Podcasts about little dipper

This episode we look at time and direction and the influence of geomancy--theories of Yin and Yang and a little bit of how people viewed the world through that lens.  For more, check out the blog page:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-127 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is episode 127: Time and Direction in Ancient Yamato   Officers of the court stood in the pavilion.  The soft trill of water could be heard trickling from one reservoir to the next.  They watched closely, as the figure of a court official, one hand out, pointing at a measuring stick, slowly rose along with the water.  Eventually, the figure's outstretched arm indicated a line with a single character next to it. On cue, one of the officials began to beat the large drum that was nearby.  The rhythm was slow, but deliberate, and the sound was loud, echoing out to the mountains and back, showering the nearby palaces in a layer of sound.  Across the palace, people briefly paused, took note of the number of strokes, and by that they knew the time of day.  Without giving it much more thought, they then went about their business.     This episode we find ourselves partway through the reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou—his formal reign started in 668, but he had been pretty much running things since the death of Takara Hime in 661 and, arguably, for much longer than that.  668, however, saw Naka no Oe ascend the throne in his new palace of Otsu no Miya, officially making him the sovereign.  And although 645 is the year Naka no Oe and others had started the Taika Reforms, it's not wrong to say that  that 668 and the start of Naka no Oe's official reign, brief as it would be, that he finally had the ability to bring it all together and set it into stone. We've talked about many of these reforms before on the podcast, but a lot of them were associated with the continued push to incorporate continental concepts into Yamato society, covering everything from court ranks to how to organize agricultural production.  Of course, there was also Buddhism, which we've covered numerous times, but there were other concepts coming across as well, including ideas about history and writing, as well as ancient STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.  This included architects, and new ways of constructing buildings.  And it also meant ways of seeing the world, including things like directions and time.  And this is what I want to focus on this episode, taking a break from the primary narrative to spend some time on what we might call Yamato concepts of science, especially how they thought about the structure of reality organization of time and the universe – their cosmology, as it were.  After all, to better understand the reasoning and motives of people, it is helpful to try and understand how they saw the world, not just for translation—understanding what it means when an entry says something like the “Hour of the Horse” on an “Elder Wood” day—but also for understanding how things actually worked in their eyes.  For instance, the idea of ”auspicious” and “inauspicious” times and directions is something that most listeners probably don't incorporate much into their daily lives, but the Chroniclers and the people of Yamato absolutely did, so understanding concepts like this can sometimes be the key to unlocking why historical people may have taken the actions that they did.  In particular, we'll talk about things like yin and yang, five elements, ten stems and twelve earthly branches, and what all this meant for the Yamato ideas of organizing time and space. A large part of Yamato cosmology is tied to something called Onmyoudou, literally the Way of Yin and Yang, which in the organization of the Ritsuryo state fell under a particular ministry, known as the Onmyo-ryo.  If you've heard of Onmyoudou before, you likely have heard about the “Onmyouji”, practitioners who studied the flow of yin and yang—and who could reportedly do miraculous things with that.  A 10th century Onmyoji, the famous Abe no Seimei, is perhaps the most well-known, with numerous stories about his exploits, which were then turned into a fantastical series of stories by the award-winning author, Baku Yumemakura.  Those were then turned into Manga, movies, and more.  Abe no Seimei is like Japan's Merlin, or Gandalf, at least in the stories. Back to the organization we mentioned, the Onmyou-ryou was responsible for Yin-Yang theory, or Onmyou-dou, which included divination, as well as astronomy, or Tenmon-dou, and calendar making, or reki-dou.  While some of this was based on straight up natural observances, a lot of it was explained through older concepts of Yin and Yang theory.  Today, you might encounter a lot of this in the theories around Feng Shui, and this can also be referred to as “geomancy”, or earth divination.   To give a broad overview of Onbmyoudou and its origins, it is part of a large corpus of concepts focused around a concept of energy known as qi or ki—which forms the basis for a lot of Chinese and Japanese cosmology, or their concept of how the world worked.  Much of this is tied up in concepts that are modernly broadly called “Daoist” or associated with so-called Daoist practices.  That term can be a bit misleading, as strictly speaking, Daoism refers to the teachings of the legendary philosopher Laozi, in his book, the Dao De Jing, as well as works attributed to later authors, like the Zhuangzi. There is some controversy as to when and to what extent this strict Daoism came to Japan.  However, in the broader sense, the category of “Daoist “ practices includes an entire panoply of various folk practices, including concepts of Yin and Yang – and in the archipelago, many of these concepts were imported with the various books that people had acquired on the mainland, even if they weren't strictly tied to Daoist religious practice.  For example, there were aspects that were borrowed by various Shinto shrines, and others formalized into ritual practices under the new government.  And of course many of these became linked to various Buddhist teachings and practices, as well.   But what did this actually look like in concept and practice for practitioners of Onmyoudo in Japan? Let's start with the idea of yin and yang.  One of the earliest references comes from the Zhou Yi, the Zhou Book of Changes, the core of what we also know as the Yijing, the Book of Changes.  Here we see the idea that the universe began with a single force that split into two, and those two forces make up all of creation in one way or another.  Yin and Yang, or In and You—or even Onmyou—refer to these forces, which are characterized as shadow and light, moon and sun, female and male, cold and hot, etc.  So these forces are opposites, but it should be noted that they are not necessarily good or evil.  After all, too cold is just as bad as too hot.  Likewise too much darkness is as blinding as too much light. As most people have seen, yin and yang are often depicted as a circle divided into two comma shapes, with a smaller circle in each.  One side is white with a black circle and the other is black with a white circle.  This is the “Tai Chi” diagram, but the diagram itself doesn't seem to have been depicted like this prior to the 11th century, at least that we are aware. But the concepts are much older.    Now if you've heard of the Yijing, where it came from is something of a mystery.  One theory is that it started as a written account of folk wisdom, and may have even given instructions for things like when to plant and when to harvest, based on changes in various heavenly phenomena.   But overall it is organized into 64 chapters, each associated with a particular hexagram.  Start with a line, that can either be a full line – representing yang – or a broken line representing yin.  Stack three of these on top of one another and you get a trigram.  If you chart out every single possible combination of yin and yang lines, you get 8 unique trigrams, sometimes referred to as the baqua.  Stack two trigrams atop one another and you get a hexagram, a combination of 6 lines that can have 8 by 8 or 64 unique variants.   It's theorized that the Yijing resulted from taking all of the collected sayings or aphorisms and bits of advice and cataloguing and dividing them into 64 chapters, each one associated with a given hexagram. Going further, each line of the hexagram is  associated with particular line in Yijing, and various meanings are ascribed to it and its association.  It's a complex and fascinating system and I don't have time to go into it fully, but I would note that this was used as a form of divination—yarrow stalks or other means of random lot drawing that gives you a binary outcome – zero or one, yin or yang – could be used to determine the six lines of any given hexagram.  This, in turn, would reference a chapter in the Yijing which was then interpreted as a sign as to how to read a given situation that you might find yourself in. What's really important to understanding the worldview of the time is this idea, represented by the hexagrams in the Yijing, that you can encompass everything about the universe by making and cataloging different amounts and arrangements of yin and yang. It's a science, as it were – a systematic approach to understanding the differences in the world by breaking it into component parts.    And if this seems preposterous, consider this:  today we understand that all things are made up of tiny atoms.  And these atoms are all made up of the same material—protons, neutrons, and electrons.  And yet, how those atomic particles combine create atoms with wildly different qualities.  And how those atoms then combine into molecules and so on and so forth describe how we explain everything around us.  So is it really so far-fetched? I'm not saying that we should suddenly start to figure out the measurements of yin and yang in everything, but if we want to understand how the people of the time saw their world, it may be helpful to hold an open mindand understand the assumptions that they were working from and where they came from.  As human beings, we naturally look for connections in the world around us, and this was no exception.  People would observe facts, know how that it worked, and often then would back into the reason for it.  This is a tale told across cultures, and we still see it, today.  At the same time, we've developed structured approaches to test out our theories, empirically. So for the moment, let's leave the trigrams and hexagrams, and talk about another idea that also gained traction as people were trying to figure out how the world worked.  This was the five elements theory also known as Wuxing, or Gogyou, in Japanese.  The five elements in this case are Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth.  Some may notice that these, along with the sun and the moon, are used in Japanese for the days of the week:  Nichi (sun), getsu (moon), ka (fire), sui (water), moku (wood), kin (metal), do (earth). Buddhists, by the way, also had an elemental system with only four elements,  Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, possibly connected with some Greek influence, and brought along with Buddhist practice.  For now, however, let's focus on the five elements. The idea in wuxing is similar to that of yin and yang in that everything in creation is made up of these five elements in some degree and configuration.  Furthermore, there are creation and destruction cycles.  So fire creates ash, or earth.  Earth gives birth to metal.  Metal creates water—look at a cold piece of metal in a warm environment and see how the water droplets form on it, and imagine what that looks like without understanding humidity and how there could be water vapor in the air.  And then water creates wood, or plants—any farmer could tell you that without water the plants die.  And wood is where we get fire from. Of course, the reverse cycle is the opposite.  Fire eats the wood.  Wood drinks up the water.  Water rusts metal.  Metal tools plough the earth. And Earth can be used to douse fire. Finally, there is another cycle of weakening. ,. Because fire heats and weakens metal, metal chops down wood, the trees roots break up rocks, the earth soaks up water, and water likewise puts out or weakens fire. So the theory went, if these elements make up all matter, these relationships continue on a more complex scale in everything.  So if something was thought to contain a lot of “fire” element, then it would be potentially helpful if you needed “Earth” but destructive or at least weakening to metal and wood.  Properly accounting for these elements was important to achieve the results you were looking for, whatever that may be.   These were the kinds of things that were incorporated into traditional medicine practices, but also applied to auguries or divination about things like where and how to build a building.  Even today, Shrines will sell calendars that help people know the prominence of certain elements, and some folk remedies may look to balance elements, much as medieval European medicine was often designed to balance the four humors that ancient physicians believed were present in the human body. The chart of these five elements and their relationships is something you may have seen.  It is a five pointed star, often inside of a circle.  Of course this is also similar to a western pentagram, though typically drawn with the point of the star up, but it has nothing to do with Christian values or Satan, or anything similar.  Rather, it is just a way to represent these five elements, and you'll see it frequently in reference to Onmyoudou. The elements were used to categorize many different areas into groupings of five.  This includes grouping the various directions into five directions.  Of course, you may be wondering about that, since most societies usually mark four cardinal directions, and in this case, they did the same, but added the fifth as “center”.  And so you get things like the north is water.  It is related to cool, or cold weather.  It is represented with the color black. To the south, opposite of the north, is fire.  It is hot, and the color is red.  Of course, this probably doesn't take a huge leap to see the connections they drew: since these civilizations are in the northern hemisphere, the farther north you go, the colder it gets, and the farther south you travel, the warmer it gets, generally speaking, at least until you reach the equator. Meanwhile, the west was related to metal, and the color white, while the east was related to woods and forests, and the color…. Blue.  Alright, that last one, in particular, probably doesn't make sense to a lot of us.  After all, we likely associate blue with water, and wood, or trees, would be associated with brown or, possibly, green.  Well, in this case, it goes beyond that.  The north is water, but it is also associated with darkness—shorter days in the winter, and things like that Sothe association of north with black makes sense, but many also look at the ocean and don't necessarily see it as “blue”, or dark or even black, like Homer's famous “wine-dark sea”. Furthermore, although they have a word for it (midori), “green” was not a primary color in Japan, instead  considered more of a shade of “aoi”, or blue.  Even today they refer to a “green” traffic light as an “aoi shingo, not “midori” shingo.  So if you asked someone in the Asuka period to describe the wooded hills and fields, they would have likely used “aoi”.  And of course, we are missing the fifth element.  In the center we have the element earth and the color yellow. A lot of these different concepts were brought together during the Han period, when they were trying to syncretize all of the various philosophies and attempts to describe the world and bring them all together into a single system.  This meant that the Yijing, the wuxing theory, and others were mixed together with various other philosophies and theories of how the world work.  Things like the Shanhaijing, the Classic of Mountain and Seas, along with stories about immortals, the Queen Mother of the West, and more were all rolled together, and basically assumed to be true.  This included various real-world observations.  Therefore, there were many attempts to try and reconcile these various theories together. One of the other concepts, which we've discussed before, was the system of ten heavenly stems and the twelve earthly branches.  We've mentioned this before regarding the sexagenary style of counting the years, but we'll recap here.  The ten heavenly stems and the twelve earthly branches are concepts that go back to at least the legendary Shang period, and even show up in various bronzes Andit wasn't until later that they would be associated with other ideas.  The ten heavenly stems were each associated with one of the five elements, with each element being represented by a greater and lesser, or elder and younger, stem.  And then each of the twelve earthly branches were associated with animals—what we often call the Chinese Zodiac. We talked about how this applied to the calendar, in that it was used to track years in 60 year cycles, but also it was used to track days of the year.  The twelve earthly branches were also used for earthly directions.  The first, the rat, was in the north, and the order continued clockwise to the east, the south, west and then back to the north.  Now this means that the four cardinal directions—north, south, east, and west—all match up nicely with one of the twelve earthly branches, but as for northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest?  Those were all combinations of two branches.  So, for instance, the northeast was a combination of the ox and the tiger, or ushi-tora. Speaking of eight directions, where have we also heard the number eight come up recently? That's right: the eight trigrams, or bagua.  So each one of those trigrams, each representing a different concept, got associated with a direction as well.  This makes it easier to see where practices of geomancy came from.   You had a system with complex, overlapping associations between concepts and the physical world, and in the Tang dynasty, they used all of this  to understand not only  how things had happened, but also how the world would be in the future—in other words, they tried to use it to make predictions.  Hence the “mancy”. In the Yamato state, all of this became an official part of the government under the Onmyoryou: a branch of the government whose job is to make observations and figure things out from there, for the good of the state and the people.  They made observations of the heavens to figure out how the calendar should be aligned—which months should come at what time, and when there should be “leap months”, or intercalary months, to keep various astronomical phenomena in the correct seasons, which were also further divided up into 24 periods.  They also kept track of the movement of bodies like the various planets, because those planets were also assigned values, and thought to affect the flow of energy within this framework.  And so comets, storms, eclipses, and more were all important because of the theory that everything in the heavens impacted and were reflections of how things were happening on the earth.  Similarly, these various discussions of white animals and other omens were likely captured and catalogued by these officials as well, attempting to figure out what they meant. All of this also influenced things like how palaces, buildings, and even capitals, would be built and laid out.  For the palace, it was important the the sovereign be in the north, looking south.  In fact, many maps would have south at the top because that is how a sovereign would be viewing it, were it stretched out before them.  And one would need to consider various features, including mountains and streams, as all of those things carried various meanings, but it wasn't as simple as just finding the one thing that could affect a person.  As they observed differences they would also have to catalogue what happened and try to determine what the cause could be, based on their understanding of the world.  And in the archipelago this would also include an understanding of Buddhist and local kami-based wisdom and knowledge as well. One of the things in the Chronicles that inspired this episode was something I actually mentioned last time,  a record from 666  talking about Chiyu, a Buddhist priest of the Yamato no Aya family, who presented a south-pointing chariot to the sovereign, Naka no Oe.  this appears to be the same Chiyu from a similar record in 658, which also refers to him building a south pointing chariot.  So did it take him eight years, or is he just now presenting it to the sovereign?  And what, exactly, is a south-pointing chariot? Well, as the name implies, a south-pointing chariot is a two-wheeled chariot that always points south.  More appropriately stated, it is a wheeled device with a figure on top, much like a weather vane, which always points south.  This is usually described as the figure of a person or an official pointing in the appropriate direction.  This was a mechanical, rather than a magnetic compass. As the chariot, or carriage, is wheeled around, the two wheels spin.  The wheels themselves are independently connected to a series of gears.  If the wheels spin at the same rate, then their movement cancels each other out.  However, if one wheel turns more than the other, then it will cause the figure on the top to rotate.  Of course, as the chariot turns to the right, the left wheel, traveling along the outer diameter, will travel farther than the right.  This will cause the figure to turn counter-clockwise to the left, but from an outside observer's perspective, it will continue to point in the same direction, even as the chariot itself turns.  Turning to the left would cause the opposite effect. Though it may have been used earlier, there appears to be reliable written evidence of a South Pointing chariot starting from the third century.  The first one was based on much earlier stories of a similar device, but it is unclear if it was a chariot, some other device, or even just a legend that was told as historical fact.  From the third century on the design appears to have been continuously improved upon. I should point out that all we have is descriptions—we don't have any actual south pointing chariots, let alone diagrams showing how the mechanisms worked.  There is the possibility that it used a kind of differential gear to work automatically, but we don't have any actual evidence.  There are other theories that it may have required some kind of manual switch, so that it would attach to one wheel or the other as needed.  That would require that the chariot be moving in either a straight direction or turning in one particular direction, which seems rather unwieldy. I noted some of the problems with this, and even moreso in a place like Japan, where 70% of the terrain is mountains.  Up and down hills, along paths that are likely anything but the smooth, paved surface we have for roads today—and even those have plenty of irregularities and potholes that could throw off any such device. And if you want to use it for any real distance, then you have to factor in other things, including the curvature of the earth.  After all, with the earth being a sphere, any chariot traveling due west to east or east to west, other than at the equator, would have one wheel traveling farther than the other one.  Granted, at the scale we are talking about, it probably is all but negligible, and the rough terrain and simple slippage of what were most likely wooden gears probably entered a lot more variability than the earth's curvature. One of the other issues is that the chariot only points “south” if you set it up to do so.   And if you know that, well, why do you need a south-pointing chariot?  Ultimately, it seems that this is more of a novelty item, good for impressing crowds and demonstrating some engineering principles, rather than an actual, useful invention.  After all, it was forgotten about and recreated multiple times, often centuries apart.  Had it been a truly useful invention, it probably would have been kept in constant use.  Meanwhile, I suspect that there were a fair number of farmers and others who knew that you could more easily and reliably use the sun and stars, as long as the weather was clear. There is also some evidence of an understanding of magnetic compasses since at least the 2nd Century BCE.  Early Han sources suggest that a spoon made of naturally magnetized ore could be placed on top of a polished bronze surface, and it would align itself north to south.  We don't have any actual surviving examples, however—there are later versions that you can find, where the plate is divided up into various directions, and then a magnetized “spoon” is placed on top, but nothing has actually come from Han tombs.  Furthermore, this seems to mostly be for geomantic purposes.  A more practical compass, with a magnetized needle, seems to have been developed by the 11th century, which could then be used for actual navigation. By the way, the “spoon” as a compass pointer may be in reference to the “Big Dipper” constellation, which was envisioned as a spoon, or ladle, in shape.  The seven stars were often used in geomancy, likely because of their importance, at least in the northern hemisphere, of pointing to the north.  So there's some thought that the “needles” of these early compasses weren't litterally  spoon shaped, but symbolically representive of the Big Dipper or the Northern Ladle.  Quick astronomy lesson, here.  If you are in the northern hemisphere, particularly from the 35th parallel to the north pole, you can see the seven stars that make up the constellation or asterism we know as the Big Dipper.   In English we sometimes also refer to this as Ursa Major, though technically the familiar seven stars are just a part of that larger constellation.  In Japan, the same constellation is often referred to as Hokuto Shichisei, the Seven Stars of the Northern Ladle.  It can be seen further south, but parts of it may dip below the horizon during the autumn season. It is important for several reasons.  One is that it is made up of particularly bright stars, which you can generally see even when other stars may not be visible.  Second, its distinctive shape lends itself to being easy to find in the sky.  And finally, if you draw a line between two of the stars at the end of the “cup” of the ladle, you can follow that line to find Polaris or hokkyokusei, the north star, which means you know which direction is north- and once  you know that, you can use it to figure out any other direction.  And Polaris is less than a degree off of true north, making it even more accurate than most magnets, as the magnetic pole can be quite different, depending on its current position, and magnetic north changes over time as the magnetic field around the earth fluctuates. That said, this was not necessarily the case in ancient times.  Four thousand years ago, the star closest to true north would have been the star Thuban, in the constellation Draco, a star that most of us probably haven't heard of.  Polaris, in the constellation Ursa Minor (the Little Bear, also known as the Little Dipper) apparently took over as the north star around 500 CE.  However, even before then, the mouth of the dipper could still be used to indicate north.  In fact, if you draw a line between two of the stars in the back of the constellation, then you also end up finding Thuban.  So even if the north star itself wasn't accurate, finding the dipper would still help you orient yourself, especially if you can find true north during the day and then compare that with the constellation at night. Which helps to understand why astronomy, or Tenmondou, was so important in the Onmyouryou.  Though it wasn't just a study of stars, but of the way of the heavens in general.  And the changes in the heavens, brings us to another important concept—the flow of energy across the seasons.  From the bright days of summer, filled with sunshine and yang energy, to the dark yin energy of winter's long, cold nights. It wasn't enough to just know what happened, and where, but when was also important. Obviously you need to know when to sow seeds, flood the fields, and harvest the rice.  Beyond that, though, you have other concepts, such as how the the day and hour of an event could be symbolically important. And of course, all of these had their own associations with various concepts of the flow of yin and yang energy. Now knowing the year, the month, and even the day is largely just a matter of counting.  But let's talk about something a little more tricky:  How do you know the hour? This brings us to the vignette at the top of the episode, about the clepsydra, or water clock, that Naka no Oe is said to have built. Now we talked about some of the fountains and similar things that have been discovered in the Asuka region back in episode 118.  One thing that they believe they also found evidence of is something called a water clock, which is, as its name suggests, a clock powered by water.  It is typically depicted as a series of three or more boxes or reservoirs that each hold an amount of water.  Water is placed in the top reservoir, and then a hole towards the bottom is unplugged and it is allowed to drain into the box beneath.  The hole is of a particular size, and thus the water flows at a constant rate, filling up the container below, which has a similar hole, etc. all the way to a reservoir at the very bottom.  The multiple boxes mean that the water level in the intermediate boxes stays relatively constant, resulting in relatively consistent pressure and flow rate.  The last reservoir has a measuring stick on a float, so that as the last box is filled with water, the measuring stick raises up.  Since it is rising at a constant rate, one can use that to tell how much time has passed, regardless of anything else.  Thus you can keep time even at night. There is a record of Naka no Oe making one in the fifth month of 660, and he would have another one built in 671, which we will discuss later.  It is interesting that both of these inventions appear twice in the narrative—once during the reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenchi Tenno, and once during the previous reign, that of Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tenno.  In this case it is said that 671 is the first time that the water clock, or roukoku, was actually used. From what I can tell, there is nothing that definitively indicates that the Mizuochi site in Asuka was definitely the site of Naka no Oe's water clock.  There isn't much in the Chronicles telling us what it was like or where, exactly, it was built, and there wasn't anything found at the site naming it as the location of the roukoku.  However, the site is in a prominent enough place, with channels for water and a pavilion of some sort.  They definitely found evidence of pipes, remnants of lacquered wood, and reservoirs for water, among other things, that suggest something to do with moving water happened in this area.  So it seems a very strong choice, as it all fits with theoretical archeological reconstructions. A water clock like this is excellent for keeping accurate time at all hours of the day.  However, it does have a slight problem in that anyone without a clock is still going to have to use the sun and similar heavenly cues to know what time it is.  So how do you let them know?  Well, it turns out that the continent had an answer for that as well, and instituted various systems of drums and bells to let people know the hour.  In fact, some of these practices continued, in one form or another, right up to the modern day—with or without a water clock.  After all, the key was to give the community some sense of the passing of time, but I doubt anyone was using it to time things more precisely than a general idea of an hour—though they did have the concept of their own minutes and seconds.  Which brings us to just how they saw time back then. The system of time that the Chronicles seems to use also came over from the continent, where there appear to have been several different methods for telling time prior to accurate clocks.  And while there was an idea of dividing the entire day into twelve segments, the time as it was announced was not always consistent with those twelve segments, or hours.  Rather, time was based around the key parts of the day.  So, for instance there was sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight.  And while noon and midnight remain exactly twelve hours apart, sunrise and sunset change with the seasons.  So if you call out sunrise, and then divide the time between sunrise and noon into equal segments of time, the size of those time segments change with the seasons.  On top of that, because of the tilt of the earth and our slightly irregular orbit around the sun, the sun appears to “move” across the sky faster or slower throughout the year, with a difference of about 30 minutes total between the extremes.  This isn't going to affect most people's daily lives, but would have been noticeable to those taking accurate measurements. In ancient Han, this appears to have been common in cities and towns, with a watch that would call out as they progressed on their rounds at set points in the day and night, relying largely on heavenly cues—which I suspect did not lead to the most accurate timekeeping, but it was sufficient for what most people needed.  The telling of time in this manner was partly to help with keeping track of the time of day, but was just as much an announcement that the watch was on duty and a warning to would-be criminals. Now a water clock was an excellent device for keeping track of a standard, absolute time, such as it were, but it required constant maintenance.  If you already have a watch calling out the time, perhaps they can also keep the water clock properly set, but you did have to have someone constantly filling it up and draining it at known points of the day.  Plus there was the problem that you only knew the time if you could check it, and this wasn't like a clock tower or something similar. And so in 671 it appears that Nak no Oe instituted the continental idea of drums and bells to announce the time to the people—or at least to those at the court.  We don't have a record of exactly how they were, used, but we can infer from other sources on the continent, and what we do know that some tradition of announcing the time with drums and bells continued to be employed in Japan until the Meiji era, though perhaps not without interruption:  Temples and the like had bell or drum towers, and as the day progressed they would beat out the time.  It was not, however, telling time as we might think of it, with one stroke at the first hour, two on the second, etc..  In fact, in many ways they counted backwards, and they only counted 12 hours, not our modern 24.  By the Edo period it seems that it was common practice to toll the bells nine times at noon and at midnight.  From there, they would count down, with 8 bells at roughly 2 o'clock, 7 bells at 4 o'clock, and 6 bells at 6 o'clock.  That would be another issue.  From 6 o'clock, the number of bells that would be tolled continued to decrease, so that at 8 o'clock it would be 5 bells, then 4 bells at 10 o'clock.  It would then jump back up to 9 and start over again. Why these numbers were used for the different hours we are not entirely sure, and I have no idea if these numbers were the same ones used back in the 7th century—though it does seem to match similar continental traditions.  Even the hours themselves were known by the twelve signs that came to be associated with the zodiac:  the hour of the rat, the hour of the ox, the hour of the tiger, etc.  Midnight fell in the middle of the hour of the rat, and noon fell in the middle of the hour of the horse, with each hour being almost exactly 2 hours by modern reckoning. There were other systems in use as well.  One divided the entire day up by 100 and then each of those divisions by another 10.  The key was whether or not it was an absolute or relative measurement. Something like the roukoku would indicate an absolute measurement.  After all, the fall of water from one reservoir to another was not affected by the change in seasons—at least as long as the water didn't freeze.  The flow was constant, as was the measurement of time. For those using other forms of reckoning, such as celestial phenomena or even a sundial, things might be a bit less accurate.  This was especially true when using concepts like “sunrise” and “sunset”.  Still, through observing the changes over the year, people eventually figured out charts and rules to help reconcile absolute forms of measurement with solar time.  There were other methods for telling time, as well.  Perhaps one of the more pleasant was the use of incense sticks.  By the time of the Tang dynasty, incense in stick form was relatively common, and it had been noticed that sticks of incense could burn at a fixed rate.  This meant that you could use incense sticks like candles were used in Europe, counting down how far they had burned to tell what time it was.  If you were really fancy, you could make a single stick out of different types of incense, so that as it hit a new hour, the scent would change, alerting you to the time through your olfactory senses. Speaking of time, we are coming to the end of ours for this episode.  We do have some more information on this on our website, Sengokudaimyo.com, and we'll have links to those sections of the website accompanying our blog. Next episode we will focus more on the reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou, from his seat at Otsu no Miya. Until then, thank you once again for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

