this time of year, I think that’s impossible. Because the water is gone.

By summer’s end, the once thundering waterfalls have trickled to a faucet-like drip at Bridelveil and given up completely at Yosemite Falls. And while I kept pointing out where the waterfalls used to be, somehow it’s just not the same. Even the south fork of the Merced—a river that was roaring by with such mighty strength in spring that people were warned not to get near it—was now just a series of pools sitting quietly, hardly moving, as if the river had exhausted its potential.

This being only my second year of living here, I found the difference between the park in spring and the park in autumn so shocking that I wondered if it registered with others. My first hint that it might came from the pictures on the back of the RVs Europeans rent for their grand tours of the West. On each of these RVs are huge, blown-up pictures of America’s National Parks, each park shown at its best. Sure enough, pictures of Yosemite adorn countless RVs and in all of them the waterfalls are churning.

Next I checked out advertisements for Yosemite put out by the local tourist boards. There are those waterfalls cascading down in all their white foamy glory. And it makes sense. The waterfalls and rivers are to Yosemite what pearls are to a little black dress. They set it off; make it seem quite perfect, as if nothing else in all of heaven and earth is needed to complete the picture.

Photo credit: Kenny Karst for DNC, Inc.

So I dutifully (and happily) took my friend to see all the best I think Yosemite has to offer. We visited the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. We hiked the Valley, staying close to the banks and twists and turns of the now lazy Tuolumne River. We saw the 4,000-foot deep fissures at Taft Point and the knock-your-socks-off view from Glacier Point. And thanks to my daughter’s park school, we even joined a field trip to Tuolumne Meadows where water is completely beside the point (although we did see alpine lakes). All along the way, my friend oohed and aahed and I kept apologizing for the lack of water—as if I might have something to do with its appearance.

My friend left and the very next day a miracle happened. I obviously do not have a direct line to the rain gods, but apparently Oprah Winfrey does. She came to Yosemite to camp and sure as shootin’, the rain began to fall. Big rains. Huge rains. Rains that went on for days and days. There was brain-rattling thunder. There was bright-as-LED lightning. Over 1000 strikes hit the ground. Twenty-one fires started in the high country. The rivers ran. The waterfalls flowed. Yosemite was at its best again. All I can say is “Thank you, Oprah. Thank you. But, next time, could you align your schedule with mine?”

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In May 2009, while hiking in Yosemite National Park, long-time Los Angeles resident Jamie Simons turned to her husband and said, "I want to live here." Today she and her family have made the move to live for one year in Wawona, where her daughter attends the one-room schoolhouse, Jamie writes, and her husband longs for noise, fast food, people, and the city.(Though he's learning to appreciate mountain life.)