Category Archives: Science

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on the news, Dogs, Science, US History

Space Boy

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Imbolc and the Megillah Moon

Friday gratefuls: Grilled cheese. Chicken. Snow Plows. Ted of All Trades. Snow. Cold. Like back in Minnesota. Holding Kate’s hand. Her feeding tube. 45 gone. 46 in office. Friends, ancient and new.

Sparks of Joy: NASA. NASA employees at JPL. Perseverance on Mars. Perseverance landing on Mars.

 

 

I watched it. Or, rather I watched as the scientists at JPL watched their instruments. One man’s leg jiggled the whole time. Up and down. Others went from screen, looking for information. A slight grimace there. What did that mean? All the more difficult to read because of the ubiquitous   masks.

News about the parachute deploying brought cheers. Then, back to business. The heat shield disappeared. Perseverance was, according to a dial on the screen, 19 kilometers from the surface. Then, the dial read in meters.

“Perseverance has landed!” Arms went up in the usual touchdown, goal post signal. A clenched fist or two. Smile wrinkles at the eyes. Cheering. Backslapping.

How could they stand it? These folks work for years, in this case at least 8 years, to build a one-off machine, delicate and sturdy. A tough combination. Then they strap it to a tank of explosives and shoot it away from Earth. For a long, long journey. All of that can go perfectly. Did.

But. There’s that final mile. Oh, yeah. Atmosphere. Gravity. The potential for 8 years of work and billions of dollars to crumple in on itself, a wrecked car on a distant planet. Parachute. Heat shield. Navigation. Sky crane. All points at which things could go wrong.

As one NASA employee said, “Thousands of things have to go right. Only one thing going wrong could destroy all this work.”

That same employee said, right after the landing, “This is what NASA does! This is what we can do when we put our brains together. This is what this country can do!”

I was with them during the 7 minutes of terror as the lander went offline due to the extreme heat of entry into the Martian (get that, Martian!) atmosphere. Holding my breath, biting my lip.

Yes! I teared up. All that complexity. All that work. All those things that could have gone wrong. All those things that went right! Captain Midnight. Buck Rogers. Sputnik. The Eagle has landed. We are a space faring nation. My 10 year old heart filled up with dreams, impossible dreams, and spilled over into a 74 year old’s reality.

When we grew up, rockets were, well, not much in evidence. Sure there was Goddard. And, Von Braun. The V2. The winged bombs over London. John Carter was our Mars hero. But the thought of landing a machine on Mars. Any machine? Nope. Not in the mind of even the most space-crazed child of the ’50’s.

To live through the Russian space program. Sputnik. Then, Laika, the one way space dog. Yuri Gagarin. Mercury. Apollo. That wonderful Apollo 11. One small step for Man, one giant step for Mankind. A footprint. A flag.

My space eyes all along have been boy’s eyes. Eyes filled with wonder. Eyes filled with tears. Eyes that have seen things happen that were beyond even that boy’s hopes. It was his heart that leaped into the bodies of the NASA folks yesterday. His heart that felt the emotion. The success. The joy.

 

 

 

 

Aging, Family, Health, Politics, Science, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Bearing Down

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Winter and the Imbolc (Wolf) Moon

Friday gratefuls: Caring Bridge. Kate’s community of friends. Story. The Ancient One’s theme this Sunday. Workouts. Deb, a new workout next Thursday. The Wind, 20/25 mph this morning. Our hardly wind tight house. Covid. Vaccines. Aging. The old homestead in Andover. The Lodgepoles, swaying, bending, waving.

 

It’s been, overall, a rotten week. Kate’s been in bed, or wanting to go back to bed the whole week. This morning is better. We’ll see. A hard week emotionally for both of us, including one fight which had both of us admitting fault, sorry, no, it’s just really hard right now. Yeah, I know. Me, too. Then on beyond that one.

This follows three weeks that have been no good, very bad weeks. Tubes in and out, in and out of the hospital, a new diagnosis of atrial fibrillation, hypoxia, failing oxygen concentrator, general icky feeling for Kate. Disheartening.

As for me. Better rested. Lower expectations about what I can get done in a day. Taking care with fitness, food, sleep. Going with it.

Scheduled a new workout with Deb. We’ll do it on Zoom because I don’t like to be away from the house very long. We have two red “need you” buttons and receivers placed in the loft, the kitchen, and near the stairs in the living room. Kate keeps one around her neck and the second one is in the bathroom downstairs.

Oil and coal industry readies its fight back against Biden’s climate policies. Jesus H. Can’t they see this is over? Why can’t they be part of the solution? Could you really be a board member of a major oil, gas, or coal company and say, “Hey, it may the downward slope for us. That means we have to squeeze all the profit out. No matter what. Fuck the world.”

