Constructive Creativity

To Ride Like The Wind

2011-07-20T22:52:00.002-04:00

Here is a little post that I was thinking about doing a while back, but am now just getting around to. The title is inspired by the song "Ride Like The Wind" by Christopher Cross. Now, why would I choose such a title? Well, some years in the past, I did ride like the wind on my motorcycles! :D

My first motorcycle was a Honda 125. The picture below is not my bike, but it is exactly like my bike, down to the model and color.

The engine of my 125 was a single cylinder of, as you may have already surmised, 125 cc displacement. Having only one cylinder, the engine tended to vibrate quite a bit. In fact, the vibration was enough to numb my hands during a long ride! This bike had a kick start, which was quite a pain until I got the knack of it. One of the hardest things for me to learn was how to properly control the manual transmission, especially when starting up from a stop. I had to learn to take in the clutch with my left hand, shift it into gear, and slowly let the clutch out while giving it some gas by turning the throttle with my right hand. Sound complicated? Well, it was, at least for the first couple of months! ;) While I was learning to do this, I stalled my bike many times and had to restart it. Sometimes, I had to wheel my bike off the street to get out of the way of cars that were behind me at a stop light. Kick starting a bike doesn't always work the first time. If you are wondering what I am talking about, it does not involve actually kicking the bike, although I felt like doing that sometimes out of shear frustration! The kick start is a lever with a foot peg that folds out from the engine. Its visible in the picture above. Look to the center of the bike and see if you can spot the thin vertical bar at the rear of the engine with a black thing angling to the right off the top. That is the folded up kick start. Anyway, you fold it out, and then kick down on it with your foot. This turns the engine and energizes the starter. If you do it right, the engine starts up.

Ok, so much for getting the bike going. Riding the 125 wasn't exactly like the wind, it was more like a moderate breeze. ;) The top speed was about 55 miles per hour going downhill. That was ok for getting around on city streets, but not really fast enough for the highway. However, it was probably for the best, as it takes a good while to get really proficient at riding a motorcycle. Too much power in the hands of a beginning rider can really get the rider in trouble, or worse! I have fond memories of my 125, but after a year or so of riding it, I began to wish for something bigger and better. It took me a while to save my money, but eventually, my wish came true. :)

My second bike was a Honda Shadow 500. Once again, the picture below is not my bike, but it is identical to my bike.

The dark red color was one of the things that attracted me to the Shadow. I also really liked the styling. It was simple, but quite elegant, as you can see. :) The Shadow's engine was a two cylinder with a displacement of 500 cc. It was designed with engine balance in mind, so it was a lot smoother to ride than the 125. The engine size, being much larger on this bike, the acceleration and top speed was vastly superior to the 125. Talk about riding like the wind, I topped the Shadow out late one night on the highway at 105 miles per hour! That's like a small hurricane! :D Aside from exhilarating speed, the Shadow also had a couple of other advantages. It had an electric start (which I really loved!) and a sealed maintenance free drive shaft (the 125 had a chain drive, like a bicycle).

I enjoyed my Shadow for a long time. I rode it for 11 years. During that time, I learned a lot about keeping the bike in good working order. I would regularly change the oil and filter. But, from this simple task, I moved on to more complex mechanical repairs. I learned to change my tires. I rebuilt the clutch. I rebuilt the front suspension forks. I changed the brake pads and rebuilt the front disk break assembly. I installed new turn signals when the old ones broke. I also learned to trouble shoot electrical problems. For example, I had to rebuilt my starter relay after it melted in the open position. The result of that was that the starter would run continuously. Not a good thing! I had to disconnect the battery to stop the starter! To help me with all these repairs, I had a good maintenance book specific to my bike. I also collected a good variety of mechanics tools. I taught myself to be quite handy! :)

Well, all in all, I enjoyed owning and riding my bikes very much. :) When I moved from Alabama to Indiana, I decided to sell my Shadow, as I didn't expect to have anywhere to store it in the winter time. Snow and motorcycles do not mix well! Its been a number of years since I have ridden a bike, but sometimes, on a nice cool Fall or Spring day, I wish that I could Ride Like The Wind once again! Perhaps someday, I will. :)

Indianapolis Regional Air Show

2011-06-25T22:56:00.012-04:00

I just noticed its been about two years since I posted in my blog! Well then, I guess I am way overdue for posting something new! ;)

I went to our local air show a few weeks ago and took some pictures that I would like to share with you. The U.S. Navy's flying team, called The Blue Angels, were supposed to fly each of the three days of the air show. I was really looking forward to seeing them fly! I had seen them twice before many years ago. Unfortunately, the day I went to the show, the last of the three days, there was some rain and very low clouds, so most of the show was canceled. Still there were interesting things to see and people to talk to. :)

There were some old planes from WWII parked for display. Had the weather been better, these planes would have taken to the air! One that I really liked was the Corsair. These were fighter planes that were flown by Navy and Marine Corp pilots. They are the same planes that were flown by the famous squadron called The Black Sheep, lead by their legendary commanding officer Pappy Boyington. The Black Sheep gained additional fame in the 1970's from the TV show about them called Baa Baa Black Sheep (later, the show was renamed Black Sheep Squadron). I used to love that show! Here is a pic of the Corsair (click on the pic to see it full size):

The second plane from WWII, I think is called an Avenger (at least, it looks a lot like one). These planes (and also the Corsairs) were commonly flown off of aircraft carriers. To save space on the deck of the carrier, the Avenger's wings would fold back to the sides. At the air show, I watched as the wings of the Avenger were folded back (Corsair wings folded up). That was neat to see! The picture I took was, as you can see, before the wings were folded (should have taken one after!):

Another very interesting plane was a really old Wright Flyer dating from the early 1900's. It was built a few years after the Wright brother's famous first flight. This plane was much advanced over their original design. This one had twin pusher props (propellers), wing flaps, and a functional tail with flaps. This plane was capable of extended flight time high in the air. The first Wright plane didn't have a proper tail, and they steered by warping the wings. It was really a dangerous design, and one of the brother's had a very bad crash in it sometime after their first flight. Here are two pics showing the old Flyer and also a close-up of the information card on one of its wings:

One thing that I really enjoyed was talking to the crew of a restored Vietnam era Huey helicopter. In Vietnam, these copters were often fitted out as gun ships. However, this one was restored for use as an air ambulance. The crew hoped that they would be able to fly real missions transporting injured people to a hospital at some point in the future. I asked the pilot about the fuel cost to fly the Huey. He said it burned 90 gallons of aviation fuel per hour. At $7.00 per gallon, that would add up to $630 per hour! The pilot said later that afternoon, weather permitting, they would try to fly around some. I was very pleased that the weather did permit! :)

The Huey in flight is really something to see and hear! I was amazed in the difference in sound as the helicopter flew in different directions. Flying away from me, I could barely hear it. However, flying toward me, it was incredibly loud, even from a far distance. I asked one of the airport officials, who happened to be standing next to me watching the Huey fly, about the difference in sound. He said it had to do with the angle of the helicopter blades relative to the direction it was traveling. I had never thought about that, but it made sense. The blades are really chopping up the air as they spin. Sound waves are created as the blades disturb the air, and the waves move in certain directions relative to the blades. Here is a pic of the Huey in flight:

There was another, much bigger helicopter there. It was an active duty Army Blackhawk fitted out as an air ambulance. I talked to a couple of crew members. One told me it had flown in Iraq a year ago. It was really cool to stand next to a machine and crew members that had probably helped to save many soldier's lives! I also got to see the Blackhawk take off a while later. As an added treat, the Huey took off for a second time and flew around the airport with the Blackhawk. :) Here are three pics of the Blackhawk, on the ground, preparing to take off, and in the air:

There were a couple of small FedEx planes at the show. I had a chat with one of the crew. He was a package handler. He told me about how they sort the packages at one of their regional hubs. They have a few hours each night to sort hundreds of thousands of packages and get them on the right planes for next day delivery. Those folks really have to hustle! I watched both the FedEx planes take off a bit later. They had deliveries to make! Here is a pic of one of the planes being towed to the runway:

Well, I hope you have enjoyed my new post. I went to the zoo more recently. I'll try to post some pics from there soon. :)

Something Delicious

2009-06-09T00:51:00.001-04:00

Its been a while since I talked about cooking anything. I looked it up in my old posts (look here if you like) and its been almost four years! Strange, it doesn't seem so long ago. Well, then as now, cooking is something that I do every day. I actually enjoy the process of creating a meal, or sometimes a dessert. Something that I like to make pretty regularly these days is what I call blueberry nut cake. It is really tasty! I have always loved blueberry muffins. This is a variation on that theme. I have actually made muffins using this same recipe, but baking it as a cake is easier than filling a dozen muffin cups. ;)

Here is a picture of the finished cake fresh out of the oven. Doesn't it look good? :) You can see some of the blueberries peeking out. The cake is topped with a sprinkling of brown sugar that has melted and caramelized. The sugar topping adds a delicious sweetness!

Here, let me cut a piece just for you! :D

Here is my recipe:

Blueberry Nut Cake

Mix together:

3 egg whites
1/3 cup honey
1/2 cup extra light olive oil
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
one teaspoon vanilla extract
dash of cinnamon
dash of ginger
one and 1/2 cups frozen blueberries

In a separate bowl, sift together:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
one and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Combine all ingredients and mix well until a thick batter results. If necessary, add a bit more oil and milk to get all the ingredients wet and well mixed. Pour the batter into a 9 inch by 9 inch baking pan (I use a ceramic pan) that has been sprayed with a non-stick cooking spray. Sprinkle brown sugar all over the top of the batter. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 50 minutes. [Note: If you'd like to make muffins with this recipe, reduce the cooking time to about 30 minutes.]

This recipe is really easy to make, so you could enjoy some of this delicious cake for yourself. :)

Springtime Delight

2009-05-20T00:19:00.003-04:00

Hello my friends! After a long absence spent wandering here and there in the electronic ether and wiling away many enjoyable hours at a few special places, I finally have something that I would very much like to share with you here. It is springtime in Indiana, and with the spring comes all sorts of new, interesting, and wonderful life. Near where I live is a wall with a decorative wreath that has become a favorite place for birds to build nests. Almost every year, some sort of bird constructs a nest and raises a few chicks. In past years, I have taken pictures of Robins (Look Here and Here) and Doves (Look Here) that nested there. This year Robins have once again staked out the wreath, built a very fine nest, and laid some very attractive blue eggs. :)

I first noticed nest building activity around the first day of May. Within a few days, a very well constructed nest was completed. I noticed the first egg on May 5th. The next day, there were two eggs. The day after that, there were four eggs!

For my first picture, I am very pleased to present the nest with four beautiful blue eggs, taken on May 7th.

In the second picture is the mother Robin who is not at all happy that I am looking in on her nest! When I approach the nest, she flies up to the nearby roof and squawks at me very loudly and angrily. She walks along the roof and flaps her wings to try and distract me away from her nest. She is a very good mother trying her best to protect her eggs! I took this picture on May 15. On that day, none of the eggs had yet hatched.

Finally, twelve days after the first egg was laid, the first chick hatched. When I pointed my camera into the nest, the little baby reached up with its mouth wide open begging to be fed. However, a few seconds later when I took the picture, the tiny chick leaned over and seemed to fall asleep. In this picture, the back of its head is to the right. I have really zoomed in on this image to show the chick in detail. The eggs are really quite small, with a length a bit less than one inch. I took this picture on May 17.

The next day, I checked the nest again and there were two chicks. Here one is begging for food while the other is resting. I am guessing that the resting chick was born that day. If you look at their eyes, you will see that they are not open. This is because their eyes are not fully developed when the chicks first hatch. They are blind, helpless, and completely dependent on their parents for care and feeding.

As I have been watching the nest, I have sometimes seen two Robins together on the roof near the nest. I am sure that they are the mother and father. I don't know if they are taking turns sitting on the nest to keep the eggs and chicks warm, but that is common in some species of birds. It is also common in some species for both parents to take turns foraging for food and feeding the chicks. I should read up on Robins to see if this is the case.

I hope you have enjoyed the pictures. I will continue to watch the nest and take more photos. I will update with a new post soon with more pictures. Thanks for visiting! :)

Three Faces of Me

2008-10-07T23:54:00.000-04:00

I seem to be writing everywhere except in my own blog these days. So, its definitely time that some signs of live stirred here once again. :) In the past couple of months, two of my friends asked me if I was on Facebook. Well, I am not, and I don't have a burning desire to be there. I have been listed on a similar sort of venue called Orkut for a few years, but I only occasionally drop in there to visit a few old friends. Anyway, I have decided to give myself a facial presence here, in addition to the already "book like" qualities of my blog. ;)

First up is a picture of tiny me with my paternal grandmother. Her name was Reta. Out of all my relatives, save my mother, she showed me more love than any other. I grew up far from all my grandparents, and I only had the chance to see any of them about once a year, at most. I think that grandparents can be a very important influence on a child's development, and I really wish that I could have spent more time with mine. Reta was the last of my grandparents to pass away. She died about three years ago, and I still miss her very much.

Well, here I am again, this time somewhere between age two and three. At that time, I had blond hair and blue eyes. I really don't know why my hair was so light then. As the years past, my hair darkened to brown and then to nearly black, while my eyes changed from blue to a mix of dark green and brown.

First, let me say that this is not a recent picture of me. However, it is the best picture that I have of me as an adult. I haven't taken a really good picture in a number of years. Often when I smile, it is more of a half smile, with half of my face seeming happy and the other half seeming frowny. ;) I still look much the same as this picture, but my hairline has receded a bit and I have a few gray hairs. I have been thinking of having a professional portrait done. If I had some help to look and smile my best, I think that I might get a picture that I can be happy with once again.

I have other pictures of me during my child and teen years, but none of those are digitized. Perhaps I will scan a few of them sometime. Well, for those of you who have never seen me, I hope it has been a pleasant surprise. ;) For those of you who I have never seen, I would be happy to view some pictures of you if you would like to share them. :)

Violin Virtuosity

2008-05-31T00:34:00.004-04:00

On the evening of Saturday, May 10, I had the pleasure of attending a performance by the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. I enjoy classical symphonic music, but I am not very knowledgeable about the genre. For example, I could never hear a piece of symphony music and know who composed it. However, I have heard lots of this sort of music before, and I do very much enjoy the melodies and harmonies that the many instruments played together can create. I especially like to view live performances. I think it is very interesting and fun to watch the conductor waving his arms and the musicians responding. Also, it is fascinating to observe the physical mechanics of the performance: the violinists fingering the notes with one hand and sounding the strings with back and forth movements of the bow in the other hand; the horn players puffing their cheeks as they blow into their shiny brass instruments; the drummer pounding out a beat on his big bass drum; or the percussionist tapping a triangle to create a high clear note. It really makes the music so much more meaningful and amazing when you can actually see it being created! :)

In case you would like to know the names of the music played at the event, here are the three pieces: Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn, Opus 56a composed by Johannes Brahms (apparently Brahms was inspired by a previous work by Haydn); Concerto No.1 in G Minor for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 26 composed by Max Bruch; and Symphony No. 102 in B-Flat Major composed by Joseph Haydn. Not exactly snappy or catchy titles. ;)

Just out of curiosity, I read a biography of Joseph Haydn and was very impressed! He was obviously born a musical genius. He rose from humble beginnings and had a few good teachers, but I got the impression he was mostly self educated. He was a prodigious composer for much of his long life, and his many works apparently laid some impressive foundations that later symphonic composers built upon. For any reader with an interest in musical history, I definitely recommend reading this biography. For everyone else, I would like to give you a brief synopsis here:

Joseph Haydn, who has been called "The Father of the Symphony", was born in Rohrau, a small Austrian village in 1732. His father was a wheelwright and his mother was a cook. Neither of his parents had any musical training, but his father taught himself to play the harp and both parents loved to sing. Joseph's parents, recognizing their son's musical talent, apprenticed him at the age of six to a relative in a nearby town who was a schoolmaster and a choirmaster. He soon learned to play both the harpsichord and the violin. Also, he also began to sing in the church choir. Singing was Haydn's earliest musical profession. At the age of eight, he auditioned for the choir of a Cathedral in Vienna and was accepted. There he worked as a chorister for the next nine years. He received no training as a composer, but the Cathedral was host to many performances of musical creations by some of Europe's leading composers. Haydn learned much by simple observation. By the age of 17, his voice had deepened and he was no longer able to sing the high notes that his job required, so he was dismissed from the choir. He then worked at various jobs, such as a music teacher, a street singer, and as an accompanist to an Italian composer who taught him the fundamentals of composition. He read books on composition to increase his skills, and shortly thereafter, he composed his first opera. He quickly established a reputation as a skilled composer and attracted the interest of various aristocrats who were happy to employ a man with his talents. For years, he had a succession of aristocratic patrons. Eventually, his compositions earned him a very comfortable living, allowing him to cease composing on demand for his patrons and devote his talents to creating some of the finely crafted symphonic works for which he is best known today. It is interesting that Beethoven was his student for a time. Also, Haydn and Mozart were good friends. They occasionally played together in string quartets and had a positive influence on each other's compositions.

Alright, lets get back to the concert. The Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra was accompanied, during the Max Bruch segment, by a very talented violinist named Philippe Quint. The program from the performance detailed his very impressive resume. He grew up in Russia, but emigrated to the U.S. to study at the famous Juilliard School of Music, where he earned a Bachelor's degree and also a Master's degree, which he completed in 1998. He has studied with many accomplished violinists and taken master classes from Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman, two of the giants of the violin world (Stern, who died in 2001, was also one of Perlman's teachers). He has traveled extensively, playing with many of the world's best symphonies. He performs on a violin crafted by Antonio Stradivari in 1723 which has been loaned to him by the Stradivari Society in Chicago. If you are interested, you can learn more about Philippe Quint (and even listen to some of his music!) from his personal website.

Ok, lets talk some about Philippe's performance. He played with a very energetic and dramatic style. He not only produced a truly beautiful sound from his instrument, his physical movements became an integral part of his performance. His movements suggested that he was not only playing the wonderful Stradivarius, he was dancing with it, as if it were a loving partner. His performing style conveyed so much emotion. He varied the speed and pitch of his sound in tune with the rhythm of his physical movements. He swayed back and forth, and at times lifted himself up and down on his toes. I have never before been witness to such a dramatic musician! He really has a special gift and talent for capturing the attention and stimulating an emotional response from his audience. After the Bruch Concerto concluded, the audience gave him a standing ovation. I was certainly not the last to leave my seat! Then, Philippe treated the audience to two wonderful encores. For these, the orchestra sat and watched him, becoming an extension of his audience. He introduced the first piece as "The Red Violin #5" (From the movie "The Red Violin", which I have not seen. I have asked my library to reserve one of its copies for me. I am looking forward to seeing it.). Philippe was especially energetic in his delivery of this piece. He was moving his bow so fast and hard that the fibers of the bow literally began to shred! He continued to the end in a fury of sound and flying bow fiber. :D Then he took a couple minutes break while we were all once again on our feet. When he walked back out, he had either repaired his bow, or more likely, substituted another, as there were no loose fibers to be seen. He announced the second piece, and I believe the name he used was "Burganini" (although, I have not been able to find this piece in my web searching). This piece was probably the most complicated bit of violin music that I have ever seen performed. He not only used the traditional back and forth movements of the bow on the strings, he literally hammered the bow onto the strings repeatedly! His fingering was also varied by plucking of the strings instead of just simple finger tip presses. His manual dexterity was just amazing! The orchestra seemed completely transported by his performance. They danced in their seats and tapped their shoes to his rhythms. The big smiles on their faces were mirrored by the faces of the audience. When the piece came to completion, both the audience and the orchestra erupted to their feet and thundered their applause. I felt like I had been witness to one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. I smiled so hard that my face was sore the next day! :D

One very unusual thing happened during the Bruch Concerto. Philippe was really going at his violin, his bow arm moving almost in a blur, when suddenly the shoulder rest that was clipped to the bottom of the instrument came flying off and landed on the floor in front of the conductor's platform. At that point, Philippe had a momentary break in his part of the Concerto, so he scrambled down and tried to pick up the loose piece. He managed to grab it, stood up and briefly fumbled trying to get it back on the violin. However, he ran out of time and had to start playing again. So, he dropped the part to the floor and played his next segment. The conductor immediately heard the difference in sound quality from the magnificent Strad and turned his head briefly to see what was the matter (I think the conductor had completely missed the flying part and its attempted recovery. ;) ). The sound changed from the violin's normal loud and clear resonance to a somewhat dull and muffled texture. I never realized how much a violin's sound relies on the ability of the wood body of the instrument to vibrate freely. With the wooden bottom of the violin pressed firmly against the chest of the musician, the quality of the sound is dramatically different! Fortunately, this solo segment was brief, perhaps only 20 seconds. Then Phillipe quickly bent over, grabbed the errant shoulder rest, and got it reattached to the violin before he began again. During the remaining parts of the Concerto, he checked the shoulder rest several times to make sure it was still firmly attached. I suspect that this minor gaffe really endeared the artist to the audience. He is a great violinist. Indeed, he may someday be the greatest, in my opinion. But, he is still very human. He can stumble just like the rest of us. :)

When I was looking up Phillipe Quint on the web to help with this post, I realized that I had already heard an amazing story about him not long before I saw him perform. A few weeks earlier, I heard a story on the national TV news about a violinist in New York city who forgot his four million dollar Stradivarius and left it on the seat of his taxi. The cabbie was an honest guy and he turned it in. The frantic violinist was so grateful to get his violin back that he treated all the New York City Airport cabbies to a free half hour concert. When I learned that this absent minded musician and Phillipe Quint were one and the same person, I just smiled and shook my head in wonder. :D

Since the subject of this post is a great violin performance, I would like to conclude with something extra and special along the same vein. Some years ago, during my graduate school days, I had the opportunity and privilege to attend a performance staring the legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman, who, as I previously mentioned, was one of Phillipe Quint's teachers. I wrote about the performance in a letter to a girl who was a very good friend to me at that time. Here is the portion of that letter relating to Perlman's performance (incidentally, Perlman actually owns and performs on one of the best surviving Stradivarius violins):

"This week, I went to hear the Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra with special guest soloist Itzhak Perlman the violinist. He is thought by many to be the greatest living violinist. I do not often have a desire to go and listen to orchestra music, but my mother bought us tickets to hear Perlman almost a year ago. The tickets sold out very quickly. I may be semi-skilled in waxing poetic, but I do not even begin to have the words to describe Perlman's artistry with his instrument. He is a master's master with the violin, as I am like a small child with the guitar. It gave me an intense feeling of pleasure to sit 30 or 40 feet away from him in the center of the audience and listen to him play and watch his precise bow arm movements and his fluid fingering. The expressions on his face, as he played, said to me that he was really feeling the music. So much pleasure was given to me and the other members of the audience by this man. This man, who as a child was crippled by polio. This man, who with metal braces on his legs, moved himself slowly onto the stage on his crutches to take his chair and be handed his violin. There is something very beautiful and poetic about someone who is able to overcome what to many would seem a great tragedy. When he finished playing, he smiled to the audience from his chair amidst the tumultuous applause. He handed his violin to the orchestra's concert mistress (first chair violin), reached for his crutches at his feet, and as he slowly arose, so did I and the rest of the audience in tribute to his talent and courage. Our standing ovation lasted for about five minutes. He returned to the stage three times to bow and smile broadly."

I hope you have enjoyed this little excursion into the world of classical music performance. It is something that I really like to experience from time to time. :)

Sculptural Interlude

2008-03-04T00:18:00.005-05:00

A few weeks ago, my friend Attawie held a very successful exhibition of her sculptures at her art institute in the U.A.E. She is a wonderful and very talented artist! Well, drawing encouragement from her example, I have decided to have a very small exhibition of my own right here. I do not consider myself to be much of an artist, but I enjoyed drawing things in my youth and making all sorts of things with my hands. My most recent drawing was done a few years ago and I use it as my Blogger avatar (although it is too small to see unless you go to my "About Me" page). I made a post about my avatar which I titled: The Pilot. If you haven't yet seen it, I hope you will take a look. :) I will post some of my older drawings at some point, but this post is about sculpting.

