Superbowl Party

Here I sit, in a hotel room (with wifi) watching the Superbowl on an excellent television. It's a good game and I enjoyed The Who halftime show.

So why am I alone? This afternoon, I watched a wonderful presentation at Washington University in St. Louis. Their women's soccer team took second in their division and the women's volleyball team won the national division III championship. None of these beautiful women, who I have been supporting for over 20 years expected to see me. They were very sweet and one invited me to the sophomore suite for a Superbowl party.

I had to refuse. Each of them has family and friends their own age. I'm sure that the presence of a quiet, old man would add nothing to their enjoyment... and probably decrease it. I've noticed that their exuberance is somewhat restrained when they know I'm around. I'm taking nothing from this day for them. These are women that I have learned to love. I can enjoy this game (and the commercials) by myself tonight and think fondly of them having a rowdy good time. That's better.

I wish I had some pictures of the team to post. But mine have not been sent to me yet. All of you would agree that this is a group of lovely people. In addition to their physical talent and appearance, they have a superb intelligence and are highly disciplined. While their course load is distributed pretty much the same as the rest of WU's student population, their GPA is outstanding. They are just a pleasure to know.

Heck. I've forgotten which superbowl team I wanted to win.

Oh yes. I went to Whole Foods and bought a gourmet set of game noshes for one. Delicious.

Things I did not learn in school

Picture by Sigfried Rhinehart

This morning, I began thinking of some information that had recently come my way. Some of it was interesting, some informative and some was funny. So I'm making a little list:

- The company Arrhythmia Research Technology pays irregular dividends.

- A popular (not with me) method of consuming alcohol is by using an enema. The booze is absorbed more quickly than it is when drunk. One caution, a man gave himself a massive vodka enema and passed out during the course of absorption. Of course, the enema continued to work, eventually killing the @ssh0le by alcohol poisoning. (source: "The Darwin Awards" by Wendy Northcutt)

- The Marines are adding a minigun in a pod (called all quadrant gun) underneath the fusilage of their V22 Osprey for use in Afghanistan. The weapon can fire 360 degrees around the ship. It is fired by a crew member using what looks like a Play Station controller. Deadly video game! (source: Aviation Week 11JAN2010)

- Average alcohol consumption for an American was about 11 gallons per year (GPY) (average for all alcoholic beverages sold divided by persons alive over the age of 15). This compares to 8 (GPY) for WWII, 4.5 during prohibition and 29 GPY at the end of the American revolutionary war. (source: American History vol.43, No.5, DEC 08)

- You make a lemon "vinagrette" by whisking two tablespoons of lemon juice with four to six tablespoons of olive oil.

- Last year, a concerted cyber attack on the offices of the Dalai Lama, some embassies and foreign ministries. Canadians discovered that the operation, called Ghost Net collected information from computers and turned on cameras, allowing the operators to see and hear what was going on in the room where the computer was. The Canadians traced Ghost Net as far as servers in the People's Republic of China. (source: The Dispatch, vol.31, no.12, December 2009)

Don't you just love random information?

Horrible memory

A friend was telling me and some others about the trip he took to New York, NY in September of 2001. Yes, he was there when the Trade Center was hit. In fact, he was near enough to go try to help.

When he arrived, people were still fleeing the buildings. The thing he remembers most graphically was women running from the danger. Most of them had been wearing high heels and lost their shoes. The shattered glass from the windows was in their path. He recalls that their feet were bleeding.

That mental picture has stayed with me ever since our conversation. I remind myself that shoes are the most important thing to wear in any disaster, whether it be earthquake, tornado, fire or explosion. And I keep imagining those torn feet. The image is so horrid that I had to share it, in the hope that if I talked about it, the horror would lessen.

pictures

Last night, I promised to upload a few pics of the Santa Fe Christmas eve celebrations. They are above.

First is the Spirit of Christmas. She gave out candy canes and was gracious to all.

Next down is a tree that one of the galleries decorated with lights.

The third photo is of one of the pieces at a gallery. The owner gave permission to photograph it. I want some of the Arkanas artists to see and get ideas for new work. This one is very complex. The iron is formed first. The four glass blowers use their pipes to form the glass inside. Because the iron is such a good heat sink, someone has to keep it to temperature where the glass approaches or touches it.

The last picture is a blurry one of the luminaria. Traditionally, these are candles in paper bags that have sand in the bottom. Because the candles burn out, many people use electric lights in brown plastic wrappings to simulate them. One of the galleries that used the traditional method had trouble with the candles burning out. One of their volunteers stayed outside, tending the bonfire and replacing candles.

The people last night were so friendly and helpful. It made me think that the spirit is alive and well. There was a warm, community feeling in spite of the cold temperature.

Thank you Santa Fe.