The cynicism here is apocalyptic. I mean, literally apocalyptic. If we don’t throttle them, and ourselves, back, our grandchildren and certainly our great grandchildren will bake in the oven of our discontent. I’m Mad as Max and I can’t take it anymore.

In cheerier news friend Tom Crane sent a note about the Mars rover Perseverance “bearing down” on Mars. That’s so exciting. It lands February 18th with a package designed to search for signs of life, new and old. One of things they will be looking for are Stromatolite formations. This ancient life form can still be seen on the west coast of Australia. A trip I’d like to make someday.

I put bearing down in quotes because at the time of the article Perseverance was 4.5 million miles from Mars. I guess that’s the in dark cold of space equivalent.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Coronavirus, Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Plants, Science, World History

New Grange. Stonehenge.  Chaco Canyon. Goseck Circle. (Germany) Tulum.

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Winter and the Moon of the New Year (and the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn)

Monday gratefuls: The Winter Solstice. 30 days. Cottagepie from Easy Entrees. Family. Friends. Lights. Jacquie Lawson’s Nordic Advent Calendar. Magic. In an old guy’s heart. Songs. Gifts. The wonder of children.

 

 

Ah. Can you sink into the darkness? Feel its fecund cape wrap round your shoulders? Comforting. Nourishing. Deep. Deep as the depths of your soul. Deep as the depths of time, even beyond time, to the Hawking period before the universe began to expand. Deep as the love you feel for those close to you. Deep as the bounty of mother earth is abundant.

The longest night. It comes to you. The sun low in the sky, the day shortened. Cold weather, perhaps. Early on in humanity’s adventure with the stars they knew. The sun had begun to flee. Even at the height of the growing season, on the summer solstice, the nights had begun to increase in length.

This gradual, oh so gradual, slipping away of the light. Would it continue until the night became all there was? How would the crops grow? The animals get fed? The people stay warm and fed?

But, yes, I imagine they also knew. Last year, too. And the sun returned. And the year before that. Let’s see if we can find the moment, capture the day. That way we can assure each other that the sun will not stay away. Let’s build monuments in stone and wood that capture the light of that day, or the position of the stars on that night.

New Grange. Stonehenge.  Chaco Canyon. Goseck Circle. (Germany) Tulum.

This suggests to me that far from being frightened on this night of nights, the ancients anticipated it, probably looked forward to it. But, they also wanted to be sure it would happen again and again, so they spent vast resources ensuring they would know its arrival.

Can you imagine the celebratory feelings when, just as the stone alignments had predicted in the past, the sun came again through the slot, lined up with the stones? The shaman was right! We would get another growing season. See! Life could go on. Ancient science comforting the masses, just as contemporary science comforts us now with vaccines.

Never in my lifetime have we needed the message of the winter solstice more than this year, this 2020 of cursed memory. As the virus claims more lives, infects more people, remains dangerous especially in the richest nation on earth, we need a sign. Tonight is that sign.

Darkness need not lead to despair. These depths, this night, this virus, are not static. Just as fecund darkness enriches all plant life in the fallow season, so does the light of creation shine each year to enrich the plants in the green time. We know that because tonight teaches about darkness and its twin, the Summer Solstice, teaches us about light. Both necessary. Like the symbol of the Tao.

Rising right now, in the Covid darkness, vaccines have begun to dispel the fear and show us that yes, this pandemic can and will end. We are victims neither of darkness nor the glare of a sun that will not set. The earth teaches us this lesson every year. The Great Wheel turns and so do all the vagaries of life.

Aging, Colorado, Commentary on the news, Cooking, Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Friends, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Science, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

Fattening, Not Flattening

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Fall and the Moon of Radical Change

Wednesday gratefuls: New wheelchair. #19! Better comfort for Kate. Covid days and Covid nights. With the flu on its way. Hunker down, USA. A gift from Ancient One, Tom Crane. Safeway. Picking up groceries in my jammies. Cool weather ahead. And, snow! Drive down that fire danger. Yeah.

On the drive down the mountain to Safeway the Sun angle, the brown and gold Grasses, naked Aspen among the Lodgepole sent me back to trips to Aunt Marjorie’s house for Thanksgiving. Over the hills and through the woods.

Picked up some squash today. Yum. Also, thought I indicated I wanted 5 tomatoes. Got five pounds instead. Chili tonight. Safety wise pickup is the gold standard. As it is in terms of limiting impulse purchases. However.

