Detours

In swirling purple, blue, gray, white and orange, an anvil-shaped thundercloud hovers above Colorado Springs. Purple and gold lightning is visible on the left, in the center and up in the cloud on the right as rain comes down toward the bottom left corner. A few pine trees are visible at the bottom as are the lights of the city.

Have you ever watched a lightning storm in awe? Join the crowd. Oddly, details about how lightning is produced remains a topic of research. Scientists do know that updrafts prompt ice crystals to collide with larger, softer ice balls, causing the smaller crystals to become positively charged. After enough charge is developed, a rapid electrical discharge occurs as lightning. Lightning usually takes a jagged course, rapidly heating a thin column of air to the temperature of about 3 times the surface of the Sun! The resulting shock wave starts supersonically and decays into the loud sound we know as thunder. Lightning bolts are common in clouds during rainstorms, and on average 44 lightning bolts occur on the Earth every second. For this compiled image from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day, affectionately known by fans as APOD, 60 images were stacked to capture the flow of lightning-producing storm clouds over Colorado Springs. (Image: Joe Randall)

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Photo of an Asian woman smiling widely & digging into a piece of cake with white icing & a strawberry. The poem is here: https://poets.org/poem/colorado-oregon-upon

A poem by Joshua Beckman used with permission from the American Academy of Poets

In North America, millions of monarchs complete the longest migration of any insect species. After wintering in Mexico they fly north, breeding along the way. Their offspring reach southern Canada where they begin the long return trip back to Mexico at summer’s end. In tribute to the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), amazing sand artist, Charlene Lanzel, created "Monarch Butterfly Metamorphosis." Original soundscape by Charlene Lanzel & Barrett Cobb (flute & vocals)

From Jonathan "Jono" Hey who explains the world through his wonderful Sketchplanations and allowed us to use this one here: "Being clear is not only helpful, it's actually being kind. Being unclear about expectations, fuzzy on what you really need or skirting around an issue...sets people up to fail and creates problems. If you don't give clear feedback, then you're holding a person back from improving. I learned this from Brené Brown in Dare to Lead. She said she heard it in a 12-steps meeting.

A poem by Ariana Brown used with permission from the American Academy of Poets