The stars Kochab and Pherkad serve several roles. They’re part of the body of Ursa Minor, the little bear. They form the outer edge of the bowl of the Little Dipper. And they’re “guardians of the pole” – they circle around Polaris, the star that marks the north celestial pole. Both stars are giants – they’ve puffed up at the end of the prime phase of life. Kochab is about 50 times the Sun’s diameter, and 450 times its brightness. Pherkad looks fainter than Kochab, but only because it’s almost four times farther. In reality, it’s more than twice as bright. The stars are so big and bright because they’ve exhausted their original supply of nuclear fuel. That’s triggered changes in the cores of the stars that have caused them to puff up. In ages past, both stars were much closer to the pole than they are today. In fact, Kochab was the closest bright star to the pole for a millennium. It was the best pole star about 3100 years ago. But it wasn’t nearly as good a marker as Polaris – it never got closer than about seven degrees, which is almost the width of a fist held at arm’s length. Thanks to an effect called precession, it’s moved away from the pole. So Kochab and Pherkad serve as guardians of the pole. The stars stand to the right of Polaris at nightfall, and wheel high above the Pole Star later on. Kochab is the second-brightest star of the little bear, shining just a touch fainter than Polaris. Script by Damond Benningfield

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 1, 2025 is: cynosure • SYE-nuh-shur • noun A cynosure is a person or thing that attracts a lot of attention or interest. As a proper noun, Cynosure may refer to the North Star or its constellation Ursa Minor. // He was the cynosure of all eyes as he walked into the room. See the entry > Examples: "Look at any picture of Kashmir and you'll understand why it is called heaven on earth. And Srinagar, framed by the majestic Zabarwan Mountains, is the cynosure of all travel itineraries, offering a mix of breathtaking landscapes, rich culture, and spirituality." — Mallika Bhagat, Times Now (Mumbai, India), 17 Dec. 2024 Did you know? Ancient mariners noted that all the stars in the heavens seemed to revolve around a particular star, and they relied on that star to guide their navigation. The constellation that this bright star appears in is known to English speakers today as Ursa Minor, or the Little Dipper, but the Ancient Greeks called it Kynósoura, a term that comes from a phrase meaning "dog's tail." Kynósoura passed into Latin and Middle French, becoming cynosure. When English speakers adopted the term in the 16th century, they used it as a name for both the constellation and the star (which is also known as the North Star or Polaris) and also to identify a guide of any kind. By the 17th century, cynosure was also being used figuratively for anything or anyone that, like the North Star, is the focus of attention or observation.