I have never done a lot of sculpting, but I always enjoyed playing with modeling clay. :) The earliest sort of sculpture that I did was molding an impression of my hand when I was about five years old. All the kids in my first grade class did that. Our little hand prints were fired and returned to us as souvenirs. My mother still has my little hand plate somewhere. Maybe I should rescue it from its hidden storage box. ;) I seem to remember playing with clay many times in grade school, but most of those creations were never fired, and unfortunately, I didn't keep them. For some reason I really like rhinos, so I would usually try to mold a rhino when I had a block of clay. I actually got pretty good at making a shape that was at least recognizable as a rhino. ;)

When I was in the sixth grade, we were given clay and told to sculpt anything that we would like, and this time the figures would be fired. I decided to sculpt a duck. I have no idea why! My duck was very simple. It was shaped like a duck floating in the water, so it was flat on the bottom with no legs. I formed the head and bent it around to contact the duck's back as if the duck were sleeping. For the ducks wings, I very simply incised an outline of them on the body of the figure. I gave it a bit of a tail that jutted outward and slightly upward. We set our figures in a windowsill to dry for a few weeks. Some very naughty child in my class decided to try and lift my duck by its neck. I found the duck with its head nearly ripped off. I was very unhappy about that! I never found out who did the foul (no pun intended ;) ) deed. However, my duck was not completely ruined. I reset the head and neck as well as I could. When the figures were dry enough, we glazed them. I chose a bright orange glaze. Kind of odd, I know, but it made sense at the time. :) After firing, my repair to the neck became a very noticeable crack. That was rather disappointing. I guess that the semi-dry clay just couldn't be properly rejoined, at least not the way I did it. Oh well, I brought my bright orange partially decapitated duck home and presented it to my mother. As only a mother could, she said she loved it and placed it for prominent display in a window of our living room. I don't know where my slightly grotesque duckie is now. Perhaps it is sleeping peacefully next to my hand plate. :)

Ok, so much for my childhood art history lesson. Lets get to the sculptural subject of this post. Below are three pics of a figure that I created when I was about 20 years old. My best friend Ray, a lesser friend Michael, and I were gathered at Ray's apartment one day. Ray and Michael, who both liked to smoke a certain "substance", decided that they were going to try and make some pipes out of clay. There was some extra clay, and as I was not a smoker, I decided to create a figure out of my imagination. In those days, my imagination was rather dark (as I will explain in more detail later). I tried to imagine something that would have an aura of malevolence. The result is the figure below. Another of Ray's friends dubbed it "The Noser", which should seem obvious once you see it. As for me, I never named it. Ray and Michael had ideas of firing their pipe creations, but like many of their projects in that time, these were left unfinished. I never had my figure fired either, but it long ago dried out such that it is very hard to the touch, and I have kept it safe through the years in a padded box. The figure has a story. It is a very important story about my life at the time of its creation. So, without any further ado, I present my little attempt at sculptural creativity, followed by my story.

Well folks, its been about a week and a half since I wrote the above. My original plan was to tell a detailed account of the circumstances of my life that led to the creation of this sculpture. However, I have decided that I really don't want to tell the story at length at this time. Perhaps I will at some later date. So, what I would like to do is tell you briefly what was going on. For several years in my late teens and early 20's, I struggled with some very serious depression. Many of my relatives have also suffered from depression at various times in their lives. Depression can be a very difficult thing to live with, especially when it must be endured over a long period. I remember thinking at some point that depression was sort of like a demon that had seized my mind and stolen my life. Now, I never thought that demons were real. Rather, my thinking was in a purely metaphorical sense. When I made this sculpture, I was in an especially deep level of depression, and the demon idea was very prominent in my imagination.

As to my depression, I did seek help, but placing my trust in the medical profession really didn't yield much in the way of relief. I struggled to stay afloat in school, but I really didn't have any direction until I began to study psychology. Eventually, I earned my first college degree with a major in psychology. Along the way, I learned a lot that was helpful to me in terms of understanding my depression and how I could begin to overcome it.

So, that is the very short on details version of how my little sculpture came to be. I am sure some of you would like to know more. A few of you already know quite a bit more. In time, I may feel comfortable enough to make a more detailed version of this story public, but for now, I thank you for sharing with me something that I have mostly kept under a tight lid for a long time.

Update 3/14/08:

I would like to add a few thoughts about depression. It is not commonly known that approximately one third of all people will experience a serious depression at some point in their lives. Depression can occur for many reasons. A person may have a genetic susceptibility, or it could be brought on by a tragic loss, for example (in my case, both of these reasons played a role). Depression tends to occur more frequently in elderly people as their friends and loved ones pass away. Now, I can only speak for myself and not for other depressed people, but I think some would agree with me in that I am not at all interested in sympathy or pity. Those emotions are not helpful to me. What I always needed during periods of depression is understanding and acceptance. Some people seem to think that depression is only a figment of the imagination and that it can be banished simply by thinking positively. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. If any of you have experienced depression, then I think you will understand what I am talking about. When depression occurs in an individual, there are no quick and easy solutions. Many doctors these days are very quick to write a prescription for drugs to treat depression. However, often such drugs simply don't work, and many can have extremely unpleasant side effects. In many cases, the best treatment is simply time and having someone to talk to. For me, having good friends who I could trust with my innermost thoughts and feelings was a big help. Exercise and certain dietary changes have helped a lot, as well. Ok, I guess thats about enough for now. Thanks again for visiting and learning a bit more about how I came to be the person that I am. :)

A Special Exhibition

2007-12-13T00:26:00.000-05:00

Hello my friends. I seem to have developed a rather bad habit of being absent from my blog. Well, hopefully most of you haven't been feeling my absence too acutely, considering that I visit your blogs quite frequently. ;) Well, I finally have something blogworthy to report. Several weeks ago, I visited a special exhibition of Roman art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. As the brochure below indicates, the items are all on loan from the famous Louvre Museum in Paris, France. Apparently, this exhibition is the largest number of artifacts from its Roman collection that the Louvre has ever allowed outside its doors. It helps that the director of the Indianapolis Museum is good friends with the director of the Louvre! :) There were about 200 artifacts in the exhibit, ranging from a wonderful 8 foot tall marble statue of Roman Emperor Trajan, resplendent in full and very artfully decorated military dress, to tiny items of glass and jewelry. The statues included quite a few Emperors and some rich Roman nobles. Lets see who I can recall among the emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, Septimus Severus, Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius. Some of the emperors wives were represented too. There was a lot of discussion on the exhibit plaques about what type of togas the figures were wearing. Apparently, age and social station were both very important in determining what special decorations were allowed on the toga.

Well, lets move on to a few pictures that I have to show you. Unfortunately, there were no cameras allowed in the exhibition. So, aside from the scan of my brochure, these pictures are scans of post cards that I bought at the Museum gift shop. The Louvre is apparently quite reluctant to allow people to take their own pictures of artifacts in their collection! I don't know if the problem is that French Museums are greedy or just snobby. When I visited Italy, I got to take pictures of anything and everything in sight. Ok, I will dismount my indignantly high horse now. ;) Scanning the little post cards was a very tedious task. The initial images were of very poor quality. So, I had to do a lot of digital tweaking to get my scans to more or less resemble the pictures on the cards. Finally, I got them looking reasonably good. Hopefully, you will enjoy them. :)

On the brochure is an image of a cameo of the Roman god Jupiter from the Imperial Roman Era (that's about a 500 year span!) The cameo is about 5 inches in height. I once visited a cameo factory in Italy. I saw a great many really magnificent cameos there and enjoyed watching an artist work to make one. If I remember correctly, cameos are often carved from pieces of sea shell. This cameo of Jupiter is labeled as being composed of double-layered Sardonyx (a type of onyx).

This picture is a marble sculpture of Emperor Augustus (the first Roman Emperor). It looks small here, but the statue is nearly 7 feet tall. It was quite impressive! Interestingly, the head and the body are from different times. The head dates to about the year 10 AD, while the body dates to about the year 120 AD. I looked really hard, but I couldn't see the joint on the neck. I don't know if ancient Romans combined the two pieces, or if it was done in more modern times.

This marble bust (height about 14 inches) was labeled as "Portrait of an Unknown Woman" and dates from between 50 to 75 AD. Well, I think that she was probably the wife of a Roman man with considerable wealth and power! For one, she is beautiful, for another, someone probably paid an extravagant sum to have her likeness immortalized in marble. However, I suppose that she could have been the lover, or fantasy creation, of a very talented sculptor.

This is a marble carving (about 5 feet tall) labeled "Praetorian Relief". The Praetorian Guards were the personal guards of the Emperor. Occasionally, they went a bit beyond their stated duties and assassinated an Emperor in order to promote someone else to the pinnacle of Roman power (at some points, the Emperor was he that could pay the Praetorians the biggest bribes!). Btw, my scan didn't cut off part of the guard's hand. The sloppy maker of the post card did that!

Doesn't this picture look almost like a very intricately woven carpet? Well, it is a mosaic composed of thousands of tiny pieces of tile. It is labeled as "The Judgment of Paris". (This is one of the most famous of mythological tales: Paris has to judge a beauty contest between the goddesses Juno, Venus, and Minerva. He chooses Venus, who rewards him with the fairest of women for his wife. Unfortunately, Helen is already married to the Spartan King Menelaus! Paris takes Helen, and thus began The Trojan War.) The mosaic dates from somewhere between the first and second centuries AD. The size is fairly large at about six feet square.

Here is another mosaic, which is very imaginatively labeled as "Fragment of Floor Mosaic". ;) It dates to about the year 300 AD. It is about two feet square, and is made of stone and glass fragments. Look at the expression on the little boy's face. Doesn't he look like he has done something naughty? ;) Its really amazing that such emotion can be conveyed in a mosaic format!

If these pictures are interesting to you, then let me give you a couple of links to the Indianapolis Museum of Art and The Louvre Museum where you can browse more pictures of the exhibit that I enjoyed, and more. Here is a link to the Roman Art Image Gallery from the Indianapolis Museum's web site. If you click on a picture, you can read a detailed description. This next link will take you to The Louvre's Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities. There are a lot more pictures there, as well as various links to other exhibits in The Louvre. It is really an amazing museum! I hope that I can see it someday!

Let me talk for a moment about why I am so interested in Roman art and antiquities. As I mentioned previously, I have visited Italy. When I was in high school, I studied Latin for three years. I was a very good student, and came to have a fair grasp of the grammatical rules of the language, however, I had difficulty remembering a large number of Latin vocabulary words. I suppose that I was just too old to learn a new language. Also, I had many other difficult subjects to occupy my time. The best thing about Latin class for me was my teacher, who was my favorite teacher of all time. :) She told really wonderful stories about Roman history and mythology and she treated us like friends, not like inferiors, which was the style of some of my teachers.

In the Spring of my senior year of high school, I went with my teacher, and a few other students in my class, on a week long expedition of Italy. It was a truly wonderful and memorable trip! We spend a couple of days in Rome, seeing the fabulous art treasures of The Vatican (I photographed the entire ceiling of the Sistine Chapel!), the Colosseum, the ruins of the Roman Forum (the ancient business and social center of the city), The Pantheon (probably the most amazing and best preserved Roman structure anywhere in the world - the 100 plus foot span of its unreinforced concrete dome was the biggest in the world until the advent of modern engineering in very recent times), and various other smaller wonders. We saw the Gardens and Fountains of Tivoli. We visited Emperor Hadrian's Villa. We toured the fantastic and very well preserved Roman town of Pompeii, which was buried in 79 AD by the volcanic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. We visited Florence where I saw the giant statue of David by Michelangelo. Finally, we spend a day walking about the city of Venice. Fortunately for us, the water was low that day, so we didn't have to use any of the elevated walkways. I took a great many pictures, but they were all developed as slides. Someday, I really should have them transferred to a CD. I would love to share some of those pictures here! :)

Thanks for visiting, and I hope you enjoyed your vicarious visit to the age of the Romans. :)

A Few Little Things

2007-10-07T00:06:00.000-04:00

Ever since I was a young child, I have always been fascinated with small things and small details. Perhaps I am mildly autistic, but I can't count toothpicks or cards like the Rain Man. ;) Mostly, I have always had an interest in noticing and observing little things that most people seem to ignore. When I was about 8 years old, I watched some movie about leprechauns. This was the first time that I heard that four-leaved clovers were considered lucky by some people, especially those of Irish descent. A short time after that, I took an interest in a clover patch near our house. I knelt down next to the patch and began to scan the clovers looking for one with four leaves. After only a few minutes, I found my first one! Within about 15 to 20 minutes, I had found several more four-leaved clovers. I picked one and showed it to my mother. She had never seen a four-leaved clover and was somewhat amazed. :) I continued to look at clover from time to time, with continued high leaf count success. A few years later, I was outside playing in a grassy school yard with my classmates. The teacher was outside with us, which was customary at that particular school. I really liked that teacher, so I decided to do something nice for her. There were a lot of clover patches in the field, so I began to look for a four-leaved clover to give my teacher. Well, this particular field was quite lean in terms of four-leaved clover content. I spent about 10 minutes and didn't find any at all. This was rather unusual in my experience. However, I persevered, and a few minutes later, I found one. It was a rather scrawny thing with one leaf slightly tattered, but it did indeed have four leaves, which was all that really mattered to me. I took it to my teacher and offered her my little gift. When she saw it, her eyes really lit up! Just like my mother, she had never seen one. She was really pleased, and she called all the kids in my class to come over and see it. The kids got really excited and they all wanted to find a four-leaved clover too. You can imagine what ensued during the remainder of our outdoor play time. About 20 kids all running around and squatting down in one clover patch after another. I think most of the clovers in that field got pretty well flattened that afternoon! :) I looked at more clover patches too. Eventually, I found one more four-leaved clover, a really nice and big one, which I also gave to my teacher. However, none of the other kids found one, and some were quite disappointed! After that day, the kids in my class may have thought I had some sort of special powers. ;) Well, not really, I just have very good observational and pattern recognition skills. Over the years since, I have found a great many four-leaved clovers. I lost count a long time ago. Whenever I take the time to look at a clover patch, I can almost always find at least one with four leaves. Something that most people don't know is that a clover can actually have more than four leaves. I have found a few with five leaves, and I once found one with seven!

Well, I wrote my little clover finding story a few days ago. Today was a nice sunny (albeit rather hot for October!) Saturday. I decided to go for a walk in my favorite city park/nature preserve. Having my clover story in mind, I decided to see if I still had the knack for spotting a rare four-leaved specimen (its been quite a while since I tried). Usually, when I go to this park, I hike along trails through the woods. The trees are big and tall (future post alert :) ), so the woods can be a bit gloomy during the leafy seasons. Clover do not thrive in gloom, indeed they do not grow in the thick woods at all, so I decided to hike along the grassy roadsides running through the park. There were lots of small clover patches scattered here and there in the short cut grass. I probably looked at about half a dozen patches before I spotted something interesting. Passers-by who saw me may have wondered what that strange man was doing staring into the grass. ;) Anyway, the interesting object that caught my attention was a clover with not four leaves, but five! Now, this is a really rare find. I think it may be only the third time in my whole life that I found a five-leafer. I picked it, and a regular three-leafer growing a few inches away, for a photographic comparison. My friend Hnk seems to like the word "Wallah" (last post comment reference). So, I present to you ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure: Clovers In My Hand, Wallah! ;)

It was still early in my walk, so I decided to keep looking for a four-leafed clover to add to my captive menagerie of small leafy greens. As I walked farther down the road, I came to a small lake with a lot of grass along its banks. Several people were fishing in the lake. As I walked along the trail next to the bank, I saw some really nice clover patches near the anglers, but I decided to keep walking for a ways past them. I didn't want them to worry about the crazy grass watcher right behind them. ;) Well, as it turned out, my decision to bypass those luxurious clover patches wasn't a bad one after all. I found a much less impressive patch a few hundred feet away that yielded a bit of green gold (Indiana tea?). :) So, here is the final lineup, in order of leafy ascendancy:

Ok, lets transition now from the world of plants to the animal kingdom. Why don't we start with a really tiny king (is Little Elvis in the house?). ;) My friend Melantrys recently entertained her visitors with some pics of a bumblebee foraging among some nice flowers somewhere way out in the boonies (ancestral home of Dan'l Boone? ;) ) of the German countryside. Well, I wanted to get a picture of a good ole' American bumblebee for comparison. I staked out some flowers at a prime location somewhere in the densely populated metropolis of Indianapolis (the exact location must remain undisclosed as the bees that frequent these flowers may or may not also pollinate the flowers of the "potatoe" fields on the estate of former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle ;) ). After a good five minutes of staking, a large bee lumbered into my field of view. At first, I thought it was a bumblebee, but when I got a closer look, it turned out to be a carpenter bee. I should have known right away what it was, considering the lumbering and all. :) On a serious note, carpenter bees can be very damaging pests when they are present in high numbers. They tunnel into dead trees, wood posts in the ground, or the lumber of houses, to raise their young. I have heard about structural collapses due to these bees! Well, fortunately for Indianapolis residents, they are not terribly common, at least not in my experience. The picture below is of my little wood chewing bumble-like friend. I waited for a while longer near these flowers, but unfortunately, I did not see any real bumblebees. Perhaps they prefer "potatoe" nectar. ;)

Every Summer, I see quite a few hummingbirds. These tiny birds are really fun to watch. They can hover in mid-flight, or even fly backwards! Their wings beat so fast that you will just see a blur if one flies by. They are very territorial. They will often chase each other away from the good flowers or a feeder (they drink nectar from flowers, or sugar water from a feeder). Sometimes, they would even buzz me! There is only one species of hummingbird that is very commonly seen in Indiana and many other parts of the Eastern United States. It is called the Ruby-throated Hummingbird. However, it is only the males that display the beautiful bright iridescent red on their throats (see link for a nice pic). The bird in this picture is obviously a female, considering her whitish throat. To give you an idea of just how small these birds are, this female was about three inches long from head to tail. I occasionally saw a male this summer, but I never managed to get a picture of it. He was rather timid. I snapped this pic a few weeks ago. These hummingbirds migrate all the way to Mexico or Central America for the winter months. However, we have been having an unusually warm Fall in Indiana, so the hummers have lingered past their typical exit date. Indeed, I saw one just a few days ago.

Next up is a seahorse. The zoo has a fascinating oceans exhibit. The main attraction is a petting pool for kids that is stocked with small sharks (I presume they are a toothless variety! - I have pics, but they do not fit with my "little" theme). Additionally, there are various species of fish, a lobster, an octopus, sea anemones, and lots of other marine fauna. I have always liked seahorses. They seem so exotic and un-fishlike! No doubt they were creatures of wondrous mystery to ancient ocean divers who first came across them.

In another view from the oceans building, here are some small fish (maybe eight inches long at most). Its very hard to get a decent picture of swimming fish, especially in the low light environment of this exhibit. My camera flash went off, but the fish are still a bit blurred. Mainly, I like this picture for the very colorful corals in the background. Once upon a time, during my early teen years, I had a salt water aquarium. I had various small marine fish. Sadly, most of them didn't live very long. Marine fish tend to be very sensitive to the salinity and pH (acidity vs. alkalinity for you chemistry buffs) of their water. The water needs to be tested daily and adjusted by adding salt or an acid or base solution, depending on the test results. I was just too young, ignorant, and or lazy to keep a close watch on my aquarium's water quality, so my fish had an annoying tendency to expire after a few days or weeks. One of my fish, though, was a very hearty little fellow. He (I assumed it was male, although I actually had no clue about its gender) was called a Jawfish (the pic at this link is similar to my fish), and he was the ugliest fish that I ever put in that tank! Most of the time, he just sat on the bottom. He certainly didn't exhaust himself to death! ;) Well, he managed to live for more than a year. For all I know, he may have died of natural causes. Another long lived denizen of my ill fated aquarium maintenance experiment was a hermit crab. I think it lingered for nearly a year, dragging its small conch shell back and forth from one end of the tank to the other. That crab ate several of my fish. Bad crab! Also, it ate about half of a jellyfish that I added to my little aquatic zoo. The jellyfish had nearly finished regenerating (which was a very interesting process to observe!), when it simply disappeared from the tank one day. I assumed that my crab, tiring of his frozen shrimp treats, finally decided to make a meal of the whole jelly. ;)

Well, I have saved my favorite pic for last. This little guy (or gal) peeking out from the drain pipe is a chipmunk (ever heard of Alvin and the Chipmunks?). Chipmunks are small ground dwelling squirrels, with a number of species living in North America. This particular bright-eyed hider is an Eastern Chipmunk. Chipmunks live in underground burrows. Usually, when one catches sight of me, it will scurry down the nearest hole. This one, however, must have wandered a bit far from its burrow. When it saw me, camera in hand during my bumblebee stake out, it ran a short distance into the downspout outlet of a roof gutter. I walked over to the outlet and waited patiently. It peaked out and then did a quick about face when it saw me. I waited some more. While it was up in the drain pipe, it made some very loud chirp/squeek sounds. I got the message that it was very annoyed with me! ;) Finally, it stuck its little head out and I snapped a picture. Perhaps it was dazed by the flash, as it didn't move. I walked a bit closer and snapped another pic. Still it didn't move. So, I carefully moved even closer. I approached to about three feet away and I slowly squatted down. Amazingly, the chipmunk remained frozen in place. I extended my camera out until it was about two feet away and snapped this pic. The little fellow just sat there, perfectly still, and continued to peek at me. Too bad I didn't have a nut in my hand at that moment. ;) Well, this chipmunk was a really good sport, having allowed me to take some very nice pics of its nose. So, after this shot, I stood up slowly and backed away, while it continued it's unblinking peek. I disappeared around a corner to continue my bee watch. A few minutes later, I looked back at the drain pipe and the chipmunk was gone.

Down By The River

2007-08-04T16:50:00.000-04:00

Well folks, I was finally able to resolve my picture posting difficulties. :) I downloaded Mozilla Firefox, which works quite well with Blogger. Now I can just hit the Add Image button in the Edit Post screen and wallah, picture posted!

Ok, now to reduce my backlog of pictures, I present for your viewing interest some pics of downtown Indianapolis. I took these pictures about four months ago. I had driven downtown to visit the zoo, but by the time I got there, late in the afternoon, they were already closed. The zoo has shorter hours in the non-summer months. Anyway, as there was still plenty of daylight, I decided to walk about for a while. There are sidewalks all around just outside of the zoo, so I put my feet to the concrete, and one foot in front of the other. After walking for about half a mile, I decided to stop, take in the view, and snap a few pics. In most of these pictures, I am looking across the White River at downtown Indianapolis.

First, let me give you a quick geography lesson. The White River flows through Indianapolis more or less from the north-east to the south-west. It is the city's most important geographic feature. It divides the city roughly in half and there are many bridges crossing it. In the early history of the U.S., rivers were very important in the establishment of small towns that eventually grew into today's cities. The White River was an important trade route in the years before major roads were built. It runs south-west to the Wabash River, which separates southern Indiana from Illinois (I trust you can find your own map of the U.S. if you would like to visualize what I am talking about). The Wabash then connects with the Ohio River, which in turn, flows into the Mississippi River. So, Indianapolis is connected by water all the way to the Gulf of Mexico! Low lying parts of the city are regularly inundated with floodwaters from the river. You would think that people would get the message and move, but some people are just stubborn and insist on cleaning the mud from their houses, staying right where they are, waiting for the fun to repeat itself. ;)

In this first picture, the zoo is behind me and I am looking to my left at an old concrete arch bridge (its about 100 years old) that crosses the White River.

Next, I have zoomed in a bit from the previous view. The red brick building in the center, with the high arched windows, is part of the national headquarters of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association). All major universities in America participate in the NCAA, which makes the rules for sports like football, basketball, baseball, etc., at the college level. I understand they have a very nice museum inside dedicated to great college athletes of past years. I have not been to the museum. I thought about going in the day I took these pics, but there really wasn't time. I'll get back down there again sometime and check it out.

In the next five shots, I am progressively panning my view to the right. This picture shows the tallest buildings in Indianapolis (if you click on the picture, you will see a lot more details in the enlarged image). Just to the right of the center of the picture, you can see a green dome right below the red "Hilton" of the Hilton Hotel. This is the dome of the historic State Capital Building. As far as I know, the Governor of Indiana still keeps an office there, however, most of the State administrative functions take place in the newer and much larger complex in the foreground, just in front of the Capital Building.