The third surge of the first wave has come up hard against the rocky shore of pandemic fatigue. We have fattened the curve, instead of flattening. And, we are at it again. This time though with a broader reach in regions. That dovetails with three accelerants: the seasonal flu, cold weather and more indoor gatherings, winter holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah.

By the time 2021 arrives two months plus a little from now we might be ready to skip ahead to 2022.

The fall after college, 1969, Judy and I moved to Appleton, Wisconsin. My bakery job had me up at 4 am as my first Wisconsin winter closed in. The owner, almost joyous for a Norwegian (I now know.), used to sing, “I’ve got my love to keep me warm.” Yeah. But, he was the boss, you know. I can still hear him. Seems like the perfect song now.

Or, this. The weather outside is frightful, the fire is so delightful, and since we’ve GOT NO PLACE TO GO, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! (caps mine, ya know.)

Did I forget to mention the election? An election is coming. Like winter. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.

Local satellite gathers dust from meteor. The Lockheed-Martin works off Deer Creek Canyon Road celebrated as their designed and built OSIRIS-REX blew on asteroid Bennu and collected (they hope) dust in an extended ring.

There is a robust space industry in Colorado and it will get much bigger if Trump’s Space Force decides to permanently locate its headquarters here. It has a temporary headquarters in Virginia but there are already several sites here: Buckley AFB, Peterson AFB, Schriever AFB with 10 of its fifteen units in the state already.

Back to writing. Kate read the first half of Jennie’s Dead and her response to it jarred me back to the keyboard. I can’t exercise until next Monday so the time is easy to find. I feel good, like I know I should. Writing buoys me up.

Music, Myth and Story, Politics, Science, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

The Plastic Hour

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Fall: RBG Moon, Mars, Orion, and Venus in the morning sky

Friday gratefuls: Savannah, nurse at Cherry Hills. Dr. Gustave. Sandy, the nurse anesthetist. Right eye cut and healing. Zeiss. Alan. The intraocular lens. Those who invented, designed, and made it. Annie and Sarah. Kate, her wrist calming down. Carne asada from Tony’s.

Right eye patched. I see Dr. Gustave today at 10:30. A familiar routine. Even with the right eye still dilated, I can see the words I type with clarity. Not before, not without glasses. And, even then, fuzzy,

I feel younger. Silly? Yeah, but I feel it anyhow. I’m ready for a bonus round with life.

Wondered what it meant to have Johnny Nash, the singer of “I Can See Clearly Now”, die in between the surgery on my left eye and the right one.

Checking on the idiot. Give me a sec. OMG. He’s worse. Prosecute Biden and Obama. A rally in Florida on Sunday. Won’t debate virtually. Going out in public when he should still be in quarantine. No boundaries. No sense. Aarrggh.

George Packer writes for the Atlantic. In the Plastic Hour, he wrote himself into hope after dispirited articles: “We are living in a failed state”, “Failure is a Contagion”. and, “The President is winning his war on American institutions.” He’s brilliant and has a feel for this time we’re in. Recommended. And, if you read it, what do you think?

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Health, Humanities, Minnesota, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Torah, Writing

Unanswerable Questions.

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Orion, clear and distinct, like Descartes wanted his ideas. The night sky, visible again! Meatloaf from Easy Entrees. Learning to sleep all night on my side. The lens in my left eye. Kate, waiting for relief. Ruth will watch Kiss the Ground. Groveland wanting to hear me again after all these years. It’s Beyond Me.

Three days post-op now. Biggest surprise so far was Orion, there. No longer several bursting flares, but his own, distinct self. Rigel there, too, his left foot, bright and clear. Ah. It’s good to see an old friend looking well.

I no longer need glasses for television. But, I did order three pair of 2.5 cheaters off Amazon. I can still read now with my right eye, but that goes away on the 8th of October. With the artificial lens I can’t focus anymore.

This surgery is such a good metaphor I wonder why it’s not deployed more often. Our vision gradually becomes clouded, the world becomes less and less easy to see. What do we need to remove our political cataracts and gain a humane vision? Those cataracts that have developed over years of lesser evils and disappointing politicians. Do we all come with the cataracts of racism and classism or do we develop them over time? Who will be our surgeons?

Shifting. It’s Beyond Me. I’ve had fun gathering answers to Groveland UU’s question: What are the origins of religious beliefs?

Finding an anthropologist, Harvey Whitehouse, has worked on the subject pleased me. He’s a cognitive anthropologist, a specialty that had little footing when I studied anthropology back in the late 1960’s. They study the way our mind shapes our understanding, rather than the understandings themselves. Whitehouse’s work is bloodless, but it has high points.

