Another look at energy.....

My friend Dr, Anna Bucy posted this on Facebook this morning. The author is Aaron Freeman, who is the "funniest black Jewish comedian on NPR".  Clearly he has his serious moments!!

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.

-Aaron Freeman.

Had Enough of the Heat?

Time to break out the ND blizzard stories.   This is from the State Historical Society of ND, and it's about Hazel Miner, about whom we all heard when we were school kids. 

One of North Dakota’s heroes is a young girl named Hazel Miner who died in a blizzard March 16, 1920.
Hazel, the 16 year old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Miner, had gone to school with her younger brother Emmet (11) and sister, Myrdith (8) on Monday March 15. They drove a horse-drawn sleigh from their farmhouse 2 ½ miles north of the rural school. In the afternoon a blizzard came up and the children’s father rode his horse to the school to bring the children home.
Mr. Miner hitched the sleigh horse and then went to get his saddle horse from the school barn. In the meantime, the sleigh horse started out of the school yard and took what the children thought was the road home. Mr. Miner could not find them in the blizzard and they could not hear him call above the wind.
Instead of heading north to their home, they headed east. Mr. Miner went home and with his wife went back out to look for the children. The sleigh crossed the road and came to the gate of a farmyard which they could not enter because of a big drift. They drove a few yards further, and then the sleigh tipped over into a ravine. Though a haystack and the farmhouse were nearby, they could not see their way to shelter.
After the sleigh tipped, Hazel tried to keep the wind off the children by holding the sleigh blankets for shelter, but the wind kept blowing the blankets down. Finally, she pulled the blankets over the smaller children and lay down on top of the blanket to keep it in place and to keep the younger children warm. Hazel talked to Emmet and Myrdith through the night and told them to keep moving their feet. She punched them to keep them awake and kicked off the snow that was seeping in under the blankets.
Sometime during the night, Hazel died. When a search party found the sleigh the next morning, Emmet and Myrdith were still alive. Hazel’s love, clear thinking, and brave actions saved her brother’s and sister’s lives.
Hazel Miner’s courage was honored with a statue that stands in front of the Oliver County courthouse. The statue was commissioned by former Governor L. B. Hanna in 1936.

Bison Restoring Prairie

This is good news!!  I'm remembering the bison at the Dakota Zoo--just across the field from our house in Bismarck.  They were huge beasts and incredibly strong.  The zoo keepers would give them old tractor tires--weighing 130-140 lbs each--to play with, and they'd toss them in the air with their horns and spin them around like the flimsiest hula hoops ever made. 

http://blog.nwf.org/2013/07/yellowstone-bison-revitalize-prairie-on-fort-peck-reservation-in-one-year/?s_email_id=20130714_MEM_ENG_WLO_July_Edition|SLPMem

Excellent Post from Juan Cole on UK's Coverage of NSA, Snowden

I keep visiting Juan Cole's Informed Comment these days for the USA's coverage of the NSA vs. Snowden.   Coles says the UK's Channel 4's reporting is unmatched by any USA "news."

They report, in full, and critically. I think aside from Chris Hayes on NBC.com and Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! it would be impossible to get this quality of reporting on this issue on any US outlet. The fusion of Corporate News and the US Government (with its Deep State) is so complete that questioning the Beltway Bandits is out of the question any more.

 While the USA does its best to throw Snowden and Manning into prison and deny them asylum off our shores, people are waking up. Thanks, Dr. Coles!

Making a painting

A friend commissioned a painting--by me--a while back.  My first commission!  And the idea of that has pretty much stopped me in my tracks.  I mean, what if it's no good at all?

And here's how it's going:  Every time I show it to someone, they have all these wonderful SUGGESTIONS for making it better.  If I don't continue to work on it, though, that accomplishes two things:  1) it shuts them up good, and 2) it stops me from actually doing this. 

I've started, then erased/wiped off the paint three times.  That's ok....I've done that before on other paintings. But it certainly slows down the process.  I've pondered using encaustic (hot wax and color),
but that's scary--comes with the potential for burning down my condo.

And it's not advice, per se.   My most recent painting instructor used to love to walk up to a painting while I was working on it, pick up a brush, and daub away, always to good effect.  (I've thought of calling her to see if she wants to give me a coaching session or two, but she, one of the best deaf painters ever, is fed up with painting.  She wants to write, and she's also avoiding exposure to all the toxic chemicals involved lest she contract another case of cancer.  (She cured herself of the cancer by eliminating everything from her diet that could bollix her health:  no cooking, no carbs, no sugar.  She could be my role model, if I were a person who could profit from good example.)

Anyway, here's the picture (a photograph taken by my benefactor in Ecuador).  I love it, but I've discovered there's no natural light save for what's reflected in a few tiles in the corner and in the planters.  And it intrigues me that this darkness is her favorite aspect of the photo, especially 

  
under the arches.  Fascinating.  I especially love the two red chairs, and I'm wondering if this relates to the fact that she married her best friend, another woman.  And so on.....

Wish me luck.

My Patron Saints.....

An article by Gretchen Rubin on Positively Positive today talks about our patron saints.  Rubin lists six of her patron saints, including Julia Child, Winston Churchill, and Virginia Woolf.  I'll have to think about this before I can make any list.  But one of the questions Rubin asks to help us get started is "What did I do for fun when I was ten years old?"

My parents bought our lake cottage when I was ten, and the place transformed my inner life.  I loved wading in the water, netting baby bullheads with an old lace curtain, feeding the chipmunks out of my hand,  building a raft, rowing our old boat all over the lake and up & down the river, popping corn in the fireplace, playing with the neighbor kids who were my age and whose house had a huge wraparound porch with sofas and huge stacks of comic books for rainy days.  And the trees.  Oh, my god, the trees!  Oak and paper birch and maple and basswood and cottonwood!  When the wind blew, the leaves of the tall, tall cottonwoods made a glorious rustling sound.  The Sioux called the cottonwood the "singing tree."  They did sing!  And the song went right into my heart.

So there's my clue:  My patron saints are trees, and I've already named them:  Oak, Paper Birch, Maple, Basswood, and Cottonwood.  I need one more for six.  There are several here in this area that I adore:  Atlas Cedar and River Birch and that funny little Dogwood by my porch.  And I can't forget the pine trees:  White, Scotch, Norway.....I'm going to go out and find each of these trees and take a photo of it.

 Ha.  This is a Sycamore, another of my favorite trees.  No Atlas Cedars or River Birch yesterday.  Having a bad tooth, so that cut down on my plans.

being funny

Almost everyone who meets me says I am funny--even very funny.  I think it was my way of getting positive attention from my family, who otherwise thinks of me less positively.  I am not always funny, though.  My usual mode is grouchy and serious.  What I wanted/want to be is beloved, but that's a rare event.  oh, well.