Here is a picture of the RCA Dome, which is the current home of the Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts football team. This is a rather interesting structure, in my opinion. The white dome is not solid, rather it is inflated, much like a balloon, and held up by higher air pressure inside the building. The doors into the dome act like air locks to hold the higher air pressure inside, thus keeping the dome properly inflated. I wonder what the heating and air conditioning costs for that dome are? They must be huge! In the foreground, you can see the words "Victory Field" right below the words "RCA Dome". Victory Field is a small baseball stadium where the Indianapolis Indians play. The Indians are a minor league team. They are professional players, but they compete with other minor league teams, which is completely separate from major league play. Minor league baseball teams are often the training grounds for future major league ball players. Indianapolis does not have a major league baseball team.

Now, lets zoom out a little and take in a bigger view. Just to the right of the RCA Dome, there is a building with three tall smoke stacks. If I am correctly informed (which is occasionally not the case!), this is a facility that converts coal into natural gas, which is then pumped all over the city. A by-product of this conversion process is coke (baked coal), which was once an important fuel used by the steel making industry. Coke burns much hotter than coal. Today, as far as I know, most steel in the U.S. is produced using an electric arc process to melt the iron and scrap metal raw materials. So, I don't know if there is a big market for coke these days.

Just to the right of the coal/gas plant is the city's biggest current construction project. Can you guess what it could be? Well, as is the case in many big American cities, the resident professional football team has lobbied the politicians to create new and bigger venues so they can increase their ticket sales and line their pockets with more of their fans hard earned loot. So, behold the future home of the Indianapolis Colts, just down the road a few blocks from their current home. The RCA Dome is scheduled for demolition to make way for a much bigger Indianapolis Convention Center. This new football stadium will not be a dome. In fact, the structure will be much more complex. It will be completely roofed, however, the roof will be designed so that huge panels can be retracted to open the stadium to the sky in good weather. No doubt the natural grass playing field will enjoy the sun and rain in the warmer months, while the fans can work on their tans. ;) The main structural feature in this picture is the first of a pair of gigantic trusses that will support the roof. I don't have the exact dimensions, but I think they will each span more than 500 feet from one end of the stadium to the other!

Backing the view out a bit more, includes two more parallel bridges that cross the White River.

For this next picture, I have walked left from my starting point over to the bridge that I showed in the first picture. This is a sculpture of a buffalo made entirely of densely packed wires.

Buffalo were once one of the most important species in the ecosystem of the western U.S. grasslands known as The Great Plains. This huge area of prairie once spanned like an ocean of grass east to west between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, and north to south from Canada to Texas. The buffalo were a very important source of food, clothing, and shelter for many tribes of Plains Indians. They wore buffalo robes, slept on buffalo rugs, carried water in buffalo bladders, and made tepees from buffalo skins, for example. You may be acquainted with some of these Native Americans from the many western movies that featured cowboys, soldiers, and Indians. As you might imagine, those simple stories barely scratch the surface of the real history of "The Old West". Before white settlers came to The Great Plains, buffalo roamed the prairie in gigantic herds, some of which contained tens of millions of animals! Sadly, most of the buffalo were killed for their hides and also to starve the Plains Indians into submission. Indeed, the buffalo nearly went extinct. From hundreds of millions, their numbers dropped to less than 1000 animals about 100 years ago. I am pleased to report that the buffalo are making a nice come back. Today, there are tens of thousands of buffalo, many of which have been raised on western Indian Reservations. To Native Americans whose ancestors lived on The Great Plains, the buffalo is a sacred animal, so helping to save them is a religious duty. I was surprised to learn, a few years ago, that there were once quite a few buffalo that lived in States east of the Mississippi River, including Indiana. Not surprisingly, they were all killed and eaten by hungry white settlers.

Here, I have turned to my right away from the buffalo sculpture to look down the length of the old bridge. This bridge was closed to vehicle traffic back in the 1970's and has been a pedestrian walkway and park since then.

This final picture was taken about a month ago while I was stuck in a traffic jamb after visiting the zoo. As you can see, the construction of the new football stadium has proceeded, and much of the roof has been erected. There is still a lot of work to be done, so I don't think the stadium will be ready for any of the 2007 football season.

I hope you have enjoyed my little tour of downtown Indianapolis. I have more pictures on various themes which I will share with you soon.

Poetic Maturité

2007-07-21T01:31:00.000-04:00

Well, here I am once again, back from my wanderings. :) I made a deal with my friend Morbido to create a post before the end of the week. She agreed and promptly posted, so the pressure was on, and I began rattling my skull for a new topic de jour. My first thought was to post some pictures, having collected quite a backlog on my digicam. However, after a few hours of futile wrestling with Blogger and Picasa, I wasn't able to post a single image. :( Months ago, the bright and cheery geeks of Bloggerdom decided in their infinite grasp of all things HTMLey to lead their faithful and obedient servant, known as BloggerBot, to a pool of salty water and short circuit him. Ever since, I have been image uploadinally impaired, in digipolitical correctese, or just plain screwed, to use a more colloquial expression! Well, being unable to visually entertain my guests, and being rather pressed for time, I decided to dig once more into my dusty vaults to try and find some more mature examples of my past poetic endeavors. I did, after all, hint to my doctor friend Omid (in the preceding post comments) that I might just give him a dose of my better poetic medicine! :) So, after a bit of polish and wax, I present to you three poems (well, the first is more prosaic, but in the spirit of a poem, nonetheless). The first two, as I recall, were written when I was about 18 years of age, while the last, I penned at some point during my graduate school career. I hope you like them! :)

Imagined Idyllity

I am in the middle of a wondrous wildness of forested and mountainous terrain. Looking up from a small sun brightened morning bedewed grassy meadow, the sky is blue and cloudless; the air cool, crisp, and refreshing. I watch and listen carefully, reveling, as a bird pirouettes upon its wing; a squirrel busily gathers its winter stores; a deer runs swiftly, head held strong and erect; a cricket sings its tiny love song; and the trees: old and time ravaged, yet tall and vigorous, stand as sentinels, signaling the arrival of autumn, as a chilling breeze gently rustles through their leaves. All is well; tranquility abundant. I feel perfectly at home.

Mind's Repast

In my mind there is a place,
If places there may be,
Where I can go
Where who may know
When I am wanting peace.

This place,
This boundless perfect place,
Is just the balm I seek
When that which means within
In worlds without
Cannot, I find, be found.

In this place
I'm free to grow,
To be as I dream of being;
There, friends are true
And love can last
Until it sets me free.

Contraposition

Bright eyes searching, hunger driven
* Wheels turn, levers shift, switches switch
Small prize, unalerted, within sight
* Unhindered, unreasoned, unquestioned advance
Careful, stealthy, determined approach
* Shiny blades, powered metal mandibles
Capture, ingestion, life perpetuating life
* Rending, tearing, crushing, devouring
Bright eyes close, life's struggle on hold
* Raw materials digested, appetites unsated
Rest and reconstitution, resulting renewal
* Consuming ever more of the ever less

Uplifting End Note: Stay tuned folks, I plan to write a few scathing emails in search of remedies to my image posting difficulties. Assuming the Masters of Geekness come through with some fixes, I may just have some pics for you in the near future. Fingers, toes, and eyelashes will all be crossed in anticipation. ;)

Poetic Naïveté

2007-06-07T14:06:00.000-04:00

Hello my friends. I have been away from my blogospheric home for more than two months now. "Bad Host!", as my friend Melantrys might say. ;) I suppose that my absence can be traced to an ebb in my creative energies combined with simply spending my blogging time out and about visiting and commenting. Well, as I do not wish to be a perpetual vagabond, always enjoying the fruit of other people's labor, while sharing none of my own, its about time that I hosted a gathering here at my abode. We shall sing songs and play games! We shall eat and drink to our heart's content! A bit later, cake and ice cream will be served! Ahhhh... sorry, I guess I got a bit carried away there. ;)

Last night I was going through a large stack of very old papers and memorabilia when I came across some poems that I had written for one of my Junior High English classes. I knew that I had the poems, but I hadn't seen them in years. Some of you may remember my little Poetic Interlude from July of last year. These poems are much simpler, and probably more open and honest, as the thoughts of 12 year old child are prone to be. They are not monuments of literary accomplishment (well, neither was my Interlude ;) ), however they were fun to read once again, and they reminded me of the wide-eyed wonder with which I once beheld the world. Here now are a few of those poems. I hope you will enjoy them.

The Sea

The wonderful sea:
Tides rolling, never stopping,
Forever changing.

The Sky

The beautiful sky:
A heavenly paradise,
Always to behold.

Rain

The rain is falling,
Little drops of nature's tears,
Blinding to my eyes.

Birds on High

Soaring, soaring, wild and free,
Above the treetops they were meant to be.
Flying, flying, high above the land,
Even they could be a reckless band.

Froggly

A frog may be lumpy, bumpy, and ugly,
But he fits in the environment quite snuggly.
He creates a food chain all of his own,
Even though sometimes he might be prone,
To eat things that are mostly buggly.

An Interesting Speaker and an Anniversary

2007-04-01T00:41:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I attended a lecture given by Colin Powell. It was a truly extraordinary experience! The lecture was sponsored by the oldest and largest Jewish Temple in Indianapolis for the benefit of their members and the general public. I happened to be one of the lucky general public folks who were able to attend. My seat was near the back wall of the Temple's large auditorium, about 150 feet from the lectern. The cost of front row well cushioned seat tickets was well over $100, while my tiny plastic folding chair seat was considerably less! The really big spending wheeler dealers shelled out $1000 for the opportunity to have dinner with Mr. Secretary and to have their picture taken with him prior to his lecture. I saw quite a few very well dressed men and women toting 8x10 glossies! From what I have heard, Colin Powell's speaking fee is somewhere in the six figure range (that would be in excess of $100,000 for my friends who are not familiar with dollar jargon) and likely more than $500,000! There were probably several thousand people in attendance, by my estimate of the crowd size, but definitely not enough to cover such a large fee. Apparently, part of his speaking fee was paid by some sort of lecture series trust that was willed to the Temple by some very wealthy former members.

The one thing that really surprised me about Colin Powell was his excellent sense of humor! I'm used to seeing him in TV interviews, all business, and very serious, but I have never seen him relaxed and enjoying himself before, as I did that evening. During his lecture, which lasted for about one and a half hours, including a bit of Q & A at the end, he told many stories ranging from his childhood, his long military career, his time as Secretary of State, and a few things since his retirement. He was quite animated during the lecture, using a lot of gestures (all polite ;) ), and demonstrated a very well polished mastery of the dramatic pause, as well as excellent comedic timing. I honestly believe that he would have made a great stand up comic in another life! Perhaps that was one of the keys to his many successes. I (along with the rest of the audience) was really captivated during his lecture, and there were many instances of spontaneous laughter and applause!

Knowing that the majority of his audience were Jewish, Powell told several stories that involved his interactions with various Jewish people. He spent his childhood in a predominantly Jewish working class neighborhood in New York City (I believe he said it was the lower east side of Brooklyn). His first job was working in a candy store owned by a Jewish man and most of the customers were Jewish. He talked about learning quite a bit of Yiddish (European Jewish language) in that store, a talent which proved quite useful years later when he was meeting with various Israeli leaders. In one story, he joked about having a long conversation in Yiddish with Israeli Prime Minister Shimir (back when Reagan was President, and he was a National Security Advisor), and that within an hour the news had been flashed back to his old neighborhood in New York. :)

He talked about leading small squads of men as an Army Lieutenant in the Vietnam War. He said those were some of his strongest memories, and that he can still vividly remember the names and faces of the men he served with there. He said that he learned quickly about taking responsibility in the Army, where his most common utterances to superior officers were "Yes Sir!, No Sir!, No Excuse Sir!" I really had the sense that I was listening to a man of profound character and integrity!

Powell talked a lot about the current war in Iraq. He expressed quite a bit of anger and frustration with the conduct of the war. He didn't get too specific about who he was angry at (hopefully, he will someday!), however, he did talk in detail about his reservations prior to the start of the war, and the many lost opportunities later on. He couldn't quite bring himself to say that the war had been a complete mistake, though. Still, he had a lot to say about the lack of adequate forces on the ground in Iraq at the beginning of the occupation, and the absence of a coherent plan to deal with the power vacuum that was created by the fall of Saddam's regime. As to the current plan to surge additional troops into Iraq to try and quell the sectarian violence, he was not at all optimistic about the long term success of the plan. He likened it to putting a heavier lid on an already boiling pot! He said that peace in Iraq can only come through a political process among the Iraqi people, and that there is simply no military solution to the present violence there. He also talked about involving the neighboring countries, and the need for the U.S. to have dialogue with them. One of his earlier stories that evening had been about the time when he personally sat across the table from Mikhail Gorbachev prior to the meetings between Reagan and Gorbachev. Powell is a man with immense personal experience regarding the wisdom of engaging in dialogue with "the enemy"!

Near the end of his lecture, Powell talked about how different it was to travel internationally as a private citizen, compared to his previous experiences as Secretary of State, and his various other travel on official U.S. government business. He had gotten quite comfortable receiving the V.I.P. treatment at various airports. He was used to red carpets, military bands, and being greeted by dignitaries. Nowadays, he joked, he has to stand in long lines with everyone else at the airport and be "wanded" by the security screeners. He said recently he was being wanded by a screener who recognized him and greeted him politely saying, "How are you today Secretary Powell?" Powell responded, "You know who I am and you still need to wand me?" The way he told this story was quite humorous. :)

During the question and answer period after the lecture, Powell was asked what he thought about the state of military hospitals, given the current news about the terrible conditions at the Walter Reed Army Hospital. He said that he gets all his check-ups at Walter Reed, and that the part of the facility that he has seen is well maintained and excellently staffed. However, he acknowledged that he was not surprised to hear about problems considering how much the budget has been cut for the military and veterans hospitals. He talked about his son who was nearly killed in an auto accident while serving in the Army in Germany back in the 1970's. He said that his son received excellent care in military medical facilities in Europe and America and ultimately made a full recovery. He said that U.S. troops today deserve the same excellent level of medical treatment that his own son received. I couldn't agree more!

Powell was asked if he had ever considered a political career. He responded that he had considered it, but he felt that his abilities and interests were better suited to the path that he had chosen and that he had no regrets about his career. This was a man who was talked about in the highest Republican circles as a potential candidate for President in the 2000 election. If Powell had decided to run, I don't think that Bush Jr. would have had a chance against him. What a tragedy for America and the world that he decided not to run! I am not a Republican and I never will be, but I have great respect for Colin Powell. I would not have voted for him, but I am certain that he would have made an excellent President! I felt honored to be in the same room with the man!

Ok, lets move along to the second part of the title of this post. On Tuesday March 20, my friend Baghdad Treasure published a post to mark the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He wrote to a group of Iraqi and American bloggers and requested that they answer a few questions about their thoughts prior to the war and now four years later. I was honored that he asked me to participate! Please visit my other blog Apolitical Deconstruction to read my answers or, if you would like to see all the respondents answers, please visit Baghdad Treasure's post using the link above. I learned a great deal by reading the other responses, perhaps you would, as well!

My friend Attawie also wrote an excellent post to mark the fourth anniversary (please visit her post using the link provided, I promise it is worth the read!). I wrote a comment to her post that seemed appropriate, and she responded to my comment by recommending that I turn it into a new post for my blog. Well, that was not the first time that someone kindly complimented one of my comments by saying it would make a nice post, however, this is the first time that I have decided to take such advice. I have great respect for Attawie, and I am honored that she thought my comment worthy of a wider audience. Thank you Attawie! Below is my comment to Attawie's post:

"Attawie, this post reads like a poem, an ode to Iraq. In the past few years I have learned a lot about Iraq's history. It has an ancient, wonderful, and tragic history. The wheel has turned and the pages of tragedy are once again being read. I have no doubt that Iraq will be peaceful and great again someday, but I am not very good at thinking about somedays. I see the here and now. I see men, women, and children crying for the loss of loved ones, and their sorrow brings tears to my eyes, as well!

You ask why, by whom, and for what reason. I ask these questions also! The worst faces of humanity have danced in Iraq's streets, dressed in their finest clothes, all hiding hearts of vile darkness. The faces of greed and corruption from far away lands have smiled and laughed. The new faces of tyranny and subjugation have frowned on the old, planted their seeds, irrigated their crops with the blood of innocents, and reaped vast harvests of misery. Yet some of the masks have fallen from the dancers. They stand naked, their dark hearts revealed. The music pauses for the page to turn. What lies on the next page is the future, what is written is unknown.

I still have some hope, but I also have fear that the worst for Iraq may yet be ahead. American troops will leave Iraq. I think that will begin to happen before Bush leaves office. The Republicans in the U.S. Congress and Senate can read the writing on the wall. They will fear for their jobs before the next election and they will run from Bush's side like scared rabbits. Its what will happen after the troops leave that really worries me. I hope the Iraqi people can talk meaningfully to each other. I hope that the neighboring countries will talk to each other and to the Iraqi people. Peace and security can only come through dialogue and compromise within Iraq and among its neighbors. I hope this will happen. It must happen!"

The Arrest of a Courageous Woman and Friend

2007-03-07T00:54:00.000-05:00

Usually, I confine my posting on political matters to my Apolitical Deconstruction blog. However, I am going to make an acception in this case, as the subject of this post really hits me close to home! This past Sunday (March 4), 33 Iranian women were arrested while conducting a peaceful demonstration in front of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran. They were expressing their solidarity with 5 other women who had been arrested during a previous peaceful demonstration conducted this past summer. One of the women arrested on Sunday is my friend Parastoo! Here is Parastoo's picture that she displays on her Orkut page:

Here are a couple of articles that provide an excellent discussion of the details of the women's arrest: 1.) BBC News article; 2.) article written by Syma Sayyah, a writer and social activist living in Tehran.

Would you please consider signing the petition calling for the release of these women? Here is a link to a web page containing the petition.

Finally, if you feel really motivated to take action (like me!!), you can send lots of emails to Iranian officials. The relevant email addresses are listed at this Amnesty International page, along more detailed info on the situation.

Here is a copy of the email that I sent to all the officials named on the Amnesty page:

Your Excellency,

I am an American who has had the honor to become friends with a number of very outstanding Iranian people. I have great respect for Iran and her ancient culture.

It has come to my attention that 33 Iranian women were arrested on March 4, 2007 while conducting a peaceful demonstration in front of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran.

I am very concerned that at least one woman, Nahid Ja'fari, was reportedly injured during her arrest, when police allegedly hit her head against a police van, breaking one or more of her teeth. I respectfully ask that she and the other women be granted access to medical attention, their families, and lawyers.

It is my understanding that Article 27 of the Iranian Constitution says, "Public gatherings and marches may be freely held, provided arms are not carried and that they are not detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam". In accordance with your own laws and Constitution, I respectfully ask that these 33 women be released immediately and unconditionally.

Sincerely,

Thank you my friends for caring about Iranian women's rights!

Update (March 9, 2007): I read that 30 of the 33 women arrested have been released, including my friend Parastoo! I am not 100% sure, but I believe that their families had to post a large bail to get them out of the prison. The three women who are still imprisoned are considered as the "ringleaders" of the peaceful demonstration. This article gives more information on the release of the 30 and the three women still in custody, including their pictures and brief biographies. Finally, Parastoo gave this brief interview after her release that describes the arrest of the women demonstrators and her interrogations in the prison. If you have not signed the petition yet, please do so, as it may help the three women still in prison. Thanks!

For My Friend

2007-02-26T23:42:00.000-05:00

I would like to introduce you to a new blog called Iraqi Hopes created by my friend Hud. She is an Iraqi woman, living in Iraq, who is struggling to complete her Ph.D. thesis in linguistics. (Some of my readers will be familiar with the blog of Hud's good friend Najma who writes A Star from Mosul.) Hud's research is aimed at Americans. She asks her subjects to fill out a questionnaire. I completed the questions as one of her subjects. Her research is serious, and the questions will require a bit of time and thought to answer, but I found them very interesting! :) Hud is currently on her second extension and is feeling very anxious about getting enough subjects. So, if you are an American (I think one or two read my blog ;) ), or if you know some Americans who would like to help out a very nice Iraqi student, would you please take a look at Hud's blog and consider participating in her research, or asking your American friends to consider participating? If you would like to help her, then please contact her by e-mail (she posted a link to her e-mail address), and she will then send you (or your kind friends) her questionnaire. I would very much appreciate your help, and I know that Hud would appreciate it even more! Thank you my friends for your kind attention! :)

Pentagonal Asymmetry

2007-01-11T20:47:00.000-05:00

Well, my friends Khodadad and Dr. O2 have both targeted me as the next subject of the currently popular "five things" tagging game. I previously commented to Khodadad a drastically reduced version of what lies below. I hadn't really intended to post these five things, but then Dr. O2 ganged up on me too. I was tag teamed, and they broke my will to resist! ;) So, here's to you guys, and to you I dedicate the following five fascinating tales from my lost and misspent youth:

1.) I was once addicted to the soap opera "Days of Our Lives". If any of you know that Marlena was possessed by the Devil, then you know exactly what I am talking about! ;) In general I like soap opera type shows with evolving characters and stories. "Dallas" was one of my all time favorite shows, and boy do I have a story to tell about that! I was watching the season ending episode, and half way through the show, CBS pre-empted Dallas with the face of Dan Rather, roving reporter extraordinare. He was in a hotel room and he kept going on and on about how the Chinese government was about to cut off his satellite transmission. He had no news at all to report, he just kept talking about the eminent shut down of his broadcast. I was so mad that I was missing Dallas that I called my local CBS TV station. I recognized the voice that answered the phone. His name was Dave, and he was the head reporter/anchor for the local station's news show. I demanded to know why Dallas had been pre-empted and if it would be shown again and when. Poor Dave could only tell me that the local station had no control over the network feed and that he didn't know anything about whether Dallas would be rebroadcast. Well, after that short and frustrating conversation, I went back to watching Dan Rather talking about essentially nothing, hoping against hope that he would go away and that I could watch the last few minutes of Dallas. Well, not long after Dallas would have ended, Dan was finally cut off as he kept saying he would be. Well, at that moment I just didn't give a damn! I had missed half of the most important TV show of the entire year! I went to bed bitterly disappointed! The next day, I heard the news that the Chinese military had invaded Tiananmen Square and brutally crushed the student freedom and democracy movement. Over the next several days, the full story of the carnage and death that ensued began to come out. I felt completely and totally ashamed! I never did get to see that whole episode of Dallas, but after what happened, it didn't really matter to me any more.

