Happy New Year!!! May it be the best one yet.

In honor of the new year we’ve put together a new Whirling Rainbow podcast – Whirling New Year. It’s a tasty mix of funk, jazz, rock and world that should put a smile on your face. And it might make you get up and dance too. It’s 1-1/2 hrs. long.

Listen here.

Playlist.

We hope that you enjoy the show. Feedback is always appreciated.
———–
RoZ & Obbie

This is what our back yard looked like two months ago. We had not yet had our first frost, so we were still harvesting tomatoes, purple pole beans, assorted peppers, and a few forms of food growing from the ground. Two months to the day after this picture was taken we had to deal with a back yard that looks like this….

Last weekend, we received a series of pictures and videos from a family member in Houston. They were reveling in the “snowstorm” they were experiencing, a “snowstorm” that consisted of ice crystals more than snowflakes, and added up to what to us looked like a pathetic dusting.

So…

Do you wanna see snow?!?

I’LL show you snow!!

And then Obbie will have to shovel it….

so that we can get to the garage…..

The Beaver House was originally built as a farm house in the Kickapoo River valley north of La Farge in the early 20th century. As most houses built during that period, its wood frame was built from large, dense and durable wood… virgin timber indigenous to the region. Many homes from that era remain sturdier than similar homes of much more recent vintage.

The Beaver House was so solid that it survived a move of nearly 20 miles, over a ridge and into the next valley along steep and winding roads. In the late seventies, construction started on a dam that would have put the Beaver House at the bottom of a lake, so the house was picked up and deposited on a piece of land in the headwaters of the Pine River valley north of Yuba.

Read on →

Something cool happened in the sky tonight.

When Venus is high in the sky after sunset, every month there is a chance that the passing crescent moon will pass close by.

But we are struggling to remember the last time we saw them this close.

Here’s the ‘wide’ look at the sky.

This next shot was taken at 6:30…

At about 8, I went out to get another picture, where you can see how much the Moon moves in an hour and a half…

Sorry if you missed it!

In the next several weeks of nooze chatter, we won’t hear about the war, the Libby trial, the dismal state of the economy, the emergency of global warming, or any of the other urgent issues that cry for public attention.

Instead, we’ll incessantly hear about the new soap opera where an astronaut drove 900 miles in diapers to steal the heart of another astronaut from yet another astronaut. If this story involved airline pilots, we’d hear nothing about it except for a little blurb in “weird news.”

This is the new distraction, folks. The infatuated astronaut will dominate the headlines for months to come. Don’t be distracted.

Keep your eye on the ball.

(or, as our dear old friend Molly used to say, “always watch the shell with the pea under it.”)

Molly Ivins left us today.

I’d write more of a tribute if I had more time tonight. The best tribute I can offer right now is to ask you to click on the link above and peruse some of her columns.

We always looked forward to a new column from Molly. She was fun to read, and she could be amusing, astute and accurate at the same time. She will be missed.

James Brown.

At least that’s who I’m thinking about when I see the lowered flags.

A couple of years ago they were lowered for Ray Charles.

But I’m really getting sick of old presidents stealing the spotlight when great musicians are making their final exits. Before Ray Charles, Kurt Cobain was the previous victim of this. There are probably more.