The North Star is one of the most important beacons in the sky. It serves as a compass, pointing the way due north. And it also serves as the hub of the sky – all the other stars appear to circle around it as Earth turns on its axis. More than 4,000 years ago, the architects of Egypt used the North Star to align the pyramids of Giza. And more than four decades ago, Apollo astronauts used it to help guide them to the Moon. But the two groups were aided by different north stars. The Egyptians used a star called Thuban, in Draco, the dragon. The astronauts used Polaris, at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper. Thuban didn’t explode or fade away – it’s still in plain sight. Instead, Earth’s axis turned away from the star – an effect called precession. It’s caused by the gravitational tug of the Sun and Moon, which cause our planet to wobble like a spinning top. As it wobbles, the axis points toward different stars. Four thousand years ago, it aimed at Thuban. Today, it aims at Polaris. Over the next century, the pole will take slightly better aim at Polaris. Right now, the star is about two-thirds of a degree from where the axis is pointing. Around the year 2100, it’ll be less than half a degree from that spot. After that, though, the pole will move away from Polaris. By around the year 4100, it’ll take aim at a star that’s one constellation over, in Cepheus – a North Star to guide future generations. Script by Damond Benningfield

Hai Wonder Kids, kembali dalam renungan anak GKY Mangga besar. Judul renungan hari ini adalah   LIHATLAH APA YANG TELAH DIKERJAKAN OLEH TUHAN   Mari kita membaca Firman Tuhan dari   Mazmur 19:2 Langit menceritakan kemuliaan Allah, dan cakrawala memberitakan pekerjaan tangan-Nya.    Wonder Kids, doa adalah hal yang penting untuk dilakukan. Meskipun demikian, percaya bahwa Allah akan menjawab doamu adalah juga hal yang penting. Berdoa tanpa beriman melemahkan doamu. Jika kamu memiliki kesulitan untuk beriman, sediakan waktu untuk memandang matahari, bulan, dan bintang-bintang. Matahari, bulan dan bintang-bintang menunjukkan kuasa dan kebesaran TUHAN. Lihatlah betapa hebatnya semua yang telah dikerjakan oleh TUHAN.   Pikirkan tentang matahari. Setiap 0,8 meter persegi menghasilkan daya lebih besar dari 450 mesin mobil. Matahari yang memiliki kekuatan yang besar, hanyalah sebuah bintang yang kecil di antara 100 miliar bintang-bintang yang membentuk galaksi bima sakti. Sekarang coba genggam uang logam dan ulurkan tanganmu kearah langit malam. Uang logam yang kecil itu menutupi pandanganmu dari 15 juta bintang-bintang yang ada di langit!   Tuhan Yesus memperlihatkan Bapa-Nya yang luar biasa kepada kita melalui alam semesta yang mengagumkan. “Seolah Tuhan Yesus sedang menepuk pundakmu dan berkata, “Bapamu yang membuat semua itu, supaya kamu bisa percaya bahwa Ia bisa memeliharamu.”   MARI KITA BERTUMBUH DI DALAM ANUGERAH TUHAN   Wonder Kids, kamu bisa ke perpustakaan dan baca buku tentang rasi bintang. Kemudian, ketika langit sedang cerah, bawa selimut dan berbaringlah sambil memandang langit dan bintang-bintang. Apakah kamu berhasil menemukan bintang The Big Dipper? Bagaimana dengan bintang the Little Dipper? The North Star? Ada berapa banyak bintang yang berhasil kamu hitung? Ingatlah bahwa Allah yang mengenal setiap bintang juga mengenalmu!   Mari kita berdoa.   TUHAN, aku melihat keindahan ciptaan-Mu di langit dan bumi. Aku mengucap syukur atas semua yang Engkau perbuat. Tolong aku untuk mengagumi dan menjaga alam ini, serta mengingat bahwa semuanya adalah karya tangan-Mu. Dalam nama Tuhan Yesus aku berdoa, Amin.   Wonder Kids,  LANGIT DAN BUMI MEMUJI TUHAN DENGAN KEINDAHAN MEREKA, MENGINGATKANMU BETAPA HEBATNYA CIPTAAN TUHAN. Tuhan Yesus memberkati

Look low to the east after dark and you should see a pretty little cluster of stars. Its shape might remind you of a miniature Little Dipper, but it's actually the famous Pleiades Star Cluster.

"Maybe they didn't hear us record it and don't know it was all the way back in 2021..." "...Really?" Really! Mary and AJ finally answer some of life's greatest questions: How do twins work? What are all the chess pieces called? Can you vacuum away regret? Find out with us as we dive into the unusually tiny Falls! Follow the show: ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠ Follow AJ: ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ ⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠ Follow Mary: ⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ ⁠⁠TikTok⁠

Welcome to Gravity Falls season 1 episode 11! This week, Dipper comes to the HORRIFYING realization that he is exactly 1mm shorter than Mabel, the Alpha Twin. But if there is a seemingly innocuous problem to solve then there is a dangerous magical solution. I'm sure the feuding siblings wont let said magic fall into the wrong hands. That would get awkward. Thanks for listening!

The Little Dipper is famous for the star at the tip of its handle: Polaris, the North Star. Earth's axis points in that direction, so all the other stars in the night sky appear to circle around it. The second-brightest star in the dipper is Kochab, at the lip of the bowl. It isn't nearly as famous as Polaris, but it's almost as bright. Kochab is a giant — more than 40 times the Sun's diameter, and almost 400 times its brightness. It's so big because it's nearing the end of its life. The nuclear reactions deep inside the star push on the surrounding layers of gas, making them puff outward. Just when a star enters the giant phase of life depends on its mass. Heavier stars age much faster, so they “burn out” more quickly. And Kochab is more massive than the Sun. But just how massive has been the subject of debate. Studies using different techniques have yielded estimates of about 1.3 to 2.5 times the Sun's mass. If Kochab had a companion star, it would be easy for scientists to measure the masses of both stars. For solitary stars like Kochab, though, astronomers rely on models of how stars behave. Today, the models seem to indicate a mass of about 2.2 times the Sun's. But that isn't completely settled. Until it is, we won't know the complete story of Kochab. Kochab is moderately bright, and stands to the right of Polaris at nightfall. It rotates directly above the Pole Star in the wee hours of the morning. Script by Damond Benningfield

In this episode, I introduce you to a really important but tiny group of stars in the Winter sky called the Pleiades. Many people mistake it as the Little Dipper, but it's actually a really cool star cluster that has a lot of significance for cultures all around the world. You'll get to hear several cultural stories of this little group. Visit NightSkyTourist.com/87 for more information about this episode. CHECK OUT THESE LINKS FROM EPISODE 87: “Lunar vs. Solar Calendars”, a Night Sky Tourist blog article: https://nightskytourist.com/lunar-vs-solar-calendars/  Episode 85- The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders Read the Stars with Duane Hamacher: https://nightskytourist.com/85/   Rate Night Sky Tourist with 5 stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. THANK YOU! FOLLOW NIGHT SKY TOURIST ON SOCIAL MEDIA Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NightSkyTourist  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nightskytourist/  SPREAD THE WORD Help us reach more people by subscribing to the podcast, leaving a review, and sharing it with others. GET TO KNOW US MORE Visit NightSkyTourist.com to read our great blog articles, check out our resource page, and sign up for our newsletters. Our monthly newsletter has content that is exclusive for subscribers. SHARE YOUR QUESTION We want to hear your questions. They could even become part of a future Q&A. Record your question in a voice memo on your smartphone and email it to us at Hello@NightSkyTourist.com. COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS Email us at Hello@NightSkyTourist.com.

Episode 109. Kate block is a gem. She's a therapeutic bodyworker, yoga teacher, and fellow science lover. She's also someone who walks the walk, meaning she listens to her body and what doesn't feel right for her, and makes uncomfortable changes when necessary. Today you get to hear her story, and a whole bunch of wisdom, and I am confident you will enjoy it as much as I did. I am realizing more and more that something that really lights me up is finding innovative solutions for healing for both myself and my clients. Kate is a wonderful example of that because she's helped me get better in touch with my body and the lessons I've learned through somatic practices and this conversation apply to both therapists and our clients. Kate is intuitive, and truly has a gift for this work. Oh, and fun fact, without formally learning about Internal Family Systems (IFS) she basically does Parts with with her clients because it just made sense to her. Cool stuff, right? You're going to love this conversation, so let's dive in! We cover: What is bodywork and how does it differ from massage therapy? How Kate combines the wisdom of talk therapy and bodywork to help her clients reach the next level of peace and healing Why she reminds people that "your body is never trying to hurt you" and what she means by that Why the question, "What do you feel in your body?" often feels hard, and how to practice embodiment Kate's approach to meal prep (one of my favorite answers to the integrated motivation question) and how you can use this knowledge to change a "should" to a "choose to" for something you want to do, but don't really enjoy And much more! “I know I shouldn't focus on weight loss, but…” (Polarized Parts Alert!) Are you feeling unsure how to guide a client who wants to improve their relationship with food, but also wants to lose weight? We offer this super cool transformational exercise that can help your clients work to understand their polarized parts, build self-trust and listen to their intuition! This free PDF gives step-by-step instructions for doing one of my all-time favorite exercises (based on Internal Family Systems theory) to explore polarized parts. It will help clients get to know the parts of themselves without judgment, understand their intention, and create empowerment and harmony in their bodies. This is hands-down one of the best ways I've found to help support client autonomy and build self-trust at the same time. I can't wait to share it with you! Sign up today to use this innovative tool! Who is Kate Block? Kate Block is the founder of Little Dipper — a therapeutic bodywork and private yoga practice located in the Forest Hills area of Grand Rapids (thisislittledipper.com). Her work at Little Dipper is grounded in her belief that the most transformative massage therapy, bodywork, and movement isn't about “fixing” anything about you or your body, it's about fostering a deeper connection to your own body and heart. Kate loves helping her clients address physical and emotional issues in a way that focuses on root causes so that they feel and live better.  She is deeply passionate about the human body, health + wellness, and a well-marbled, medium-rare ribeye. Her post-grad biology background informs both her work as a licensed massage therapist and the approach she takes in leading her clients and students in yoga and movement. For Kate, therapeutic bodywork is all about learning how to show up, connect, and move (both literally and metaphorically) from a place of alignment with your deepest, truest self. Disclaimer: This blog and podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual professional advice or treatment, including medical or mental health advice. It does not constitute a provider-patient relationship.

THE FLYING TOWNIn the vastness of the universe, there was a town called Ficulle. It looked normal, but it was flying.Continuously circling along with Earth in the Milky Way, it always paused for half an hour on the weekends. All the residents took this time to sit quietly and relax while sipping a nice frothy cappuccino. And then off they went again!After their break at the space bar, the town continued its journey. The residents resumed flying, and although it may seem a bit strange to you, the birds went back to walking, and to drink from the fountains, they had to hop two or three times.This town was truly enchanting and magical. The flowers in the gardens lit up with moonlight (even during the day!), the river was made up of trails of shooting stars, and the trees changed the color of their leaves depending on the wind... and the mood.When you think about it, life in a flying town is quite interesting.All the houses were colorful, but the paint changed, and the houses continuously shifted colors, just like the leaves do. Each had a clock on the facade, but they chimed at different times because the hands flew left and right.For meals, residents glued plates, glasses, and cutlery to the floating tables. If a piece of bread fell, someone below would catch it in flight. Dogs always had their noses up to take advantage of a flying snack, naturally.Grandparents took to the sky on their straw brooms for errands but yelled continuously to avoid collisions: "Make way, make way, we're a bit blind!" Kids on their flying bikes laughed their hearts out, while butterflies, bees, and even hornets grumbled because there was too much aerial activity. They urgently requested designated paths!Besides, the town's only traffic light had a single blue light, giving the go-ahead for the sky. There was indeed a bit too much movement, and occasionally the space police took action. Those who didn't follow the rules were sentenced to walk on the ground!Only after sunset did the residents stop flying and sleep deeply until dawn. Fireflies with their little night wings could fly peacefully alongside bats with their cloak-like wings.One early morning, an intergalactic circus landed in a large field near the library. What a surprise, what magic! Clowns, acrobats, trapeze artists, and jugglers put their noses out of the tent and began to walk upside down. The mayor had an idea: "Maybe they can fix the erratic clock hands." And so they did.The head trapeze artist had noticed that the only clock keeping accurate time was the one on the tower of the astronomical observatory. Without hesitation, he grabbed a rope and his trapeze, and swinging back and forth like a pendulum, he managed to magically connect all the hands of the erratic clocks to those of the tower. From that moment on, all the clocks chimed in unison.What incredible joy! The circus artists were welcomed in the flying town, and as if in a fairy tale, the performances started precisely at 19:36. The circus shows attracted the whole town, and as the audience entered the tent, magically and astonishingly, they stopped flying and the popcorn stayed still in their bags, ready to be munched.The performers gave their best, and the clowns handed out colorful balloons to all the children to release into the sky upon exit. The children were happy, and so were the circus performers.Even the Big Dipper and her niece, the Little Dipper, hearing applause and laughter from the colorful tent, decided to interrupt their perpetual journey through the Milky Way for an hour. They got themselves a nice frothy cappuccino and saw what was happening.They had heard about this flying town where everything was topsy-turvy and chaotic. But as they approached the circus, they saw a welcome banner that read: "Here, there's entertainment, flying, playing, fun, and it's all free." The Big Dipper turned to her niece and said, "What's all this gossip the universe is spreading? This seems like a nice, peaceful place to live and visit! There's even a traveling circus... maybe that's flying too!__________________________________________________You can read or listen to this Story Under The Stars in: Italian — English — Spanish — French — Japanese — Chinese —Request your language and we will do our best to accommodate you!The translation from Italian (the original language) to other languages, and the reading of the stories in all these languages, is not magic but the work of Artificial Intelligence — which perhaps is a bit magical... We hope it has done a good job!If you enjoy these stories, please share them, and if you can afford it, Consider A Donation.

