March 14, 2025

REMINDER: YOUR SUBMISSIONS ARE ENCOURAGED

Overview for this week.

1. Monday is St. Patrick's Day, so get your green on, get out, and enjoy your local parade, and may every pedal of the shamrock bring you luck. Above all, be safe.

2. Kilauea is still erupting, bringing beautiful sunsets to the Big Island. Recently, a park visitor caught a vortex of hot air and lava, known as a "lavanado", rising from the surface of Kilauea's lava lake.

3. In The Heavens, next Thursday, the Vernal Equinox, is the end of winter and the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere.

4. In Poetry, I have a spring poem by sixteenth-century cenyury poet Thomas Nashe.

5. To go along with the vernal equinox this week, I'm looking at a public artwork here in Tucson, the Sun Circle, a ceremonial structure in the Rillito River Park that acts as an astronomical calendar tracking the movement of the sun and delineating the equinoxes and solstices.

6. In Around Town: This weekend is the 2025 edition of the Tucson Festival of Books at the University of Arizona Mall. The free two-day Festival features over 100 authors spanning a broad range of genres. Visitors can attend book panels, workshops, seminars, exhibitor booths, and signings.

7. In closing this week, I have a link to the Big Bear Bald Eagle Live Nest Cam in Big Bear, California. Eagle parents Jackie and Shadow are raising new hatchlings in their nest, looking out over Bi Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains. Check-in on the live cam during daylight hours, and you might catch a glimpse of the hatchlings.

Now, to this week's Flock.

This coming Monday is St. Patrick's Day, commemorating the day that St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, died in the fifth century. Celebrated as a religious holiday in Ireland for over 1,000 years, Its celebration has followed the Irish diaspora around the world, and today is observed by wearing green, attending a St. Patrick's Day parade, imbibing a post-lent libation, or enjoying a traditional Irish meal like corned beef and cabbage.

From: History.com, March 4, 2025

St. Patrick’s Day, named for Ireland’s patron saint, is celebrated around the world on March 17 with parades and other festivities. The earliest recorded parade was held in 1601 in what is now St. Augustine, Florida. The parade, and a St. Patrick’s Day celebration a year earlier, were organized by the Spanish Colony's Irish vicar Ricardo Artur. 

In the 1760s in New York City Irishmen serving in the British military organized their own St. Patrick's Day parade. During the 1800s, when Irish Catholic immigrants faced discrimination in Protestant-majority America, St. Paddy’s Day parades became an opportunity to show strength in numbers. Today, cities across the U.S. have longstanding traditions of St. Patrick’s Day parades, and the holiday is commemorated by people of many ethnic backgrounds. However, in Ireland, where St. Patrick’s Day has been a religious feast day since the 17th century and a public holiday since 1903, it wasn’t until the late 20th century that the government started sponsoring a large-scale, international festival and parade in Dublin, the capital city.

The Kilauea Volcano has been erupting since January, creating beautiful sunsets on The Big Island. At the end of last month, a volcano watcher at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park caught a rare phenomenon sometimes associated with lava lakes called a "lavanado" on video. A lavanado is a whirlwind of air that forms when hot surface air rises and forms a tight, narrow spiral, usually between half a meter and 10 meters in diameter. It is more similar to dust devils, common to the Great Plains and the deserts of the Southwest, than a tornado. Lavanados can reach wind speeds of up to 60 mph and can fling small slabs of lava from the cooling lava lake surface.

From: USA Today, By: Saman Shafiq, March 6, 2025

As the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii erupted again last week, lava was captured spinning into the air like a dust devil, creating a "lavanado."

Stunning video footage captured by Scott Malis on Feb. 26 during the volcano's 11th episode shows lava spewing out of the volcano and spinning into the air, creating what Malis said was a "lavanado." Malis told USA TODAY the rare occurrence took place around 4 a.m. and lasted for about five minutes.

"The heat from the from the lava mixes with the cool air on the mountain and (creates) a tornado like action, like the funnel cloud," Malis said.

"Lavanado" spotted as volcano erupts

Next Thursday, March 20, is the vernal equinox, the official end of winter and the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. The vernal equinox gets its name from the Latin word "ver," meaning "spring." The hours of daylight and night will be relatively equal on the equinox. After the equinox, the days will grow longer than the nights until the summer solstice.

From: Country Living, By: Jill Gleeson and Terri Robertson

It happens every March 20 or 21 (or occasionally March 19 on a leap year). Cue the sunshine, birds, bees, and early spring flowers in the Northern Hemisphere. The spring equinox has arrived marking the first day of spring. But what is the spring equinox?

Is it an astronomical event? A holiday once marked by the ancients? Actually, it's both. It also doesn't exactly coincide with the meteorological start of the season, which begins a bit earlier on March 1. The latter is not based on celestial occurrences, but instead the annual temperature cycle and the 12-month calendar.

What happens during the spring equinox?

Because our planet is tilted on an axis, as it orbits the sun the hemispheres essentially swap periods when they receive solar light and heat most directly. The spring equinox, which takes place in 2025 on March 20 at 5:01 a.m. EDT, marks the moment when the sun sits directly over the Earth’s equator as it heads northward. The Northern and Southern Hemispheres share the sun’s rays equally at the equinox, and night and day are roughly the same length.

Wherever you are on the planet, everyone experiences the equinox at the same instant, even if the date is different due to time zone differences. For those south of the equator, where the seasons are swapped, it will still be an equinox, but the event instead marks the first day of fall.

After the spring equinox, the days grow progressively longer than the nights through the end of the season.

What was the significance of the spring equinox in ancient cultures?

