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Showing posts from January, 2018

(Part of) A Super Blue Blood Moon

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Well, the Super Blue Blood Moon was not so "super" at my house this morning.  I was hoping for clear skies but there was haze overall and clouds along the western horizon for the Moonset.  So all I caught was this partial Moon before it went down and I had to leave for work.  I didn't get to see the "blood" Moon at all as that occurred after the Moon tracked further west.  It was cold and still and quiet; very peaceful in my front yard.  That's my personal experience of this event, which has not happened in these parts in over 150 years .  Sometimes you get to see the spectacular - and sometimes you just have to catch it on the reruns.

Meditations on the Vietnam War: Rolling Thunder

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As we have seen , America was militarily involved (via advisers, Green Berets, and air power) in South Vietnam (as well as, more covertly , in Laos) long before the Johnson Administration committed two Marine battalions to defend the air base at Da Nang in March 1965.  The greatest commitment of resources during this time took the form of various air strikes in support of the South Vietnamese government, which was on the brink of chaos due to the conflicting internal factions competing for power. A large portion of the air offensive in southeast Asia took a cohesive operational form as President Johnson, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and their team formulated the idea of ' graduated pressure .'  In a nutshell, bombing was viewed as a means of communication.  America was "saying" to North Vietnam: "negotiate for peace or we will escalate the bombing of your country."  McNamara and others believed that bombing the North could be throttled up or down dep

Supermoon Set

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I snapped these shots of the Full Moon setting this morning just before I left for work.   I have seen many Moonsets through the years here.  I blogged about one on  Thanksgiving Day 2015 .   It was a bone chilling 12 degrees as I stood on my front porch facing west.  The cold weather will be with us all week.  It is part of a huge Arctic Blast that is hammering much of the U.S. today .  This was a Supermoon , glorious to behold.  January 31 will bring us a Blue Moon, Blood Moon combination, the first one of those in 150 years .  Incredibly, it will be the second Supermoon of January 2018.  Will this year be as extraordinary as this lunar cycle?