Quasi-Spring Break

Not a bad spring break, if you could call it that, since temps hovered down toward the freezing end of the thermometer most days, with the bonus of cold rain several times and a light snow at least twice. The equinox has come and gone, and so has the new year's day of March 25. Orion tilts toward the southwest in the evening, and there are more birds around that before. But all those things don't quite add up to spring, which won't be till I can sit on my deck and read.

Missed the perigee full moon on the March 19. "The biggest moon in 18 years," said National Geographic on its web site. I'm sure it was up there somewhere over northeastern Illinois, but an overcast sky denied me the sight.

Last Thursday afternoon I went downtown with Ann. At Dearborn and Adams at about 5:45, we passed by a small demonstration. Why they were at that particular location, I couldn't say. Ann was eager to keep going, so I barely had a moment to document the scene, taking this shot from across the street and on the flip side of a banner that said "Stop the War on Libya Now!" Almost the entire group is in the image, plus a handful of passersby.

The building in the background is the 1.5 million-square-foot Citadel Center. I inadvertently captured an image of its copy of the Winged Victory (Nike) of Samothrace in the lobby -- the golden shape in the upper right.

Last week I also learned that Utah now has an official state firearm, the Browning M1911 semiautomatic pistol, along with a state tree, animal, fish and cooking pot (the Dutch oven). I'm glad the Utah legislature was able to take time out to tackle that subject. It reminded of a graffito I saw in a bathroom in the early '80s in Logan, Utah. "Don't sing in the shower," it said. "Utah shoots john singers."