2.) When I was a kid, I used to style the hair of my sister's Barbie dolls. I was a better stylist than she was! I would create various pony tails, buns, and braids. I had very nimble little fingers! :) Well, that was a phase that didn't last very long. I think I did it more to compete with my sister than because I loved the idea of becoming a hair stylist. ;) I spent a lot more time with my tough-man G.I. Joe dolls. I had the Joes with Life-Like Hair and pistil grip hands. My best friend had G.I. Joe with Life-Like Hair and Kung-Fu Grip, definitely a much cooler version (I was quite jealous!). :) I had all sorts of gear for my Joes. I had little plastic guns, little plastic bomb detonators, and little plastic grenades. I had a little aluminized astronaut suit and an everglades style plastic swamp boat with a big plastic propeller. But the best Joe accessory that I ever had was a three foot diameter nylon parachute that was intended for use with a large model rocket. I fashioned a harness to unite my Joe with the chute. I would roll up the chute and throw Joe as high into the air as I could. I guess that I could toss him up 30 or 40 feet. The chute would open and Joe would slowly descend to the ground while swinging back and forth. The most fun, though, was when the chute failed to open and Joe would come crashing back to Earth and splat into the ground looking all twisted and contorted! I had to reattach his head a few times! ;)

3.) All through my childhood, I had a very strong fear of long legged spiders, even of daddy longlegs, which are closely related to spiders, but totally harmless to humans. I am not afraid of short legged spiders at all, though. In fact, I loved to play with jumping spiders, and I didn't mind letting them walk and hop around on my hands. I once even held a tarantula without any discomfort at all! I guess it was the leg length to body size ratio that made me uncomfortable. One Summer, while I was at boy scout camp, it seemed that almost everywhere I looked there were long legged spiders. When I would swim in the lake, there were long legged fishing spiders with three inch leg spans swimming around near the shore. My friends and I would splash them until they hid in the reeds before we would dare get in the water. One day, I was walking on a trail through the woods at the camp and I came upon a small stream. There, next to the stream bank, crouched the biggest fishing spider that I had ever seen. It must have had a leg span of nearly four inches! For some bizarre reason, in spite of my morbid fear, I decided that I wanted to capture it and show it to my friends. I looked around quickly for something that I could trap the spider in. Not far away, I spyed a large rusty coffee can that had been discarded near the trail. I ran over, grabbed the can, and ran back to the stream. The spider hadn't moved. I held the can in my left hand and picked up a stick in my right hand. Then I eased the can down next to the spider. Still, it hadn't moved. I touched its leg with the stick and it ran into the can, momentarily disappearing. I slowly tilted the can up to have a look, and suddenly the spider appeared! It had climbed upside down and was running full speed in the direction of my face! All this happened in a split second. I let go of the can, and by shear reflex, jumped backward about five feet. My heart was racing! The spider scuttled over the top of the can, jumped into the stream, and disappeared from my view. After a few seconds to catch my breath, I went over to the stream and looked for the spider, but it had completely disappeared. I went back to camp and regaled my friends with my tall tale of the giant spider that nearly ate me for dinner! :)

4.) Have you ever yearned to have a window into the pre-adolescent male mind? If so, then read on brave reader, read on! If not, it is strongly suggested that the reader advance to #5! When I was about 12 years old, I was the best teller of dirty joke stories in my whole school (or so I thought, at least! :P ). I would learn a dirty story and then add my own embellishments. My theatrical delivery was also very good, in my opinion! ;) My best story was about three intrepid ants. Their tale is one of adventure, of days and nights spent exploring rumbling twin mountain peaks, thick, dark, and dank rain forests, and deep caverns. Oh, lets not forget the huge cave bears! Yeah, you must be thinking, pretty stupid eh? Well, I have just given you a few essentials of the story. Trust me, there was a lot more tantalizing detail and dramatic buildup! That story never failed to have my young friends rolling with laughter! Hey, we were all just dumb kids afterall! :D

5.) I was once a bit of a juvenile delinquent. When I was 15, I and two other school friends got it into our heads to throw a lot of eggs at the cars of certain school acquaintances late at night. Problem was, we did it over and over again to the same people's cars. Eventually we got caught and had to pay restitution. Honestly, I really didn't have anything against those people. The behavior was just stupid and senseless, but that is what young men of that age are! On the final night of our delinquency, we went to the house of a boy with a really rich daddy. The boy drove a Porsche 924 to school every day. It was the bottom of the line Porsche, but damn, it was a Porsche, and we were jealous! We had arrived in two cars. My friend was sixteen, and he had a license to drive, but I only had a learner's permit. Still, for some reason, I was driving my parent's old Ford that night. We had great fun talking to each other on our CB radios (this was long before cell phones folks!) while we drove to our quarry's house. We parked a block or two away and walked to the house, full egg cartons in hand. We dumped a dozen on top of the Porsche and a second dozen on top of rich daddy's big Mercedes. Then, all of a sudden, the lights came on and there were people yelling and running toward us! The three of us took off running in the direction of our cars. My two friends jumped in their car and took off at high speed. I was a bit slower to get to my car, and the boy who drove the egg laden Porsche caught up to me and grabbed my arm. I was really scared, but I didn't try to struggle. He was older and bigger than I was. He walked me back to his house. Rich daddy had taken off in his car in hot pursuit of my friends. Rich boy and his momma kept an eye on me after momma called the police. The policeman got there and asked me my name. I told him. He wanted to see my license, but all I had was my learner's permit. He wrote down my name, address, etc. He asked for the names of my accomplices, but I initially said nothing. I was feeling a combination of extreme embarrassment, shame, fear, and loyalty to my friends. After a while rich daddy came back and said that my friends had gotten away, but that he had the license number of the car. He gave it to the policeman. Finally, I confessed the names of my friends. Rich momma and daddy were rather surprised at one of the names. I found out later that they were good friends with his parents. Rich daddy, I found out later also knew my father. Anyway, the cop turned out to be pretty cool. Although I didn't have a driver's license, he let me drive my car home. I was sure that I was going to be hauled off to jail, but he released me (To this day, I suspect that the cop had been even more of a delinquent than I ever was in his own youth!). Still, I knew that my troubles were just beginning. I drove home slowly and stayed up all night worrying about what my parents would think of me. In the morning, I confessed to my parents what I had done. They were really upset and disappointed in me! Our three father's ended up having a big meeting with rich daddy, and another daddy, as well. Some expensive cars needed expensive cleaning and repainting. One of my friends apparently confessed to a few of our other capers, so that added to the total bill. We all ended up working for months to pay off the damages that our parents had covered for us. The story of our misadventures was spread far and wide at school. We were either heroes or pariahs, depending on the social status of our fellow students. All in all, it was a very tough lesson that I and my friends had to learn!

Ok, now that I have fulfilled the tag challenge of revealing five extraordinary things about myself, if I am to adhere to the rules of the game, I must now name five new recipients to carry the torch exponentially further into the murky ethers of the blogosphere. :) Now lets see, who among my friends is deserving of such honor and distinction? Hmmm, dramatic pause, drum roll..., ok I name as the next victims, er honorees, Anarki-13, Lavinia, Madas, Melantrys, and Tamara. Now everybody, how about a big round of applause for the distinguished top five!! :D

Happy Holiday Gardening!

2006-12-23T00:53:00.000-05:00

Nearly two years ago, in January of 2005, I created a post titled Welcome To My Winter Garden. It featured the beauty of naturally formed ice crystal patterns discovered on my window one cold and frosty morning. Well, just in time for the Holiday Season, my Winter Garden is once again in full bloom! I hope these pictures, while not quite as spectacular as the previous Garden pics, will help to get you into the Holiday spirit. Please enjoy them, and I wish a very HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON to all my friends! :)

Do You Perceive Extra Sensorially?

2006-12-04T00:31:00.000-05:00

Recently, my friend Madas wrote a post in which she described what seemed like a possible psychic connection between her and her brother. She had some very uncomfortable feelings about her brother, difficulty sleeping, and bad dreams for several days. Finally, she called him, and he told her that he was very upset that one of his friends had died of a fall from a high window. As part of this post, I would like to share an excerpt from a comment that I wrote in response to her post:

"Some people seem to somehow know when someone they love is suffering. Do you feel a very strong emotional connection to your brother (I am guessing the answer is yes)? Perhaps you somehow sensed his deep sense of loss from his friend's passing. I am not superstitious either, but I have had repeated experiences that make me wonder if I have some sort of minor ESP talent. What has happened many times over the years is that I will have a silent thought in my mind and then several seconds later another person will say the exact same words. My mother has told me a number of times that she has had the same experience too. On top of this, the same thing will happen between myself and my mother. I will think it and she will say it, or sometimes I will see an image in my mind and she will then talk about the thing that I mentally saw. This sort of thing used to freak me out a bit, but it happens so often that I am quite used to it. I have even tried to rationalize how this might be possible. It is a well documented fact that the human brain can produce measureable electromagnetic fields. Each neuron produces a tiny field when it activates to stimulate adjacent neurons as a thought or stimulus to move the body occurs in the brain. At any given moment, millions of neurons are "firing", as a neuroscientist would say. These millions of little electromagnetic fields add up to produce a significant and measurable EM field. Maybe it is possible that such a field could influence another person's brain over a short distance. The analogy to physics that I like to relate this to is called induction. If you pass a current through a loop of wire that is located near but not touching another loop of wire, a current will be induced to flow in the second wire by the magnetic field generated by the current in the first wire. Anyway, I'm probably getting way too technical here and a real neuroscientist might think I was crazy! So much for my theory of short distance telepathy. Now, how could two minds communicate over a long distance? Well, I haven't got a clue. In fact, such a concept defies rational explanation, as far as I am concerned. Nevertheless, some people believe that they can do it. Considering my own experiences, I am at least willing to be open minded and not dismiss the possibility."

I have told very few people about my experiences because, quite frankly, I doubt that many people would believe me! Ever since my early teen years, I have thought of myself as a very rational person, not given to magical thinking or beliefs based on emotion rather than reason. I can't remember when I had my first experience with what seems like mind reading or thought transference, but for many years I was very resistant to the idea that it was really happening. I kept trying to convince myself that it was just coincidence. However, at some point, it was happening so frequently, that I just couldn't dismiss it out of hand anymore. Now, I should make it clear that this does not happen with everyone. Also, it has happened with people that I am related to, people who are my close friends, and people that I hardly know at all.

A few years ago, something happened that I could hardly believe. I was playing the child's game of Rock, Paper, Scissors with someone that I had known very closely for many years. For those of you unfamiliar with the game, rock is represented by a closed fist, paper by an open hand, and scissors by a two fingered victory sign. The winner of a round is determined as follows: paper covers rock so paper wins; scissors cut paper so scissor wins; and rock smashes scissors so rock wins. If both players "throw" the same shape, then the round is a draw. Normally, I don't play child games very often, but this occurred after we had watched an episode of the SciFi series Farscape. The main character on the show played the game with his artificially created twin self (it was a fun but wierd series!). The character and the twin apparently had a psychic bond because they kept throwing identical shapes in the game. For example: Rock/Rock; Paper/Paper; or Scissor/Scissor. Well, when we played the game that night, the same thing happened to us seven times in a row, and we only played for seven rounds! We were both astonished at the improbability of such an occurrance! A few days ago, I did some research on probability theory and learned how to calculate the odds against what happened. For each round of the game, there are nine possible combinations of outcome. Three out of the nine (0.3333) result in a draw. So, the odds against what happened are: 0.3333 raised to the power of 7 which results in one chance out of 2187. Those are pretty long odds against what happened! Well, this weird occurrance was only one out of many events that I and this person experienced over the course of many years. It often happened that I would think something and she would say it seconds later.

Have any of you heard of a famous mentalist who bills himself as The Amazing Kreskin? When I was a kid, he had a TV show in which he would perform various mind reading tricks. At the time, I thought it was all fake, but like an excellent magician, I couldn't figure out how he could do what he did. Well, he claims to actually be able to read people's minds. Considering my experiences, maybe he really can! So, have any of you had any strange experiences that you were afraid to tell anyone about? Now is your chance. I promise you will receive no ridicule from me! :)

A Few Unrelated Notes:

My friend Kyubai, who lives in Baghdad, is conducting a little experiment in virtue. The first virtue in the experiment is "Respect". There are no particular rules, we are just trying to think about showing respect to other people. I promised Kyubai that I would mention it in my blog. You can read about it at his blog if it sounds interesting and you would like to work on your virtuous capacity.

I wrote a new post for my Apolitical blog. It is a letter to my U.S. Senators urging them to take some action to help reduce the level of violence in Iraq. I also asked them to check out the writings of three outstanding Iraqi bloggers. Who knows, they might just listen to my suggestions if they can tear themselves away from re-election fundraising!

I Think, But I Am Not Sure What I Am!

2006-10-17T01:49:00.000-04:00

In a comment to my last post, my friend Tamara introduced me to the concept of existentialist philosophy. Having heard the word, but not really knowing its meaning, I consulted the Wikipedia article on Existentialism. After reading up on it, I decided that I was in pretty general agreement with what I was reading. Indeed, I may very well be an existentialist! In my response to Tamara, I listed this quote from the article that seemed to sum it up pretty well: "Existentialism tends to view human beings as subjects in an indifferent, objective, often ambiguous, and "absurd" universe in which meaning is not provided by the natural order, but rather can be created, however provisionally and unstably, by human beings' actions and interpretations." Considering the content of this statement, I have to wonder if the first existentialist thinkers were burned at the stake!

Ever since I became capable of logical reasoning, probably around the age of 11 or so, I have never been one to blindly follow a particular philosophical (or religious) point of view. I suppose that I have been pretty much a free thinker since that time. I have pondered the nature of existence now for many years, yet I have to admit that mostly what I have discovered is that I am vastly ignorant of the nature of existence! :) Still, there are a few things that I have settled on that just seem to make logical sense to me.

I was a big fan of the TV series Cosmos that Carl Sagan did back in 1980. I guess that really dates me (well, sort of)! ;) One of the things that he taught me in that series is that "we are, all of us, made of star-stuff". Now, that was indeed a profound pronouncement! I remember Carl describing in detail how elements were created in the center of stars by the process of nuclear fusion. Primarily, Hydrogen fuses into Helium in a star's nucleus which releases vast amounts of energy and causes a star to shine brightly for our enjoyment (or indeed, for our very survival in the case of our Sun). However, at some point, very old stars begin to run short of Hydrogen to fuse and they begin to fuse Helium to make Carbon. When the star's Helium is used up, it will begin to "burn" Carbon to make even heavier elements. If you are really interested you can learn more from this article on Stellar Nucleosynthesis (that's quite a mouthful, eh?!), but I am digressing. Going back to Carl Sagan, I learned that the elements that make up our planet Earth, and all living things upon it, were created as a direct byproduct of the life cycle of stars. Now that was an idea that really blew my mind! It gives a whole new meaning to the 60's/New Age concept of the "Starchild"! ;)

Realizing that the atoms in my body were really billions of years old was nothing short of amazing to me! Indeed, I learned that the atoms in my body were even older that our Solar System. How is this possible you might ask? Well, in order for the heavy elements created inside of a star to become a part of you and me, a star older than our Sun had to first explode in order to release them. Not all stars explode in what astronomers call a Super Nova. Indeed, our own rather quiet and mundane Sun is apparently not fated to explode, as it lacks the necessary mass. The current thinking of astronomers and geologists is that the Earth and the Solar System formed about 4.5 billion years ago. But, how old are the atoms in our bodies? Who knows? Perhaps they are billions of years older still!

So, why am I expounding at such length about the atoms that we are all made of? Well, in my way of thinking, I am an assemblage of borrowed units that existed long before I was born and will continue to exist long after I am gone. Further, the substance of my body is constantly changing. I breath in new atoms with every breath. I ingest new atoms with every meal. I breath out atoms and excrete others in various ways (I trust that I don't have to paint that picture for you! ;) ). No doubt I still have some of the atoms that I was born with, but much of what I am has either been added since then or has been exchanged for different atoms. So, it seems to me that a human being is really not the essentially static construction that many people seem to believe. Of course, we grow, we age, and eventually we die. However, how many people pause to think that they are constantly changing without ever knowing it? At any given instant, we are but a temporary assembly of particular atoms that work together to form the whole of who and what we are. I like to think of myself as a "Participation". The atoms that currently make up the creature that is I, me, myself, participate with each other to create something that is possibly more than the sum of its parts (less than the sum, it seems to me, on some days! ;) ).

So, how can I be more than the sum of my parts? I can reach out and extend my being by grasping a tool, for example. I am not only aware of my own existance, but I exist, however fleetingly, in the minds of other people who know me. I can communicate ideas or knowledge to other people, or physically touch another person (which has the potential of being much more fun, especially if that person happens to be a woman! :) ). An atom by itself in a huge vacuum, has no such potential to be more than the sum of its quarks, at least not that I am aware of. Well, who knows, I could be quite wrong. Perhaps an atom has the potential to be its own universe of sub-atomic particles which may party and carry on with each other and give birth to little quarkettes. Maybe the Big Bang which began our Universe happened when one of these quark parties got out of control! ;)

Well, perhaps I have typed enough of a rambling discourse on the nature of existence to give my curious readers some food for thought (or maybe a multi-course banquet!). So, my friends, the floor is now open for discussion. I would very much enjoy reading your thoughts on this subject! :)

Back to the Zoo

2006-09-29T01:37:00.000-04:00

Well, it has been more than a year since I went to the Indianapolis Zoo. Some of you may remember my post last year titled Some Lighter Elements, in which a few of the Zoo's more talkative denizens really let their hair down and expressed themselves! ;) In this latest expeditionary adventure, the beasts from far afield were a bit more reticent about sharing their true feelings with me (I think they were somewhat embarrassed to have their unvarnished thoughts published last time around!), however, they were kind enough to pose for a few pictures by your intrepid host. :)

First up for your viewing pleasure is a mother elephant and her one year old baby. Interestingly, in the few weeks since my Zoo visit, another elephant gave birth! I have seen the new baby on the local TV news. She is so tiny (well, its relative) and very cute! When she was born, she weighed more than 200 pounds. Now that's quite a bouncing baby! :)

Here is a picture of the same one year old elephant with some of his keepers who were mucking out (just use your imagination, big big piles of...) the enclosure. What a good baby running over to help clean up! :)

Well, just like last year, I stopped by to see how the giraffes were doing. These two were happily munching on some food items placed in a bin up in their tree.

This may be the world's laziest rhino! When I was a kid, I was fascinated by rhinos. Many kids have a piggy bank, but I had a rhinoceros bank! Whenever I had the chance to play with clay in school, I would make a rhino. I don't remember why I liked rhinos so much, maybe I just thought their horns looked cool.

Here are some cute little guys called meerkats, who hale from Africa's Kalahari Desert. They are a relatively new exhibit at the Zoo. They are housed in a very neat building with a geodesic glass dome. Inside the building are all sorts of creatures that inhabit various desert environments around the world like lizards, tortoises (I took a few reptile pics, but they weren't that exciting), and various birds. There are actually about a dozen meerkats in the exhibit. They are very social animals that live in large family units. They are somewhat similar to prairie dogs (large ground squirrels from the American West) in their habit of digging large underground homes. They seem so intelligent when they look right at you with their big eyes, and boy are they curious! If all humans, apes, and monkeys were to somehow vanish from the face of the Earth (not an impossibility, in my opinion, I am sorry to say), I can really see meerkats taking over after a few million years! If you get the cable channel Animal Planet, there is a fun and interesting show called Meerkat Manor which follows the lives of a large family group. It is rather like an animal soap opera! :)

Here are some really colorful and quite tame parrots. They were just about eating out of people's hands, as you can see! Parrots are probably the smartest of all birds. I saw a program about an African Gray Parrot that has learned about 300 words and can apparently speak in complete sentences! As I recall, his trainer is a research psychologist. Her work is really opening up a new frontier in the understanding of intelligence! Maybe I was a bit hasty in predicting that meerkats will inherit the Earth. ;)

Ah, now this may well be one of the best photographs that I have ever taken! Just as I did last year, I also stopped by the Indianapolis Botanic Gardens, which is next to the Zoo. Every year, they have an indoor butterfly exhibit for several months. This butterfly is a member of a group called blue morphos. They live in Central and South America. This is a very large butterfly, having a wing span of about six inches. It flitted right past my face, actually startling me! Then it landed on a nearby hanging basket of ferns. I just walked up, lifted my digital camera above my head, and snapped a few quick pics. This one was the best. Usually, when these particular butterflies land, they fold their wings up so that only the underside of the wings are visible. The undersides are a rather drab brown with small eye spots. I think they are colored to resemble dead leaves to help the butterfly hide in trees. However, for some reason, this butterfly decided to show its upper wings in their full iridescent glory!

The next two pictures were not taken at the Zoo or the Gardens, but rather near where I live. The subject of the photos is probably the most famous of North American butterflies, the Monarch. These butterflies are best known for their epic migration (some fly more than 2000 miles!) which occurs every year in the Fall. All the Monarch butterflies, from as far north as parts of Canada, south to Florida, and west to California, migrate to a few isolated places in the mountains of central Mexico (some over winter in California: see update below). There, as many as half a billion Monarchs will spend the winter, alive but in a semi-torpid state, occasionally rousing from their rest to flit about. The trees are literally carpeted with butterflies! Unfortunately, in recent years, these mountain sanctuaries have come under attack by logging pirates who have been illegally cutting the trees. Hopefully, these places will be better protected in the future! When the warming of Spring comes, the Monarchs once again start to fly northward. Throughout the Spring and Summer months, there may be as many as five generations of Monarchs that spread out north, east, and west, until they reach the limits of the continental U.S. and southern Canada. Then, once again, the cycle repeats when the last generation of the year instinctively knows to fly all the way back to Mexico. The Monarch is one of the true wonders of nature! This particular one is apparently stocking up on nectar to fuel the next leg of its long journey.

Here is a link to a wonderful site showing pictures of the Monarch butterfly's complete lifecycle from egg, caterpillar, chrysalis (the fascinating metamorphic stage between caterpillar and butterfly), and adult. These are really terrific pictures, so please check them out! If you would like to learn more about the Monarch migration and the threats to their conservation in Mexico, this news article from a few years ago is very informative.

Monarch Update: My friend Jarvenpa has just taught me that Monarch butterflies also have winter homes in California. Here is a link to the State Park at Santa Cruz, CA where some of the Monarchs spend the winter. Apparently, The Monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains spend the winter in California, while those east of the Rockies fly to Mexico. I found a Wikipedia article that taught me even more about Monarchs. This article said that Monarchs live in Bermuda, Spain, and Portugal, and are sometimes seen in England. Also, they were introduced to Australia and New Zealand in the 1800's. Thanks Jarvenpa!

Finally, a 15 year old blogger from Rasht, Iran commented recently to my previous post. He is apparently a very accomplished journalist, and I was impressed with his blog. So, if you would like to give this young man some encouragement, why don't you check out Kourosh's blog. He surprised me by saying that my blog is being filtered in Iran. Well, I guess that I have finally "arrived"! ;)

The Pride That Wenteth After A Fall

2006-08-14T01:01:00.000-04:00

WARNING! This post contains adult oriented subject matter that some people may find offensive. If you are under the age of 18, or if you have very delicate sensibilities, it is suggested that you read no further.

The genesis of this post might be thought of as a reaction to a reaction. My friend Dr O2 created a post, to which my friend Nyx responded with a post of her own, which I, in turn, then responded too. Interesting cause and effect (but not an unusual occurrence in the blogosphere, I think)! :) My response was triggered by a picture of Michelangelo's sculpture of David that Nyx posted. I mentioned to her that I had written a bawdy little story about The David a couple of years ago. Nyx then asked if she could read it. Her positive response has encouraged me to share the story more publicly in a post.

In case you have not seen a full length picture of the famous statue of David, please allow me to direct your attention to this link that also contains some interesting historical trivia about the sculpture (Note: this picture shows the Full Monty...well considering the subject, most of the Monty seems to be missing!). Happy viewing! :D

Actually, the following is not exactly a story, but rather excerpts from a series of emails that I exchanged with a good friend a couple of years ago. I include a brief excerpt of hers because it gives important context to the story. Well, the stage is set, so lets get started!

Me (written to my friend):

When I was in High School, I went on a tour of Italy with my Latin teacher. While there, I saw several of Michelangelo's marble statues. His seated figure of Moses was amazing in its smoothly polished detail. Right down to the veins in Moses's arms. But I was most impressed with his David statue. It was a colossus, 16 feet tall and totally nude. I'll bet that thousands of women in the past 500 years have fainted at the sight of the endowment on that statue! I have read that Michelangelo was gay, and that The David is an image of his young lover (admittedly, this is a controversial interpretation). Well, I think that may very well be possible. The statue of David is like eroticism incarnate. It just shouts youth, vitality, virility! It is, by far, the most impressive work of art that I have ever seen.

My friend:

I've never been to Italy, but that's one of the places I would love to visit, and now with your description of the statue of David its a must see. As far as David is concerned though, I've seen pictures of the statue but I don't recall him being well endowed. As a matter of fact, I was surprised that a big boy like him is depicted as a baby in his genitalia. But then, I think it would've been awkward if Michelangelo had made the statue with something coming down to his knees. Then, it would've been known as The God of Pornographia!

Me:

After I first read your email today regarding The David's economical assets, I began to wonder if my imagination over the years had stretched The David's endowment. So, I started to look for a picture of the statue. I found one, and sure enough, The David has a very tiny protuberance, quite out of scale with the size of his hands. However, his two well rounded companions appear to be of normal size. Ah well, the truth can sometimes be deflating. I'm wondering if Michelangelo, upon completing The David, stepped back from his masterpiece and thought to himself, "Now, my David's nose is not quite right. I had better get up there and adjust it." As he carefully climbed his ladder, hammer and chisel in hand, he neared the top and suddenly his sandal slipped on an upper rung. Momentarily off balance, he instinctively opened his hand to grab the ladder's rail. For a second, it was as if time was standing still. As slowly as thick molasses, the hammer and chisel descended. Michelangelo's head slowly revolved and pivoted downward, his eyes widened, and his mouth opened. The flow of time suddenly returning to normal, the hard steel of the hammer's head impacted squarely upon The David's mighty endowment, severing it cleanly near the base. Michelangelo's open mouth suddenly expelled the words, "Oh my lord Jesus!", as The David's gigantic smoothly polished white marble pride impacted the stone floor and shattered into a thousand little shards. Slowly descending the ladder, with tears welling in his eyes, Michelangelo, the greatest sculptor the world had yet seen, reached out and tenderly scooped the remnants of his David's magnificent manhood into his hands. "Ah well", he said, "David did not slay the mighty Goliath by knowing him to death! May God forgive my arrogance. I shall forthwith refashion the nub like unto that of a male child, that the world and the future may understand the magnitude of the triumph of a boy with naught but a sling and a small stone to defend the honor of a nation!"

