So, that's where you've been

Image of a painting by Craig Mahoney via the Huffington Post.

This picture showed up in an internet meme today, originating with the Huffington Post which printed the copy of a Craig Mahoney painting.

Several people admitted to a tear in the eye at grown-up Calvin reunited with his stuffed tiger.  It certainly brought some memories flooding back here.  In the years my son and I lived together in the house (on alternate weeks of course) Calvin and Hobbes were among our unifying moments, both of us appreciating the daily and especially the Sunday strips.

What was also special in that house we built was the backsplash behind the stove.  We didn't have any women to veto our decorating choices so instead of some cute poster of hanging garlic, we located several instances of Calvin and Hobbes interacting over food, including the color Sunday strip of his mother cutting  brontosaurus steaks with a chainsaw.  We cut them out of a couple of collections books and pasted them to a piece of poster board and then covered it with glass and hung that behind the stove.  It always brought a smile during our cooking adventures.

That backsplash holds a special place in the memory of our life together in that house, along with the list on the refrigerator of numbered excuses my son gave for not going to bed on time when he was told.  What I remember was No. 13 was "Wait, I have to kill a boss first." Instead of shouting out the excuse as he manipulated his Gameboy, he would just shout 13 and continue to play.  There were about 20 of them.  I know I saved that list in a box somewhere, but we left that backsplash behind when we had to move out of the house.

Wish today I could pull a Hobbes AND Calvin and for that matter, my son, out of a memory box like the picture shows.

Original Huffington Post story.

So long, Marshall Lytle

" the clock strikes two, three and four ..."

When was the last time you saw a string bass in a rock group?  There was one in what is acknowledged as the first rock and roll band, Bill Haley and the Comets, in their classic "Rock Around the Clock."

The bassist on that cut died this week, another in a long stream of  deaths recently among legends of rock.  It is something that takes some getting used to, as the musicians of youth grow old, the fortunate ones anyway.

I grew up on rock and roll. To provide some idea of the time progression,  I recall singing this song very loudly with friends on a school bus bringing our group home from an eighth grade field trip to Albany, N.Y. in 1955.  From there music and I grew along together.

When someone in that first group dies, it feels like someone kicked an important part out of the foundation, with more to come as one legend after another dies, not from the extravagant lifestyle of those early victims, but from what essentially amounts to simple aging.  Yes, the Stones are still going at 70 and so are others, but time is catching up as it did Saturday for Marshall Lytle.

"... when the band slows down we yell more, more, more."  

Please.

Going outdoors

Tomatoes.

Green Day for sure, actually a couple of days ago.

That's the day the buds sprout on the deciduous trees and give the forest canopy a green hue. It's very late this year.  That's not surprising but  actually it is only a little more than a week later than last year despite the long, cold spring we have been experiencing.  I mean, a week ago today it was snowing.  But that's in the past and Green Day has finally sprouted and it couldn’t have come a minute later.

This robin did not appear happy to
find patches of snow in the yard a
week ago.

The combination of starting plants early and the late winter weather has left this house a jungle.  I have tomato plants four feet high and green bean plants that have beans on them three inches long. I have been moving and juggling positions across almost 20 feet of windows to try to keep them all in the sun but I have lost a few already.  Yesterday the hardening process began.  Take them outside during the day and bring them in at night for a few days to get them used to the direct sun, wind and perhaps cooler temperatures and then day after tomorrow I will plant and then figure out what to do with the usual gaps between plants.  I am keeping the tomato plants indoors for a while longer; I understand they are a little more fragile than the others.

The hardening machine.

Green beans about a week
ago.

Got a little creative with the hardening process this year.  Always before  one by one I carried the plants out and put them in the garden in the morning and then reversed the process in the evening.  This year I found I could park the four-wheeler by the door, fill the trailer with plants and then drive it out into the sun.  Move it around during the day and then bring it back to the door in the evening, with just a short hop with the plants to bring them indoors for the night.  And, rather than try to fit them all on the tables in the windows, figuring they are supposed to be in the dark anyway, I spread a tarp on the living room floor and put them there.  It's a little inconvenient, but only for a couple of days and it does make the process go quicker.

Despite the weather, too, the ground is in the best shape all weeded and raked out and level and fertilized, just ready for planting.  I have a lot more vegetables this year and hope to eat a little more off the garden than I have in the past.  We'll see about that.  I have another bag of those assorted wild seeds to scatter too, only these are all native Alaska flowers so that should add some color.  All told with the sun out it looks a lot more optimistic for a good year. 