This presentation has to be a discussion. It asks an unanswerable question, my favorite kind. Each of us has an intuition about the answer. It will be interesting to learn what others have concluded. I have several notions to throw into the pot, but the answer is lost in the long ago, far away.

Doing presentations is a delight. I get to do research. I get to think about a topic. My ideas and conclusions get an airing. Feedback comes. On occasion cash, too.

It’s also unsettling. The research has to stop. The thinking must end. No matter how tentative, the ideas must be articulated. Exposed. Naked. And, in person.

My work doesn’t include the realm of the certain. I cannot say what the origin of religion is. No one can. Then I here Wittgenstein, of that about which we cannot speak, we must be silent. I only speak about such matters. A challenge, for sure.

So right now I’m anxious, teeth a bit clenched. Zoom adds another layer of uncertainty. Also a layer of experiment, of trying something new.

Anoka County, Garden, Great Wheel, Hydroponics, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Plants, Science, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Gardner Me

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Kiss the Ground. Netflix. Not a huge fan of documentaries. Not sure why. I love fiction, not non-fiction books though I read them from time to time.

But this one. Recommended by long time friend Tom Crane. Didn’t say much new, maybe nothing for me, but it pulled my heart. Reminded me of who I’ve been. Who I’ve left behind.

Gardner me. That guy that used to spend hours planting flowers, amending soil, weeding the onions and the beans. Cutting raspberry canes back for the winter. Thinning the woods. Thinning the carrots and the beets. Lugging bags of compost. Bales of marsh hay. Planning flower beds so there would be something blooming during the entire growing season. Hunting for heirloom seeds.

I had plans. I read books about adapting gardening techniques in xericulture. Thought about this idea and that. Read a lot before our move. But, then. Prostate cancer and a cascade of other distractions. Divorce. Arthritis. Kate’s troubles.

The whole horticulture act slipped into yesterday. And I miss it. Even the cussing at the critters. A notable reminder. Heirloom Tomatoes. Oh, my god. I buy them when they’re good. Five bucks a pound. I eat them like the fruit they are as a fruit. The taste. So good. No comparison to those raised for mechanical harvesting. Not even the same thing, imho.

Our carrots and beets and leeks and garlic and beans. Our honeycrisp apples. Granny. Plums. Cherries. The onions drying on the old screen door in the shed Jon built. A basement pantry filled with canned vegetables, canned fruit. Jars of honey from Artemis Honey.

A greenhouse. That’s the only way I could return to gardening. I’m no longer strong enough for the kind of gardening we did in Andover, Minnesota. I’d need plants on a bench about hip height. But I’m seriously considering it. The dogs. Yes. Kate. Yes. But, plants, too. Our own food on our table. Nurturing plants. I’m sad I left it behind.

We’ll see.

Aging, Family, Health, Science, Third Phase

Apres

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Kate. Our ancientrail of man and woman together. Dr. Gustave and his wife, the artist Lindsay Smith Gustave. The cataract, the eye. Its evolution from one-celled life. The hand and the eye together. Art. Seeing and making. UFO’s in Ode’s mind. The threat to our democracy. Our opportunity to act.

In the car to see Dr. Gustave. One day after. Bright light. Eye still dilated. Colors more intense, more clarity. Less sfumato. In closing the dominant left eye, the one with the new lens replacing its cataract, I can return to the sfumato that the cataract created. Damned if I don’t prefer it in some ways. Aesthetically it’s pleasing to me, the gentle blending of colors, their slight smokiness, which I couldn’t identify before. Guess I’ll have to high these eyes to a gallery of Renaissance painting after the second one’s done.

You had an extra large cataract. Yes! So I take out a cataract shaped like a walnut and I slip in a lens shaped like a plate. When the two sides of the eye close over the plate, there can sometimes be a fold. If you get a straight line in your vision at night, that’s the fold. No matter. If it’s still there, we’ll just laser it out.

This morning, here in the loft, as I look at my banks of track lighting, they have a lance of light through them at about a sixty degree angle. It does not impair my vision. We’ll see.

My distance vision is already 20/25 and will get to 20/20 in time. I could watch TV without glasses last night. This computer screen is far less fuzzy than it was on Wednesday.

At the lower left of my left eye, I have a sensation of light. Not a big deal. If it hung around though…

No resistance work for a month. Can do aerobics. No heavy lifting. (see the resistance work) Not sure what I’m gonna do with the Chewy order when it comes.

Watched a live, real time video of cataract surgery last night. Takes about 8 minutes or so. Involves slicing the mature organelle into quarters, then vacuuming them up with a teeny vacuum. The lens slips in through a tiny incision, unfolds, then gets straightened out, flattened. The edges of the eye right there are polished to prevent problems later.

