{"id":1654,"date":"2015-09-21T21:19:52","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T01:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/?p=1654"},"modified":"2016-05-21T21:29:09","modified_gmt":"2016-05-22T01:29:09","slug":"the-last-quiet-mornings-of-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/?p=1654","title":{"rendered":"The Last Quiet Mornings of Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

In these\u00a0final days of summer, I’ve been making a special effort to savor every last minute of the season.\u00a0Year round I like to get up early\u00a0and go for a run. Not surprisingly, it’s a especially nice to go for an early jog in the summer. No rushing cars. No bustling people. Cool and comfortable. Just a\u00a0blessed, serene world waking up and me jogging along.<\/p>\n

Last week I went out for a run and\u00a0was treated to a remarkably\u00a0beautiful sight.\u00a0\u00a0A young crescent moon was rising in the early dawn along with\u00a0 a brilliant Venus and nearby Mars.\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0 dashed inside\u00a0to grab my binoculars and\u00a0do a little amateur astronomy\u00a0before work and the sun came up.\u00a0In the lightening sky, and using\u00a0my mega-binoculars, I could just make out Venus too was a crescent, perfectly mimicking the crescent moon.\u00a0 To the left was the red, glowering Mars. How many times had that conjunction occurred in my life? \u00a0Would it occur again in my lifetime? How many humans had witnessed it through history? It was a sublime sight and a great way to start a day.<\/p>\n

\"20150906_133616\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the calm beauty of the world waking up it’s a challenge not to become cynical and think everything would be better without humans. The no-humans<\/em> concept really is a waste of time to dwell upon, and\u00a0has more to do with self-righteousness than concern for refugees, children, the environment, animals, etc…<\/p>\n

I then jogged over to the Y for an early\u00a0workout.\u00a0 The peaceful early morning calm was destroyed by the oomph-oomph-oomph, pulsing beat of a spin class. Worse.\u00a0They were spinning to an 80’s pop hit that was a\u00a0piece of musical debris\u00a0thirty years ago and hadn’t aged any better.\u00a0\u00a0I turned around and ran out of there.<\/p>\n

The sun was up. Venus and the crescent moon were\u00a0fading. Mars was lost in the light blue sky. Cars were roaring by on the street. Drivers were honking at eachother.<\/p>\n

It<\/em> really is a challenge not to think the world would be better without people.<\/em><\/p>\n

copyright 2015 Magnus Incognito<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In these\u00a0final days of summer, I’ve been making a special effort to savor every last minute of the season.\u00a0Year round I like to get up early\u00a0and go for a run. Not surprisingly, it’s a especially nice to go for an … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[56,59,57,55,58,60],"class_list":["post-1654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-beautiful-summer-days","tag-binoculars","tag-crescent-moon","tag-summer","tag-venus","tag-ymca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1654"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1705,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654\/revisions\/1705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}