A planet that orbits a star in the Little Bear has had a traumatic few million years. It either survived a merger of its two stars, or it was born from the debris created by that collision. Halla orbits the star 8 Ursae Minoris, which is old and bloated. The planet is more massive than Jupiter, the giant of our own solar system. Halla orbits the star once every three months, at about half the distance from Earth to the Sun. When it was discovered, astronomers thought it must have survived being engulfed by its star, which should have been much bigger in the past. Scientists continued studying the system with telescopes in space and on the ground. And they found a couple of other possible explanations. One says the planet originally orbited two stars. The stars merged to make a single star. Perhaps surprisingly, that kept the star we see today from growing as big as it would have otherwise. So Halla kept on orbiting despite the fireworks. Another possibility is that the merger produced big clouds of debris, and Halla took shape from that material. The surviving star eventually will puff up even more, then shed its outer layers — another traumatic event for Halla. 8 Ursae Minoris is in Ursa Minor, the Little Bear. Some of its stars form the Little Dipper, which is in the north at nightfall. The star is near the lower right corner of the dipper this evening, but you need binoculars to see it.  Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

The ELO₂ consortium (of which One Giant Leap Australia Foundation is part of) has created a challenge for young students to learn about lunar rovers and what they are used for in anticipation of Australia's first lunar rover – part of the Australian Space Agency's Moon to Mars Trailblazer Initiative.Landing an Australian rover on the lunar surface will highlight the kind of space and STEM endeavours that children can aspire to, creating a ‘where were you' moment that hasn't been seen since Australia played a crucial role in helping NASA bring TV images of the first Moonwalk to the world in 1969.ELO₂ Little Dipper Challenge invites children aged 5-12 years old to experiment with common materials found at home or school in a creative project about space. The mission is to build and test a scoop, like the one that will be on the Australian lunar rover, to collect soil from the Moon.FInd out more at; www.elo2.au

By Mary Lindow  It's a wonderful thing to be able to give a hand to someone who is in turmoil, but we can't do it by just quoting nice Christian sayings or throwing out a random scripture at them. It's so easy to say, “Oh yes! Just trust in God! It'll all work out. Somehow somewhere God will help you!”   When we see a person who is going through trials and who knows God, but is struggling hard, who is deeply fatigued and bobbing up and down under the water, barely keeping afloat, due to some difficulty or trial of their faith, we need to lift them up and we are not to judge them, because it is a slander against the very loved creation of Jesus Christ. Oswald Chambers had a tremendous statement about this. He said, “It's a great thing to see physical courage, and still even strong, moral courage, but the greatest thing is to see spiritual courage, to see that we can help others stand true and strong in the integrity of Jesus, no matter what they are going through. People who have gone through a hot fire or as some call it, a crucible, these tested individuals are going to be a tremendous support to many other people.”   He went on to say, “Here's the reason we go through the things we do.  God wants to know if he can make us “good bread - good food” to feed to other people.”   In first Peter one through eight Peter says to us, “Though right now, you're grieved by so many different trials, hang in there, remember the inheritance! It's not messed up it's not defiled, it's not made dirty. Look to Jesus and you will receive the ultimate result and reward of your faith.”   MY FELLOW BELIEVERS, THERE'S A TIME COMING WHEN EVERYTHING THAT RIGHT NOW THAT IS A PROBLEM, WILL BE PERFECTLY SOLVED. In the meantime, are we prepared to let people poke at us, to joke at us, to humiliate us, to let them have their momentary agendas over certain narratives? When you stick it out and hold on, looking to the greater horizon, to the very central part of Christianity, which is your personal walk, your personal relationship to Jesus, how do you continue to handle the cruelties of this current world system?   LOOK TO HIM! LOOK AT HIM! Which actually means, look for spiritual discernment, remembering it's a difficulty to be weak, and God strengthens us to go through anything when Jesus Christ is what he is, and who he said he was!   “If we have a trial of faith, we must endure it until we get through it, and more often than not, even other Christians who are watching might pull back in disgust at our difficulties or losses.”   THESE INDIVIDUALS HAVE YET TO ACTUALLY SURRENDER THEIR LIVES TO HUMILITY. They enjoy thinking God has blessed them with earthly things and pleasures because somehow, they are more clever and worked harder at achieving.   THE RICH YOUNG RULER WAS MUCH LIKE THIS. He did all the right actions, was good hearted and generous, oh yes! But he loved the attention it garnered as well. When Jesus asked him to sell it all, sell out 100% to help those around him, and to come and follow Jesus, he couldn't. He loved being in charge and in control of his own destiny.   IT SAYS THAT HE WENT AWAY SAD. Sad because he couldn't live both lifestyles at the same time. He most likely thought he could finance Jesus quite well, and make a return on his investment if the marketing drew good crowds!   IF YOU HAVE BEEN THROUGH TRIALS OF FAITH IN THE PAST, GOD WILL THEN BRING ACROSS OUR PATHS OTHER MORE IMMATURE SOULS, AND WE HAVE NO BUSINESS DESPISING THEM.   WE ARE SUPPOSED TO HELP THEM. We are to be to them something that has embraced and fully transferred into our souls, which is, the very fundamental nature of Jesus. Remember, people will draw off of that “virtue” leaving you. The scripture says Jesus, knew in himself that power had gone out of him. This is when the woman with the shaming, hemorrhaging issue of blood said, “If I could just touch that piece of fabric, the hem of his garment!” and Jesus did say, “Someone touched me! I felt Virtue leave me!”   FRIENDS! YOU AND I WILL FEEL THE SAME THING! There are people who spiritually and morally who will literally draw or pull the virtue out of your life, and if you don't keep up the supply from the life of Jesus Christ you will be exhausted! We must keep our spiritual strength strong and let others nourish themselves until they are able to stand on their own feet, and then take direct life instructions from him.   DON'T BE DISTURBED IF PEOPLES LIVES SEEM TO BE MESSY… … OR THINGS ARE CHANGING AND NOT FITTING PERFECTLY LIKE A JIGSAW PUZZLE PIECE! It actually means there is a terrific possibility of greater things developing! And the same thing spiritually is that if there is turbulence in our lives, God is turning it into the right thing in the right time! So, in the meantime, look to Jesus, and take the next step as it comes.   “GET THROUGH WHATEVER YOU'RE GOING THROUGH AND YOU'LL BE A TREMENDOUS ASSISTANCE TO OTHERS WHO ARE GOING THROUGH THE VERY SAME THING!”   IT'S NOT FOR US TO SHAME OR HUMILIATE OR CRITICIZE OTHERS for not being where you are spiritually, but instead, it's for us to see that we are good nourishing bread for these people in the hands of God.  If we look at Job Chapter one verse one that verse certainly speaks loudly! It says Job was blameless and upright.  He feared God and pushed away or shunned evil and this was the character God gave to Job. God asked Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There's no one on earth like him”, and Satan, then replied and said, “Well, strip him, and he will curse you to your face!”   SATAN WANTED JOB TO FALL. HE WANTS US TO FALL, But God wanted Job to be blessed. So Satan tried to strip Job from God. With a Malignant, and a strong, strong, evil energy, he goes to work, and then in one day he brought the greatest man in all of the East into abject poverty and then visits him with great sadness, blow after blow of such a difficult and crushing nature and with such speed this all fell upon Job! We just have to marvel at the testimony of the Holy Spirit that in all of this, Job did not sin by blaming God with wrongdoing, that's in verse 22 of Job one. What a massive win for God, and what a punch in the face and a defeat for Satan.   A Current Prophetic Word Many hidden and also more visual Prophetic individuals are hearing similar threads and words from the Holy Spirit regarding what I'm about to share with you. I encourage you to be very focused and still as you take these insights to heart. The Father has things that are very succinct and encouraging for you to hear. “Those who have stayed faithful to God's leading, stepping out into new things will start to see doors opened into the promises. The prophetic word of testing and preparing them for this time is now coming to pass. There is a precise blessing for the double portion where that which was conceived and dreamed about in the years past, and now it surfaces into a double blessing. This is the year where the prophetic voice brings into the open new life, brings restoration, strengthening the weary soul, enlarging your heart, resurrecting the dry bones. This is the prophecy to His church. ‘As you reorder, reset yourself to His leading, His mission, and His headship, He brings the wind of His Spirit to cause His church to rise up. Expect to see resurrection in the church'. Doors begin to appear for many, with heavenly encounters and signs showing the way. Those who have stayed faithful to God's leading, stepping out into new things will start to see doors opened into the promises. For some, this year will be one where you start to truly enter the dream you felt God called you to during the last year or two, even though it seemed to lead to nothing, and you found yourself back at the beginning of where it all started. But through the voice of the Father and the Son, they have been establishing you, preparing you, for what lies ahead. This year, development has been taking place, positioning you for the door that is about to open. The is the beginning of the prophetic word and dream being realized… …But it is only the beginning. The place where no options and hard brick walls once existed, now, doors appear, new partnerships and pure relationships continue to be revealed. This is for personal moves of God and for national moves of God globally. The moment and movements, yes, better mobility allowing the passage through the doors is being made possible.However, be wise and aware that the enemy crouches at the door, so don't be deceived, but in the power of God and faith in His leading, continue, despite the battle. Know too that Satan will seek to deceive by building his false gates and attractive “other doors” options, flanking the Lord's, so; prayerfully seek the will of God. The key that opens the Doors of The Father is humility and dependence on Him. This door is opened by the Doorkeeper. Hearts once closed to love will begin to open the journey to humility, bringing about those who will bend their knees. Those who carry the gospel will see their light received by those bowing and seeking God, and a new awakening will take place. It's time for the doorkeepers to announce the invitation, ‘Come, enter into His presence, open your heart to His perfect love, and you will find rest. The Lord will make His home in you.'   My Husband Steve had a most beautiful encounter with the Lord during an early morning and he is going to share his exact words and understanding about what that the Lord gave to him in the next few minutes of this podcast. It is so very timely and certainly the word of the Lord for this time that we are living in and experiencing.   PECULIAR PEOPLE (Jesus Christ) who did give himself for us, that he might ransom us from all lawlessness, and might purify to himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works;” Titus 2:14 (Young's Literal Translation) PERHAPS YOU HAVEN'T CONSIDERED YOURSELF PECULIAR, BUT THAT'S HOW THE APOSTLE PAUL REFERS US TO. Why? Because Peculiar People walk by the spirit, and not by the flesh. In our temporal life on this earth we are bombarded with difficult situations. However, even as we live in the flesh our life is hidden in God and we who walk in the spirit overcome these situations. “I am crucified with Christ nevertheless, I live, yet, not I but Christ, who lives himself in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave his life for me. THERE IS A SONG THAT WAS OFTEN SUNG IN WORSHIPS SERVICES THAT ORIGINATED FROM PSALM 48:1-3  Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. In the city of our God, on the mountain of his holiness. Beautiful for situations, the God of the whole earth, Is Mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the City of the Great King?   ON THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES, THE INGATHERING, THE FIRST NIGHT OF SUKKOTH, SEPTEMBER 30, 2023, AT 4AM, I WAS AWAKENED AND WALKED OUTSIDE TO SEE THE FULL HARVEST MOON. It was an unusually bright night. Prophetically it represented the soon coming harvest of souls about to be ingathered to His Kingdom. Next to the moon shown the planet Venus - the morning star. We know the Morning Star to be another name Jesus gave to Himself in the Book of Revelations. I also saw the Little Dipper shining very brightly as if reporting that His Saints were about to “dip in“ and gather the end time harvest for the Kingdom of God. In this weary season because of the constant assault of evil agendas we often feel as if we are literally on the battlefield of the last days War between Two Kingdoms. Satan's assault, his purpose, is to steal, kill and destroy, particularly from the Saints of God. His method is to first come by fearful thought to distract us from who we are in our spirit man and steal our divine purpose.   MANY SAINTS ARE PRESENTLY BURDENED BY SITUATIONS OF THE WORLD. They are looking to their situations as being more real than God's Word and the power that He has given to them. If your purpose is stolen it is equal to neutralizing you or equal to spirituality killing you. When your eyes are focused more upon the negative situation than on who we are in Christ, then Satan has not only stolen from you, he has robbed you of your true identity. The ‘eyes of our flesh' are then held captive by him as we focus more on the problem than the victory we have in Jesus. He said, “I have come that you might have life abundantly!” We stand as conquerors in Him or we succumb to the trouble and are defeated.   GOD SAYS WE ARE A PECULIAR PEOPLE. Why? We who know our God intimately, walk in the spirit and not in the flesh. We are unmoved by situations. “He who has ears to hear, (he who walks in the spirit realm), let him hear what God is saying to the churches.”   EARLY IN 2022 THE LORD SPOKE TO ME AND SAID, “Live in the history of your future!” Exactly what does that mean? Ask yourself these questions: In the spirit realm how do you envision yourself in the future? What are (or will be) your accomplished results?  What passions did God instill in you and what purpose has He created in you before the foundation of the world?   IN THE SPIRIT, IN THE FUTURE, DO YOU SEE YOURSELF SETTLED AND LOOKING BACK ON YOUR LIFE  HAVING COMPLETED WHAT GOD HAS PURPOSED FOR YOU TO ACCOMPLISH DURING YOUR SHORT SPAN ON THE EARTH?   In the midst of your current situation, according to your future self, do you look back at the present obstacles, the situation that Satan threw at you to trip you up, and see yourself as having overcome it?  Do you envision yourself as confident in the Lord having applied His word and having walked by faith and not by sight? In the spirit you are imagining that you have advanced yourself in faith? Are you living in the years yet to come and looking back to the now seeing how you overcame the situation by the Word of God? That is how you live now “…in the history of your future!” You borrow from your future victorious self and apply that to the present.   FOR EXAMPLE, LOOKING AT A MONETARY SITUATION OF LACK OF FINANCES, IT IS ALWAYS ACCOMPANIED WITH ANXIETY. Scripture says, “Anxiety in the heart of a man weighs it down.” - Proverbs 12:25. IT IS THE DEVIL'S TRAP TO DIVERT YOU INTO EMBRACING WORRY RATHER THAN FOCUSING ON ALL THAT YOU HAVE SUPPLIED IN THE PROMISES OF THE LORD. That same scripture above is completed with “but a good word makes it glad!” In other words, focusing on the Word of God and the promises He made to provide for you are more powerful than any lack you might be experiencing in the natural.   YOU ARE A PECULIAR PEOPLE! You are not moved by what you see, by what present upsetting situations you are going through. “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”  Peculiar People have joy in the midst of natural situations. They override circumstances by faith standing on the promises of God.  In their spirit they see themselves having passed through the “valley of the shadow of death” overcoming these natural situations by remaining confident in what God says about them.   PECULIAR PEOPLE HAVE A FOUNDATION ON WHICH THEY STAND. “Having done all to stand,” (standing firm on the Word and who God called them to be), “stand therefore!” They see themselves, not on the defense, but on the offense, having the upper hand. They confidently wrestle the adversary and rejoice in prayers of thanksgiving. They are resolute in presenting themselves and pleading their case before the Throne of Grace, fully dressed in the armor of God, which is the holy character of the Lord Jesus. They stand in faith stating what scripture says about their situation saying, “God, here is what your Word says about it and I'm holding you to it!” He loves that boldness!   PECULIAR PEOPLE STAND FIRM AGAINST THE WILES OF THE DEVIL BECAUSE THEY SEE THEMSELVES AS VICTORS. They envision who they have become in their future self. They know who they are because of what Jesus did on the Cross and who God called them to be. They know their purpose is to bring heaven to earth, to be a present expression that represents the faith of all the great Cloud of Witnesses. Peculiar People already envision themselves as having defeated the devil and as being part of the City of God, the New Jerusalem. This is their future! “Live NOW in the history of your future!” They have already overcome natural situations and the devil's ploy against them. HOW YOU ASK?  “And they overcame and conquered him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, for they did not love their life and renounce their faith even when faced with death.” Revelations 12:11 (Amplified)   FIRST, VICTORY COMES BY THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB. They identify themselves with Christ on the Cross having had died with Him, then having risen with Him where their life is conducted by faith and hidden in the Son of God. Secondly, it is by the word of their testimony, their covenant! They live their earthly lives through Him in spirit over the flesh. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever! Forever is the spiritual place that is beyond the dimension of eternity. It has no beginning and no end. These saints are hosting Christ in their spirit; therefore, they live through the Alpha and Omega in this life on earth. Thirdly, they overcame Satan in their identity with Christ because they love not their our own lives, their own soul and body, even to a situation of facing physical death. If necessary, in our stand against Satan, we volunteer for martyrdom. How is the possible? Because we have already died with Him!   PECULIAR PEOPLE LIVE THROUGH CHRIST JESUS BY WALKING IN THE SPIRIT, a realm higher than our natural earthly physical life. We live on Mount Zion, the city of the New Jerusalem, along with the victorious Saints who have preceded us. The Morning Star has risen in our heart and we see ourselves for who we are as victors in the spirit. We live now on this earth borrowing on the promise of who we will be in the age to come. We live in the history of our future! We live as the Ingathered. We call those things that are not (presently in the midst of our situations) as though they were, because by faith, in the spirit realm, they already are a reality in the purpose of Christ within us. That is how you fulfill and complete the part of the prayer that Jesus taught His disciples to pray, and to live. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.”   THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU! It is your personal relationship with God in spirit. It is your union with Him in revelation that you are one with God in intimacy. Once that is established, and then you can confidently carry His presence outwardly and exhibit His nature toward others.   YOU ARE THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AND RADIATE HIS GLORY. That is what it means to bring His Kingdom on earth “as it is in heaven.”   PECULIAR PEOPLE BRING THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN TO THE EARTH. Stand firm in who you are as the bright Morning Star continues to arise in your heart, even to its brightest, as the light of the full day or noon. Live today in the history of your future. Be Peculiar.   LET'S GIVE THANKS FOR GOD SPEAKING TO US MY FRIENDS! He spoke to Steve that we are to be unusual, peculiar radiant people, filled with the light of Jesus! Thank you Jesus…. For BEING the door of Hope. Revelation 3:8 says, “I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.   Isaiah 22:22 declares, “And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.”   Speak Lord…. Your Servants are listening. Here we are. Send us. **************************** Duplication and sharing of this writing is welcomed, as long as the complete message, Website, podcast link and information for Mary Lindow is included. Thank You! "THE MESSENGER"  - Mary Lindow - “2023” www.marylindow.com www.marylindow.podbean.com   If you would be so kind and assist Mary helping her to meet other administrative needs such as web site and podcast costs, or desire to bless her service with Spirit-led Love gifts or regular support: Please JOYFULLY send your gift in the form of: ► Personal Checks ► Business Checks ► Money Orders ► Cashiers Checks To: His Beloved Ministries Inc. 
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It might be summer where you are, but in Anne of the Island, it's always September, and we are headed back to school with Anne. In this episode, Ragon and Kelly explore Anne's ambitions as a writer and a scholar – including, of course, her embarrassing first experience as a published author! Kelly and Ragon also share stories from their own college years and talk about the history of women in higher education.  Inspired by: Kelly is inspired by the pretty stationary of Felix Doolittle | Stationery & Gifts | Shop and Open Sea Design Co. Ragon is inspired by the Big Dipper and Little Dipper rings at Bryan Anthonys.    