All this time a retractor has the eyeball served up like an over easy egg. John, the nurse anesthetist, told me not to fight the retractor. I didn’t. Didn’t even know it was there.

Surprisingly tired both Thursday and yesterday.

Around 4:15 p.m. Kate and I drove into Swedish hospital. She had to get a drive up Covid test before her catscan on Tuesday and the draining of the fluid on her lungs the next day. Really hope this gives her some relief, She needs it. Meanwhile the stoma site has begun to heal. Almost normal looking.

Aging, Health, Science, Third Phase

Aarggh.

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. The Tesla experience. The kind folks at Cherry Hills Surgery center. The Latina who placed my IV and gave me enough eye drops I thought I was being waterboarded in a minimalist way. Savannah, my nurse, who kept giving me warm blankets. John, the nurse anesthetist. And Dr. Gustave, eye surgeon. My dominant eye, now pirated. Kate, for her encouragement and support. Tom and Paul for notes yesterday. Cheri Rubin (Alan’s wife), too.

I was back home by noon after going down the hill with Alan in his computer on wheels, as Tom calls the Tesla. At a recent cosmetic visit to repair dings Tesla replaced, at no charge, the car’s whole motherboard and added software updates. One of them added the ability to read signs and, I think, included reading speed limits. Very, very cool.

At the surgery center I filled out the usual absurd number of forms which got added, I assume, to the absurd number of forms I had already filled out. I got more forms on the way out. How many trees died for my eye surgery?

Pre-op was a series of bays separated by curtains on a snaking metal fixture attached to the ceiling. One interesting feature. I got to keep my clothes on! I guess the head is far enough away from the rest of the body.

My legs went on a triangular pillow and my head rested on what looked a hell of a lot like a mortuary head rest. Similar to Chinese pillows. Savannah gave me drops. Then the Latina, whose name I did not get, came and gave me more drops. and inserted a needle into my left hand.

I felt bad for her. When I asked her to repeat something because I was deaf in that ear (left, the side she was on), she said, “Oh. that’s o.k. I’m Hispanic and people say I talk really loud. So that’s sort of normal for me.”

“I know a lot of loud Caucasians.” I wanted to tell her not to denigrate herself, not for me, not for anybody, but I didn’t. She was quick, efficient and cheerful. Good at her job.

Savannah, my nurse, would have been at home in Minnesota with her blonde curly hair and blue eyes. She had an unusual amount of eyeliner, emphasized by the mask. Are you in pain? Not yet.

More eye drops. And, then, a much longer than 20 minute wait. Staring at the ceiling, considering all the eyedrops, where did they go? What would I do when I get home? No, be here. Do deep breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Reverse that. In through the nose, out through the nose. Variations.

Thoughts of aging, maturing cataracts, the disturbing article about the upcoming election I finished in the waiting room. Cataract surgery as a metaphor. Wait, they’re cutting into my EYE?

Dr. Gustave came. What are we doing? Why doesn’t he know? Taking a cataract out and putting in a lens. I agree. Which eye? Geez. That, too. The left. I agree. Are we going for the distance correction or the reading correction? Distance. I agree. He was agreeable.

John picked up the ball by asking questions I’d already answered twice. Any drug allergies? No. Bad reaction to anesthesia? No. Anesthesiologist questions. He wanted to anesthesia in the sun. Which seemed unlikely to me.

In the operating room a name I know from astronomy loomed above on a robotic arm. Zeiss. That makes three robots who have been critical parts of my health care: the DaVinci, the preying bird of radiation, and now this Zeiss. It looked far more delicate than the other two though bulky, or blocky.

After that John hooked up the versid and I leaned into the drug, falling away. Mostly. I could see during the operation. In the eye that was being sliced and diced. I saw three large purple gangly things, topped with white. Felt pressure, some pain part of the time. Not long, maybe twenty minutes.

Recovery was fast. A Latina, older than the one before, took me by the arm as if we were about to walk down the aisle, and led me to the car.

Alan asked if I spoke pirate now?

A clear plastic shield covers my left eye. I still see circles and haloes around lights, but I can tell already that the vision is clearer, more distinct. Much more on an eye to eye comparison. And, yes, the white’s are much whiter.

A bit achy since I had to sleep on my side or back and I’m a stomach sleeper. Other than that, ok. I go see Dr. Gustave today at eleven. Driving there is the test of the eye, I suppose.

Anyhow. Done for now. No lifting heavy objects. Might mean I can’t exercise for a month. Arrggh, matey, not what we wanted.