At the Healing-in-Progress Café...

 

... you can talk about whatever you want. 

 

Yes! I was able to get out and do my sunrise run this morning. Photos taken at 7:23 and 7:25. Unfortunately, there was 100% cloud cover, but the temperature was a nicely warmed up to 20°. The next 2 days are going to be too cold again — 2 below tomorrow at sunrise and 1 below on Saturday — but then it looks like there will be a stretch of sunrise-runnable days — at least until next Thursday or Friday. By then, we'll be launched into February, and February won't be as cold as January... probably. Plus, it's short. I can already feel the spring approaching. Certainly, the darkest 20% of the year is over. We're entering the most balanced days, in terms of light and darkness, and I like that.

Sunrise — 7:24, 7:29.

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Sunrise — 7:20.

It was too cold for a full-scale sunrise run this morning, but I bundled up for a short walk to a vantage point.

I liked the view out over the frost-coated cattails...

The extra steam from the University power plant did the diffusion work normally performed by clouds...

 

You can see all the clear sky...

 

Meade was waiting for me in the truck, and he took this shot as the sun broke through...

 

He assures me that I am in that picture. 

Here's how the breakthrough of the sun looked to me....

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk about whatever you like.

Sunrise panorama.

Time: 7:21.

Icy Lake Mendota in the morning and afternoon.

It finally warmed up enough to do the sunrise run...

... about 30° at 7:27 when I took that photograph. 

Later, we drove out to a place in Madison that I'd never even noticed before, Governor's Island:

 

This is land that had belonged to a governor in the 19th century, that became the Wisconsin Hospital for the Insane, later called Mendota Mental Health Institute. It's where Ed Gein lived out his last years. 

We enjoyed our sojourn around the beautifully scenic location. It was about 40° at 3:20, and we walked out onto the Lake Mendota ice... just a little way...

 

Watch out, if you go. There are, I hear, some "puddles." 

I liked the view from the bluff...

 

Notice how the ice piles up in frozen "waves" along the shore. 

We walked the entire loop of the small island, then drove home around to our side of the lake, where we got a glimpse of the sunset... 

... as we entered the car wash:

ADDED: One more photo. This one by Meade:

At the Black Ice Café... you can talk about whatever you want.

It finally warmed up enough that I could take an afternoon walk. I hadn't seen the lake in 7 days, and those very cold days had transformed the lake:

There's some beautiful glassy-clear ice on the lake. Look out there:

2 ice skaters with 2 dogs:

Higher up, the prairie and the sunset:

5:22 a.m.

That's today, the 9th of the 10 days with the earliest sunrise time, 5:17.

I was there at 5:17, but the sun had not yet broken over the shoreline.



I don't have a view of the horizon. The first direct bit of sun became visible at 5:20:



You see why I picked 5:22 as the best. It wasn't because I was 5 minutes "late." I wasn't late! Were you?

At the Pre-Dawn Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

The photo was taken at 5:10 a.m. today, the 8th of the 10 days when the sun rises at 5:17, the earliest sunrise time of the year.

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I didn't think it would work...

... but you actually can point your iPhone camera directly at the sun.

To the eye, the sun looked perfectly orange and the sky was blue. The camera interpreted the sun as white, and that required the sky to be perfectly orange.

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can write until dawn.

That photo was taken at 5:20 this morning, the 7th of the 10 mornings with the earliest sunrise of the year — officially: 5:17.

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At the Sunrise Café...

... you can write until dawn.

That photo was taken at 5:19 this morning — the 6th of the 10 days with a 5:17 actual sunrise, the earliest sunrises of the year.

Here's how it looked — at my secondary vantage point — at 5 a.m.:



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"The scope of what some museums now call 'rapid response collecting' has expanded significantly in recent years."

"Curators often mingle with crowds, scoop up fliers and ask people to part with signs, or perhaps a piece of clothing. Such collecting has taken place at demonstrations around the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015, and during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., after the death of Michael Brown."

From "Museums Collect Protest Signs to Preserve History in Real Time/Curators surveyed the area outside the White House on Wednesday for artifacts that will help record the emotional turmoil" (NYT).

They swoop in.

This morning, driving to the sunrise, at the turtle crossing, we saw birds picking over the smashed body of a plate-sized turtle.



I thought: How mean of the birds. But the birds didn't smash the turtle. Yes, but they delighted in the corpse.

Sunrise, 5:19.

The "actual" sunrise time was 5:17.

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Lake Mendota at 4:49 a.m.

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

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What does a bird symbolize?

Sunrise, captured at its predictable time — it was 5:19 — with the sudden appearance of a bird. Seeing it only now, as I process this morning's photographs, I wonder what does a bird symbolize?

The internet answers most simplistically: Freedom!

Which cues "Ballad in Plain D"...

Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me
“How good, how good does it feel to be free?”
And I answer them most mysteriously
“Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?

ADDED: I have made a study of the birds of the Bible, and I have produced a list of 8 quotations, which I've ranked in the order that seemed right to me:

8. Matthew 8:20 — "Jesus replied, 'Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.'"

7. Ezekiel 38:20 — "The fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the beasts of the field, every creature that moves along the ground, and all the people on the face of the earth will tremble at my presence. The mountains will be overturned, the cliffs will crumble and every wall will fall to the ground."

6. Psalm 50:11 — "I know every bird in the mountains, and the insects in the fields are mine."

5. Ecclesiastes 9:12 — "Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them."

4. Job 12:7-8 — "But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you."

3. Psalm 102:7  — "I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins. I lie awake; I have become like a bird alone on a roof. All day long my enemies taunt me; those who rail against me use my name as a curse."

2. Matthew 6:26 — "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"

1. Job 41:1-5 —"Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope? Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook? Will it keep begging you for mercy? Will it speak to you with gentle words? Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life? Can you make a pet of it like a bird or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?"

Day 1 of the 10 days of the 5:17 sunrise — the earliest sunrise time of the year.

It looked as though it was going to be an overcast sunrise, with, at best, some bumpily textured clouds — a Type #2 sunrise. But as I reached my vantage point — 0.7 miles into my run — I saw I had "The Broiler" — Type #7!

I don't think I've ever reached my vantage point in time for one of these broilers. They tend to disappear by the sunrise time, so I catch them from my car window or the parking lot, or I make a quick stop and see them at my secondary vantage point. But today, I didn't know it was happening, because the sun is positioned so far north right now that I don't get an advance look as I'm doing the run. And then I caught the view at 5:16:



I presume it was broiling even more hotly a minute or 2 or 3 before that point, because it was fading fast. Here's how it looked a minute later, at 5:17, the "actual" sunrise time:



And one minute after that, at 5:18, it had calmed down into this:



A minute later it had descended into the Type #2 format that was all I had expected. The lesson is: If you want to catch The Broiler, get to your vantage point 5 minutes before the actual sunrise — even if it's the earliest sunrise of the year.

At the Sunrise Café...

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