It looked optimistic enough today, along with the weather forecast, I planted a row of asparagus (for harvest next year) and spread some of the wildflower seeds in the spot among the trees.  Let's call that fairyland, a place where the sprites can dance.

Green Day.

Rock of ages

There's a meme floating around the internet these days that asks if we are just getting older or is the music in stores getting better. So today I was sort of bopping down the aisle in Fred Meyer and suddenly realized I was half dancing and singing along with "Sweet Home Alabama." Oh, crap!

Fat rain

WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY FOR SNOW REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 7 PM THIIS EVENING TO 1 PM AKDT SATURDAY...

.TODAY...RAIN LIKELY IN THE MORNING...THEN RAIN AND SNOW IN THE

AFTERNOON. NO SNOW ACCUMULATION. HIGHS IN THE LOWER 40S. SOUTHEAST WIND 10 TO 25 MPH BECOMING LIGHT BY LATE MORNING.

.TONIGHT...SNOW. SNOW ACCUMULATION UP TO 2 INCHES EXCEPT 2 TO 4 INCHES NEAR HATCHER PASS. LOWS AROUND 30. LIGHT WINDS.

That's the forecast Southcentral Alaska woke up to this morning.  It is MAY 17 for crying out loud and even here this is a late snow.

So of course it was a day errands had to be run, including irony of ironies, collected a snowmachine from the repair shop 20 miles away AND buy materials to put gutters along the eaves.  Seems like convoluted connections like that are going to lead to convoluted experiences.  The salesman at the hardware store thought it was great fun that I chose to put up gutters on the day we have had the first precipitation in some time. 

On the way home the signs hit the windshield.  I call it fat rain.  As raindrops approach a temperature that would support snow, they hit the windshield and cling to it maintaining their splattter shape for a moment, sort of halfway between rain and snow, wanting to freeze but it is just not quite cold enough yet.  So, the Jeep and I fought our way through the fat rain and reached home without encountering any snow. 

Two hours later the ground had a good dusting with a healthy snowfall adding to it.

Most of these plants are tomatoes, the tall narrow leaves are on plants I
grew from bulbs but I forgot what they are. Snow falling outside.

That would be all right if it weren't for the jungle I am supporting in my south-facing windows.  I have tomato plants more than two feet tall,  bean plants that will take hours of work to untangle them from each other and one bulb-based flower that has grown as high as the top of the window.  Its leaves are in the background to the left of center in the photograph.

It will have to be at least two more weeks before I can plant them outside so more repotting, adjusting, even experimenting to try to save the garden.  Today I even cut back one tomato plant to see if it might bush out, and slow down its growth.

Fortunate in one respect, for me anyway.  Last week scientists reported for the first time in human history the amount of CO2 in the air had risen past 400 parts per million.  Given all the plants in the house, I figure I have an oxygen-rich atmosphere while everyone else is breathing air with a combination of elements changed to their detriment.

Rage against the machine

Where is it?

Officers restrain Eleanor Fairchild, 78, left, and Daryl Hannah in a dust-up
during their protest of the Keystone XL pipeline in Wood County, Texas.
PHOTO: from Future Earth Eco Tribe facebook page

In a confrontation Monday that was barely reported, a 78-year-old woman was arrested in Texas for protesting construction of the Keystone XL pipeline being built to transport the dirtiest imaginable oil from Canada's oil sands site to the Gulf of Mexico for export overseas.

Eleanor Fairchild protested because the construction was on land taken from her by the state of Texas under eminent domain to allow the pipeline to go through.  And then Eleanor along with actress Daryl Hannah ended up in jail.

In other words, an American state government confiscated one of its own citizens' land for the profit of a foreign company.  And that American landowner ended up in jail because of it.

What is particularly telling is in interviews one local TV station in Wood County, Texas, showed people who disagreed with her, thought the government was correct in taking her land and then throwing her in jail when she objected.

While it might be jumping to a conclusion and it is a real danger to judge people, those interviewed reminded me of the same ones interviewed claiming President Obama is a traitor or defending their rights to own assault weapons because there might have to be an armed rebellion against government intrusion into private rights.  This is in a state where supposedly responsible elected officials threatened to secede from the Union after Obama's reelection.

Noticeably absent from Eleanor Fairchild's protest against the government taking her land for the benefit of a foreign corporation were those gun-toting zealots wanting to defend individuals from the tyranny of the state.  Where is the outrage when a little old lady and an actress were trying to block heavy, yellow equipment in an attempt to stop the project?

