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Cozy with Chemistry

Chemistry — we couldn’t live without it.

Metals that don’t fit a child’s preconceived notion. Bubbling and fizzing. Also cakes and cookies rising.

Beakers and flasks and distilling apparatus. Hot plates and coated magnets stirring liquids.

Wear your safety glasses. Douse the match with water. Assume the other person in the lab is working on explosives.

Ah — memories of chemistry classes and labs and analyzers.

On this National Periodic Table Day — I’m looking for recommendations of Marie Curie biographies to read with snuggled under the Elements. Do you have one?

STARE DOWN hero Dave Holmes, pondered and learned from this graphic during undergrad and medical school. Find out more about Dave as a person, not a surgeon, here: http://amzn.to/1LXiTwP This sweet romance is set in St. Louis.

Blog

After Totality

In case you’ve been hibernating — we had a solar eclipse yesterday.

From Oregon to South Carolina, the media this last week or more has been filled with information and advice for viewing. (Wear the special glasses!) Since I happen to live in one of the areas in the direct path of the eclipse, my plans were simple.

From my front door I needed to walk a matter of yards to find a spot on the lawn with a good view. Joined by other residents of my condo, we chatted and traded memories of other, partial, eclipses. The tricky part for me was photographs. Rather than risk the sensor on the camera, I turned around and got images of the shadows.

I have never seen this pattern on my sidewalk near the oak tree before.

This was taken ten minutes or less after totality.