Well, that's the story folks. I hope you have enjoyed it! :) Now, before you ask me if this really happened, let me say that what you have just read is a total flight of fancy from my imagination. However, Michelangelo was a very astute observer of the human form. His statue of David is not a representation of a boy. The figure certainly has the musculature of an adult man, while his hands and feet seem acromegalically (try saying that three times really fast :) ) oversized! Yet, there is a profound absence of manliness where one would expect such to be. Perhaps there was a defect in the marble, or maybe the master sculptor did indeed have one of the most stupendous accidents in all of art history! ;)

Poetic Interlude

2006-07-24T00:28:00.000-04:00

A little something that I penned
Especially for a friend:

For Love, For Life

Shadow on your face
Try another place

Wind at your back
Take a different tack

Time on your side
Take a look inside

Games to be played
Aren't you glad you stayed

Battles to be won
Before the day is done

Walk the path to peace
Let your troubles cease

Be at one with joy
Seek not another toy

For you deserve my friend
To find love before the end

Viva!

To Infinity and Beyond!

2006-06-25T18:25:00.000-04:00

In my previous posts, I have attempted to convey various aspects of my life and personality to my kind readers. Those of you who have blogged with me over the past few years know that I have a wide variety of interests (perhaps too many!). In keeping with my established pattern of gradual self-revelation (my blog is definitely not for the impatient busy-body! ;) ), I would like to share with you now a bit of one of my greatest interests, something that has fired my imagination and stirred my inner most being from the time that I was a small child. Prepare yourself for a brief journey through space and time, as we travel from our humble little oasis in the midst of vast desolation to the very edge of the universe. If you haven't already guessed (or peeked at the pictures *naughty audience! ;)*) the subject of this post is truly Astronomical! :)

I would like to turn my spotlite on a very interesting web site. It is currently my only non-friendly link. :) The site is titled "Astronomy Picture of the Day". Apparently, this web site was established at least eleven years ago (as visits to its archives has taught me). All the pictures that I present for your viewing pleasure today are "borrowed" from various APOD posts. Please click on the links below the pictures to see the proper picture credits and also to read a brief explanation of each picture at the corresponding APOD pages. Also, PLEASE click on the pictures themselves! I promise it will be well worth your time to see the magnificent details of the enlarged pics!

Before we begin our journey, I would like to explain a little about the measurement of astronomical distances. The distance between the various stars that are visible in the night sky is truly vast. The brightest things that we can see in the sky when we look up are the Sun, the Moon, and some of the planets of our Solar System. The stars that we can see are present in our own Milky Way Galaxy. There are billions of stars in our galaxy, and far beyond our galaxy, there are billions of other galaxies! On Earth, we think of distance in terms of miles or kilometers, but in space, a much different "yard stick" is needed.

Astronomers have invented at least two new yard sticks to help them to work with the tremendous distances between their objects of interest. One is called the Parsec. If you are really interested, you can look it up, but I have always found it to be very difficult to relate to. The second, is called the Light Year. Now, this unit is fairly easy to understand. Light travels through space at a speed of approximately 186,000 miles per second, or 300,000 kilometers per second. A Light Year is simply the distance that light will travel in a year. Well, these are big numbers, so lets compare it to something within our own Solar System. The distance between the Earth and the Sun is approximately 93,000,000 miles. If we divide that distance by the speed of light, we can see that it takes light 500 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth. This is about eight and one third minutes. Thus, the Earth/Sun distance might be called 500 Light Seconds or 8.33 Light Minutes. Now lets compare that to the distance to the nearest star. The star Alpha Centauri is about four Light Years from our Solar System. So, if an astronaut (cosmonaut, taikonaut, or you can make up a name from your own country ;) ) was in a space ship capable of traveling at the speed of light, it would take her/him four years to get from here to Alpha Centauri. How big is our Milky Way Galaxy you might wonder? It is approximately 100,000 Light Years in diameter. According to astronomers, our Solar System is located about 28,000 Light Years from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Galaxy is roughly shaped like a flattened disk, but the disk has a thickness that various from the center outward to the edge. The galactic center is about 30,000 Light Years thick, and where our Solar System lies, the Galaxy is probably at least 10,000 Light Years thick (well, don't quote me on that, I'm just estimating). Anyway, this explains why we see many stars in the sky no matter which direction we look. If our Solar System was located on our galaxy's edge, our view in the night sky would be dramatically different!

Ok, lets look at the first picture. This is a very famous picture taken by the Apollo 8 crew in 1968. The objective of the Apollo 8 mission was to circle the moon and return to Earth. As some of you may remember, the first moon landing happened the following year. I remember this picture from my early childhood. It was one of the first astronomy pics that really made me feel a sense of wonderment and awe! Our Earth is truly beautiful, don't you think?!

Earthrise

To find the next picture, I had to spend quite a lot of time searching the APOD archives. When I found this picture of the Sun, I knew immediately that it was the one! From the APOD description, about 10 Earths could fit in the hook of the solar flare seen in the bottom left of the picture. Now that's really amazing to me! If you follow the link below the picture, you can watch an animated GIF image of the solar flare erupting. Its quite spectacular, I think! :) Here is a link to an interesting Wikipedia article about the Sun, if you would like to learn more.

Our Glorious Sun

This picture is of the relatively nearby star cluster known as The Pleiades. It is only about 400 Light Years away, and is easily visible to the naked eye in the night sky, if you know where to look. So, it was certainly well known to our ancient ancesters!

The Pleiades

Here is one of the most famous pictures taken by the Hubble Telescope. One widely circulated zoom of this picture, has been dubbed "The Pillars of Creation". It is aptly named, as many new stars, and presumably new solar systems, are forming within this nebula. It is located about 6500 Light Years away.

The Eagle Nebula

This picture came to my attention a few years ago. It has a rather fascinating story, I think! At the center of the Key Hole Nebula, lies the star know as Eta Carinae. This star is about 100 times more massive than our Sun. The nebula is being formed as the giant star throws tremendous quantities of its outer atmosphere into space. It is a signal to astronomers that the star will soon explode as a Supernova. The life span of such giant stars is measured in millions of years. This is quite brief compared to the life span of our small quiet Sun, which is about 10 billion years. Also, not to worry, our Sun will last another 5 billion years or so, and it will never explode! The Key Hole nebula is about 10,000 Light Years away.

The Key Hole Nebula

Here is a very nice picture of our nearest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, which is located about 2,000,000 Light Years away. Andromeda is know as a spiral galaxy for reasons that are immediately obvious in the picture. It is very similar in shape to our own Milky Way Galaxy. From what I have read, the Milky Way Galaxy and Andromeda are speeding toward each other! Eventually, they will collide!! Again, don't get too anxious, this will not happen for a few hundred million years. Andromeda is quite dim, but it is very large (bigger than the Moon) in the sky, and is visible if you live in a part of the world with very dark night skys. It is really unfortunate for us modern city dwellers that night time "light pollution" takes away much of the astronomical beauty that our pre-technological ancestors enjoyed! Is it any wonder that astronomy played such a huge role in the religions of our ancient ancestors?!

The Andromeda Galaxy

The final picture is one that gave me what I would call something of a "religious experience" the first time I saw it (you have really got to click on this pic!). I was literally moved to tears! The picture is known as The Hubble Deep Field image. To make it, the Hubble telescope was trained on the same, apparently nearly empty, spot in the sky for 10 full days (now, that's some serious gyroscopic action! :D )! It took that long to collect enough light to form the picture. The result was astonishing, and it even surprised veteran astronomers! In the picture, there are literally hundreds of galaxies, some of which are more than 10 billion Light Years distant! What really excited me about this image was that I could see so many islands in the vast emptiness of space where there might be other living creatures. Also exciting is the realization that you are looking back in time, back to the universe when it was quite young. Just think, it took 10 billion years for the light from these distant galaxies to reach us, and astronomers think that the universe is about 13 billion years old! Our little planet, in our little galaxy, is really just a tiny part of the vastness of the universe. There is so much out there, so much wonder, so much danger, and so much that we have yet to learn!

The Hubble Deep Field

I would like to close this post with a poem that really touched me years ago when I first read it. It still stirs some powerful emotions inside of me! It is a poem that has very special meaning for many pilots and people who have gone into space. It was composed by a young aviator who died on December 11, 1941 when his plane collided with another over the skies of England. He was only 19 years old on the day of his passing, and he had sent this poem to his parents a few months earlier. I think it is one of the most beautiful poems that I have ever read!

"High Flight"

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Increasing Vitality

2006-05-15T00:06:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, I was enjoying a leisurely stroll in the bright sunshine (it has rained every day since! *shows very unhappy face*) along a section of a City of Indianapolis bike/pedestrian trail called The Monon Trail after the long defunct Monon railroad line that donated its right of way for the enjoyment of all Indianapolitans. Along the way, I snapped a few pictures to share with my friendly readers. :)

First up, a beautiful living bouquet of daisies.

This rabbit was just sitting next to the trail, munching on a blade of grass (you can see it sticking out of its mouth if you look closely), completely unafraid that some passer-by might fancy a bit of stewed coney (remember the coney and tater stew from Lord of the Rings?) for dinner. I ate some rabbit once. Not bad, sort of like an exotic chicken (for some reason, a lot of animals taste like chicken...its a mystery to me for sure!). However, this little fellow, whether it was tame or just plain daft, was in no danger from me. He was too cute for my stew pot! :)

Here's one for my friend Jarvenpa, who really likes Dogwood trees. :)

This tree is called Redbud. They have really pretty light purple flowers and their leaves have a heart shape.

My friend Koozeh (who is unfortunately not blogging any more *very sad face*), taught me about the symbolic importance of the dandelion flower as a part of the Iranian celebration of Spring. When I was a kid, I used to love picking dandelions and blowing on them to scatter the white seeds. They would gently drift to the ground, or travel quite a distance, if caught by a good breeze. These, I left undisturbed for the enjoyment of a passing child. :)

I have been trying to get a picture of the mother robin whose eggs I showed you last time, but she is very skiddish and flies away before I can get close enough. However, I saw several robins along the trail, and managed to get a pretty good shot of this one. The resolution is not that good because I had to digitally zoom the picture quite a bit so you could see it. Ah, I have very quickly found the limitations of 3.2 megapixels!

Ok, lets get back to the story of the robin's nest! :) On the afternoon of my walk, I got this quick snap of the nest showing three chicks, growing quite nicely, but their eyes not quite open yet. My previous post showed only two eggs. However, the mother robin ultimately laid four eggs! I am guessing that one of the eggs just didn't hatch. Anyway, I have a rather sad story to relate about one of the chicks. On the following day (after this pic), there was a really bad storm with high winds and a lot of heavy rain. Late that afternoon, after the storm had passed, I came to check on the nest. I didn't see the mother robin and the wreath didn't look right. I walked up to it and found the wreath rotated counterclockwise about 45 degrees. The nest is sheltered from rain under a section of roof, but the wind apparently had seriously dislodged the wreath. Glancing down, I saw one of the chicks on the concrete below the nest. It had fallen about seven feet and was not moving. I picked it up for a closer look, but it was clearly dead. Concerned about the other chicks, I looked into the next and saw two shivering and rapidly breathing survivors huddled closely together. The mother was no where to be seen, but even if she had been nearby, with the nest tilted by 45 degrees, she couldn't have sat on it. Strongly desiring to save the two remaining chicks, I gently rotated the wreath back to its original position. Then, I secured it from any further rotation by tying a piece of string to its lower right portion and then anchoring the opposite end to a heavy metal chair. After that, my main concern was whether the mother might have abandoned the nest out of fright after the storm tipped it. It was going to be a cold night, and I knew that the two chicks probably wouldn't survive without their mother's warmth. I worried about that for a few hours until it was dark outside. Then I carefully peeked at the nest from about thirty feet away. For the previous couple weeks, I had been using a pair of binoculars to view the mother at night when she was not as likely to be spooked by my presence. To my great relief, I found the mother robin once again sitting on the nest! What a good mother she is! :)

Today, while the mother robin was away, I took this quick picture of the two remaining chicks. I was really amazed by how much they had grown in just a week! :)

May 18: Robin's Nest Update: Today I discovered that the nest was empty! The two chicks have left to make their way in the wide Robin's world. I wish them well. :)

Note: I have updated my Apolitical Deconstruction blog with a post that may be of interest to my Iranian visitors (of course, all my readers are welcome :) ).

Signs of Life

2006-04-23T00:49:00.000-04:00

Hello my friends. I have finally returned to this, my little forum of self-expression. I have been absent for far longer than I ever imagined I would be. To those of you who have encouraged me over the past few months to write here again, I would just like to say a heartfelt thank you! I will explain my absence shortly, but first I would like to share with you some recent pictures and proof that Spring has indeed returned to Indiana. :)

First, I have for your viewing pleasure some daffodils that were in full bloom last week. I got a nice little digital camera a few months ago. It is a Canon PowerShot A510 with 3.2 megapixels, for those of you who might be curious. It is not a really high powered model, but it will be more than adequate to my needs, and besides, the price was really right! :)

Next, I have zoomed in on a portion of the previous picture. Just for fun, can you find these flowers in the bigger picture? Well, if you are good at picture puzzles, you should have no trouble. :)

Finally, I have a picture of a Robin's nest that I took a few days ago, with two beautiful blue eggs. I have been trying not to disturb the mother as much as possible. She flies away if I get closer than about 20 feet. However, yesterday I got a quick peek into the nest and now there is a third egg! More to come on this story. :) Some of you may remember my pictures from last year when a dove nested in the same place!

Ah, now on to the more serious business of where I have been. On December 16 of last year, my father's mother passed away suddenly. She had been in declining health for some years, but her passing was quite a shock for me. As I said in my post "Questions and Answers", from November of last year, visiting my Grandmother in Tucson, Arizona was high on my list of things I wanted to do! I had not seen her in about three years. She and I did talk occasionally on the phone, though. Three months before she died, she asked me to come and see her soon. I wanted to. I just wish there had been more time. She was my last surviving grandparent, and one of my most beloved relatives. I have been working on and off since February on a post to honor her memory and tell a bit about her life. It is still in the works and I will eventually publish it here. For a long time, I thought that I just had to finish it before I wrote anything else in my blog, but my heart just hasn't been fully into the project. I am still healing from her loss, but I am feeling better. I have many enjoyable memories of her and my grandfather. I promise that I will share some of them with you!

Finally, just a quick note about my new blog Apolitical Deconstruction. I have published a few of my letters to my U.S. Senators there and I will certainly write more in the future! I have some strong convictions, which I don't mind sharing with my elected representatives (and now with you as well, if you are interested). However, I view political opinions in much the same light as religious beliefs. It is ok if your opinions and beliefs are different from mine. As long as the conversation remains polite, you are free to agree or disagree. I am willing to accept you as you are if you will afford me the same courtesy. So, with that in mind, I look forward to interesting discourse with whomever wishes to visit and engage. So far, all my visitors have been quite amicable! :)

Bye for now, and thanks for your patience and support! I promise to return again soon.

Something Constructive

2005-12-08T00:21:00.000-05:00

Hello my friends. I would like to apologize for going postless (better than postal!) for so long. In the past month, I have completed a major project (keep reading for details), experienced a death in my extended family, and kept a promise to visit my friend Ray (remember Katy?), which was delayed for several months. Finally, at long last, I am back with a new post! I am happy to present to you, hopefully for your viewing pleasure :), a selection of the many pictures that I took to document the largest construction project that my two hands have ever built. So, please sit back, relax, and enjoy the show! (Disclaimer: An occasional mouse activation will be required for maximum enjoyment.)

To begin the program, here are two photos of the way things looked before I began the work. Well, to be honest, the handrails on the stair were falling off, so I removed all of them and then temporarily reattached the ones on the right. Please take note of the yawning chasm at the base of the stair, and the artfully curved and rotated lower half of the stair. The hill is mostly fine sand, which had shifted quite a bit over time, and literally moved and deformed the stair as it shifted! Note also the prime botanical specimens which once called this stair "home sweet home". Not shown, are the multiple three foot tall yucca plants (I will show you one of these monsters in a later photo) that had grown into the stair, which I had already laboriously dug out. They are really nasty plants, and damn near impossible to kill! They kept growing new shoots from their tangled web of tuberous roots. I finally put them down (dead, dead, DEAD!) with some RoundUp herbicide. Normally, I hate using chemical poisons, but this stuff is sprayed on the leaves of the plant and it kills the roots.

Ok, now for some improvements. After a lot of thought about what could be done to remediate the problem of future sand shifting, I decided that the best solution was to construct a substructure in the form of a terrace to contain the sand under the lower half of the new stair. I have a picture of the giant hole that I had to dig (with my trusty rusty spades) in the hillside, but sadly it didn't make the final cut (hey, I have about 45 pics in all, and it was quite a job to load these 15!). So, in this photo, I have installed the wooden terrace structure, which I assembled elsewhere and wheeled down the hill and into place. Also, shown is one of eight new posts to which the new stair and handrails will be attached. Each post is supported by an 8"x8" concrete block set at the bottom of a three foot deep hole. The posts are held in position laterally (as you can see) by a bag's worth of post setting concrete which I poured into an improvised form.

Here, the project is a bit further along. I have installed all the posts and the new stair stringers (beams). The wood on the ground are old stair treads which I placed temporarily to give me something to walk on. Trying to walk up and down a steep hill of loose sand is a skill that I have yet to master (digging holes in that damn sand wasn't much fun either)!

Well, here we have a perfect example of why stairs and dock ramps on the shore of this lake are mostly shot to hell (possible future projects for me!). This lake lies right next to the main river that flows through Indianapolis. Sometimes, the river rises high enough several times a year to flood the lake. When a flood happens, the very antiquated and unhygienic combined storm drain and sewer system of Indianapolis dumps tons of raw sewage into the river, some of which ends up in this lake! Nasty!! The water really rises high. I would estimate that the water is something like 12 feet higher in this photo compared with the previous one! See that big green bushy thing to the right of the stair? That is a yucca. Even floods will not kill those things!

Ok, at this point, the flood has receded and I am back to work. I have removed the old dock ramp and hauled the partially rotten debris to the city landfill. What I am doing here is sinking reinforced concrete footings near the lake to support the weight of the new ramp and also to anchor it in place against future floods. Wood that is submerged has a great deal of bouyancy (tendency to float). I precast these footings elsewhere and moved them into place with my wheeled dolly. They weighed about 200 pounds each and were nearly beyond my ability to lift, but I managed, and thankfully did not herniate myself! I have not shown the pictures of digging these holes. That was quite a pain! The holes were nearly three feet deep, but about one foot below the surface was the level of the lake. Thus, digging down one foot resulted in a hole full of water! I used a large round plastic cylinder (former water softener tank) to keep the hole from collapsing as I dug below the water. That water still stank from the flood too!

Here, both footings are in place and I have set a form of scrap wood to cast a reinforced concrete beam between the footings to give the foundation extra weight and stability.

Here, the concrete beam has been cast and I have set a temporary jig to hold the anchor bolts in position at each end for the next concrete placement.

Behold the finished foundation. Doesn't she look solid? Like a rock! :)

Here, I have skipped ahead a bit. I constructed a wood frame for the new ramp, had some really solid hinge pieces fabricated at a local steel shop, and then, I had to put everything together. Getting this ramp frame in place was definitely not a one man show! I have several cousins in the Indianapolis area who make me look small, and I am no 98 pound weakling. One of them owed me a big favor for helping him move (twice!). So, with our combined hefting ability, some help from my sturdy wheeled dolly and the hill itself, we got that sucker into place and all hinged together in a single afternoon. It was definitely "Miller Time" (cheap American beer) after that, but seeing as neither of us are big beer drinkers, we toasted our success with more Gatorade (it was a hot day!).

Moving along, I have started to attach the deck boards to the ramp frame. Also, you can see the completed frame of the platform to which the ramp is connected.

Here is a detail shot of one of the ramp hinges. Those steel plates are 1/4 inch thick and the hinge pin is a 1.5 inch diameter solid steel bar. I had originally planned to use steel pipes, but the steel fabricator screwed up and made the hinge plate holes too big, so they threw in the solid bars at no charge. The ends of the bars were later secured with large steel rings to keep the pin in place during many years of anticipated flooding.

The next three pictures are "money" shots of the completed project (yes, I did bill for my services, actually there were several bills for this job!). This work is solid! Well, what can I say, I am an engineer, after all. :) Oh, one more thing, I did a bit of repair and reinforcement work on the dock, but it was basically in good shape. In the spring, it will be cleaned and sealed with the same wood preservative that I applied to all the new wood. The wood is treated to resist rot (at the factory), but the sun will damage its surface unless it is stained or sealed. Thanks for checking out my handiwork!

Questions and Answers

2005-11-08T23:29:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, my friend Hnk, who lives in Mosul, Iraq, posted the answers to some questions that she had received from her sister Najma. The questions were divided into categories requiring the recipient to list seven things for each category. The final part was to list seven people who she wanted to answer the questions. Actually, Hnk only listed three, but that's ok since I was one of the lucky new recipients. :) I e-mailed her that I would think about the questions and try to answer them. That was several weeks ago. Hey, I've been really busy! However, as I always try to keep my promises, I have finally drawn up my list of answers below. I must confess that I would probably give at least some different answers if I was talking to my best friend instead of writing in a public blog, but, I hope that my visitors, and especially Hnk, will appreciate them anyway.

Before moving on to my answers, I would just like to take a moment to tell you a bit about my young blog friends in Iraq. I have been reading Iraqi blogs for more than a year now. At first, I was trying to learn more about what was really going on inside of Iraq after the U.S. invasion (which, as some of you already know, I considered a very dubious endeavor from the beginning!). However, after a short time, I became really enthralled by the personal stories of the blog writers. So many people in Iraq have suffered the loss of loved ones, or at least of people that they knew, including most of my blog friends. I often felt rather helpless and wished that I could do something to make the situation there a little better. Finally, I realized that there was something that I could do. I could write positive and encouraging comments and e-mails. So, for the past year, I have read and responded and tried to be a good friend by providing a bit of light for some good people passing through a frequently dark time. Several of my Iraqi friends and links to their blogs are listed on the left side of this page (also here in the post for convenience). They are Hnk, Dalia, Raghda, and Maas. Hnk writes about her life, her school, her travels, and her feelings. Dalia is Hnk's cousin who lives in Baghdad. She is a wonderful artist and has posted some of her drawings. Raghda is another of Hnk's cousins who also lives in Baghdad. She likes to post pictures and stories about cats. There are so many cute kitten pictures at her blog! :) Maas is Hnk's best friend in Mosul. Maas likes to post puzzles for her readers to ponder (Dalia usually solves them before me!). Hnk's sister Najma is a bit older and is very smart. She writes very much like a journalist sometimes, reporting on what is going on in her part of Mosul. I have not talked much with Najma, but I do read her blog frequently. Anyway, I hope that you will find these blogs interesting. And now, on to my answers to the questions:

Seven things I plan to (or wish I could) do:

1. Visit California to see Giant Redwood and Sequoia trees. Actually, I like any sort of huge and ancient tree. There are so few left in the world. :( There is a story that I have heard from the time of the Roman Empire. The Emperor Caligula is said to have ordered the cutting down of a truly ancient chestnut tree called "The Tree of 100 Horses". I have wondered if the name literally meant that it took 100 horses to form a ring around the tree's trunk! Assuming a Roman horse to be 8 feet long, this would give the tree a diameter of 250 feet. This is a bit incredulous! Perhaps the tree could shelter 100 horses under its branches. That I could believe. Anyway, according to the story, Caligula ordered that the lumber from the tree be used to build a huge floating brothel, with the "working girls" being none other than the wives of the Roman Senators! If you would like to see some pictures of one of the world's largest living trees check out this link. The tree is a Montezuma Bald Cypress living in Oaxaca, Mexico and is estimated to be 2000 years old! I think this tree could be called "The Tree of 100 Children" (see the picture). :)

2. Build a house. In my mind, I see soaring vaults of stone and concrete, but this may be a bit grandiose! Perhaps I should start with a small log cabin. :)

3. Travel to more interesting places around the world. I have been to Italy and South Korea. Talking about soaring vaults, the ancient Pantheon in Rome is one of the most incredible structures that I have ever seen! It has an unreinforced concrete dome that spans more than 100 feet and it was constructed more than 1800 years ago! The tour of the Vatican was also quite awe inspiring! The enormity of the spaces inside of St. Peter's was truly amazing, as was the unrestored beauty of Michaelangelo's frescos in the Sistine Chapel. As for South Korea, it is a country of dramatic contrasts. Seoul, its capital, is a gigantic city with more than 10 million people crowded together. I have never seen so much traffic in any city that I have visited. The constant honking of horns was what I remember most about driving with my friend or riding the city buses. In the Korean countryside, I saw poverty the like of which I have never experienced in the U.S.: farming families that lived in small mud houses surrounded by flooded fields of rice. One great memory from that trip was a visit to Solag Mountain. This is a beautiful place in Korea to see a large area of unspoiled nature. I hiked the mountain trails with my friend up to an ancient Buddhist Temple. Along the way, groups of young school children (mostly girls) giggled and pointed at me, a few even had the courage to wave and say hello (in English to my surprise!). When I waved back and returned the salutation, there was much more giggling. :) I saw hundreds of people there that day, but I was the only non-Korean. It was obviously a very special place to Koreans that few Americans have probably ever seen. I felt privileged to have a Korean friend to take me there.

