The Sun and the Moon

A few weeks ago, I was driving my five-year-old grandson home. He was quiet for a few minutes, then said, "Hey Mama J, I look out one window and see the moon, then look out the other and see the sun." Something about this stuck with me. I began to write about it a couple of times, but got side-tracked. Then today, I mentioned Alexander Calder and his mobiles. While searching for images of his works, I ran across this:
"In June 1922, Calder found work as a mechanic on the passenger ship H. F. Alexander. While the ship sailed from San Francisco to New York City, Calder worked on deck off the Guatemalan Coast and witnessed both the sun rising and the moon setting on opposite horizons. As he described in his autobiography:
'It was early one morning on a calm sea, off Guatemala, when over my couch — a coil of rope — I saw the beginning of a fiery red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the other.'
The H.F. Alexander docked in San Francisco and Calder traveled up to Aberdeen, Washington, and took a job as a timekeeper at a logging camp. Remembering the vision at sea as he gazed at the beautiful mountains, he wrote home to request paints and brushes...and decided to move back to New York to pursue a career as an artist."
All because he'd seen the sun and the moon...and those Washington mountains!

Image: Red Mobile, Alexander Calder, 1956