SmokeSound

Wow!  Wow!  Wow!  Somebody found some more helium in Tanzania! We were running out of helium, you know.  Childrens' birthday balloons all over the country were coming down from the ceiling with no chance to replace them. Balloons float, or rise, because the helium inside them is lighter than air. If that is a bit complicated, imagine filling a birthday balloon with water, and tossing it up to the ceiling.  It wouldn't float up, but the floor might. Helium is not used just for birthday balloons: it is also used to make super-conducting magnets, for cooling the space station, and for MRI machines. Those are all useful things to do, and even interesting, but it is easier to make a buck blowing up balloons at the supermarket. Hydrogen gas is even lighter than helium, and there is a lot of hydrogen, but hydrogen burns like a mad banshee, and helium doesn't.  That is why the Hindenburg burned a big hole in the sky in 1937, and why the Goodyear blimp, inflated w

Maybe you are better at this than I am. I cannot tell whether this is the same owl. He looks smaller to Mari and me, but when I compared two photos-- one now and an earlier one-- I cannot tell whether this is The Lone Ranger or one of The Brady Bunch. No matter! It--implying nothing about gender, because I do not know much about that kind of thing--seems alert, but composed, about having us walk by, three or four feet away. I do not want to get too "oohy" and "aahy" about the little critter, because the little tad is a killer.  I have disposed of two feathered carcasses over by the bird feeder since we first sighted this or that owl. I am trying to remember what it is I like to eat, and that nobody eats rocks and mine tailings. If you like, you can think of our house as a safe house, if you are a mineral or a mine tailing.

That guy, at left, was not in the Revolutionary War, although there are probably moments, from time to time, when he wishes he had been. He is demonstrating how a musket works. In case you wonder, a musket works this way: First, you shove some gunpowder down the barrel, and after it, a lead pellet wrapped in cloth or paper. Then you pour a little powder in the pan, where a spark can ignite it. Pulling the trigger slams a piece of flint against a piece of steel, which produces sparks, igniting the powder in the pan which, in turn, flashes through a small hole, igniting the powder in the barrel, which explosion shoves the lead shot out through the barrel. The gun has a hammer, which has three positions:  closed, half-cocked, and cocked.  When closed, the gun is useful as a decoration, or maybe a club.  At half-cock, the gun can be loaded, but it will not fire, which is a great comfort for clumsy patriots.  Only at full cock can the musket be fired. Got that?  You don't

We have a visitor at our front door. It seemed best to me not to ask dumb or unnecessary questions. As Jao said, who also peeked around the door:  "He looks mad!" I think it is a Screech Owl, but I do not know enough about screeching to argue with you, and I'd rather not irritate the owl. Four years ago, Mari asked if I would put up an owl box for screech owls in our back yard. I did not know, then, that when one came it would rather come in through the front door. Whatever it says!  It will get no argument from me.  I am using the back door.

I recall asking my mother what it meant to say:  "The sun never sets on the Union Jack". She told me what the Union Jack was, and gave me an abbreviated history lesson about India and Australia and Canada, and even our own Atlantic coast.  I managed to hold together what I knew about the rotation of the earth on its axis with Britishers drinking tea on white table cloths in Africa.  It all had something to do with the British navy, and trade, and guns, and God Save the Queen! Those were the days, my friend! They thought they'd never end! We'd sing and dance forever and a day! England just hauled down the Union Jack. The British Empire, having been reduced to an island, has just declared that it does not like being part of an empire, or even a commonwealth, now that the proverbial shoe is on the other foot. Great Britain, not so great now, is itself coming apart: the Scots aren't so sure they want to save the Queen, and neither are the Irish. May