4. Write a publishable work of fiction. Some of the people that I most admired growing up were the masters of science fiction and fantasy whose stories I read. Those stories fired my imagination and came alive in my mind! As for writing my own book, I am realistic: I am not yet up to that challenge, but maybe some day...

5. Visit my last remaining grandparent in the near future. My father's mother is 91 years old and is not in very good health. She lives in Tucson, Arizona. The environment in and near the city is really beautiful, with many green desert plants, and a number of tall mountains which form a partial ring around the city.

6. Strive to reach a level of self-actualization. This is a psychological term that describes a person who is using his or her abilities to the fullest extent possible and who has also found happiness and satisfaction in life.

7. Know the joys and travails of raising a child. Of course, being single is not particularly conducive to realizing this goal!

Seven things I can do:

1. I can ride a motorcycle again. When I was a bit younger, I had a really nice motorcycle for 11 years. It was a 500 cc V-twin Honda that looked very much like a small Harley Davidson. I had a lot of fun on that bike and also used it as a primary means of transportation (as long as it wasn't raining!), I even rode it during the winter. Of course, I had to really bundle up to resist the chill factor! :)

2. I can play a classical tune on my guitar. I took lessons for five years when I was a kid. I wish now that I had taken more, but my teacher moved to another city and I didn't really look for another. Some of my favorite pieces were originally composed to be played on a lute more than 500 years ago!

3. I can visualize in full color and motion anything that I have carefully observed, or anything that I can imagine, all inside of my mind.

4. I can quickly invent solutions to physical problems with the tools and materials that I have close at hand (making good use of #3!). Lacking the proper tool or material, I usually know (or can find out) where I can procure either. Perhaps I have a genetic preponderance favoring some prehistoric Homo Habilis (aka "the handy man") ancestor. :)

5. I can take great pleasure in the simple company of good friends.

6. I can be trusted to tell the truth and keep all my promises.

7. I can make people laugh by making quick comments regarding things or people that I see or hear around me.

Seven things I can't do:

1. I can't understand high level abstract mathematics. In Junior High School, I aced geometry, but nearly failed algebra. Later, in college, I had some very good math professors and did much better. Still, visually oriented mathematics (graphing, integral calculus, etc.) was always much easier for me to relate to than a bunch of symbols on a page.

2. I can't sit behind a desk performing engineering calculations all day nearly every day for years while at the same time finding much enjoyment in life.

3. I can't read very fast.

4. I can't understand the blind devotion to a particular religious faith that would cause a person to label everyone with a different perspective on the nature of reality as evil.

5. I can't defy gravity, although I frequently dream that I am able to do so. :)

6. I can't drink a lot of alcoholic beverages without becoming sick to my stomach a few hours later. Because of this, I haven't gotten drunk for years. I have, on occasion, become a bit tipsy though. :)

7. I can't understand how the universe can be an infinity of empty space beyond the farthest star of the farthest galaxy.

Seven things I say most often:

1. Rats!

2. Dammit!

3. Crap!

4. That figures.

5. Ouch! (I get a lot of splinters in my hands and occasionally mash my fingers with a hammer!)

6. What the hell?!

7. Now, where did I put that damn tool?! :)

Answering these questions was fun. :) So, I will invite any of my visitors who are interested to answer them as well. Thanks for learning a bit more about me! Btw, some of you may recall that this month marks the one year anniversary of this little blog. Soon, my little baby blog will be out of diapers (quite a precocious little blog!) and on to the terrible twos! :)

Earthquake

2005-10-16T01:03:00.000-05:00

Thus far, I have mostly steered clear of posting about topics involving issues of current popular interest (my remembrance of Qudrat was an exception). I am an avid follower of news stories, from local happenings to events of global significance, however, there is usually not much in the daily laundry list of woe and tribulation that I would categorize as constructive or creative. The recent earthquake in South Asia, though, is something that has been very much on my mind and there are a few things that I would like to say on that subject, both from a personal and a professional perspective.

It is always difficult for me to watch news reports of great tragedies. I tend to empathize very much with those who have died and with the survivors who have lost their loved ones. Certainly, I am not unique in this capacity. I am joined by many other decent and caring human beings who do what they can to try and relieve the suffering of those who are in need. For me personally, I usually send a donation to the Red Cross. As I mailed my check a few days ago, I thought of a particular story that I had heard earlier in the week about a little girl in Pakistan whose body was recovered from beneath the rubble of her school. The story was quite brief. There were no survivors of this school's collapse. In all, about 50 children perished. The report mentioned, almost in passing, that a little girl was found wearing a light green dress. As I listened to the report, I began to imagine a young girl of about six years of age. I saw her mother helping her daughter to dress for school, selecting the green dress and thinking how pretty her daughter would look in it. I saw her mother carefully preparing a meal for her daughter's lunch at school, while her daughter ate the tasty breakfast that her mother had cooked to start her family's day. Perhaps the girl's mother walked her daughter to school that morning. I wondered what they talked about along the way. I imagined the mother giving her daughter a loving hug and kiss goodbye when they reached the school's entrance, along with some gently spoken advice to listen to her teacher and be a good girl. I could not imagine all this without feeling a great sense of sadness for this little girl, and also for her parents, especially if one or both of them survived.

As some of my visitors already know, I worked for a number of years as a structural engineer. It may not seem very likely, but cities such as Indianapolis, which are not particularly close to any known earthquake faults, still require that structures be designed in accordance with the established rules of seismic design set forth in various building codes. Therefore, I always included a set of seismic calculations for every building that I designed. Seismic loading is one of several types of lateral loading that may require an engineer's attention (among others are wind loads, hydraulic or fluid loads, and earth pressure loads). Seismic loads result from the inertia (resistance to movement inherent to a mass that is at rest) of the structure itself. An earthquake induces a lateral acceleration to the base of a structure. The inertia of the upper portions of the structure resist the motion of the base of the structure. This causes the base to move faster than the top which induces stress in the structure's beams and columns. Earthquakes, as depicted in movies, usually show tall buildings swaying back and forth until they fall down. This type of motion does commonly occur during earthquakes (although not usually to the degree shown in the movies!). As the forces induced by an earthquake in a building are a function of its mass, it is logical to assume that if the mass of the structure is reduced, it might be less susceptible to damage. This has indeed proven true, and in the past few decades, large structures near active seismic faults have increasingly been designed with steel as the primary structural material, replacing reinforced concrete that was more commonly used in the past. Steel is not only capable of carrying higher loads per unit volume of structure, it has the added advantage of being highly ductile; i.e., it will bend without breaking. This characteristic of ductility will allow a building to sustain damage from an earthquake, yet remain standing to greatly increase the chances that its occupants will survive.

While well engineered earthquake resisting structures are commonly available for public and private use in the U.S. and other developed countries, this is unfortunately not the case for many of the remaining countries of the world. The same magnitude of earthquake that has killed tens of thousands of people, such as last year's earthquake in Bam, Iran and this recent earthquake, would probably only kill a few tens of people if it occurred somewhere in California. The difference is in the usage of building materials and the degree to which they are properly reinforced. Hundreds of millions of people in Iran, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, and other neighboring countries live near potentially severe earthquakes. Very commonly used building materials in these countries include stones and mud bricks. These materials are usually assembled into buildings with little to no reinforcement to resist the lateral loads of an earthquake. Also, these materials have a lot of mass. Thus, it is no surprise that the death tolls are so catastrophic when an earthquake hits. One thing that surprised me about the schools in Pakistan that collapsed was that they were constructed out of reinforced concrete. This implies that engineers were actually involved in the design of these buildings. I wonder if the collapse of these schools is due to negligent engineering, shoddy construction, or some combination of the two? In any case, most of these deaths would be preventable, if only the people in these countries can be introduced to some different methods of construction using better reinforcement or lighter materials. Also, these methods need not include the services of expensive structural engineering consultants!

There are some available lessons to be learned from methods of construction in other less developed countries. Where materials such as wood or bamboo are in common use as construction materials, earthquakes tend to not claim many lives when they occur. These materials are lightweight and flexible. Thus, they are able to survive an earthquake, often with little or no damage. However, in densely populated countries such as India and Pakistan, there may be very little wood or bamboo available for construction purposes. What little wood is available probably is used mostly for cooking or heating. Even if there was plenty of wood or bamboo available, average people might not use it anyway. A country like Pakistan is subject to great temperature extremes. It can be very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. Also, temperature extremes between night and day may also be very large. Houses made with thick walls of stone or mud brick have excellent insulating properties. This greatly reduces the need for expensive or scarce fuel for heating and also is helpful for keeping the house cool in the summer. So, it would seem that there is a need for building materials that are either more resistant to collapse or are much lighter and more flexible while at the same time acting as good insulators. There are actually a few possibilities that exist that could provide cheap housing and public structures while also satisfying the above needs.

Over the past several days, I have done some web searching to try and find out what sort of new construction methods and materials are available that could prevent many deaths from future earthquakes if they were implemented on a wide spread scale. I found a very interesting article written by a researcher in India (here is a link) that describes his inexpensive method of reinforcing mud brick houses to better withstand lateral loading. Much of his reinforcement consisted of strips of chicken wire and pieces of bamboo embedded in mud mortar. He tested a scale model using his methods against a traditionally built model of equal size with very encouraging results. His structure was damaged, but still standing, while the other one was destroyed. In a very powerful earthquake, such a reinforced house probably would not survive, however, it might very well remain standing long enough to allow its occupants to exit before it collapsed. Another interesting article (here is a link) describes how blocks of polystyrene (same as styrofoam drinking cups) could be coated with a thin layer of stucco reinforced with chicken wire to form the walls and roof of a house. This would result in a house that would be cheap to build, very well insulated, and also very light weight, seemingly an ideal replacement for traditional South Asian housing. I can only hope that such new methods and materials will be implemented soon!

I Eat, Therefore I Cook

2005-09-28T00:28:00.000-05:00

Disregarding any potentially fallacious logic inherent to the title of this post :), something that I enjoy doing nearly every day is cooking. I think that I learned to cook fried and scrambled eggs when I was six or seven years old. Bacon followed soon afterward! Since then, I have tried cooking many things with reasonable degrees of success. I usually don't go to a lot of trouble, preferring to throw a collection of vegetables, seasonings, and some type of meat (usually chicken) into a pot and let it stew. However, I occasionally go to a bit more trouble. I sometimes eat fish, which I bake with different vegetables and seasonings. I can also make some pretty good chili and stir-fry. As I have gotten a bit older, I have become a lot more health conscious. Consequently, I have greatly reduced my intake of cholesterol (no more egg yolks!) and sodium. Also, I try to eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Most recently, I have attempted to reduce my intake of trans fats (partially and fully hydrogenated oils) to zero. I do not subscribe to any particular diet fads, however, I think that I am pretty well in tune with many aspects of the Mediterranean diet. I do eat a fair amount of fat, but I try to consume mostly monounsaturated fats, which are the healthiest. Olive oil and nuts like walnuts and almonds contain mostly this type of fat. I have stopped eating beef (no, I did not become a Hindu, although I have known some pretty cool Hindus :) ) because it is very high in saturated fat. The cattle disease BSE is pretty scary too! As previously mentioned, I eat a lot of chicken and some fish, but I also eat turkey and lean ham. When I was a kid I loved to eat fried pork rinds, which is basically just fried slabs of solid fat! I do love chocolate, cookies, cakes, etc., but I have cut way back on my processed sugar intake. When I bake, I now substitute honey and molasses for sugar when a sweetener is called for. If a recipe calls for margarine or vegetable grease, I always substitute olive oil. Also, instead of using all white flour, I use part whole wheat flour. Whole wheat items, like breads, tend to be digested more slowly than things like white bread (do you remember Wonder Bread?) and are thus less likely to make the consuming party obese! Anyway, with all the substituting that I make in my quest for greater health through selective gastronomics, I have developed some of my own recipes. I have listed two below that are really quite good. When I make them for friends or relatives, there is never any left over. I know that some of my visitors like to cook, so I hope that you will try these recipes and more importantly, I hope that you will enjoy them! :)

Apple Walnut Muffins

Mix together:

2 egg whites
1/6 cup honey
1/3 cup extra light olive oil
1 pealed and finely chopped apple
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
dash of cinnamon
dash of ginger

In a separate bowl, sift together:

1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Combine all ingredients and slowly add milk while mixing until a thick batter results. Approximately 3/4 cup milk should be about right if you want to measure.

For baking, use a non-stick muffin pan. However, even "non-stick" cookware often sticks anyway (so much for truth in advertising!), so spraying it with a non-stick vegetable spray like "Pam" is a good idea. Bake at 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) for 25 minutes. A 12" by 12" baking pan can also be used to make a cake, however, the cooking time will need to be increased to 35 or 40 minutes. A good test for doneness is to stick a toothpick or a sharp knife into the muffin/cake. If it pulls out clean, then it is done.

Banana Nut Bread

Mix together:

2 or 3 mashed ripe bananas
3 egg whites
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup extra light olive oil
1/2 cup chopped pecans (or walnuts)
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
dash of cinnamon
dash of ginger

In a separate bowl, sift together:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Combine all ingredients and mix well until a thick batter results. Pour into a non-stick bread pan. Here again, a non-stick vegetable spray is a good idea. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 60 to 70 minutes.

The Nesting Instinct and Something for a Friend

2005-09-08T13:43:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, not long after my experience with the duckling, I discovered that a nest was being constructed on top of a wreath hanging on a wall near where I live. I watched as the nest grew in size over a period of several days, but I had still not caught sight of its builder. Finally, I spotted the avian culprit lying low and trying to be as inconspicuous as possible behind the green fabric leaves and white flowers of the wreath. It was a dove!

I watched her for a few days, approaching a little closer each day. She did not seem particularly concerned about my presence. However, she sat absolutely still as I observed her. I tried not to make any sudden movements and I only watched her for a few seconds at a time before I slowly turned and walked away. After about a week, I decided to try and take a picture of her. I brought out a little step ladder so I could get to approximately the same height as the nest, carefully set it up, climbed two steps slowly, aimed the camera and pressed the shutter release. The flash went off and I froze expecting the dove to startle and fly away. However, she just sat immobilized on the nest as if nothing had happened. Here she is (please click on the picture for an enlargement):

Emboldened by the Dove's tolerance of my presence and picture taking, I decided to attempt another shot from a different angle. Again, to my great satisfaction, the dove was completely cooperative.

Over the course of the next two weeks or so, every time I looked at the nest, the dove was there. I don't know if she ever left. I assumed that she was sitting on some eggs, but I wondered if she was getting hungry. I thought that her mate might be feeding her as she sat, but I never saw him. Nevertheless, she persevered and I continued to watch her every day. At long last, my patience (and hers too!) was rewarded when I noticed a tiny head poking out from beneath her. I continued to carefully watch for a few more days, not wanting to startle the dove from her nest and baby. Then, I decided to try and get a picture of the mother and chick. Once again, I was very pleased that she tolerated my efforts.

The next day, I saw another tiny head peaking out from beneath the mother dove. The two chicks grew fast. It seemed that nearly every day they were bigger and their feathers more fully developed. In about three weeks, they grew from tiny helpless chicks into juvenile doves about half the size of the mother. I didn't want to disturb them and so I didn't take any more pictures during this period. One day, I found that the mother was gone. I figured that she was off to get something to eat. I decided to try and take a picture of the two half grown doves in the nest. I got out my step ladder and carefully climbed into position and raised my camera. Just before I was about to press the shutter, one of the little doves jumped and flew from the nest to a nearby bush. I was quite surprised! I climbed down and approached the dove in the bush. This time, it didn't even let me get close. It flew again to a nearby tree. Then, I began to worry a bit that it was too far from the nest and the mother wouldn't be able to find it to continue feeding it. I decided to give up on taking any further pictures. I carefully removed my step ladder and withdrew from the remaining young dove in the nest. The next day, I was glad to see the mother back on the nest with the one baby. The day after that, they were both gone. I continued to hear doves cooing for the next few days, so I assumed that one or both of the young doves were still hanging around and were possibly still being fed by their mother. This was a very interesting experience and I was glad to have been able to observe the mother dove and her babies.

For My Friend:

Earlier this week, my friend Pantea asked me to help her get the word out about a petition that seeks to stop the flooding of the reservoir behind a dam which is nearing completion in southern Iran. This dam will submerge parts of the famous and historical site of Pasargadae (this link has some very nice pictures, so please take a look) which was founded by Cyrus the Great around the year 547 BCE (approximately 2500 years ago). I have done a bit of net surfing to learn more about this dam project. It is called the Sivand Dam and it is being built on the Polvar River near the site of Pasargadae. The Iranian government has delayed by one year the original schedule to fill the reservoir to allow an international team of archeologists to excavate the area to be flooded. In the past six months, these archeologists have made a number of very interesting discoveries, but with so little time remaining, and so much work left to do, the team has recently said that they will need four years to thoroughly dig the site. I sincerely hope that they will be granted more time! The petition may not be able to stop the dam's flooding, but if enough people sign it, it may at least allow a further delay in the flooding. So, in the interest of preserving as much as possible of the as yet undiscovered historical treasures of Pasargadae would you please add your name to this petition? Thank you!

The Pilot

2005-08-01T00:29:00.000-05:00

Recently, I had a discussion with my friend Tsul Trim that included my mentioning that I wanted to be a pilot when I was a kid. I said that after I got my first pair of glasses, someone told me that people with glasses could not be pilots and that I was very disappointed when I heard that! Well, Tsul Trim is a very good artist and she is also an art teacher for young children (her blog includes examples of her own excellent paintings and the paintings of her students, as well). So, she suggested that I should draw myself as a pilot as a way to express my unfulfilled childhood desire. I said to her that I might try to do that, but first, I would have to find my inner child. :) I thought about it for a while, and finally I decided to accept her suggestion and make the attempt. However, I had not drawn anything other than engineering construction details for years. Also, I have never been much of an artist. Nevertheless, I got to work with a pencil, paper, and an eraser, labored (mostly erasing!) and brought forth my creation, hopefully for your viewing pleasure. The actual drawing didn't take that long, but I spent hours copying, scanning, and digitally correcting the image until what I could see on the computer screen was a close approximation of what I had drawn with my pencil. As you have probably surmised, a penciled drawing does not scan very well (at least, not on my scanner)!! So, without any further ado, I present to you "The Pilot" (please click on the drawing to see a larger image):

Katy

2005-07-21T11:46:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday, July 19, Ray, one of my oldest and best friends, called me to let me know that his sister had passed away the previous day. I was very sad to hear this news. I am also sad and disappointed that a prior commitment will prevent me from attending Katy's funeral. However, I have promised to drive down and visit soon.

Since I heard the news, I have been trying to put my thoughts and feelings into perspective, but it is not easy. Although I did not know Katy anywhere near as well as Ray, she did have a very important impact on me. It was through her that I met a young woman who was to become one of the most important people in my life, thus far. But, this post is not about me, and that story will have to await a future telling.

In the past, when someone that I knew passed away, I have always tried to recall the most vivid memories that I have of that person. However, with respect to Katy, I have only a few memories and they are spread apart by many intervening years. The oldest vivid memory that I have of Katy occurred when I was about 17. At that time, Katy would have been about 12 years old. Ray and I were outside the front door of his house playing with some young kittens that were recently born to one of his family's cats. We heard a loud squealing meow from just inside the door and we rushed inside to see what had happened. Katy was franticly asking us to see if the kitten was ok. We saw one of the kittens lying on the carpet and Ray asked her what had happened. Katy said that she had stepped on it as she was coming down the stairs. I looked at the kitten and it wasn't moving. Then I looked at Katy and there were tears in her eyes. Ray bent down and picked up the little kitten. Still, it did not move. Katy was standing nearby and kept asking Ray how the kitten was. I felt bad for the kitten, but I felt much worse for Katy. I looked again at Katy's eyes. They were, as usual, unfocused and looking about somewhat randomly. Katy had lost much of her vision years before to a condition that I did not understand well at the time, but that I knew she shared with her mother, who was also visually impaired. After a few moments of silence, Ray gently told Katy that the kitten had died. Katy asked Ray to hand the kitten to her. Ray placed the kitten in her hands and Katy sat down on the stairs and shed silent tears while stroking it slowly. I cried too as I watched her. There was something beautiful in her gentle caring and quiet sorrow.

In later years, I saw Katy from time to time under much happier circumstances, the best of which was the occasion of her wedding to a man that I found to be a genuinely likable fellow. In the past few years, Ray and I have kept in touch by phone with infrequent, but long and enjoyable conversations. I would always inquire about how Katy was doing. I don't remember exactly when she was first diagnosed with cancer, but I remember feeling shocked and worried upon first hearing that news. She was so young. It seems to me that she must have been in her late 20's at the time. She underwent surgery and chemotherapy, and for a few years it seemed that she had beaten the disease. I was happy for her and relieved. But, as sometimes happens, her doctors eventually found that the cancer had returned. I sometimes tried to imagine what she must have thought and felt throughout those years of struggling to reclaim her health and life. I think that she was a very courageous person. Almost certainly, more brave than I would have been in her place. But, she had the love of her family, her husband, and her daughter to nourish and sustain her throughout those long and difficult months.

Katy, farewell, I will always remember you! Ray, my friend, my brother, I will see you soon!

July 22: End Note Update:
I am sure that for some of my visitors this will be a difficult post to read. It was certainly a difficult post to write! For the past few days, I have been in a state of emotional turmoil and I haven't been sleeping very well. Finally, last night, I slept fully and soundly. I have reread the post and I have been asking myself if the anecdote about Katy and the kitten was really appropriate in a post intended as a memorial to someone that I cared about. Unfortunately, I just don't have many memories of Katy. If I did, I would have probably chosen something else. However, it occurs to me that the true measure of a person is not found in their response to happy moments, but rather in how they respond to adversity. By that measure, I think that Katy was indeed a rare and special person.

An Unexpected Guest

2005-06-23T01:10:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I was returning from some shopping when I noticed a rather curious brown and yellow lump in the road. I pulled in, parked my car, and walked toward it to take a closer look. As I approached, I could clearly see that it was a baby duck. It didn't seem to be moving and I thought it might have been hit by a passing car. In that instant, I felt sad and a bit angry that another person could be so careless. However, as I knelt down to take a closer look, I saw that the baby was breathing. It was lying on its back with its little feet pointed skyward. I reached down with my hand and stroked it gently along its side. At my touch, the baby opened its eyes and started flailing its legs in the air. I guess that it was startled and scared. I looked around, but there was no sign of its mother anywhere. It was definitely abandoned. I felt really sorry for the baby duck and I really wanted to help it if I could. I thought for a moment and then decided to try and set the duckling on its feet. I carefully turned it over while it squirmed and made excited baby duck sounds. Once on its feet, it attempted to walk, but it immediately fell over and ended up on its back once again. This was definitely not a good sign! I tried again to put it on its feet, but again it fell over. It seemed to me that the duckling was not injured so I wasn't sure what was wrong. It was pretty warm outside and rather hot on the asphalt, so I decided to take the baby and get it out of the sun. I picked it up and found a small box to put it in. Then I set it in the shade.