4, Little Dipper by Warm

Join Fiona Powers Ozyurt of the Maria Mitchell Association as she discusses the constellation Draco. The constellation Draco, meaning “dragon” in Latin, is one of the most recognizable and prominent constellations in the northern sky. To find Draco, go outside after dark and look for  a winding snake-line pattern of stars between the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, and next to the bright star Vega. 

In this episode of the Furbabies Podcast, Stephanie Goodman interviews the founder and owner of Health Pet Austin food stores, Trevor MacKellar, about his journey in opening and expanding Austin's premier pet food store. Trevor shares some of his passions for pets, pet rescue, and what makes Healthy Pet Austin different from the big box pet stores. Find out more info at http://HealthyPetAustin.comABOUT HEALTHY PETTrevor MacKellar and Chris Jabbori opened the first Healthy Pet location in Austin, Texas, at the Shops at Arbor Trails, in June of 2012. The duo has worked tirelessly to make each Healthy Pet location so much more than a simple pet supply shop. Healthy Pet aspires to be a resource for the community, whether it's by hosting an animal adoption event or by educating pet owners about the best nutrition for their pets.Healthy Pet offers a wide selection of premium pet products at various price points, specializing in holistic and all-natural pet foods. Healthy Pet is continuously researching and stocking only premium-quality products that the staff would give to their own pets. All three Healthy Pet locations boast Do-It-Yourself Dog Washes, so customers can enjoy clean pets without making a mess at home. Grateful for the warm Texas welcome for the first three locations, Healthy Pet is proud to announce its fourth location, Healthy Pet Galleria, is set to open in Bee Cave in January 2020. From Arbor Trails and Lakeline Mall to downtown Austin and, now, the Galleria, Healthy Pet is happy to call Texas Hill Country its newest home. Trevor has always had an entrepreneurial spirit and a no-quit work ethic. He got his start in the pet industry at just 16 years old, working at a pet store in his home state of Michigan. He started out sweeping floors but quickly rose through the ranks to manager, honing his customer service skills and pet knowledge along the way. When faced with the opportunity in 2012 to open his first store in Austin, Texas, with his business partner, Chris, he jumped at the opportunity. Whether he's educating customers on the importance of diet for a pet's health--one of his favorite parts of the job--or overseeing one of the many events Healthy Pet hosts, Trevor has completely immersed himself and Healthy Pet in the Austin community. An extension of that community includes the Healthy Pet employees. Trevor loves that Healthy Pet is able to offer many young adults their first jobs, teaching them life-long skills regardless of where their career paths may lead; he finds it equally as rewarding to cultivate a positive work experience for long-term employees, some of whom have been with him since the beginning.While he would like to think most people remember him for his great customer service and extensive pet nutrition knowledge, he knows he's mostly famous for being Biggie's dad. While he moved to Austin with Biggie in tow, Trevor has added to his pack since his arrival. Christybeth, daughters Hadley and Harper, cat Little Dipper and Golden Retriever Gibson now make Austin home for Trevor.Tune into the Furbabies Podcast YouTube Channel at http://FurbabiesPodcast.tv.Got a question or suggestion for Stephanie and the show? Book a call with Steph at TalkWithStephanieGoodman.com

Fiona Powers Ozyurt of the Maria Mitchell Association discusses a rare green comet named “Comet 2022 E3 ZTF.” To see the comet, grab some binoculars or a small telescope if you have one and head outside after dark around 6:00 pm and face the Northern sky. You'll notice the bright and greenish smudged object, located just North of the Little Dipper.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 28, 2022 is: lodestar • LOHD-stahr • noun Lodestar is a formal word that refers to something or someone that serves as an inspiration, model, or guide. // The new arts district became a lodestar for the city's bright future. See the entry > Examples: “There's no getting around John Wilson's ‘Maquette for Eternal Presence,' a stoic bronze bust ... in the middle of the first gallery on the third floor of the Art of the Americas wing at the Museum of Fine Arts. This is very much the point. The museum opened its reinstalled 20th-century American art collections in late May, and everything revolves around it, a lodestar for renewed vows of breadth and inclusion.” — Murray Whyte, The Boston Globe, 27 July 2022 Did you know? If you're looking for inspiration, lodestar may represent the mother lode. The literal, albeit archaic, meaning of lodestar is “a star that leads or guides”; it is a term that has been used especially in reference to the North Star, a star in the Ursa Minor, or Little Dipper, constellation. The lode in both lodestar and mother lode comes from the Middle English word for “course” (lode is still used in some parts of England to mean “waterway”). Both the starry sense of lodestar and the more earthly “something or someone that leads or guides a person or group of people” meaning date back to the 14th century, the time of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who used both in his work. The literal sense had mostly fallen out of use by the early 17th century, but the figurative use shines on.

Look low the east after dark and you should see a pretty little cluster of stars. Its shape might remind you of a miniature Little Dipper, but it's actually the famous Pleiades star cluster.

The stars that mark the outer edge of the Little Dipper are known as the Guardians of the Pole. That's because they're not far from the Pole Star, Polaris. They circle around it all night, every night — like guards on patrol. But a couple of thousand years ago, one of those stars didn't just guard the pole — it was the pole. Kochab was closer to the celestial pole than any other bright star beginning in about 1500 BC and continuing for two millennia. The pole star changes because of an effect known as precession. Earth wobbles on its axis like a spinning gyroscope that's running down. It takes 26,000 years to complete a single wobble. During that time, Earth's axis draws a big circle on the northern sky, so different stars take turns marking the pole. Polaris is less than a degree away from the true celestial pole, which makes it a great pole star. Kochab was a good bit farther from the pole, so it wasn't as good a marker. Still, it got the job done for 2,000 years. You can find Kochab in the northern sky tonight. It stands almost directly to the left of Polaris as night falls, well above the bowl of the Big Dipper. It's only a bit fainter than Polaris, so if you can find the current Pole Star, you shouldn't have any trouble finding its predecessor. The other guardian, Pherkad, is to Kochab's upper left, at the opposite corner of the Little Dipper's bowl. They march around the north pole throughout the night. Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

The sexiest head butt ever, Tom Papley divides Wil and Charlie, Robbo dreams of 1000 subs. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Hester Bros. are joined by a special guest this week, Felipe Chamon from the Brazilian Dragon podcast! Hang out and listen to the group discuss Episode 11 of Gravity Falls "Little Dipper," as Felipe helps Alec and Lucas unpack their sibling upbringing. *~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~* Thanks to all the amazing contributors to this project, who are all insanely talented: Artwork - Tessa Scarbrough (https://tessascarbrough.com/) Mysterious Voice - Anna LeFlore Puzzle Master - Forever Anonymous *~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~* Support us by following us on Social Media, and especially on YouTube where we make more cartoon content! YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnkC3LvhA4dDhNABMIqrFYg/featured Discord: ~ https://discord.gg/AYzneyuNSY ~ Twitter: ~ https://twitter.com/HBCartoonTheatr ~ Instagram: ~ https://www.instagram.com/hbcartoontheater/ ~ Facebook: ~ https://www.facebook.com/HBCartoonTheater/ ~ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

The Hester Bros. are joined by a special guest this week, Felipe Chamon from the Brazilian Dragon podcast! Hang out and listen to the group discuss Episode 11 of Gravity Falls "Little Dipper," as Felipe helps Alec and Lucas unpack their sibling upbringing.*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*Thanks to all the amazing contributors to this project, who are all insanely talented:Artwork - Tessa Scarbrough (https://tessascarbrough.com/)Mysterious Voice - Anna LeFlorePuzzle Master - Forever Anonymous*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*Support us by following us on Social Media, and especially on YouTube where we make more cartoon content!YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnkC3LvhA4dDhNABMIqrFYg/featuredDiscord: ~ https://discord.gg/AYzneyuNSY ~Twitter: ~ https://twitter.com/HBCartoonTheatr ~Instagram: ~ https://www.instagram.com/hbcartoontheater/ ~Facebook: ~ https://www.facebook.com/HBCartoonTheater/ ~This episode is part of the Brazilian Dragon Podcast Network. Follow the Brazilian Dragon on Twitter and Instagram! And feel free to support The Brazilian Dragon Podcast via PayPal. Plus, check out our new website!

Hear MMA Research Fellow, Celia Mulcahey, as she discusses the Little Dipper!

We are all buzzed and ready to talk about our favorite coffee shops in the keys! Also join us for our first interview with a new local business “The Little Dipper” and let her know you heard about her on our podcast --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/localsideofkeywest/message

Brooke Grimsley joins in-studio | NFL playoffs | Mahomes heart rate data from his smart watch | Ratings prove people enjoy real conversations and blasting woke culture | Re-living the vintage name segment from Thursday | Will Farrell/SNL bits | The Little Dipper resurfaces

No need to get short with us! This week Dara and Cailin continue with Season One of Gravity Falls with the sizable episode eleven, “Little Dipper” and episode twelve "Summerween". Happy Summerween! ——————- Connect with us! iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/w... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wittyclothes... Twitter: https://twitter.com/wittyclothes Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wittyclothes Email: wittyclothes@gmail.com

Jazz Cabbage Cafe' from Dec. 21 feat. Barton Morris, Josey Scoggin, Paul Tylenda On today's show:Cannabis Community Gives Back- Josey ScogginCannabis and Driving- New StudyCaregivers Under Attack- UpdateOr any business properly before JCCJoin Jazz Cabbage hosts Jamie Lowell and Rick Thompson as they talk about all things cannabis in Michigan. The first 20 minutes are Rick and Jamie talking about all the current events happening in Michigan. Adam Brook and Jim Salame join at 20 minutes in. Rick talka about the Little Dipper from Redemption Cannabis. Attorney Barton Morris stops in and talks about the Viridis Labs scandal, then updates us on the Rudi Gammo clemency case.  He talks about municipal ordinances and how caregivers are being zoned out of existence in some places. Josey Scoggin (Sons and Daughters United, Great Lakes Expungement Network) joins to discuss the charitable work they've done this year and to give praise to Paul Tylenda, attorney, who joins the show and is honored for his commitment to performing expungements on behalf of GLEN. He also talks about the recent developments in the Viridis Labs case. The Jazz Cabbage cast of regulars include Jim Salame (The Entheo Show, Decriminalize MI) Debra Young (MiLegalize) Adam L Brook (Medical Mondays, 'Mr. Hash Bash') Rick Thompson (MiNORML, Four20Post, Weed Talk News) and Jamie Lowell (Michigan ASA, The Botanical Company, Medical Mondays) and Shelly Smith (Reads and Weeds). Jazz Cabbage received an Award of Distinction from the Communicator Awards in April of 2021, and was named One of America's Best Cannabis Podcasts by Celeb Stoner Magazine. The broadcast takes place live every Tuesday at 4pm EST on YouTube and Facebook; podcast is available for listening shortly thereafter on Alexa, Spotify and all major platforms.

You may have mistaken them for the Little Dipper - a small little bluish-white cluster of stars that look like a cart, a plough, or to some even a question mark. It is the asterism (stars that are not a constellation but a smaller group of stars within a larger constellation) of Taurus the Bull, visible in the early fall mornings and clear wintry nights.  Poems, stories, songs and myths surround this beauteous gem of the night skies. A Japanese auto manufacturer even features them as their main logo. The nineteenth-century English poet Alfred Lloyd Tennyson penned these famous lines about them:  Many a night I saw the Pleiades rising thro' the mellow shade, Glittering like a swarm of fireflies, tangled in a silver braid. They have been useful to many cultures for keeping time, knowing directions, and as an aid in knowing when to plant and harvest crops. They are recorded in the Old Testament, and in the ancient Greek poetry of Homer, Hesiod, and Aratus. They are M-45 in the famous catalogue of 18th-century astronomer Charles Messier.  Just as Jesus intended them to be.  And, by the way, all of that is just a sampling of how the heavens do indeed declare the glory of God!  So come along with Wayne and Dan as they explore the wonder, stories, and science behind an ancient and wondrous little cluster of stars we call the Pleiades. To see a great picture of the Pleiades and read more see Wayne's Blog article below: https://creationanswers.net/answersblog Podbean enables our podcast to be on Apple Podcasts and other major podcast platforms.  To support Good Heavens! on Podbean as a patron, you can use the Podbean app, or go to https://patron.podbean.com/goodheavens.  This goes to Wayne Spencer. If you would like to give to the ministry of Watchman Fellowship or to Daniel Ray, you can donate at https://www.watchman.org/daniel. Donations to Watchman are tax deductible. Photo credit:  NASA, ESA, AURA/Caltech, Palomar Observatory

Interested in booking The Little Dipper? Follow their instagram at @lildipbananas for more information! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gavin-christensen/support

Charley and Ella talk about the return of Lil' Gideon, the way this episode relates to the trans-ing of their respective genders, and (of course) the FAAAAAAAAAMILY AUTO MART! Watch Gravity Falls episode 11 "Little Dipper": https://www.disneyplus.com/video/b66e0bc7-a66f-4e85-88af-57b75dfeeefa Watch the Family Auto Mart commercials that inspired Bud Gleeful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X03iP0Uhmck Download the theme song: https://ellacesari.bandcamp.com/track/my-hearts-in-gravity-falls-20-ft-pryin-brian "Hall of Conspiracies" theme by http://simandthedimbulbv2-0.tumblr.com/  Stan voice-over and theme song instrumental by http://twitter.com/PryinBrian Join our Discord Community: https://discord.gg/ZTRu7qyZcR Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mysteryshackpod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mysteryshacklookback/ https://pipedreampodcasts.com/mystery-shack-lookback Email us if you have well-archived experiences in the original Gravity Falls fanbase: mysteryshacklookback@gmail.com

