Sunspot 798/808 flared twice more yesterday, and at least one of the X-class explosions propelled a coronal mass ejection (CME) toward Earth. NOAA forecasters estimate a 70% chance of severe geomagnetic activity when the CME arrives--perhaps tonight, Sept. 14-15. Sky watchers at all latitudes should be alert for auroras.

Observing tips: Although auroras are sometimes bright enough to shine through city lights, you'll see more from a dark-sky site in the countryside. The best time to look is usually during the hours around local midnight.

12:05:38 PM    comment []  trackback []  

Yesterday I acquired the keys to the little empty storefront. Sally-from-the-valley brought some boxes of books to stock the someday Sale bin and together we inspected the place, which appears smaller and dingier every time I see it.

I drove home in the repaired pickup, except it isn't repaired after all. I don't know what to do next. I'm out of funds for the foreseeable future and still have to haul in hay and wood: even unladen the truck had overheated by the time I reached my house. My little draft animal wants to be retired.

I was worried about Mark Boyd, who writes the Salon blog small ponderings from western North Carolina. He and the blog went silent as Hurricane Ophelia approached the Carolinas several days ago. I had a quick email from him last night, though (and a couple of nice comments here): he and K are on the coast, in the eye of the storm, and won't be back on their mountain until Friday. Email and phone communications are sketchy, at best, but at least I can say the Boyds are unharmed.

I watched a film last night called Limbo. It's a John Sayles movie from 1999. It was supremely strange, with an ending that seemed to strand me in limbo.

I'll drive those bookshelves in to town, to the store, again today, and take brooms and rags and a couple of garbage cans. The previous tenants are not quite out, and I have permission to finish up for them in order to make enough space in the back room to paint my shelves.

I fluctuate between the absurd optimism that so often drives me, an excess of faith in my ability to make things happen, and the disheartening realization that this can never work in a million years. I look around--silence, no traffic, across the street an elderly woman shuffles slowly down the sidewalk--and realize I'm about to open a store in a ghost town, a community whose self-esteem is a notch below Kafka's, as Woody Allen would say.

I'd better take my vitamins and develop an ad strategy.
6:33:48 AM    comment []  trackback []