Josh, Anne-Marie, and Aylia Colwell’s Gazette

Le week-end du 10 Mai 2008 a retrouvé le clan Caubet au presque grand complet à Pourchergues, un petit village des Pyrénées pour y fêter Monique. Un grand nombre d’entre nous a bravé les distances et les éléments pour se joindre en musique autour d’une Monique en pleine forme qui cache bien ses 80 ans sonnés. Voici pour la mémoire collective un petit résumé en image.

Voici le second invité d’honneur, l’arrière petit fils de Monique, Aymé.

Bab et son grand Mathys

Monique qui a eu bien du mal à cacher son émotion.

80 bougies sur un magnifique fraisier préparé avec amour et doigté par Damien

Toute la famille et les rapportés.
Si vous voulez voir plus de photos, contactez l’un de nous et Monique, la reine du numérique et de l’ordi se fera un plaisir de vous envoyer un CD.

Anne-Marie finit son été en fête pour oublier que sa fille est partie. Son groupe Artist Way a ouvert sa gallerie Samedi 16 Août. Voici une photo devant une de ses peintures qu’elle a vendue ce soir là.

Le Rêve.

We sent Aylia off at the crack of dawn this morning on a transcontinental flight to LA. As of this evening she is safely in her new (tiny) dorm room at Occidental College. Tomorrow she begins training to be a Resident Advisor.

I flew to Paris via Frankfurt Tuesday night for a workshop on Saturn’s rings that I organized. About 3 hours before landing I got quite sick, and after repeated trips to the lavatory to throw up, passed out outside the lavatory, hitting my face on something on the way down. The result below is looking much better in this picture than it was just 24 hours ago. The workshop went quite well, and now I’m off to London for another meeting.

This is looking much better than when it first happened, I’m happy to say. I must have hit something on the way down to the floor.

In Montreal for the 37th COSPAR assembly, we had a very good dinner at a restaurant recommended by Lance and Sylvie.

At the Boris Bistro in Montreal

We went to the Olympic Park, a return after 32 years for me, where we rode up the largest inclined tower in the world. When I was here as a twelve-year-old for the 76 Olympics, the tower had not been completed. The Olympic Velodrome has been converted to a “biodome”, a zoo of sorts. The olympic pool, however, is still a pool, and we were able to witness what appeared to be Canadian olympic divers training for next month’s games.

I return to the Olympic stadium after 32 years. In 1976 the large inclined tower, meant to support and retract the stadium roof, was not completed. The tower is completed, but the roof is permanent. We rode up a funicular on the back of the tower.

Inside one of the habitats of the “biodome”.

A ring-tailed lemur at the biodome.

We rode a tandem bike over to an island where we saw the “biosphere”, the former U.S. pavillion of the 1967 World Expo.

At Aylia’s prompting, a new family portrait:

July 12, 2008

We had noticed the remarkably aggressive behavior of our backyard mockingbirds when they detected an interloper that they felt was too close to their nest. Even the sight of our cat inside the house was enough to bring them to the window where they would chirp angrily until he left. Recently while walking Dusty I saw this mockingbird attacking a young hawk atop a light pole. I don’t know where the nest was. But I had enough time to walk Dusty back home, get my camera, and return to the scene to catch this picture (and others).

A neighborhood mockingbird tries to frighten a young raptor away.

As for our own family of mockingbirds, we counted three young birds. Two are visible on the edge of the nest below. The third one was smaller and weaker, and it died within hours of the birds coming down from the nest. We have good reason to believe that at least one, if not both, of the other two made it.

Two of the three baby mockingbirds are visible on the edge of the nest, shortly before leaving it forever. The third was much smaller and did not survive long after leaving the nest.

A pair of mockingbirds built this nest in what appeared to me to be a very precarious position on top of two interleaved palm fronds from neighboring palms in our back yard. But the birds have a much better instinct for nest building than I do. One bird is hanging out there permanently now, so I suspect eggs have been laid.

This bird doesn’t react to our presence and appears to be staying put to take care of eggs.

This shows the rather precarious positioning of the nest on palm fronds. It has survived some pretty vigorous thunderstorms already.

I was in Rome last week for the Cassini Project Science Group meeting. This view is from a new viewing platform at the top of a national monument to modern Italy, built about 100 years ago. Behind me is the Colosseo, named after a long-lost 30-plus-meter statue of Nero. I had some time to visit the colosseum on Friday which is impressively huge but which has such a bloody history that it was also somewhat repulsive to think about what happened there. At least according to the audio guide, the depiction in the movie Gladiator captured the bloodletting there fairly well.

A night shot of the colosseum.

A view from the interior of the Colosseum.

The spot of sunlight is crossing a brass strip that runs diagonally across the floor of this church. The Sun shines through a whole high on the southern wall, and the meridian line shows the location of the Sun at local solar noon. With the seasons, the position of the image of the Sun moves up and down along the strip.

Today’s launch of the space shuttle Discovery was our first attempt to view the ascent literally from our back yard. The shuttle was clearly visible for more than a minute, rising high above the horizon on a column of flame and smoke before disappearing behind a cloud shortly before solid rocket motor separation.