Oh, yeah, they defend the pipeline, believing the oil industry's total bulldust about how many jobs the pipeline will create, 30 full time once the pipeline is completed according to one report.  And others believing industry bulldust about how they can clean up any spill.  Ask the folks in Arkansas about that one, or in the Gulf of Mexico or in Prince William Sound in Alaska. Incidentally, to build the Alaska pipeline, the government had to settle Native land claims, in the process ceding more than 40 million acres of land and $40 million for the privilege and making the pipeline pay for leases where it crosses Native lands.  Was anything like this offered to Eleanor Fairchild?

Have to ask too, where was the press?  Only one of the first 10 results of a Google search showed a link to any of the established national news outlets other than those strictly on the Web, and that one was a local CBS affiliate in Wood County.

All in all it is a big fail across the board.  Not to advocate violence or armed rebellion, but how is anyone expected to believe the commitment of all those gun-waving patriots when not one of them showed up to defend a great-grandmother against a government that took her land?  Doesn't Ted Nugent live in Texas?  Wonder what would happen if that pipeline crossed his land where he hunts animals confined by fences. All this points to the fact that Nugent and others like him are blowhards, shake a saber, raise an assault rifle and and hide behind a misinterpretation of the second amendment to defy the government to pry their guns from their dead cold fingers, but when it comes to reality, just another bunch of hateful cowards with no backbones.

And, how is anyone expected to trust a press that is more interested in covering manufactured scandals in Washington than it is in protecting people's rights.  Apparently the federal and Texas governments are willing to damn the individual in favor of a foreign company that plans to ship the dirtiest, foulest oil known to man all the way across the country to a port where it can be shipped to overseas markets.  Interesting that Canadians blocked the plan to take the pipeline west to tidewater somewhere along Canada's Pacific coast.

Just have to ask, where is the rage?

CBS affiliate's video report on the arrests.

For more, Google: eleanor fairchild eminent domain

Time and tide wait for no man

There's been talk over the years kicking around the idea of generating power from Cook Inlet tides.  This is the body of water just off Anchorage, Alaska, which endures the seventh highest tides in the world. On some tides the difference between low and high can exceed 40 feet. That's a lot of water moving in or out in a six-hour period.

Before today, while the idea had seemed entertaining, I had no idea how it is done or what a generating unit might look like.

During the procrastination phase of the day today I came across the picture.  It's of a tidal generator offshore of Bristol in the UK. It is one of several units built by UK-based Marine Current Turbines. In 2011, the huge German energy company Siemens bought 45 percent of that firm, meaning a lot more energy might go into producing a lot more energy.

Seeing it, gives more credence to the possibility of this infinite source of electrical power.  I mean as long as the moon is in the sky, there are going to be tides. One interesting fact in the attached article is that given the reliability of tidal predictions, power supply can be calculated out as far into the future as one cares to go.

Here is a story looking at the future of tide-generated electric power.

So you say you want to be a writer

Tell us again why that is.

Baz Luhrmann who directed and has a screenplay writing credit for the latest movie version of The Great Gatsby had some interesting things to say about author Scott Fitzgerald during an interview with Stephen Colbert tonight.  It might make the aspiring writer consider another line of work, especially now in a world where flashy movies draw the audiences great books once did.

One of the interesting facts he proposed was that Fitzgerald died at the age of 44, a time when he had been buying copies of the book, just so it would show some sales.

But that wasn't the most astounding of Luhrmann's illuminations.  Though the movie is only scheduled for general release tomorrow (May 10) enough people have seen it or heard about it that sales of the book have exploded.  In fact, Luhrmann said more copies of the book sold last week than were purchased during the entire of Fitzgerald's lifetime.  Think about that for a moment: A classic in American literature, a must for every student of that literature beginning in high school and in one week in 2013, that classic sold more copies than it did in the 15 years between 1925 when it was first published and 1940 when the author died at the age of 44.  In fact it is the Number 1 best seller listed by Amazon and has been in the top 100 in sales for 790 days.

If F. Scott Fitzgerald could only know.

And for the rest of us who toil in the shadow of classics and see, now, how one was treated, pause, look at our tortured prose, mostly unlikely to ever reach anything near the status of Gatsby at the pinnacle of the Lost Generation's massif, and we have to wonder.  Why do this?  There is no simple answer except to say, because we have to and there is nothing we can do about that.  Perhaps it is a disease or at least a psychosis.

Either way it is terminal.

Maybe the answer is simply in the quotation below from Gloria Steinem, "Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."

And if that wasn't discouraging enough, look what happened to the writer who invented the detective story.