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At a gas station recently we saw this oversized load, stationary, its driver visiting the convenience store. The Husband, ever watchful for a photo opportunity, leapt out of the car, camera in hand for a shot. The truck driver emerged before photography was completed, and asked, "Know what that is?"
"A sewer pipe?"
"An oil pipe?"
"No".
It was part of a wind turbine - a section of the upright "stem", bigger than I'd have expected.
My mind wandered off, pondering energy and the astrological elements: Earth, Air, Water and Fire. All offer opportunities for man to extract energy. The Earth gave us oil and coal - overused through long centuries, to its eventual detriment. Fire gives us heat energy, thermal dynamics, and solar energy, increasingly being harnessed using solar panels.
Water and Air offer some relatively new opportunities to harness their energy on a big scale, both will probably move more to the fore in coming decades. Wind turbines are already showing up, even in supposedly backward Oklahoma. A regiment of these elegant structures can be seen topping a ridge beyond the Wichita Mountains. Water offers hydro-electric power, of which man has already made good use for several decades, and a newly tapped source from the ocean - wave energy.
It's interesting that Neptune and Uranus, outer planets which could be said to rule Water and Air respectively are currently lying in each other's domain or sign of rulership - Uranus in Pisces, Neptune in Aquarius. Their planetary energies combine and gather strength - perhaps heralding an incoming prominence of the energy derived from their elements.
These two artworks illustrate energy from Water and Air rather nicely:
Water: by English Golden Age illustrator Walter Crane
Air: by Russian-born surrealist painter Vladimir Kush
"A sewer pipe?"
"An oil pipe?"
"No".
It was part of a wind turbine - a section of the upright "stem", bigger than I'd have expected.
My mind wandered off, pondering energy and the astrological elements: Earth, Air, Water and Fire. All offer opportunities for man to extract energy. The Earth gave us oil and coal - overused through long centuries, to its eventual detriment. Fire gives us heat energy, thermal dynamics, and solar energy, increasingly being harnessed using solar panels.
Water and Air offer some relatively new opportunities to harness their energy on a big scale, both will probably move more to the fore in coming decades. Wind turbines are already showing up, even in supposedly backward Oklahoma. A regiment of these elegant structures can be seen topping a ridge beyond the Wichita Mountains. Water offers hydro-electric power, of which man has already made good use for several decades, and a newly tapped source from the ocean - wave energy.
It's interesting that Neptune and Uranus, outer planets which could be said to rule Water and Air respectively are currently lying in each other's domain or sign of rulership - Uranus in Pisces, Neptune in Aquarius. Their planetary energies combine and gather strength - perhaps heralding an incoming prominence of the energy derived from their elements.These two artworks illustrate energy from Water and Air rather nicely:
Water: by English Golden Age illustrator Walter Crane
Air: by Russian-born surrealist painter Vladimir Kush