The spring equinox and its autumnal counterpart designate the start of new seasons, as do the solstices in summer and winter that occur on the longest and shortest days of the year, respectively, when the sun's path is farthest from the equator. Early civilizations found the spring equinox and these other heavenly happenings a reliable way to keep track of the seasons, and many of today’s cultures continue to pay tribute to them just as their ancestors did.

From: Poetry Foundation

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king,

Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,

Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing:

   Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The palm and may make country houses gay,

Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,

And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:

   Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,

Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,

In every street these tunes our ears do greet:

   Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo!

      Spring, the sweet spring!

— Thomas Nashe

Pima County's Chuck Huckleberry Loop Park has been described as a 137-mile open space art gallery. One of the many public artworks in the park is the Sun Circle, a ceremonial structure by artist Chris Tanz that sits alongside the Rillito River Park bike path and acts as an astronomical calendar tracking the sun's movement and delineating the equinoxes and solstices. Visit the Circle at sunrise or sunset on the day of an equinox or solstice and will witness the sun move along a marked path across the floor of the Sun Circle.

From: Chris Tanz Design

The Sun Circle is a ceremonial structure in a public park.

In it you can observe the sun’s movement along the horizon over the course of the year.

Eight curving walls create a kiva-like circle which was inspired by the ruins of Casa Rinconada, the great kiva at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, an archeoastronomincal monument,.

Six of the walls have small windows oriented to sunrise and sunset at the summer and winter solstices, and the spring and fall equinoxes.

On those occasions, sunlight passes through the window of one wall and dances along a marked path on a facing wall and across the floor of the circle.

When the sun rises on the winter solstice, light pierces through the window in the southeast wall and projects a matching trapezoid of light onto the facing wall.  

At sunrise and sunset, patches of light follow the tracks marked on the walls and on the floor of the Sun Circle.

The 2025 edition of the Tucson Book Festival is this weekend, March 15th & 16th, at the University of Arizona Mall. The Festival was established in 2009 by literary enthusiasts and philanthropists: Bill Viner, Frank Farias, John M. Humenik, Bruce Beach, and Brenda Viner. The Festival aims to improve literacy rates among children and adults in Southern Arizona. It generates donations for agencies dedicated to improving literacy, including Reading Seed, Literacy Connects, and the University of Arizona Literacy Outreach Programs. Over 100,000 visitors will attend This year's Festival.

From: Visit Tucson

Tucson Festival of Books: A Springtime Bestseller 

The Tucson Festival of Books arrives in March when the sun is beaming, desert wildflowers are blooming and University of Arizona students are gone bye-bye on spring break. It's Tucson's annual gift to bookworms -- a two-day bestseller for all ages. 

Much of the activity -- book panels and special events where literacy lovers can come together, meet their favorite authors, and discover new bookish companies and resources -- takes place on the pedestrian-friendly, open-air University of Arizona Mall. Festival admission is free, but many of the popular author events require advance tickets (see tucsonfestivalofbooks.org).

Friends of Big Bear Valley in California have a live Eagle nest cam that streams on YouTube. The cam documents eagle parents Jackie and Shadow as they care for their recent hatchlings. The camera has an excellent view of the nest looking out over Big Bear Lake.

Big Bear's most-watched eagles are proud parents, as two of their three nest eggs have hatched.

Parents Jackie and Shadow still have one egg to tend to, hopeful that a trio of eaglets will complete their new family.

Their San Bernardino National Forest nest is world-famous, thanks to an eagle cam installed in 2013 by the nonprofit, Friends of Big Bear Valley.

Sandy Steers, biologist and executive director of Friends of Big Bear Valley said there are weather concerns, to a certain point, as the eaglets will have to stay under their mother. Also, space under mom gets tight if all three eggs hatch.

"Hopefully there's no bad weather after they get too big to stay underneath Jackie or Shadow, but (they) don't have their waterproof feathers yet. It will take about six weeks before they get their waterproof feathers."

Big Bear Bald Eagle Live Nest - Cam 1

credit: NASA, ESA,STSci, and hubble Space Telescope

New stars shed light on the past

These Flock regulars are always here for you:

Cita Scott for paintings, photography, and culinary art. Cita will be in and out of town all summer. Don't hesitate to give her a jingle. (520) 404-1551

Kimberly Gomer, MS, RD/LDN

Registered and licensed Dietitian/Nutritionist. Find me on my website at KimberlyGomer.com for information about nutrition coaching.

Sarah Smallhouse & Make Elections Fair ArIzona

– Sign the petition here

Sensitive & Specific: The Testing Newsletter by Mara G. Aspinall and Liz Ruark. Mara is always here to help in understanding testing knowledge and how it's being applied.

Kyria Sabin of Fletcher Pilates,

(520) 323-7070

The Fabric Jeanie!

Tap to learn more. 

(520) 245-0589

Linda Collazo, mezzo-soprano

for piano and voice lessons

Andres Valbuena, drum selection, drum basics, and more.

Dr. Hayward M. Fox, Ph.D.

The institute of Personal andTranspersonal Knowledge

Tucson Village Farm:

Vegetaable growing in the summer heat.

The Physio Shop,

Elite physical therapy services and more.

Icebox Cryotherapy,

Icebox Tucson’s unique enhancers allow you to be your best version! 

Nathan Anderson of Catalina Acupuncture

(520) 999-0080

Don't Be Shy: Share Your Stories!

I'm looking forward to sharing more of your personal stories - oral, written, or otherwise, as we enter our third year. I'd so love to present them to The Flock, hit a mailbox below to share your story.

Holualoa Ed Fit Wellness & Culture 2

520-818-4433

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