I went straight to my computer and did a search on the care of ducklings. I found a short article and read it. It said to keep the baby duck warm and give it water to drink. Also, it said that the baby duck could be fed something called "duck starter". Well, I had no idea what duck starter was. I assumed that it was something that duck farmers could buy. I thought that the first priority should be to try and get the baby duck to drink some water. It also occurred to me that the baby might have gotten overheated laying in the road. I decided that I would try putting the duckling in a shallow pan of warm water. This would cool it a bit if it was too hot and allow it to drink. When I placed the squirming duckling in the water, to my consternation, it failed to float in a properly upright position and rolled over. I reached in and gently righted the ducking, making sure to keep its head above water. I didn't know if it drank any water, although it certainly had the opportunity when it was upside down! So, I sprinkled a little water on its head and bill. It seemed to swallow a bit which I was glad to see. I took the soaking wet duckling out of the water and held it in my hands. It was shivering. Well, obviously now the duck was too cold. I put it back in the small box and went looking for a larger box. I found one and then cut a few bunches of tall grass that had gone to seed and used these to line the bottom of the box. I placed the duckling on the grass and it proceeded to fall over on its back once again. I put the large box in the sun to try and warm the duckling back up again. It lay quietly on the grass with its eyes closed.

I left the duckling in the sun for about 15 minutes and then I went back to check it. I lifted it in my hands and it was still soaking wet and shivering. I became worried that my little duckling bath was probably not a good idea and I decided that I needed to do something quickly to warm it up and dry its downy feathers. I put it back in the box and took it inside. I got out my hair dryer, set it on low, and blew warm air towards the duckling from about three feet away. The duckling seemed to like the warm air and it relaxed and closed its eyes. After about ten minutes, the duckling was mostly dry and fluffy. I placed a small bowl of water in the box and put the box under a table lamp so the duck would get some radiant heat from the bulb. I wanted to try to get the duckling to drink some more, as I suspected that dehydration could be the cause of its inability to stand up properly. I put the bowl in front of it, but it didn't try to drink. So, I scooped the duckling into my hand and placed its bill in the water bowl. I was very happy to see that it took a sip, lifted its head, and swallowed. I put the duck back down on the grass and left it to continue warming under the lamp. Over the next several hours, I helped it drink a little water about every half hour and it gradually seemed to be doing better. It was starting to waddle around the box. and it kicked lots of grass into its water bowl. At least it was energetic! Finally, it started to burrow under the grass and sort of hide in the corner of the box. This was kind of cute. I would talk to it some and it would answer with little peeps from under the grass. :)

By evening, I was thinking that I needed to get the duckling something to eat. So, I went to a huge pet warehouse store called PetsMart. I figured that if any store would have some duck food, they would. I got there and walked all around the store. There was a section for feeding various birds, but nothing was labeled as duck food. So, I walked around some more. At this point, I was looking for an employee. I walked past the small animal section, past the dog and cat section, and found to my great surprise that there was a very extensive horse department. Now this store is located in a very suburban section of Indianapolis, not way out in the middle of farm country. So, this was really quite astonishing! The department even had its own dedicated employee, who happened to be on duty. So, I walked up to her and asked her if the store had any food that a baby duck could eat. She said, not surprisingly, that she really didn't know, but she kindly invited me to follow her as she went looking for a particular person who would know. She found him, I told him the situation, and he said that the store didn't carry anything that a baby duck could eat. He told me that if I did start feeding it that it would become quite tame, but that it would be dependant on people for the rest of its life. I said that I didn't particularly want a pet duck. What I really wanted was to help the duckling to survive. He suggested that I take the duckling to a wildlife rehabilitation specialist. I said that I would be willing to do that and asked if he could give me the phone number of one. We went back to his office and he spent a few minutes sifting through a large number of papers and cards. This guy wasn't exactly well organized! Finally, he wrote down the number of an animal shelter and said that they could put me in touch with a rehabilitator.

When I got home, I decided to try and give the duckling a bit of food. I chopped up an assortment of mixed fruit and vegetables: carrots, lettuce, apple, and spinach. I offered it to the baby, but it didn't seem interested. So, I just left the small plate in the box. Over the next few hours, I helped the duckling drink a few more times. I don't know if it ate anything, but there was plenty of grass kicked up onto the food. The duckling was still burying itself under the grass. I would walk up, look in the box, and say, "Baby duck? Where are you?", and the baby would answer with cute little peeps. :) Well, finally, I was tired and I went to sleep. I left the lamp on to keep the duckling warm over night.

In the morning, I went to check on the duckling. I called to it and it peeped back from under the grass. I got it out and held it in my hands. It seemed well and did not fall over as I held it. I petted it and put it back in the box. I looked at the food plate and I didn't think any of it had been eaten. Walked in yes, but not eaten! I called the number the pet store man had given me, but I discovered that it had been disconnected! This was quite irritating! I got out the phone book and found the number for the City Animal Control Department. I called them and explained the situation. The woman I talked to said that they could send an animal control officer out the next day to pick up the duckling. I was rather surprised to hear that a city employee would arrive in a city vehicle at my door to pick up one tiny duckling! However, I told her that I was worried that the duckling might not make it if I waited. I thought it really needed to eat something. I asked if I could bring the duckling to them. She said that I could, but then hesitated and asked me where I lived. I told her and she said that there was an animal shelter for birds and exotic animals that was actually closer to me. She went on to say that was the place where they would take the duckling anyway. So, I asked for the number of the shelter and I called them. The woman who answer the phone said that they had already received quite a few ducklings and that I could bring the duckling on over. She also mentioned that a wildlife rehabilitator was scheduled to come by that afternoon and that she would take the duckling and care for it. Well, I was quite pleased! I ate a quick breakfast and then I took a few pictures of my little feathered friend (please see below :) ). Then I drove to the animal shelter. I handed the duckling over in the grass filled box to the woman I had spoken with on the phone. She picked it up and looked at it while it wiggled and peeped in her hand. She thought it looked pretty healthy and strong. I was glad to hear her say that! I asked her if I could call and check up on how the duckling was doing. She said that the rehabilitator had already been given about 200 baby ducks and that it would be pretty hard to tell one from another. After a brief moment of incredulity at the number of abandoned ducklings that had already been brought to the shelter, I said that I could certainly understand! She then joked that maybe we could paint a colored dot on the duckling. I smiled and said not to worry about it. I thanked her and left feeling good and that I had done my best to give the duckling a chance to survive.

Do You Ebay?

2005-06-12T03:21:00.000-05:00

First, I would like to apologize to my guests for my rather lengthy absence. As many of you know, I have not disappeared altogether. I have managed to drop in here and there to say hello and sometimes a bit more. :) I would like to explain where I have been spending much of my free time of late. You see, I have acquired a new hobby of sorts. Actually, it has become somewhat of an addictive habit! I have discovered the world of Ebay auctions and I have been rather busy attempting to buy various items of interest and utility.

This all started about two months ago. Some of you will recall the post that I devoted to the passing of famed science fiction author Andre Norton. Well, I was exploring her official web site one day and I discovered that Andre and her caregiver Sue Stewart had started a small business of making and selling bead necklace jewelry. Apparently, in the last year of Andre's life, she wasn't able to write any more and she was rather depressed about that. Sue, who is an accomplished craftsperson, suggested that Andre might like to try doing some craft work as an outlet for her creativity. Andre agreed and got very involved in the project. She enjoyed shopping for interesting beads, as well as designing and making the necklaces. After reading about Andre and Sue's Ebay store, I was intrigued and decided to check it out. I thought that it would really be neat if I could buy something that had been hand made by one of my favorite authors. (Just to be clear, I had no intention of actually wearing one of the necklaces! :) ) Unfortunately, by the time I arrived at the Ebay store, all of the necklaces that had been personally handmade by Andre had already been sold. However, I noticed that there were a few small items of Andre's personal jewelry available for sale. One of these items, the cat pin pictured below, caught my eye. I really liked it! I knew that cats were very special to Andre and that they figured prominently in some of her books. Somehow, it seemed to me that the cat in this pin had a certain character, perhaps an air of superior intelligence and an attitude to match! I wondered if Andre had selected this pin because she saw something similar when she looked at it.

From Sue Stewart's description: "This item is from Andre's personal collection of jewelry, it belonged to her and was worn by her. The cat pin is made of copper. The eyes and nose are opals and the stones adorning the body are marcasite. It is about 3/4 inches wide and 2 inches tall. Andre was a lover of all animals, especially cats."

So, I had decided to bid on the cat pin, but first I needed to set up an Ebay account as well as a means to fund my purchases. I did a little reading on how to set up an account and then proceeded to do so. It was really quite easy, as Ebay is really user friendly! To fund my purchases, I decided to use Ebay's PayPal service and I signed up for an account. Basically, I gave them my credit card number on a secure web page and chose a user name and password for my account. When I make a purchase, PayPal does an electronic transfer to the seller and charges my credit card. The seller never sees my credit card number. Also, there is no charge for this service to the buyer. However, the seller pays a small fee to PayPal for the transaction.

Well, back to my story. I ended up placing several bids for the cat pin. It was between me and another bidder who seemed to really want the item. In fact, he or she had previously bought a number of the necklaces made by Andre and some of her personal jewelry. This person was either a serious fan collector or some sort of Sci-Fi business owner. Well, I decided to stop fooling around and plotted a strategy. I knew that the auction would end at a specified time. So, I decided to enter my maximum bid a few seconds before the end of the auction and hope that it was more than Mr. or Ms. Collector Pants was willing to pay. A few minutes before the end of the auction, I started a stop watch to time my final bid. One minute before the end, I entered the bid. The next step was to confirm the bid. I waited until there was 20 seconds left and then pressed confirm. It takes about five seconds for this to go through. I waited tensely and then got a screen saying I was the high bidder and that there were about ten seconds left until the end of the auction (I know, my timing was a bit off :) ). I waited, nervously expecting the other bidder to jump in with a higher bid. After ten seconds, I checked and found to my delight that I had won the auction! I used Ebay's simple checkout procedure which took me to my PayPal account and I paid for the item along with the seller's shipping charge. I exchanged a couple of friendly emails with Sue Stewart regarding the item and, about a week later, it arrived in the mail. I keep the pin next to my computer and look at it occasionally while wondering if this pin might have inspired any of Andre Norton's stories...

In the past two months, I have bought a number of old structural engineering books, which are of great interest to me considering my engineering education and work experiences. Below is a picture of one of the books. This book, published by the Bethlehem Steel Company in 1934, lists all of the various structural steel sections, like I-Beams for example, that the company manufactured at that time, along with various information intended to aid an engineer in the design of a steel structure. Today, this sort of book is very useful to engineers who work to rehabilitate old buildings. I have done some of that sort of work in the past and found those projects to be some of the most interesting things that I did as an engineer.

This next picture is of a very large and heavy old bench vice that I bought. I have no idea how old it is, but it I suspect that it could easily date to when my grandparents were young! I constructed my own work bench a few years ago and I had been thinking for some time that every good work bench needs a good vice. Well, this vice is one of the largest and heaviest that I have ever seen and, despite its age, it is still in very good working condition. It really is true that there was a time when things were just made right! Actually, I did a bit of research on the internet and found a few newly manufactured vises that are just as big as this old one. However, they cost about four times what I paid and probably wont last half as long! So, I am quite satisfied with the deal that I found.

So far, I have been quite pleased with my Ebay experiences. It is easy to tell if the sellers are reputable. Ebay provides a system whereby buyers and sellers can leave feedback on any given transaction. All this feedback is accessible to any Ebay user, buyer or seller. Thus, a buyer can see what previous buyers thought of a particular seller, and a seller can see what previous sellers thought about a particular buyer. It is really an excellent way to do business and I can certainly highly recommend it! It is very interesting to see that Ebay has grown into a worldwide business. I have seen items offered for sale in Canada, England, France, Germany, and Australia. I am sure that a number of other countries are involved, as well. Many sellers say that they will ship their items anywhere in the world. I have no doubt that Ebay is going to continue to grow into a true worldwide market place. I think that I may have to invest in Ebay, and the sooner the better! :)

Islands in the Stream?

2005-05-16T17:16:00.000-05:00

A recent post by my friend Khodadad has got me to thinking. Well, actually, it reminded me of thoughts that I have had from time to time over the years. Have you ever felt that your life is insignificant, that your existence just doesn't count for much? I think that many people have such thoughts occasionally, I certainly have. A long time ago, my mother's mother tried to teach me a lesson. At the time, it didn't seem very significant. However, it resonates within me now. Her lesson was basically that, "No Man Is An Island". This is an old saying that originates from a work by the 16th century poet John Donne (see excerpt below). Apparently, it was a favorite saying of my grandmother's mother. The saying teaches the moral lesson that every person is interconnected and interdependent with other people. None of us can really live a fulfilling existence without other people. Indeed, it would be impossible for most of us to survive in our modern world without the help of other people. Certainly, there are some people, here and there, but mostly in low tech parts of the world, who retain the knowledge of how to "live off the land". But, how many people are cut out to be Mountain Men or Women who live a lonely, hermit-like existence? I am certainly not cut from that sort of cloth. I need contact with other people to feel healthy and happy.

Lets go back to the old saying for a moment, "No Man Is An Island". I have thought a lot about the concept of human beings as islands over the years. I think that, in some ways, the saying is not entirely correct. We are, to a certain extent islands, separate, distinct, and disconnected from other people. We have our own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, not all of which are shared with other people. However, every person that lives within communication range of other people does exert some degree of influence upon those others.

I like to use visual imagery to do my thinking. So, for the purpose of this discussion, I would like to imagine all human beings as standing in one huge continuous shallow pond. The distances between the people in the pond are variable, and some groups are so far from other groups that interaction with other groups is essentially impossible. However, this sort of thing is quite uncommon, as there are very few groups of undiscovered humans living apart in some deep and uncharted jungle. Anyway, I digress. Lets focus in on one person in the vast pond. Lets imagine that instead of this pond person speaking to another, he bobs up and down in the water. This action sends out ripples that impact and reflect off other pond people who are nearby. These reflected ripples then impact off more pond people, reflecting until they eventually subside out of existence. Often the ripples that one pond person creates by bobbing will have little effect on the other pond people. (This might be analogous to real human beings engaging in light conversation about the weather.) However, sometimes the ripples from one pond person will resonate with another pond person in a certain way that causes her to begin bobbing in response, thus sending out additional ripples that have a farther reach that the original ripples and which impact off additional pond people. (This might be likened to a person communicating a new and beneficial idea to one or more other people.) Much less frequently, a pond person might bob so energetically that he sets many other pond people bobbing in a resonant pattern that reinforces and multiplies the amplitude of the ripples to the point that they become great waves that wash over and submerge large numbers of pond people, some of whom are so overwhelmed that they never resurface. (An analogous human event might be a war.)

So, why am I spending time talking about pond people? I am trying to make the point that every person has some power to influence other people. We are all powerful in that we can positively or negatively influence the course of other people's lives. Sometimes a kind word or action can change another person's day, and that person may, in turn, perform a kindness for one or more additional people. The opposite could also be true. A negative word or action could have adverse consequences for the recipient, who may pass that negativity along to others. Have you ever seen the movie "Pay It Forward"? For the most part, I thought it was a great movie (except for the ending when the kid died - that really ruined my day!). The basis of the movie was for one person to do good deeds for others and instead of asking for a reward, he or she would ask the recipient of the good deed to do a good deed for someone else. If enough people "paid it forward", the world could be changed for the better. Well, it is a great idea in theory, but in practice, maybe not, given the proclivities of human nature. However, I like the concept. I try to do little good things every day. I give encouragement to friends. I say thank you to people I am doing business with. I wait and allow someone to merge ahead of me into a traffic jammed street. If someone drops something without knowing, I pick it up and hand it to them. There are so many ways that a person can be helpful to others and maybe change other people's lives for the better. So, the next time that you think that your life is of no consequence, think again. Sometimes little things do mean a lot, and none of us are islands unto ourselves!

Sculpture "No Man Is An Island" by Clark B. Fitzgerald, given to the First Congregational Church of Melrose, Massachusetts in loving memory of Herbert and Sarah Tourtillott (my greatgrandparents!) by their children.

Painting by James Becker highlighting the lower right portion of the sculpture.

"Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Excerpt from: Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII by John Donne

Some Lighter Elements

2005-05-03T23:46:00.000-05:00

Since my last three posts have been serious, I have been thinking that it is about time that I lightened things up a bit. I went to the Indianapolis Zoo a few weeks ago and I would like to share some of my pictures. Maybe it was just the early Spring weather, but all the animals seemed really lazy or very bored. Of course, it may just be that Zoo life is so exciting for them that they all decided to take a break and just chill out. They probably all had little stampedes in their enclosures earlier in the day, before I got there! Well, anyway, here are some pictures and my impression of what these animals had on their minds. Enjoy. :)

Now, were is that handler with my hay bale!?

Hmmm, should I drink or should I poop?

Ahhh, a comfy rock bed and a dead tree to put my paw up on, that's the life!

After walking around the Zoo, I visited the Botanical Gardens that are right next to the Zoo. They have a tropical butterfly exhibit every year that begins in the Spring and runs through early Fall. The Gardens obtain various colorful and attractive butterflies, which arrive in the dormant chrysalid state (the metamorphic period during which a catapillar transforms into a butterfly). These are placed in several transparent enclosures within a large greenhouse. When the butterflies hatch, the Garden's staff open the enclosures to allow the butterflies to fly about the greenhouse for the enjoyment of the guests. I came rather early to the butterfly exhibition, so most of the really big and beautiful ones hadn't hatched out yet. However, the small ones can be quite pretty, too. One of these, for some reason, found me to be an agreeable perch. Trying to adjust and focus my camera with only one hand was a bit challenging, but happily it turned out well. :)

I wish this fool would hurry up and take my picture, I want to get back to my bowl of sliced fruit!

A Little Boy Who Touched My Heart

2005-04-24T19:35:00.000-05:00

This has been a difficult post to begin. I have been thinking about it for the past week. This post is dedicated to a little boy who passed away in a refugee camp in Afghanistan on Friday, April 15. His name was Qudrat Ullah Wardak and he was sixteen months old. When I heard on the local TV news that he had died, I was stunned and very sad. I could not speak for several minutes and tears flowed from my eyes. Even now, as I write this, I am feeling very emotional. I never personally knew this child, and yet I did feel a personal connection to him. I was most certainly not alone in my feelings. Thousands of people in central Indiana undoubtedly felt a similar connection. You see, Qudrat was here, in Indianapolis, for nearly two months, until Wednesday, April 13, when he returned home.

I first heard about Qudrat in late February, when the local news presented the story of the little boy who would be coming from Afghanistan with his father Hakim Gul Wardak. The story discussed how members of a unit of the Indiana National Guard were attending to the health needs of Afghan refugees near their camp when little Qudrat came to their attention. He was very tiny for his age, very weak, and his skin would frequently turn blue. A doctor with the Guard unit was familiar with such symptoms and knew immediately that there was a problem with the baby's heart. The doctor was pretty sure that Qudrat's symptoms were caused by the presence of a hole in the tissue that separated the right and left sides of his heart. Such a defect makes it very difficult for the heart to properly circulate oxygenated blood to the body. Most babies with similar symptoms do not live very long without medical intervention. The doctor knew that Qudrat would require some very specialized open heart surgery. However, there were no heart surgeons in Afghanistan. Fortunately for Qudrat, one of the Guardsmen was a member of The Rotary Club in his community in Indiana. This Club had a program called "The Gift of Life" which had provided funding to give dozens of children from all over the world the opportunity to have life saving medical procedures performed at a hospital in Indianapolis. This Guardsman contacted his Club members in Indiana and they agreed to sponsor the surgery that could save Qudrat's life. Please see this article for more information.

Qudrat and Hakim Wardak shortly after arrival in Indianapolis.

After Qudrat and Hakim arrived in Indianapolis, they were taken to the hospital where Qudrat would be thoroughly evaluated prior to his surgery. When the doctors had a chance to review the scans of Qudrat's heart, it was discovered that his condition was actually much more serious than the original diagnosis in Afghanistan. His tiny heart had several serious defects including a reversal of the major vessels leading away from the heart and a malformed heart chamber and valve (please read this for more information). This would be the most difficult operation that Qudrat's pediatric heart surgeon had ever attempted. He had experience repairing similar defects, but not all together in the same patient. However, despite the potential risks and difficulties, the medical team were confident that they could help Qudrat, and that the chances of his survival were very good. The operation took place and it was completely successful!

Qudrat happy and playful several weeks after surgery.

From the day that Qudrat and his father had arrived from Afghanistan, the local TV stations and newspapers had made the baby's condition and medical treatment a leading story. It was for me a wonderful change from the usual laundry list of crime and tragedy. This was a story with absolutely no moral ambiguity. Here was a tiny baby who would die without the help of many other people. Every day, I was eager for news on his progress. I worried for him before his surgery and I was elated for him that he had not only survived, but that his prognosis was very good. There was a small scare after the surgery when Qudrat and his father were accidently exposed to chicken pox. They were both immediately given a vaccine against the disease and were observed carefully for the next three weeks, however, neither came down with an infection. Meanwhile, Qudrat was doing exceptionally well. He was eating voraciously and was more active than he had ever been. Most importantly, he seemed very happy! So was his father. Hakim had expressed an interest in immigrating to the U.S. (please refer to this article). He was confident that his wife would like to live in America also. The Rotary Club arranged for Hakim to meet with a lawyer who was experienced in helping people to apply for immigration visas. However, Hakim decided that he would not attempt to stay in the U.S. during the application process. He did not want a long separation from his wife. So, as soon as Qudrat's doctors said that it was safe for him to travel, a return trip to Afghanistan was arranged. Hakim and Qudrat returned to something akin to a hero's welcome at the airport in Afghanistan and at the refugee camp. All of Qudrat's relatives wanted to hold him and play with him. Everyone was very happy, especially Qudrat's mother Tajbara (Here is an article about the homecoming). However, early in the morning of the second day of their return something happened that would turn the joy of Qudrat's homecoming to great sorrow. Qudrat awoke crying around 3:00 AM. His parents discovered that Qudrat's heart was beating very fast. They gave him some medicine for pain, that the Indianapolis doctors had prescribed and taught Hakim how to administer, and Qudrat calmed down. But, shortly thereafter, Qudrat stopped breathing. His parents sent for help to the Guard Camp, but by the time several Guard officiers arrived, it was to late and there was nothing that they could do. Qudrat had passed away. A few hours later, when the news of Qudrat's death was given to a group of reporters, who had traveled to Afghanistan to cover his return and follow his progress, they sat in stunned silence for several minutes, many of them openly weeping. Later that day, the news reached Indianapolis, where many more tears were shed for the little boy who had touched so many hearts.

According to the Muslim customs of Qudrat's family there was no autopsy and the boy was buried the same day that he died. No one will ever know why Qudrat died after such a promising initial recovery from surgery. But, I know that I and many others will remember him for a long time. I wish his parents peace, and if it is still their wish to come to America, I hope that they will be able. I think that there are many people in Indiana who are willing to help them, whatever they decide.

Here are two more articles written after Qudrat's death:

BBC NEWS : Afghan heart surgery toddler dies

IndyStar: Qudrat left imprint on reporter

Please note: even if you don't have time to read all the linked articles, they all have more pictures which help to tell Qudrat's story. Thanks for your interest!

My First Demonstration

2005-04-04T00:23:00.000-05:00

Last month, my friend Sima posted a list of demonstrations that would be held across the U.S. on the 2nd anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Well, in all my years, I have never been to a demonstration, so I was curious. The demonstration was held, fittingly, in front of the Indianapolis War Memorial, and I must say that I was quite pleased that I went.