Every once in a wonderful while I hear Mari say, "I love being retired!" Almost always, she has a sewing project in hand when she says it. Announcing  how much she loves being retired, earlier today, she suggested we have lunch at Teresa's. I heard myself say,  "I love lunch at Teresa's!" Settled in, a Negra Modelo in hand and our favorite waitress having assured us that whatever it was we ordered was coming soon, I had time to listen to our table neighbors. "They," I thought, "are not going to enjoy being retired." In fact, they were not enjoying much of anything. They were complainers; quiet but concerted complainers reinforcing their view of life by trying to one-up (or one-down) each other by demonstrating how perceptive they were at detecting small faults with everybody they worked with. What a miserable way to wriggle through work, toward retirement! Neither one of them, I thought, ha

It is hot, here in the Sonora. It is hot in a lot of places, even in the aquarium at the Sonora Desert Museum. This fish, whose species I did not note, coasted up to something equivalent to an underwater limb, or hammock, and drifted to a stop:  flop! "What the heck,", he or she said, "the Snowbirds have migrated north again, too!  This is our slow season." A couple of tourists, brave hikers in this scalding heat, decided to hike mountain trails without awareness of enough water, died before anyone could find them.  I have some outside projects I want to do, but I am easily persuaded to delay them.  Instead, I propose to Mari that we have lunch somewhere; somewhere where the beer is cold. We have a hammock, out in the garage.  It is too hot in the garage to excavate it, and hang it in the yard for migrating birds having second thoughts.

That is not a river. Neither is it a lava flow. It is the Sweetwater Swamp after, and on, hot days. It has a real name: Sweetwater Wetlands. I am not sure it is water, at all, or even that it is wet. It was thick! Once it was water.  Then it was wasted; that is to say, used,  in homes like ours, then shipped off to be reclaimed.  After being run through a city-sized processor, it is pumped into a system of holding ponds where enthusiastic forests and fields of trees and reeds compete with each other to make the best of what might be called "nutrients" and water and sun.  Often, there are dozens of birds at the Swamp, turtles galore, and more birders than birds. Yesterday, I was the only person there.  I saw almost no birds.  It was, I shall admit, not a prime time of day to see birds in the desert, especially because the temperature was very high.  Had there been birds, they could have walked on . . . on the water.   There may have been a thousand turtles bene

 It was, Jao lamented in limited language, frustrating to have as window from which he could see the whole world, and have it be too high up for him to see through. He tried, valiantly, to push a ladder into position, and sometimes almost did so, but the floor is concrete, and he is made of softer material, so we scotched that! Instead, I bought a couple of porch stringers, found a scrap board for treads and an extension handle for a paint roller, and built a way to get up where the whole world can be seen; even the mountains all around.  It is a thoroughly well-rehearsed lecture; that lesson in geography.  Sometimes it has a paragraph on the planets going around the sun.  I have no idea where he learned that, or what he thinks it means.  It doesn't matter.  Experiment will probably confirm what theory has taught him. For those of you with a sharp eye for floral detail, the little blue critters are Mari's addition to what even Magellan had not confirmed.  

I recall having read, while writing a book, that Friedrich Nietzsche said: "I would not want to build a house, but were I to do so, I should build it right down into the sea.  I would like to have some secrets in common with that beautiful monster." And if Nietzsche did not say it so, I will not complain if you attribute it to me, although no one will believe you, not even I. Heidi, our daughter, and Jack do not have a house built right down into the sea, but the sea is close enough so that you can hear it murmur and roar, and you can see it, and if you wish, by walking to the edge of the continent and looking down at it as it comes at you. That is not the best part of that house.  The best part is Heidi and Jack. We had planned to drive back to San Francisco with them, in an evening or so, to attend a Giants game, but as I have said (in earlier posts, below), we had been scurrying around and through San Francisco for a couple of days already, something like Romm

