November 2019

Neatness Counts
World Museum of Mining
Butte, Montana
2019

The Mechanical Arts #6
World Museum of Mining
Butte, Montana
2019

The Mechanical Arts #5
World Museum of Mining
Butte, Montana
2019

Good For What Ails You
World Museum of Mining
Butte, Montana
2019

Good Spot
World Museum of Mining
Butte, Montana
2019

Even though the sun was shining it was a cold, blustery day when I was at the World Museum of Mining and I was uncomfortable the whole time because I did not dress warmly enough. So when I came around the corner and saw this cat curled up in the sun out of the wind, I was quite tempted to go share it’s spot for a while. I did not figure it would appreciate the intrusion though so I soldiered on in the cold.

The Mechanical Arts #4
World Museum of Mining
Butte, Montana
2019

The Mechanical Arts #3
World Museum of Mining
Butte, Montana
2019

The Mechanical Arts
World Museum of Mining
Butte, Montana
2019

The Mechanical Arts #1
World Museum of Mining
Butte, Montana
2019

The subjects of my photographs have broadened and evolved over the years but some trends, in this case photos of gears and other mechanical devices, have stayed strong and constant over time it seems. The photo above was taken just a couple of weeks ago. The one below, published in a photo contest in what was then The Wichita Eagle-Beacon newspaper, I took back about 1971. Perhaps not surprisingly (I have a tendency to be attracted to such places) both photos were of defunct equipment associated with mining; copper mining in Butte in the current case and gold mining somewhere in Colorado in the older photo.

Music Lesson
Bozeman, Montana
2019

…to my listening ears
all nature sings
and round me rings
the music of the spheres.

–Maltbie E. Babcock

The music of the spheres, more formally known as musica universalis (universal music) is a concept traceable to the ancient Greeks.  Pythagoras, in an extension of his finding of an inverse relationship between the pitch of a musical note and the length of the string that produced it, claimed that the sun, moon, and planets also emit unique harmonic sounds based on the speeds of their orbits. Further he claimed that while the sounds are not detectable to the human ear, they did somehow affect the quality of life on Earth. Some proponents of the theory  claimed we can’t hear the sounds because they’re there when we are born and thus indistinguishable from silence.

Aristotle later discounted the notion in explaining his own model of the universe yet the ideas persisted. Much later the noted astronomer Johannes Kepler expressed belief in the concept and folded it into his own theory of the connection between music and astronomy. He claimed that while inaudible to the ear the planetary music produced a “very agreeable feeling of bliss.” (Some of us must not be listening carefully enough!)

The concept is still popular today, although mostly in music rather than science–and now of course in this new composite photo I created.