In all honesty, my personality is not particularly suited to publicly demonstrating. When I am in a crowd of strangers, I am inevitably an observer rather than a participant in whatever they are doing. However, in this case, I did feel more than a little kinship with these demonstrators. The main point of this demonstration was to express a strong desire for the U.S. troops to leave Iraq immediately. Some of my readers already know that I am quite doubtful regarding the wisdom of an abrupt pullout of American troops since Iraq's societal infrastructure has been badly damaged by the invasion and is still not very strongly reorganized. However, despite my misgivings about the demonstration's theme, I found that there were many things that the speakers were talking about that I could agree with. For example, America needs to stop wasting its precious human and financial resources "defending" its thirst for oil and instead put those resources into developing new technologies that will increase the energy efficiency of the many industries, vehicles, and living accomodations that our society depends on. In addition to using less oil, we need to invest in new sources of energy, particularly renewables like solar and wind power. Other things discussed that are very important to me were improving access to health care for all American citizens and saving Social Security. Just a small portion of what has been spent invading and occupying Iraq would have provided health insurance to millions of Americans who currently have none. So, I did indeed find a number of reasons to join with other demonstrators in applauding the various speaker's comments!

In between segments of speakers there were a few interludes reserved for entertainment. The featured guest, who is the subject of my third picture, goes by the stage name "George Shrub" and bills himself as the world's only singing CIA Agent. His songs and jokes were very funny and satirical jibes at Bush and his pack of Neo-Cons. I really enjoyed his performance!

For me, one of the most striking occurrences at the demonstration was when a man drove by and shouted "Get a Life!" I couldn't help feeling a profound sense of irony as I noticed the "Support our Troops" magnet affixed to the back of his gas guzzling Ford Excursion!

I would like to extend my thanks to Sima for helping me to have a very interesting day!

The Passing of a Giant

2005-03-27T01:20:00.000-05:00

Up to this point, I have been mostly writing here with an eye toward providing posts that would be entertaining or interesting to my kind audience. However, this time I am writing out of purely selfish motivations. Recently, on Thursday March 17, one of the truly great writers of modern science fiction and fantasy passed away at the well earned age of 93. It was my great pleasure to have read a number of the works of Andre Norton. I read her books mostly as a young teenager. Indeed, she wrote with that age group specifically in mind. The second science fiction book that I ever read was one of hers. It was called "The Zero Stone". It was the first book that I checked out of my Junior High School library. I enjoyed it so much that I became a regular library patron. All the librarians knew me by name! I found a picture of the original hard cover book that actually looks quite familiar to me, even after many years:

Her books really captured my imagination and led me to read the stories of many other authors of science fiction and fantasy in later years. I owe her a debt, and to her I say, with fond remembrance, thank you and farewell!

My Favorite Butterfly

2005-03-06T01:06:00.000-05:00

Male Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

I have been thinking that some readers might appreciate an explanation of the various clues in my riddle that was solved recently by Ehsan with help from Jamak. I hope that you like the picture above. It is, of course, the subject of my riddle. I found this picture some months ago. It is by far the best picture of a tiger swallowtail that I have ever seen!

Ok, lets get to the clues. The first and most apparent clue was the color of the paper: yellow with black ink, the main colors of the butterfly. "Chromation commingles Twix saffron and swarth", compliments this clue. "Mong myriad min. moieties: Unmanifest motley crews", was the subtitle of my first posted clue. This picture is a photograph of a tiger swallowtail's wing magnified about 650 times. The picture shows the microscopic scales that give color to the butterfly's wings. "Brigandine occults crystal Sans aegis reception", again refers to the microscopic scales on the wings. Brigandine, as Khodadad correctly noted, is a type of ancient body armor worn by soldiers. It is composed of interconnected metal scales. Now, I said that this was one of the more obscure clues. All insect wings consist of a transparent membrane that is made rigid by a network of stiffening veins. Many insects simply have transparent wings; for example, most people will have noticed this feature of common house flies. Butterflies and moths have the same transparent wing membranes, only the transparency of their wings is hidden by millions of tiny colored scales. Aegis is a word that refers to the shield of the mythical god Zeus, or in general as a protection. Now, the clue should be understandable. The butterfly's "brigandine" hides the crystal wings without offering any protection. "Pon planular paired adjuncts; Fore ante hind; Frail borne' trails Brandish ahinder", is a more strait forward clue. The butterfly has two pairs of wings. It has fore wings and hind wings. The "frail borne' trails" are the tails on the hind wings. "Kin felinus maximus: Via simile in mien", simply means that the subject of the riddle looks like the world's largest cat: the tiger. Many people probably believe that the so called "king of beasts", the lion, is the world's largest cat, however, the largest tigers outweigh the largest lions by several hundred pounds. The last part of the riddle is the clue from the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". The "aeronauts toting coconuts", in the movie, are swallows, although it is not established as to whether they are African or European swallows. :) Thanks to everyone who participated in my riddle. I am glad that it has finally been solved!

By Request: Another Clue

2005-02-23T22:53:00.000-05:00

'Kin felinus maximus: Via simile in mien;

Once again, I have bravely surfed the length and breadth of yonder Internetus Communicatus to bring to my gallant audience of Lords and Ladies a new portent to lay bare the murky and insubstantial threads of one of the great mysteries of our age. ***Ahem, cut the crap Merlin, you're laying it on a bit thick!*** Right you are Majesty. If the kind audience will please direct their attention to the indicated illustration, we may begin once again to deliberate on the subject at hand. As before, it would be advisable to consult the discussion of the previous posting. The gentle Lady Jamak, especially, has attained a very high degree of enlightenment regarding this most devious of conundrums.

A Clue To My Riddle

2005-02-19T00:08:00.000-05:00

'Mong myriad min. moieties: Unmanifest motley crews.

This picture shows part of the subject of my riddle. I did not take this picture myself. I found it after searching the web. To my amazement, I actually found exactly what I was looking for! Please refer to the comments to the previous post. I have given some other clues in my responses. I hope this picture will heighten your curiosity and stimulate your creative problem solving skills. :)

Can You Solve My Riddle?

2005-02-09T23:25:00.000-05:00

My friend Jamak had a contest this week to guess the message behind a picture that she posted. Her contest has inspired me to dust off an old riddle that I created during my college days. I sponsored a contest among interested residents of my dorm, and I offered a bottle of their favorite liquor to whomever could solve the riddle. There were a lot of very smart people in my dorm, and most of them were eager to win a free bottle of liquor, however, no one succeeded. I suppose that the prize is still collectable, however, there are a few postal regulations that would make the mailing of a bottle of liquor problematic. So, I would like to simply share my riddle with you, and if you are up for a bit of a challenge, I invite you to attempt to solve it. Here is the riddle as it originally appeared (please click on the picture to see an enlargement):

I printed the riddle in an Old English font and then copied it onto colored paper for distribution. As the picture may be rather difficult for some readers to see clearly, I will reprint it as follows:

Riddled in Verse

Chromation commingles
Twix saffron and swarth;
'Mong myriad min. moieties:
Unmanifest motley crews.

Brigandine occults crystal
Sans aegis reception;
'Pon planular paired adjuncts;
Fore ante hind;
Frail borne' trails
Brandish ahinder.

'Kin felinus maximus:
Via simile in mien;
'N aeronauts toting coconuts,
'Pon scent yon
Astral Gloried Grail,
O'er lands vastly leagued.

As English is a second language to most (if not all) of my readers, I would like to clarify my abbreviations: 'Mong = Among; min. = miniature; 'Pon = Upon; 'Kin = Akin; 'N = And; and O'er = Over. The word "borne" should be written with a slash over the "e", rather than the apostrophe shown. In the original printing, I misspelled "saffron". I have corrected the mistake above. I made what I thought was a very obvious reference to the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" in the riddle. It was an extremely popular movie with a cult like status when I was in college (the movie was actually made years before I went to college). Today it is probably not that well known. It is a truly hilarious movie, and I highly recommend it! Aside from that, a good dictionary would be very helpful toward solving the riddle. There are many clues approaching the subject of the riddle from different directions. Some are more obscure than others, and they are certainly not all necessary to find the solution. If there is a great hew and cry for some sort of prize, I suppose that I can come up with something. :) Otherwise, have fun and good luck. I hope that you enjoy the puzzle!

Welcome To My Winter Garden

2005-01-24T15:10:00.000-05:00

The Myth of Global Warming?

2004-12-20T17:54:00.000-05:00

Michael Crichton, the author of such famous books as "The Andromeda Strain" and "Jurassic Park" has just published a new book titled "State Of Fear", in which he argues that there is insufficient data to conclude that the human produced rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is actually causing the effect commonly known as global warming. Indeed, he is not at all convinced that global warming is even a real phenomenon (please refer to this BBC article). He acknowledges that the average global temperature has risen by three tenths of a degree Fahrenheit in the past thirty years. However, he points out that during the previous thirty years, average global temperatures actually declined (the article doesn't say by how much, I presume by some fraction of a degree). He sums up his position doubting the existence of the phenomenon of global warming thusly: "I think there's only one position, and that is the position that the data leads you to". He has looked at the temperature data and he has made his determination. However, I must ask, is this the only parameter that should be considered in evaluating the presence or absence of global warming? In my opinion, the answer to this question is no.

It is a fact that glaciers all over the world have been in retreat for approximately the past 100 years. I have seen numerous examples providing photographic evidence that glaciers have retreated up mountain slopes, in some cases by miles, in the past 100 years. High altitude glaciers that occur on mountain tops in tropical regions, such as Mt. Kilimanjaro in Kenya, are expected to completely disappear within the next several decades. Glaciers in Europe that have been relatively stable in size and thickness for thousands of years have experienced dramatic reductions in size in the past 100 years. You may recall the discovery of the now famous Iceman, a stone age hunter who died high in the Italian Alps about 5000 years ago and was entombed and preserved in ice all those long years, only to be exposed by the recent rapid melting of his frozen grave.

It is not only mountain glaciers that are rapidly diminishing. The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, which hold enough frozen fresh water to dramatically raise global sea levels if it were all to melt (not to the point of the somewhat ridiculous movie Waterworld, but you get the idea), have been showing some definite signs of melting much faster than falling snow can rebuild them. These gigantic ice sheets, some as much as three miles thick, are in constant slow motion. New snow falls in the interior of these huge islands. The weight if this new snow slowly compacts previous layers into ice. As more weight is added, the ice flows slowly outward toward the ocean. In the case of Greenland, the ice near the ocean is simply receding inland, exposing long ago covered rocks and soil. In the case of Antarctica, the glaciers actually extend far out to sea, in some cases, by hundreds of miles. In the past few decades, these floating glaciers have been getting thinner and the outward extent of the sea ice, which varies from winter to summer, as the ocean water freezes and thaws, has been rapidly diminishing. A few years ago, a gigantic ice berg over 100 miles long and 20 miles wide broke off of one of these huge Antarctic ice sheets and is currently drifting near Antarctica, as it slowly melts. Some scientists are very concerned that in the next 50 years or so, all of the floating glaciers surrounding Antarctica will thin to the point of breaking away and melting. The consequences of this potential rise in global sea levels, will be dire to low lying islands and countries like Bangladesh, much of whose land area is near to the current sea level.

There is one other area of great concern. It is the sea ice that covers much of the Arctic Ocean. Satellites have been monitoring the thickness and area of the Arctic sea ice for more that ten years. In that time, the ice has lost a significant percentage (about 20 percent, if I remember correctly) of its thickness. Also, the greatest annual winter extent of the sea ice has been getting smaller every year. Some wildlife biologists who study polar bears are very worried that large numbers of polar bears may eventually die of starvation because their habit of hunting on the pack ice during the winter is becoming increasingly difficult as the area of ice coverage continues to diminish.

Ok, the facts so far are that the global average temperature has increased slightly and the Earth's volume of frozen water has been measurably reduced. Any first year chemistry student should be able to deduce a possible correlation between these two sets of data. It takes heat to melt ice. It is quite possible that the phenomenon of global warming has been masked because the increase in atmospheric heating, caused by the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide trapping infrared radiation from the sun, is being counterbalanced by the melting of ice.

Now lets consider one additional set of data. Michael Crichton apparently only considers atmospheric temperature data. I think that oceanic temperature data is also very important. The oceans role in regulating the Earth's climate is not entirely understood, however, the existence of vast oceanic currents has been known for at least 200 years. It was Ben Franklin, the noted scientist and American revolutionary thinker, who discovered the Gulf Stream, the giant river of warm water which flows from the tropics up the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada and then across the Atlantic past Iceland and on to England. It is this gigantic conveyor belt of heat that makes life so much more pleasant and tolerable in northwestern Europe. During the 20th century, oceanic scientists discovered that the Pacific Ocean experiences a periodic oscillation of warm water from one side of the ocean to the other, from east to west and then back again. When this large area of warm water returns to the eastern side of the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Baja California, a phenomenon called El Nino occurs. The presence or absence of El Nino can have dramatic effects on the weather of the entire United States, Mexico, and Central America. In the past twenty years, the period of years between the recurrence of El Nino events has been growing smaller. This strongly suggests that the oscillation of the warm water from one side of the ocean to the other and back again is gaining speed. This would indicate, to a student of physics, that the system is gaining energy. Assuming that the oceans are absorbing heat energy from the atmosphere, it is possible that the oceans, like the ice, could be playing a role in masking the existence of global warming.

There are two potentially disastrous problems associated with the melting of ice, and the increase of oceanic water temperatures, respectively. Lets consider the effect of the melting of fresh water ice from Greenland and the Arctic Ocean first. Scientists who have studied the mechanism that drives the Gulf Stream, have discovered that there are huge columns of water in the North Atlantic in which the salinity (salt content) is much higher than the average oceanic salinity. Water with higher salinity is heavier than water with lower salinity, and thus it sinks. These columns of saline enriched water are continuously regenerated by evaporation from the ocean's surface. The sinking of these columns of "heavier" water is the engine that drives the circular flow of the Gulf Stream around the Northern Hemispheric Atlantic Ocean. The problem with adding large quantities of fresh water from the melting of Greenland's ice sheet and the melting of Arctic ice, is that the North Atlantic will become gradually less saline. There may be a point at which the water will simply stop sinking and the Gulf Stream will stop flowing. Ironically, this could actually be the same mechanism which in the past has been the triggering cause of new ice ages.

The second potential disaster involves a substance called methane hydrate. This is a frozen combination of methane and water that occurs in huge deposits on sea floors all over the world. If a chunk of methane hydrate is brought to the surface and allowed to warm up to air temperature, it will simply melt and evaporate. Or, it can actually be set on fire, burning slowly until all the methane has been consumed. What is important about methane is that it is a very potent greenhouse gas. If huge amounts of methane were suddenly released into the atmosphere, it could cause a very dramatic increase in global atmospheric temperatures. Some oceanic scientists are concerned that if the water temperature of the oceans rise enough, huge amounts of methane hydrate may melt and separate into water and methane. The resultant release of this methane would cause a significant increase in the Earth's average atmospheric temperature.

So, we may be faced with the potential of a new ice age, or perhaps a very uncomfortable increase in temperature, or maybe some bizarre combination of both. Certainly, not all the facts are in and more data needs to be collected before we can make accurate predictions about what will actually occur as a result of the continued increases in atmospheric greenhouse gasses that human beings are producing. However, wouldn't it be far more wise to err on the side of caution and take strong steps to reduce the emission of gases like CO2 into the world's atmosphere, rather than wait and do nothing, as Michael Crichton suggests? I think that we should be proactive and do everything we can as soon as possible. If we do nothing, our descendants may be very very angry with us. What do you think?

Is There Anybody Out There?

2004-11-28T15:26:00.000-05:00

One of my most engaging hobbies since I was about 11 years old has been reading science fiction stories. For me, one of the most interesting subjects of science fiction is speculation about forms of life that may live on other planets, either within our own solar system or on planets orbiting some distant star. I am especially interested in the possibility of intelligent life that human beings might someday encounter. As you might imagine, I have long been a fan of the original Star Trek series, its various sequels, and movies. However, I have often been amused by the aliens who invariably look human, with minor differences in ears, eyebrows, skin color, etc. There was the occasional alien who looked like an animated rock, a gaseous cloud, or a bright light, but these were rare. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, did address this issue. The problem was in part a lack of money for special effects. However, a more important issue for him was that he wanted the audience to be able to readily identify with alien characters. An animated rock or a gaseous cloud could not convey emotions.

It has been obvious to me for a very long time that an alien life form need not look like a human or humanoid to possess intelligence. There are indeed highly intelligent life forms on our own island in space that bear little outward resemblance to human beings. Whales and dolphins are excellent examples. Dolphins, due to their smaller size, are the easiest to maintain in an artificial environment where their behavior can be observed and studied in detail. It is difficult to assess the intelligence of a dolphin, however, researchers are making the attempt. It has been well established for years that dolphins communicate with each other. They "speak" in very complex patterns of clicks and whistles. They hunt for food in groups, using patterns of behavior that appear to require some degree of planning and forethought. Also, they are extremely curious, and they can learn new behaviors very quickly. I do not presume to posit that dolphins are as intelligent as human beings, however, I do not think that the limits of their intelligence have been established yet. It is an open question that will require a great deal of future research.

Now, lets consider a creature that is vastly different from a human being or a dolphin, both of which are vertebrates and mammals. The octopus is indeed a very different sort of creature. It is a mollusk, an invertebrate whose close relatives include oysters, clams, snails, and slugs. Yet unlike its relatives, the octopus is a very intelligent creature. They possess the ability to nearly instantaneously change their color, either uniformly or in complex patterns, to match their surroundings, enabling them to hide from potential predators. Octopi also appear to communicate with each other by flashing rapid changes of color in territorial struggles or to facilitate mating. This ability requires very good eyesight, as well as, a very complex brain and nervous system. Another aspect of octopus intelligence involves their ability to interact with their environment and solve problems. Each of the eight arms of an octopus can be controlled with very high dexterity. They can move heavy rocks or gently manipulate tiny objects. I have seen a documentary of an octopus that was presented with a glass jar with a screwed on lid. Inside the jar was a live crab, which was a favorite food of this particular species of octopus. The octopus spent several minutes turning the jar over and trying to get to the crab. The octopus seemed to be trying to figure out the problem. After a while, the octopus somehow got the notion to rotate the lid. Perhaps this was just dumb luck, but that octopus finally got the lid off that jar and ate the crab. I was astonished! As proof that the octopus had the ability to learn and remember, the same diver returned the next day and found the same octopus in its lair under a rock. The diver presented the octopus with another sealed jar containing a crab. This time, the octopus immediately grasped the jar, unscrewed the lid, and ate the crab. It had indeed learned and it did remember!

Well, the point of this exercise was to establish the reality of intelligent creatures having an appearance very different from a human being. Accordingly, if we ever do encounter an intelligent extraterrestrial life form, I would not expect it to look like us. Speculation about intelligence elsewhere in the universe is intriguing. However, a more practical pursuit for the near future is to attempt to answer a far more basic question. Is there reason to believe that any live exists beyond our planet? My intuition says yes, but as yet, there is no proof. The next few decades will be very interesting in terms of probes searching for signs of life within our solar system. A probe currently orbiting Mars has recently detected methane in the Martian atmosphere. Methane can only exist as an atmospheric gas for a few years. After that, it is broken down by solar radiation into simpler molecules. A major source of methane on Earth occurs as a byproduct of cellular metabolism of various microbial fauna. Methane can also be released by volcanoes, however, Mars is, by all indications, a geologically dead world. There has not been an active volcano on Mars for millions of years as demonstrated by the high number of large and intact meteor impact craters present on the extinct Martian volcanoes. Geologically recent volcanism would have covered over these features. Thus, the Martian atmospheric methane may be an indication that Mars currently supports, at least, microbial life!

What of other solar system bodies? Some scientists believe that the Jovian (Jupiter) moon Europa may be a likely candidate for some form of life. The entire surface of Europa is covered by ice that has a thickness of several miles. This was apparently determined by radar scans of the moon by the Galileo Probe. There is some evidence that a liquid ocean may exist beneath this ice. The Jovian moon Io, the closest to Jupiter of its four major moons, is very hot and volcanically active from Jupiter's radiation and from gravity induced tidal flexing caused by its proximity to Jupiter. It is most likely unsuitable for any form of life. Europa is farther away from Jupiter, but it may have enough energy imparted to it by its giant companion to allow for liquid water beneath its icy surface. On Earth, there are very complex ecosystems that surround hot water vents located in the oceans far below the depth that sunlight penetrates. These vents have been found along the mid-oceanic ridges in the Atlantic that mark the place where the continents are spreading apart. Along these ridges, new oceanic floor is slowly being formed on either side, as the continents move apart, and the Atlantic ocean widens. This new ocean floor begins as molten rock that is extruded from the Earth's mantle. The heat from this molten rock powers the vents. Along with hot water, the vents pour out a rich chemical mixture, some of which can be harnessed by bacteria as food. This forms the basis for a food chain that is independent of photosynthesis. A similar food chain could theoretically exist in the ocean of Europa.

If we can find life elsewhere in our solar system, the possibility of life in the neighborhood of other stars becomes much more likely. If this is the case, there may well be somebody out there. What do you think?

Every Little Bit

2004-11-23T12:43:00.000-05:00

One of the things that I am passionate about is environmental conservation. I am not an activist in the sense of people who gather together and march with signs and slogans. I prefer a lower key approach. For years now, I have recycled everything that I can. I started recycling glass bottles when I was a child. However, my motives were not that altruistic at that age. My motive was the acquisition of candy at the store! Back then, anyone could return soft drink bottles to a grocery store and receive five cents per bottle. The bottles would be washed by the soda companies and reused. On a good day of scavenging my little friends and I might each find ten or fifteen bottles that had been thrown behind some bush or into a creek. We would haul our booty to the store, get our cash, and buy a delicious candy bar or maybe a honey bun. Later in life, when reusable glass bottles had been replaced by disposable plastic, and after my consciousness of the limited supply of energy and natural resources that our planet could provide had been raised by several orders of magnitude, I decided that in order to facilitate a more morally justifiable existence for myself, I would have to try and be a less wasteful person. I started with aluminum cans. Recycling an aluminum can takes only a few percent of the energy needed to produce one from aluminum containing bauxite ore, so it was quite logical, from a purely economic standpoint, for aluminum recycling programs to lead the way. As community recycling programs became more comprehensive, I began to recycle more. Number one and number two plastic, glass, steel cans, newspaper, and cardboard. Recently, I found a place where I could recycle junk mail! Every little bit that I save from the landfill means that a tree might remain standing, or a bit of oil needn't be burned to power a generator to make new products from unrefined materials. What if everyone recycled? Well, at this time, practically speaking, there just isn't a market for everyone's recycled waste. It would gather in mountain sized heaps and mostly sit unused for many years to come. But, given time, maybe companies would spring up with innovative uses for all these nearly free materials. The main costs of recycling are in the sorting of combined materials and the transportation of those materials to a reuse facility. Recycling in mass actually occurred for a few years in America. During WWII, nearly everyone in America participated in recycling. It was a patriotic duty to recycle everything possible so that it could be efficiently converted into war materials. My mother was a "Block Buster", which was in some ways similar to being a girl scout, I suppose. Anyway, it was her job to walk around her neighborhood with her little Block Buster hat on and collect any recyclable materials that her neighbors might have. This sort of thing was repeated all over the country. It was really quite amazing, and it worked! Mass recycling is possible, and it can happen if enough people want it too. Do you recycle? Please remember, every little bit helps!

A Humble Beginning

2004-11-19T17:45:00.000-05:00

I have nothing earth shattering to discuss in this first little foray into internet publication. As you probably already know, I have been contributing my two or three cents worth here and there in the blogosphere, either regularly or sporadically, for quite a few months now. To those of you who have been kind enough to respond to my comments and engage me in discussion within your own blog, or as one visitor to another, I would like to say thank you very much and I hope that you will allow me the pleasure of returning the favor to you.

So, what shall I discuss in my blog? Well, I think that just about anything that I find interesting will be fair game. It so happens that I find a great many things to be interesting. So consider yourself to have been fairly warned.

Why have I titled my blog "Constructive Creativity"? Well, a number of years ago I thought that some day I might like to start a business where by I would apply my creativity, through the use my hands and my tools, to make things that hopefully some people would be willing to pay for. I haven't exactly realized that fancy of my imagination, but I have taken some steps in that direction in the past few years. Nevertheless, I remain a creative person and there are many ways to constructively apply my skills. Writing was an avocation of mine from an early age, and although I wrote very little for a number of years, I have, in the past year, rediscovered that a glowing ember of my former passion for this pastime yet remained, and it has since rekindled into a steady flame.

I invite you to visit and participate in my humble little abode of discussion and exploration. Please excuse the sparseness of the accommodations, I have only just begun.