CLICK HERE to listen to episode audio (5:32).Sections below are the following: Transcript of Audio Audio Notes and Acknowledgments Images Sources Related Water Radio Episodes For Virginia Teachers (Relevant SOLs, etc.). Unless otherwise noted, all Web addresses mentioned were functional as of 8-23-21. TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO From the Cumberland Gap to the Atlantic Ocean, this is Virginia Water Radio for the week of August 23, 2021.  This episode, the second in a series of episodes on water in U.S. civil rights history, explores water as symbolism in African American civil rights history.  [The first episode in the series--the series overview--is Episode 566, 3-1-21.]  We start with about 50 seconds of music. MUSIC – ~53 sec – Lyrics: “Well the river ends between two hills; follow the drinkin' gourd.  There's another river on the other side; follow the drinkin' gourd.  Follow the drinkin' gourd; follow the drinkin' gourd.  For the ol' man is a'waiting for the carry you to freedom; follow the drinkin' gourd.” You've been listening to part of “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” recorded by Eric Bibb in 2013.  The song is believed to have been used prior to the Civil War as a code to help enslaved people escape on the Underground Railroad.  In that interpretation, the verses gave information about the route, and the drinking gourd referred to the Big Dipper, setting the direction to go by pointing towards the North Star.  Another water-related spiritual song, “Wade in the Water,” is also believed to have been used as Underground Railroad code.  Both songs became popular hymns within African American churches and, by the mid-1900s, were closely associated with the modern Civil Rights Movement. In a 2018 post entitled “The Role of Water in African American History,” Tyler Parry stated that, “water's culturally symbolic importance resonated across generations….” Following are four other examples of water symbolism connected to the African American movement for civil rights. Number 1: “Parting the waters.”  This phrase refers to the account in the Bible Book of Exodus, in which God parted the waters of the Red Sea so that the Israelites could escape from Egyptian slavery.  It's been used as a metaphor for the enormous challenges that African Americans have faced in acquiring and asserting their civil rights.  For instance, it's the title of the first volume in Taylor Branch's trilogy on the modern civil rights era, America in the King Years.  That trilogy is the source for the next two examples. Number 2. “Until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”  Martin Luther King, Jr., frequently used this phrase, taken from the Bible Book of Amos, to describe how long the U.S. civil rights movement would need to continue. Number 3: “Springs of racial poison.”  At the signing of the federal Civil Rights Act in July 1964, President Lyndon Johnson said, “We must not fail.  Let us close the springs of racial poison.” And number 4. “A fire no water could put out.”  Dr. King used this phrase in his final public sermon in Memphis.  Recalling demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, when Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety “Bull” Connor ordered fire hoses turned on demonstrators, Dr. King said that Connor didn't realize “that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out.” These examples are only a small piece of a much larger story.  I invite listeners to offer Virginia Water Radio other examples of water metaphors and symbolism in U.S. civil rights history. Thanks to Eric Bibb, his manager Heather Taylor, and Riddle Films for permission to use this week's music, and we close with about 25 more seconds of Mr. Bibb performing “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” MUSIC – ~ 24 sec – Lyrics: “For the ol' man is a'waitin' for to carry you to freedom; follow the drinkin' gourd.” SHIP'S BELL Virginia Water Radio is produced by the Virginia Water Resources Research Center, part of Virginia Tech's College of Natural Resources and Environment.  For more Virginia water sounds, music, or information, visit us online at virginiawaterradio.org, or call the Water Center at (540) 231-5624.  Thanks to Ben Cosgrove for his version of “Shenandoah” to open and close the show.  In Blacksburg, I'm Alan Raflo, thanking you for listening, and wishing you health, wisdom, and good water. AUDIO NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Eric Bibb performance of “Follow the Drinking Gourd” heard in this Virginia Water Radio episode was taken from a video recording dated March 19, 2013, and posted by Riddle Films online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjBZEMkmwYA.  Audio for this recording is used with permission of Eric Bibb, via his manager Heather Taylor; and of Liam Romalis at Riddle Films.  More information about Eric Bibb is available online at https://www.ericbibb.com/.  More information about Riddle Films is available online at http://riddlefilms.com/.An excellent version of “Wade in the Water” (the other song mentioned in this week's audio), performed by Deeper Dimension, is available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NQvOFTioJg. Click here if you'd like to hear the full version (2 min./22 sec.) of the “Shenandoah” arrangement/performance by Ben Cosgrove that opens and closes this episode.  More information about Mr. Cosgrove is available online at http://www.bencosgrove.com. IMAGES Image of the relation of the constellation known as the Big Dipper and as the Drinking Gourd to the North Star.  Image from the National Park Service, “North Star to Freedom,” accessed online at https://www.nps.gov/articles/drinkinggourd.htm, 8/23/21.Map of escape routes for enslaved people prior to the U.S. Civil War.  Map by National Park Service, “What is the Underground Railroad?”  Image accessed online at https://www.nps.gov/subjects/undergroundrailroad/what-is-the-underground-railroad.htm, 8/23/21.Sculpture in Birmingham, Alabama's, Kelly Ingram Park, recalling fire hoses being used on civil rights protestors in the 1960s.  Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, March 3, 2010.  Accessed from the Library of Congress, online at https://www.loc.gov/item/2010636978/, 8/23/21.SOURCES Used for Audio Kenyatta D. Berry, “Singing in Slavery: Songs of Survival, Songs of Freedom,” PBS “Mercy Street Revealed Blog,” 1/23/17, online at http://www.pbs.org/mercy-street/blogs/mercy-street-revealed/songs-of-survival-and-songs-of-freedom-during-slavery/. Taylor Branch:At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2007;Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1988; Personal Communication, March 16, 2021;Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1998. Joel Bressler, “Follow the Drinking Gourd: A Cultural History,” online at http://www.followthedrinkinggourd.org/. Encyclopedia Britannica, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers – Poem by Langston Hughes,” online at https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Negro-Speaks-of-Rivers. C. Michael Hawn, “History of Hymns: ‘Wade in the Water,'” 2/1/16, Mississippi Conference of the United Methodist Church, online at https://www.mississippi-umc.org/newsdetail/2576866. High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Ga.), “'A Fire That No Water Could Put Out': Civil Rights Photography” (exhibit November 4, 2017—April 29, 2018), online at https://high.org/exhibition/a-fire-that-no-water-could-put-out-civil-rights-photography/. Martin Luther King, Jr.:August 28, 1963, speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. (“I have a dream” speech), as published by American Rhetoric, online at https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm;April 3, 1968, speech in Memphis, Tenn. (“I've been to the mountaintop” speech), as published by American Rhetoric, online at https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm. LearntheBible.org, “Parting of the Waters,” online at http://www.learnthebible.org/parting-of-the-waters.html.Bruce McClure, “Here's How To Find The Big Dipper and Little Dipper,” EarthSky, March 7, 2021, online at https://earthsky.org/favorite-star-patterns/big-and-little-dippers-highlight-northern-sky/. Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “Symbolism,” online at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/symbolism. National Center for Civil and Human Rights (Atlanta, Ga.), “Rolls Down Like Water: U.S. Civil Rights Movement” (exhibit), online at https://www.civilandhumanrights.org/exhibition/us-civil-rights/. National Park Service:“Kelly Ingram Park” [Birmingham, Ala.], online at https://www.nps.gov/places/kelly-ingram-park.htm;“North Star to Freedom,” online at https://www.nps.gov/articles/drinkinggourd.htm;“Theophilus Eugene ‘Bull' Connor (1897-1973),” online at https://www.nps.gov/people/bull-connor.htm;“Underground Railroad,” online at https://www.nps.gov/subjects/undergroundrailroad/index.htm. NPR (National Public Radio) and Smithsonian Institution, “Wade in the Water” (26-part series produced in 1994 on the history of American gospel music), online at https://www.npr.org/series/726103231/wade-in-the-water.Tyler Parry, “The Role of Water in African American History,” Black Perspectives blog (African American Intellectual History Society), May 4, 2018, online at https://www.aaihs.org/the-role-of-water-in-african-american-history/.PBS (Public Broadcasting System) “American Experience/Soundtrack for a Revolution,” online at https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/soundtrack/. Walter Rhett, “Decoding ‘Wade in the Water,'” Black History 360*, February 18, 2011, online at https://blackhistory360.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/decoding-wade-in-the-water/. Selma [Alabama] Times-Journal, The drinking gourd and the Underground Railroad, January 26, 2004. Smithsonian Folkways, “Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1966,” online at https://folkways.si.edu/voices-of-the-civil-rights-movement-black-american-freedom-songs-1960-1966/african-american-music-documentary-struggle-protest/album/smithsonian. Tellers Untold, “How Harriet Tubman used ‘Wade in the Water' to help slaves escape,” February 15, 2021, online at https://www.tellersuntold.com/2021/02/15/how-harriet-tubman-used-the-song-wade-in-the-water-to-help-slaves-escape-to-the-north/. For More Information about Civil Rights in the United States British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), “The Civil Rights Movement in America,” online at https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zcpcwmn/revision/1. Georgetown Law Library, “A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States,” online at https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/civilrights. Howard University Law Library, “A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States,” online at https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/intro. University of Maryland School of Law/Thurgood Marshall Law Library, “Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights,” online at https://law.umaryland.libguides.com/commission_civil_rights. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, online at https://www.usccr.gov/. U.S. House of Representatives, “Constitutional Amendments and Major Civil Rights Acts of Congress Referenced in Black Americans in Congress,” online at https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Data/Constitutional-Amendments-and-Legislation/. U.S. National Archives, “The Constitution of the United States,” online at https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution. RELATED VIRGINIA WATER RADIO EPISODES All Water Radio episodes are listed by category at the Index link above (http://www.virginiawaterradio.org/p/index.html).  See particularly the “History” subject category. This episode is part of the series Exploring Water in U.S. Civil Rights History.  As of August 23, 2021, other episodes is the series are as follows:Episode 566, 3-1-21 – series overview. Following are links to some previous episodes on the history of African Americans in Virginia. Episode 459, 2-11-19 – on Abraham Lincoln's arrival in Richmond at the end of the Civil War.Episode 128, 9-17-12 – on Chesapeake Bay Menhaden fishing crews and music.Episode 458, 2-4-19 – on Nonesuch and Rocketts Landing in Richmond.  FOR VIRGINIA TEACHERS – RELATED STANDARDS OF LEARNING (SOLs) AND OTHER INFORMATION Following are some Virginia Standards of Learning (SOLs) that may be supported by this episode's audio/transcript, sourc

The conversation about Jordan Love's preseason success or struggles continues. ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit joins the show! Is NIL gonna be a disaster? That's how Chewy sees it playing out. We wrap the week up with Hot & Cold!

We discuss why Nick thinks he can see his six pack and play another round of Are You Smarter Than Jason Dick. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A tough Sunday, with a spectacular, dare we say stellar theme, but some really tricky naticks -- 35A, Japanese beer brand, KIRIN, versus 31D, Sharing maternal lines, ENATIC (yikes!), and 109A, Wine that may be Spumante or frizzante, PROSECCO, versus 94D, Clear, as crystal, BUS (double yikes!). The grid was a technical tour de force, with IX-based rebuses  representing stars: if you connected those stars, you got the Big and Little Dipper! That must've taken forever to create, we doff our hats (metaphorically) to the constructor, well done!We're off for a week, but we'll be back next Sunday, so in the meantime ... keep doing those crosswords!

Happy Friday! Here's an awesome treat for you all. We got to speak with Rev Alumni Jeff Caudill of Gameface about his outstanding new solo EP called "Old Blood" which comes out TODAY July 9th, 2021. We are joined by the incredibly talented Melody Caudill who plays under the moniker "Career Woman" about her music and writing process as well as discussion of her latest two singles "Balcony" and "Little Dipper" which are both sure to make any "Best Of 2021 Songs" list. All of these tunes are available to listen on all of the usual streaming platforms so do check them out and spread the word! Also, everyone wish Jeff a Happy 50th Birthday! 

Mabel realises she's a bit taller than Dipper and boasts to him. Jealous, Dipper treks into the forest to find height altering crystals so that people will stop teasing him. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/otakuology/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/otakuology/support

The inaugural episode of UnEarthly Quests. In this episode we explore the stories of the constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, also known as the Big Dipper and Little Dipper or the Big Bear and the Little Bear. Come with me as we travel to Ancient Greece and learn the ancient greek mythology stories. We also travel to South East Asia and explore the Hindu story of the North Star. We discover the Norse myths and we learn how black slaves historically used the Big Dipper and the North Star to find freedom in America. Join me on this quest around the world and through history and mythology. This episode involves stories that include rape, impersonation, attempted murder, and child neglect. www.unearthlyquests.com Find Constellations Using this web app, also available as a mobile app: https://stellarium-web.org/ Remember to leave a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts for extra star points. Credits: https://www.canva.com/join/dividers-whip-antiques Music: Hymn to the Gods by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com) Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/file:///C:/Users/SaralynnDobler/Downloads/Hymn+to+the+Gods+-+320bit.mp3 The Pyre by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4504-the-pyre License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Sounds from Zapsplat.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Join the Number 1 Canna Crew as we review Delta 8 Dabs from JkDistro.com and we review the Little Dipper from DipDevices.com today buy using codes KSBudz20 for 25% off your orders! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bbks/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bbks/support

On today's episode join Box and Rev. Don as we dive into the world of Delta products! Jk Distro now has Dabs, High Hopes ICT now has Delta 10!! What is that? Let's figure it out together. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bbks/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bbks/support

Noel, Allison, and Kate continue Streaming In Place with Gravity Falls, talking season one episodes 11 and 12, “Little Dipper” and “Summerween.” Sibling rivalries, supervillain incompetence, and trash candy. Tune in for our thoughts, then come back Wednesday for season one, episodes 13 and 14, “Boss Mabel” and “Bottomless Pit!”.Shout-out to our Zoom listener, Marcus! Thanks for joining the chat and sharing your thoughts.Join Allison on Twitch on Monday, March 8th, 2021 at 8pm CST for Redacted: Bridget Jones’ Diary!

Noel, Allison, and Kate continue Streaming In Place with Gravity Falls, talking season one episodes 11 and 12, “Little Dipper” and “Summerween.” Sibling rivalries, supervillain incompetence, and trash candy. Tune in for our thoughts, then come back Wednesday for season one, episodes 13 and 14, “Boss Mabel” and “Bottomless Pit!”. Shout-out to our Zoom listener, Marcus! Thanks for joining the chat and sharing your thoughts. Join Allison on Twitch on Monday, March 8th, 2021 at 8pm CST for Redacted: Bridget Jones’ Diary!

Allison, Noel, and Kate continue Streaming In Place with Gravity Falls, talking season one episodes nine and 10, “The Time Traveler’s Pig” and “Fight Fighters.” Waddles! Also stupid teen boys, fate, and a giant time baby. But mostly, Waddles. Tune in for our thoughts, then come back next week for season one, episodes 11 and 12, “Little Dipper” and “Summerween.” Shout-out to our Zoom listener, Marcus! Thanks for joining the chat and sharing your thoughts. Join Allison on Twitch on Monday, March 8th, 2021 at 8pm CST for Redacted: Bridget Jones’ Diary!