 I recall often thinking that Mt. Rainier always lurked in my mind, and it does, but that is an accident of place. Had I been born in Northern California, I might have been lurked by Mt. Shasta always in my mind. It is nearly as tall--a few hundred feet-- but, I think, more serene in a sunny way, perhaps a function of not having Puget Sound scarcely an eruption away.   When in its prime, the debris from Mt. Rainier reshaped the place that became the Port of Tacoma. It still occasionally belches, just as a reminder; just as a threat. Mt. Shasta is a sister reminder of how small it is to be human when earth shakes its shoulders and reaches down to hot places below, coming up with something like rage. Napa, in the wine country of California, just north of San Francisco, sits on one of the seams in earth's crust where, in 2014, considerable parts of the town were rattled like castanets.  Today, construction and reconstruction fences are common, so we turn

We had intended to visit the Japanese Garden next to the Rose Garden, but something about time zone differences (I assume:  I am, like an Orange-Colored Apparent Presidential Nominee, unaware of facts, and running on gas), and the gates were not yet open, so we promised ourselves to see the Japanese Garden another time, if it has not been deported. "Is that a rose I see?" "I see.  That is a rose!" Glory planted all in one place tends toward ordinary surfeit, but not for long.

After having thought about it a while, my computer found Bing Crosby and his brand.  Why PX?  I do not know. I do not even know why Bing!  Bing? Is there--has there ever been--another Bing? But what that brings to mind is quite another sign. One roasty warm day in Portland-- it got up to 100 degrees F.-- in a land in which air conditioning is provided by the proximity to an ocean somewhere off to the west, I decided to hike somewhat up the side of Mr. Tabor: a great protuberance into town a couple of blocks east of us; something like urban Mt. Hood envy without the attitude or altitude. Returning to civilization, I came down a block or two away from the reservoir where I had begun. God, it became evident, does not provide proper syntax or spelling. Or maybe God just had too many "L"s, and not enough "N"s and "E"s. Bing Crosby, we were told in Susanville, provided the saloon owner with enough cash to get his brand up on the w

Elliot is still at that malleable age at which she does not know that her elders--even her old elders-- are already thinking about selling her into indentured servitude                                            by encouraging her to attend the university,                    and take out large loans. In the meantime, she is learning to eat from a spoon. She will, of course, go on to a spork, then a fork, and a dull plastic knife, after which there will be training courses in all kinds of things, followed by pre- and graduate-school. She does not have a chance. Both of her parents know the way. But first, that spoon. "Orange crap!", she thinks. "Milk is never orange!" "The last time we tried this, Mom started with bananas--not bad-- then switched to sweet potatoes!" "Yep!  Half-and-half. Even so. . . ."                 Portland is Craftsman-style, except where the four-story advocates for affordable h

It is possible to drive from Lake Tahoe to Oregon without traveling in the fast lane: we did it, slowly, lovely, almost lost. Traveling north and leaning left we sidled up to the Sierras, Kings Canyon and Yellowstone Park west of us, while the land rose toward the places where magma sometimes insists its way up and out and where the floating land masses collide and bend up to compensate for all the shoving down. Water and wind wear down the peaks, leveling the valleys, leaving them rich with everything earth can offer, and we kept saying to each other how lovely it was. We do not remember how we happened upon Susanville in California, but we did. A fine, old bar and restaurant, in a building enduring since the California Gold Rush boasted the longest bar in them parts, parading examples of ranch brands from the area all along the wall. Bing Crosby was there once, and he had a ranch, too, although not in the area, but storied

Mari and I were invited by Daniel and Elliza to come to Portland to see our newest granddaughter, Elliot. We decided to drive, partly for the hell of it, partly because Mari has a slightly used Subaru, replacing a long-term Ford Escape, and partly because-- among other things-- it made it easier to see our daughter, Heidi, and Jack, somewhere near Santa Cruz. We aimed, first, at Las Vegas, mostly out of sheer curiosity, since we had never been there. We will probably not go there, again. It has been our intention to see a show because we had (logic in play, here) never been to Las Vegas before. When we got there, we said "To hell with it:  let's eat." Cigarette smoke everywhere. We did enjoy the drive through desert places we had never seen, or could not remember. The next day, we drove through even more interesting places, wriggling our way on back ways to Lake Tahoe, not Reno, but the south end of the lake where we had an enchanti