Allison, Noel, and Kate continue Streaming In Place with Gravity Falls, talking season one episodes nine and 10, “The Time Traveler’s Pig” and “Fight Fighters.” Waddles! Also stupid teen boys, fate, and a giant time baby. But mostly, Waddles. Tune in for our thoughts, then come back next week for season one, episodes 11 and 12, “Little Dipper” and “Summerween.”Shout-out to our Zoom listener, Marcus! Thanks for joining the chat and sharing your thoughts.Join Allison on Twitch on Monday, March 8th, 2021 at 8pm CST for Redacted: Bridget Jones’ Diary!

Like waves rippling across the ocean, the aftermath of a stellar explosion is rippling across our region of the galaxy. It forms a thin arc that runs between the big and little dippers. Astronomers first saw evidence of the ripples in 2006. A space telescope detected a thin, straight line produced by X-rays. It was a couple of degrees long — the width of your finger held at arm’s length. A few years ago, other astronomers followed up on the discovery. And they found that the line kept on going. It forms an arc that’s 30 degrees long — three times the width of your fist. It extends from near the outer edge of the bowl of the Big Dipper to the handle of the Little Dipper. X-rays indicate that the arc is a shock wave — something that’s plowing through the gas and dust between the stars. It appears to be the aftermath of a supernova — an exploding star. The explosion took place perhaps 100,000 years ago, about 600 light-years from Earth. Debris from the star’s outer layers was blasted into space at up to a few percent of the speed of light. That bubble of gas and dust continues to expand, getting thinner, cooler, and fainter. So today, all that’s visible is a long, thin strand at the edge of that expanding bubble — an arc between the dippers. The Big Dipper is in the northeast at nightfall, standing on its handle. The Little Dipper is to the left. Its bowl hangs below the handle, which ends at Polaris, the North Star. Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

Like waves rippling across the ocean, the aftermath of a stellar explosion is rippling across our region of the galaxy. It forms a thin arc that runs between the big and little dippers. Astronomers first saw evidence of the ripples in 2006. A space telescope detected a thin, straight line produced by X-rays. It was a couple of degrees long — the width of your finger held at arm’s length. A few years ago, other astronomers followed up on the discovery. And they found that the line kept on going. It forms an arc that’s 30 degrees long — three times the width of your fist. It extends from near the outer edge of the bowl of the Big Dipper to the handle of the Little Dipper. X-rays indicate that the arc is a shock wave — something that’s plowing through the gas and dust between the stars. It appears to be the aftermath of a supernova — an exploding star. The explosion took place perhaps 100,000 years ago, about 600 light-years from Earth. Debris from the star’s outer layers was blasted into space at up to a few percent of the speed of light. That bubble of gas and dust continues to expand, getting thinner, cooler, and fainter. So today, all that’s visible is a long, thin strand at the edge of that expanding bubble — an arc between the dippers. The Big Dipper is in the northeast at nightfall, standing on its handle. The Little Dipper is to the left. Its bowl hangs below the handle, which ends at Polaris, the North Star. Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

It's been a long week, we're tired, but we're still here, keepin' the party rollin' on. JC is back this week, and things quickly get irreverant.

This week on Gravity Falls Dipper discovers that his shorter than Mabel as also Gideon Gleeful plans his revenge against the Pines. You can follow the podcast @SYNSPod Raul @raulvaderrdz Billy @BBusterBill on Twitter, You can send us a message or suggestion and leave a review on the podcast service of your choice. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/seeyounextsummerpod/message

Look low the east after dark and you should see a pretty little cluster of stars that looks like a miniature Little Dipper.

Draco is a pretty well-known constellation. Or at least its name is. Just about anything that’s called “the dragon” is going to attract people’s attention. But the star pattern itself is tough to follow. It’s a meandering trail of stars that curls around the Little Dipper. But most of the stars are faint, so you need dark skies to see them. From light-polluted cities, Draco is more of a stealth dragon — hard to see in the skies above. In Greek mythology, the dragon protected a magical apple tree planted by Hera, the wife of Zeus, the king of the gods. One of the 12 labors of Heracles — better known by his Roman name, Hercules — was to steal some of the apples. To do so, he had to kill the dragon. Hera placed the dead creature in the sky. The head of the dragon is marked by a four-sided figure. It’s high in the northwest as night falls, far to the upper left of the Pole Star, Polaris. A couple of the stars in the head are fairly bright, but the other two are faint. In the skylore of ancient Arabia, the four stars were mother camels. They were protecting a baby camel, which was represented by an even fainter star at the center of the quartet. The baby was being threatened by jackals or hyenas — a pair of stars that stands below the camels in early evening. Look for the long, sinuous body of the dragon curling to the left and upper left of Polaris as darkness falls. It rotates down toward the northern horizon during the night. Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

It's a big episode for a tiny plotline! This week we talk about "Little Dipper!"We open with... TANGENTS! Lots of tangents as we discuss cat grooming, The Owl House, and Harry Potter fandom reclaiming their franchise from J.K. Rowling.When we actually get to Gravity Falls, Gideon absolutely steals the show this episode. His family is a horror story. The Mystery Twins conflicts are becoming more nuanced. Only Stan can balance being a con man and a parental figure.All this and more! Follow my website @ https://www.geekygirlexperience.com/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GeekyGirlExperience Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GeekyGirlExperienceTwitter: https://twitter.com/HopeMullinaxWe're now putting these up on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvaYWKP4QfsGBA22GkztPRO9_aqumPqoYWe have cute Waddles the Pig merch over on the Etsy store:https://www.etsy.com/shop/GeekyGirlExperience

Did you get out to shoot NEOWISE? The comet that took the astro photography community by storm last month? I hope so. It was a great excuse to escape the humdrum of life for a bit and to really push the boundaries of what we’re comfortable with. In this episode we’re talking about our experiences and the fun times had in making these images. Links Mentioned in today’s show: TOM’s Website and other links: https://tomwagnerphotography.com and @tomwagnerphotography on IG KIRK’s Website and other links: https://Milkywayphotographers.com @milkywayphotographers on IG Sign up for LPS notifications. Be the first to know when it’s available! https://mailchi.mp/eeb40a226ba2/kk5w15cdqv We’ve started doing some live review sessions. Get on the reminder list for those live sessions. I’m only using this list for live session reminders only. Nothing else. SO if you’ve signed up before and you want to get these, you’ll need to sign up again. If this is ALL you want, then sign up and know that I won’t hit you with anything else unless you sign up again on a different form. https://mailchi.mp/e3beabe0a33d/podcast-live-session-updates Shop at lensrentals.com with my affiliate link and I’ll get a small commission of the sale. Use the code "latitude15" at checkout and you'll get 15% off your order. I also have an affiliate link with ThinkTank Photo  Thank you for your support! Main Topic Kirk and Tom, Welcome to the show! Today’s show is all about our experiences in shooting the comet NEOWISE. And really my hope is that we’ll be able to inspire the listeners to get out there and shoot the heavens regardless if there’s a comet or not, but also, when the next comet comes around hopefully they’ll be prepared.  Back in the catalog, May 10 and 13 episodes, we did a two-part series on beginning astrophotography. Those skills are valuable for sure as well, but in this episode, it’s about the fun, the techniques and the results. So let’s get to it. I should mention that the images will be in the show notes and on the podcast listener fb group. I’ll also share them to the Master Photography Podcast facebook group so you can see them there as well if you’d like.  Whitman Mission (Brent) ISO 1600  -  24mm  -  f/4  -  13 seconds  -  Multi Frame Composite. Canon 5D4 This is a blend of two images. With one image processed twice. So in Photoshop it was actually three images. I photographed the wagon while lighting it with my cell phone light. Then I blended those two together to make a seamless image of the wagon nicely lit. Then I processed one of those frames for the sky, making it a bit brighter, and then used a luminosity mask to select the different portions and blend them together. I then did a custom control lighting adjustment layer to tone down the areas in the foreground that got too bright. Random Oklahoma 1 (Tom) This is a composite of two images, one for the foreground and one for the sky. The foreground was shot at 24mm, f/8.0, ⅙ sec, and ISO 100. The sky was a combination of 10 images, stacked to reduce noise. They were shot at 105mm, f/4.0, 5 sec, and ISO 3200 (5 images) and ISO 6400 (5 images). Random Oklahoma 2 (Tom) This is another composite, with the sky composed the same as the previous photo mentioned. The windmill was shot at 105mm, f/8.0, ⅕ sec, and ISO 100. I chose a composite here so I could get some detail on the windmill. Windmill (Brent) ISO 800  -  78mm  -  f/4  -  20 seconds. Mounted on a star tracker. This causes the foreground element to blur a bit but it’s only noticeable when really zoomed in. I still have yet to finish processing this one. I got the foreground much lighter (with a flash light) and I plan to blend it in, we’ll see how that transition goes! Given the movement likely to have some problems. I also made a time lapse on this one and posted a video on making the timelapse to YouTube. Over the wheat field (Brent) ISO 6400 (1600)  -  18mm  -  f/3.5  -  10 seconds This is a composite that was loads of fun to make. I’m an “ISO SNOB” usually, meaning I want to use the lowest ISO possible. For this one I took two exposures. One at 6400 ISO for the sky, and another at 1600 for the wheat. I used a flash light to bump up the light in the 1600 ISO shot and simply did an overlay in PS. It became it’s own luminosity bump of sorts. The end result was higher technical quality in the wheat but also still capturing the comet real nice in the sky. I talked about a similar shot on the Master Photography Podcast that published Aug 6.  Mt Hood and NEOWISE (Kirk) 7/11/20 Sony a7iii Sigma Art 105mm f/1.4 3200 ISO f/2.5 3.2 sec Stack of 15 photos Sky processed separately from foreground.  I wanted to get a photo of the comet where it was a prominent feature of the image. That meant I would need to use a longer than a standard 50mm lens. After seeing online photos taken with everything from ultra wides to 300mm, I decided I wanted to use a lens around 135mm.  With that goal in mind, I started to think about what kind of foreground I could use. I knew the comet would be at a compass direction between N and NE. The first foreground that came to mind was Mt Hood. I searched Google Maps, Google Earth, Stellarium, and PlanIt Pro for Photographers for several hours. I found an excellent location that was 30 miles from the top of Hood. A rented Sigma Art 105 mm f/1.4 lens was used for all the frames. I stopped the lens down to f/2.5 to sharpen the corners of the shots. I used PhotoPills to determine the longest shutter speed I could use and still get the stars to be points. And then, I set my camera’s built-in intervalometer to take 15 images. I took the photos at around 3:20 am as the comet passed over the top.  For processing, my friend Marybeth Kiczenski, shelbydiamondstar on IG and FB, offered to process it for me. Since I love the look of her astro landscape photos, I jumped at her offer. She used Sequator to stack the frames for the sky. She then stacked the same images in Photoshop for the foreground. She then loaded both as layers into Photoshop and applied a mask to blend the two. Next was color grading it using Photoshop’s “Selective Color” function. She flattened the image and then used several functions in Nik Collection. Usually, she uses Topaz Denoise, but she felt this photo didn’t need it. I’m super happy with Marybeth’s results. I think it speaks for itself! Shooting the Perseid Meteors by Kirk Keyes The Perseid meteor shower runs from mid-July to near the end of August. The peak of this year’s shower occurs around August 11, 12, and 13th. There is a quarter Moon up for the latter half of the nights, so that means you’ll want to shoot from when astronomical twilight ends until a bit before the Moonrise. So start around 10 pm until about midnight or 1 am on those nights. You can still shoot after the Moon rises - it’s just that the dimmer meteors will not stand out as much. But the bright ones will still look spectacular!  Photographing meteors is actually not too difficult. You’ll want a camera with manual settings, a wide and fast lens, a tripod, and an intervalometer to trigger the camera.  The Perseid shower is one of the brightest and has one of the greatest number of meteors during the year. They radiate from the NE part of the sky, and can be seen mostly all night from the northern hemisphere. Look for them to stream away from the constellation Perseus. You don’t know where that is, that’s OK. I don’t really either!  So look for the big “W” near the Little Dipper - that’s the constellation Cassiopeia. It’s close to Perseus. You don’t need to aim your camera there, that’s just where the meteors will generally appear to originate. But they will appear all across the sky.  Find as dark of a location as you can as you’ll see more meteors with darker skies. If you can find a foreground subject, that will add interest to your photo, but you will probably catch more meteors if you simply aim the camera overhead! Then put your camera on the tripod and put on a fast and wide lens. Something like a 24mm or wider on full-frame (16mm for APS-C). Then set it to its widest aperture. Adjust your ISO to 1600, and focus on the stars.  Then take some test shots at 10, 15, 20, and 30 seconds. Look at the histogram for each one, and use the exposure time that places the hump on the histogram about 1/3rd from the left side. Don’t use one that’s too far to the middle, as you’ll blow out the sky in your images.  Then, here’s the hard part - set your intervalometer to shoot shot after shot, and let it go! Bring a lawn chair, a blanket or sleeping bag, and something warm to drink. And lay back and watch the show as your camera shoots away! Later, look through your photos. Hopefully you caught some good ones. If it’s a good shower this year with numerous meteors captured, you can blend them onto one image. It makes a cool photo, and you will probably see that the meteors actually do radiate from one location in the sky.

Lady Midnight and the Little Dipper are in prison. A platonic orgy of villains are on the rampage. Can anything save the goddamn city in this series finale? Find us! Email: thepennypeepshow@gmail.com  Twitter: @PennyPeepshow Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PennyPeepshow/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepennypeepshow/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Netta Jenkins and Jacinta Mathis, Co-Founders of the Dipper,  A safe place and community built for professionals of color. Follow the Dipper. In villages from Liberia to Louisiana our ancestors looked to the stars, specifically the Big Dipper and Little Dipper, as a way to lead them on a journey and to a better life. This is why we built Dipper. Our goal is to build a community of professional of colors who are willing to share their experience, insights, and truth regarding their experience within the workplace.  https://www.ourdipper.com. 

A day off turns into an off day when Lady Midnight and the Little Dipper take time out to do whatever it is you're supposed to do at an air show. Find us! Email: thepennypeepshow@gmail.com  Twitter: @PennyPeepshow Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PennyPeepshow/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepennypeepshow/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For video, quotes, and talking points from this Town Hall, please head over to the Design Exec Club Website.Hosted by:Mark Bergin - Founder & CEO of DRIVENxDESIGN - Linkedin, Instagram, TwitterPanelists: Gurvinder Khurana - Co-owner and Design Director at alignWilliam Knight - Director at The Renew ConsultancyMichael Lambrianos - Managing Director at Wiesner Hager UKChristine Losecaat MBE FRSA- Founder and CEO at Little Dipper, Chair and Trustee at ADVANCE charityPippa Nissen - Director Nissen Richards StudioPhil Nutley - Head of Experience Design at CCD Design & ErgonomicsPaul Priestman - Chairman at PriestmanGoode Notes and Publication: Lucy GrantPodcast Production: Patrick Daly

Most stars don’t change much over time scales that we can see. Instead, the changes play out over millions or billions of years. But one star is undergoing dramatic changes over scales of decades. That’s allowing astronomers to watch it evolve in real time. T Ursae Minoris is in Ursa Minor, the little bear. As night falls, it’s above the Little Dipper The star is nearing the end of its life. As a result, the nuclear reactions in its core aren’t stable. That causes changes in the star’s outer layers. And those changes create cycles in the star’s brightness. Until about 40 years ago, it had one main cycle, which lasted a bit more than 10 months. Since then, though, that period has dropped to about six and a half months. And another cycle has emerged. It lasts about three and a half months. A recent study concluded that the second period showed up thanks to a “helium flash.” A shell of helium around the star’s core suddenly ignited, converting the helium to carbon. Comparing the two cycles allowed researchers to compile a complete dossier on the star. They found that it was born 1.2 billion years ago. It’s 1.7 times the mass of the Sun, and almost 300 times the Sun’s diameter. Overall, the star is getting smaller and fainter. But things should turn around in about 50 years, when the star will start getting bigger and brighter. And within a hundred thousand years, it’ll blow away its outer layers, leaving only its dead core – the final phase for a star that’s changing in a hurry.   Script by Damond Benningfield

Harry helps Draco to cast his patronus. After a storm in the hollow, Harry comes across a creature in need, stuck in the snow.  *Sorry for the added noise on the recording, but it's pouring rain up here in the mountains! 

The gang gives updates on their various work from home experiences. Erin tells a story but the story is a joke so don't interrupt her. Ian hides gum from Hannah around the home. Hannah has been making pretty sparkly things to keep the darkness at bay. Erin got a delightfully correct surprise from a bookstore in Wisconsin. Ben has FINISHED Final Fantasy 7 Remake since last week's episode! HOMEWORK:  - Check out Hannah's photos of her Diamond Dotz projects and if they look interesting, get some for yourself! - Visit honestdogbooks.square.site and try out their "Surprise Me" offer - Play Final Fantasy 7 Remake already!! - Watch Ben stream the original Final Fantasy 7 on Twitch - CALL US AND TELL US YOUR OBSESSION! 774-326-0420 - Follow @Nicelyprovedben, @Hanthropology, and @TooBroadPod on Twitter - Watch Ben on twitch.tv/discogreg  - Watch Erin on twitch.tv/ernbrn_og  - Watch Hannah on twitch.tv/hanthropology - Follow WayTooBroad on IG - Email us at waytoobroad@gmail.com - Listen to So Dreamy - Visit ernbrn.com - www.waytoobroad.com for anything you want - www.ernben.com for anything you need - queerworksmap.com - Please leave us a rating/review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening!

In this episode, I interview Kate Block of The Little Dipper. We discuss how she stumbled upon her passion for therapeutic bodywork, and how she uses yoga to bring space & mind-body awareness into the lives of those she works with. By offering uniquely tailored services to meet the physical and emotional needs of each client, her goal is to help you get unstuck, feel good in your body, and find your true north. - Follow the link to our website below where you'll be able to access the FULL show notes with time stamps and links to all the resources mentioned throughout the episode. - Our goal with the Pursuit of Authenticity podcast is to share knowledge to create a physically, mentally, and emotionally stronger version of you. If you enjoy the episode, show your support by leaving a review and/or sharing it out with friends or family who may benefit from the podcast as well. And be sure to subscribe to be notified of future episodes! Resources: https://www.instagram.com/jason_crandell/ Power yoga, anatomy, mindfulness https://www.instagram.com/julesyoga/ Biomechanics https://yinyoga.com/ Bernie Clark - Yin yoga https://www.dr-moshe.com/content/4-about-Dr-Moshe how to speak with your clients to help them become more aware - canadian naturopath - inspired her heart sessions https://www.thisislittledipper.com/program Empowered Yoga & Bodywork program https://facebook.com/pg/littledipperGR/events Upcoming events Find Little Dipper at The Wellness Collective in Grand Rapids, MI. Schedule via email at: kate@thisislittledipper.com or go to her website to learn more http://thisislittledipper.com. Find her on Facebook and Instagram at @LittledipperGR. Find show notes: https://poastrengthandwellness.com/archives/10765 Connect with us: www.facebook.com/POAstrengthandwellness www.instagram.com/POAstrengthandwellness

To save her little sister, young Marie scales a mountain to retrieve healing water. The hike back down, however, is fraught with hardship and temptation.

Welcome to the Rural Revival podcast. I'm your host Danna Larson. We're in Brimfield, Illinois (pop. 933) this week on the podcast with Mikaela Endress and Kami Stahl of Kamaela's Kreamery. Mikaela is a student and Kami is a farmer, and together these two best friends have a pop up ice cream shop in a vintage trailer called Little Dipper, and can be found hitting up fun locations across Illinois all summer long. Kami and Mikaela are sharing about how this all started as a dream when they were four years old and riding their bikes to the local ice cream store.You will love everything about this story, and how much fun these girls - and their customers - are having with this business. And while Kamaela's Kreamery may be closed for the winter and Little Dipper tucked away on the farm, they've got some great things coming when they open again in the spring. They will definitely be on our road trip route next summer, and we hope you put them on yours as well!Check out more on the blog.SHOW NOTES:Cinnamon Tree FarmIllinois Central CollegeIllinois State UniversityNo Roots BootsRock Island TrailInstagram: @kamaelaskreameryFacebook: @kamaelaskreamery

⭐️ Coffee ☕️ Cheers under the ⭐️ stars ⭐️ watching the Little Dipper next to a warm fire w Milo

Hey there, folks! Sorry it's taken me so long to get these upcoming episodes posted, but I fell so damn far behind last week and I'm just scrambling to catch up. Thank you so much to Melanie for commissioning these episodes! The two episodes I'm covering here are Fight Fighters and Little Dipper, and both deal with Dipper trying to get some leverage and respect from people he thinks don't see him as grown-up or tough. The first one is mostly about putting one of Wendy's suitors out of the picture, and the second one is literally about him growing. This show is so much fun. Thanks for listening!

Today we learn that these chips are not ridged for pleasure, but for oral discomfort. We encounter alligators, crocodiles and the ice cream truck while debating who is the Big Dipper and who is the Little Dipper. Links: The opposite of fancy | Orangette

DESOLATION SOUNDS PODCAST EPISODE 8 - HIGHWAY OUT THE COMFORT ZONE Albums are thin on the ground this week, mostly due to Steven dropping water on his laptop but these things happen (apparently).News coming into the Desolation Sounds Podcast this week includes studio updates from Incubus and DevilDriver, there's more festival announcements from 2000 Trees and Slam Dunk, and Canadian punk outfit PUP have gone DIY with their album with the launch of their own label Little Dipper.There's also news on all the new music from the week, featuring Architects, Blood Command, Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes, Devin Townsend and the aforementioned PUP.For album reviews this week, Steven is taking one big, floaty step out of his comfort zone into the worlds of indie pop with newcomers Tallies and post-metal with favourites A Swarm of the Sun. Finally, to celebrate the announcement of their third album, the Open Mic album for this week goes to the debut album of Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes: Blossom.This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

KGO Radio's Jason Middleton talks with Rosabel Tao of Cunningham Collective about what can be learned from United's PR fiasco.

Guest: Christi Beth Adams, running community leader Today, I’m joined by Christi Beth Adams, the owner of Nashville’s Fleet Feet sports stores. She shares her journey from starting out as a 4th grade runner in small-town Kentucky to earning a collegiate track scholarship to managing her own successful athletic shops. She also explains how the shared experience of putting one foot in front of the other connects runners everywhere and discusses what led her to make Fleet Feet one of the first supporters of the Heroes 6K race series, which celebrates addiction and mental health recovery across the country. For more about Recovery Unscripted, visit http://recoveryunscripted.org For more about Fleet Feet, visit http://fleetfeetnashville.com For more about the Heroes 6K race series, visit http://heroes6k.com Music from this episode: "The Ache" by David Condos - URL: davidcondos.com "Little Dipper" by Podington Bear - URL: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Podington_Bear/Daydream/Little_Dipper_1829 - Composer: Chad Crouch "Massive" by Podington Bear - URL: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Podington_Bear/Driving/Massive - Composer: Chad Crouch "Ronny" by Alex Fitch - URL: URL: freemusicarchive.org/music/Alex_Fit…ola/Ronny_1253

Thanks to Nicole for the lovely donation to keep the lights on. We are starting a new weight loss challenge, join today at www.logicalloss.com/challenge17 FROM THE EMAIL BAG You mentioned how “instant oatmeal” is not the same as it was ten years ago. I like oatmeal, and eat it most weekdays. I make it in a small “Crock Pot” that is intended for things like dip, fondue, etc. I think it’s called the “Little Dipper” ($14.95)– capacity of 16 oz. I use McCann’s Steel Cut Oats, put in a 1/4 cup, and then add 10 oz of water. Plug it in when I go to bed, and in the morning it is perfectly done. Stir, add a little milk, or whatever you prefer as “milk” and you are ready! I also drink OJ in the morning, but I “cut it” 50/50 with non-sodium seltzer. BTW, the McCann’s comes in a can and retails for about 5.99 for 20 servings, so it’s economical too. -Carol I've been enjoying the podcast for quite some time now. Thanks for keeping at it!  And congratulations on your 30lb loss last year. That's awesome! Question for you - I know that you have mentioned some weight loss challenge apps in the past. Some co-workers want to do a weight loss challenge but they want to raise money for a charity that we support. Do you have any recommendations on an app that they could use to do that? I would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks! Longtime fan, Nikki in SoCal Weight Loss Challenges - Websites and Resources I haven't talked about this in a while, and I went and look at and some of the resources of the past have gone away (well, that's the internet, and it's also hard to stay in business when you charge 0.00) Here are a couple that seem up to date My Weight Loss Challenge Spreadsheet. If you just need a spreadsheet where all the math is done for you, here it is. Diet Bet Dietbet.com is one of the top sites. It allows you to have teams, and they have kickstarters (4% weight loss), Challenges (for most % of body weight), and they have bets for those who want to maintain. Check it out at dietbet.com Heathwage Healthwage has got a lot of press coverage that just pays you to lose weight. You put in how much you want to lose, how long you want to lost it, and it calculates a prize. For me I told it I wanted to lose 15 pounds of 6 months. It said I would need to lose 20 and I would earn $133 (I would have put in 120 which is 11% return). I am at a weight that I don't think I could get that low. (I lost 30 lbs last year). Meltodwn Challenge I really liked this one, and started  challenge. IT STARTS TODAY so get in on this now! This has an app, and you can easily setup a group, or if you want have it go to charity, or have some of it go to the person running it (which we did in my case to pay for it). Stickk Stickk.com is an interesting twist meant for ANY resolution. You pick a referee to keep you accountable. You can earn money, or motivate yourself by having your money go to something you hate. Check it out at stickk.com Thintopia and Fatbet Both of these sites are still around. They help people login and track their weight and you see the progress. With Dietbet, Healthwage, and Stickk, there is some sort of anti-cheat involved (videos, pictures, etc) These two sites (both free) operate on the honor system. Fatbet is at fatbet.net and Thintopia is Thintopia.com Join the Challenge Today

The mind’s ability to envision more than what is physically present in the world is an astounding fact of life. We’re always imagining, thinking, and living in our heads. Our thoughts and our imaginations shape how we see the world, they shape our words and our actions. This is nothing new. We’ve been doing this for all our lives. as far as we can remember. But that’s why we take a closer look and ask the question: how do our imagined lives shape our reality? What happens day to day at the frontier between the worlds we imagine and the worlds we inhabit. Host: Justine Beed Producers: Justine Beed and Natacha Ruck with help from Louis Lafair, Amabel Stokes, Alec Glassford, Tamu Adumer, Joshua Hoyt, Austin Meyer, Claire Schoen, Christy Hartman, Will Rogers, Albert Gehami, Jonah Willihnganz, and Jake Warga Featuring: John Rick, Tamu Adumer, Louis Lafair, Terry Root, Louie Psihoyos, WonGi Jung, Austin Meyer, Amabel Stokes, Alec Glassford, Max Whitmeyer, Nina Donaldson, Maria Doerr, Liam Bhajan, Jeffrey Abidor, Emma Fisher, Natacha Ruck, and Jackson Roach Music and Sounds: See storytelling.stanford.edu for full list of music and sounds used in this episode Image via Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kainkalju/5894855297 Story 1: Birth of Imagination Description: What happened the first time humans used imagination to shape the world? Producers: Tamu Adumer and Natacha Ruck Featuring: Professor John Rick Image via Wikimedia: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bifa…o_(Madrid).png Story 2: One Quinoa Burger At A Time Description: Can imagination help one student tackle one of the biggest problems of our time? Producer: Louis Lafair Featuring: Terry Root and Louie Psihoyos Music: "T-Shirt Weather," "Little Dipper," "Pure Swell," "Funk," and "Boop" by Podington Bear Photo via the Stanford Review: stanfordreview.org/article/is-stan…conserve-water/ Story 3: My Imaginary Girlfriend Description: How hard can it be to break up with an imaginary girlfriend? Producer: WonGi Jung with help from Justine Beed Featuring: WonGi Jung Image via StoryNight Story 4: Double Banded Dream Description: In this story, we venture into the land of dreams and investigate how imagination can endanger reality. Producers: Austin Meyer and Joshua Hoyt Featuring: Austin Meyer Music: "Nothing Lasts" by Alexandre Desplat and "Gnossienne No. 2: Avec étonnement" and “Gynopédie No. 1”by Erik Satie Image via Wikimedia: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wedding_rings.jpg Story 5: The Periphery Description: In this story we dive deep into the head of a coffee shop vigilante and listen to her thoughts as she tries to save the day. Producers: Amabel Stokes, Justine Beed Writer: Amabel Stokes Featuring: Amabel Stokes, Alec Glassford, Max Whitmeyer, Nina Donaldson, Maria Doerr, Justine Beed, Liam Bhajan, Jeffrey Abidor, Emma Fisher, and Jackson Roach Music and Sounds: See storytelling.stanford.edu for full list of music and sounds used in this piece Image via Unsplash: unsplash.com/photos/k_RYBedEvDw

The North Star will shine on this message when the night sky braces for the Polarizing energy of Polaris, a major son of Ursa Minor called the Little Dipper...For there is no shine of insight that Polaris prefers more than the winged flight insight that the Birds of earth pattern of stories spoken in the heavens. For now the oven door of Lucifer's incubation of the "Birds" open that truth may fly to kiss Polaris who despises the deeds of Draco the constellation Dragon... and who for centuries beyond centuries has wanted the story about the "Birds" of Lucifer told. Go to now, wait not long, but let your feet prepare to rush forward to carry the audio of your mind that it may turn its receiver on. JERRY O. LEE, D.D., THE MANIFESTER .COM

special guest zach doarn joins us in the bad parent studio. justin verifies zach's parent cred. colds and strep throat suck at foreplay. satan's swampy ass crack. baby fever causes babies. justin's drunk love for his truck. cheeseboogers. people sticking their noses in your parenting business. jake calls in. how's … Continue reading

With: Alex Hirsch (Creator and Excutive Producer), Mike Rianda (Creative Director), Robert "Rob" Renzetti (Supervising Producer). Dipper finds a magic crystal with the ability to grow and shrink anything, but Gideon gets his hands on it and tries to get revenge on Stan and take the Mystery Shack.

The Little Dipper.

Episode #5 emphasizes astrology with JoAnne Brasil, writer and astrologer, telling us about the astrological charts of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, as well as her usual monthly report on what the stars are doing. Then we'll hear two poems written and read by Ralph Jack (who plays the flute as well). This episode is about 20 minutes long. Keywords: Astrology, JoAnne Brasil, John McCain, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Joe Biden, Big Religion, US banking system, mortgage scandal, Cassiopeia, Orion, Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Mercury retrograde, Halloween, Presidential Election, Ralph Jack, “Don't Let Dogs Yawn,” “Your Day To Lollygag,”