Christmas Eve

It's that time of year. This time was even better than most. As usual, we were with our daughter and grandchildren in Los Alamos. We had Christmas eve dinner with a friend of long years who had recently returned to New Mexico. She and her family hosted us in a pot luck at her home in Santa Fe.

Our friend lives about a block from Canyon Road. If you've never been in Santa Fe, Canyon is where many art galleries are located. All of them feature excellent things, from sculpture to painting to ceramics and mixed media. I took some pictures (with the gallery owner's permission) and will post them when I get a little more time.

The special thing about this area is that about five in the afternoon, streets are closed off to vehicular traffic. Gallery owners put up Christmas lights, especially the luminaria that are unique to this part of the US. Most corners sport bonfires surrounded by happy people who warm themselves and take part in singing Christmas carols (like Little Town of Bethlehem or It Came Upon a Midnight Clear) and Christmas songs (eg. I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas or Jingle Bells). It doesn't matter if everyone knows the words since those who do carry those who don't through the parts they have forgotten.

Of course, many of the galleries are open. Some serve hot coffee or cider. People can walk through, talk to the owners and, in some cases, the artists. Many of the works you can see are museum quality.

On the street, hot food is sold as well as hot drinks. People dressed for the winter parade up and down as they admire the windows or walk into the galleries. There were even some who dressed in Victorian clothing and gave out candy canes or led carols. One gallery had a blues singer who played the harmonica and had a toptoppy drum accompaniest. Another had a classical guitarist who played beautiful classical and Spanish music. He talked to some of the amateur guitarists who visited and gave hints on technique.

The way home was lovely. The snow of yesterday had been cleared from the highways but remained on the lawns and vistas. A bright half moon illuminated things. Of course, many houses were decorated with lights, both the traditional luminaria (or feralitos) and colored lights and yard sculptures. Although I was tired, the views were so enchanting that I could not close my eyes. I'm wired enough to finish this, but not to transfer the photos from my camera. Later.

Merry Christmas to all. My heartiest good wishes for the coming year.

A quiet week

So what do you write when everything is normal?

Don't get me wrong. Normality is good; it's restful. But same old just doesn't have the zip that new, exciting adventures do.

The first thing I do is go out and take pictures in the garden. You are looking at a photo of a daddy long legs strolling on the leaves of a purple cone flower. I always thought that they were black. This one is light brown.

The weather here is been fine. After one of the wettest Octobers on record, November has been dry, sunny and mild. That has helped a lot. Trees have been dropping their leaves like it was autumn (it is.) The dry spell has let me catch up with clearing some of the gardens of leaves. That has its objectionable parts too. See my post before this one.

The weather has some plants confused. I found a daisy, a spring bloomer in a protected spot around the Master Gardener project I work (Curran Hall.) Spider wort is reblooming and the Indian blanket flowers and zinnias in my last post are still brightening the landscape. A couple of daffodils have stuck their noses out of the dirt. That is not all good. Even though daffies have some antifreeze in their sap, a hard freeze will kill them and diminish their normal, spring glory.

Our local news is full of the trial of the man accused (now convicted) of raping and murdering a very nice young reporter, Anne Presley. I thought it was just here colleagues on the station where she worked, but every station is full of it tonight. There are a lot of things happening here in Arkansas. I think that too much time is spent, not just on the trial, but on retrospectives of her life. She was, as I said, a nice girl. Her death is a useless tragedy. It seems to me that all of this attention is slightly morbid and does not serve the community as news.

My office is piled knee-high with stuff to be sorted. Some should be tossed, some sent to storage and some shelved where I can get to it. Maybe next week.

I bought a copy of "The Oxford English Dictionary Thesaurus" last week. After studying it for several days, I still can't find the words I want. The thing consists of two large books and a poster sized guide to the thesaurus. Words are listed in groupings like society, animal and the like. But the poster seems to have different group numbers than the guide book, which has different numbers than the actual thesaurus. It's a disappointment. I do so love dictionaries.

I once bought an English Swahili dictionary. It was a theory of mine that Edgar Rice Burroughs used Swahili for the language of the great apes. Looks like I was wrong. Oh well. We learn as much from failed experiments as we do from those whose results agree with our predictions.

apologies to Kurt Weil

Oh it is garden time

From May to December.

But the leaves fall down

When it is September.

And the golden leaves

Are blown all around.

It is time to rake

and a leaf pile make.

If you couldn't guess from the last two photos and the pastiche of September Song, I raked leaves most of today. Part of them are mulched and placed around winter sensitive plants and the rest are still piled, like the song says.

I left them on the lawn so the neighbor kids could jump in them and not get hurt. The ones I mulched were on the driveway and that concrete skins knees when roughly contacted.

Leaf raking is a restful way to spend a pretty day. The weather was wonderful and the autumn flowers were happily blooming in our garden. The first four pictures are variations of the Indian blanket flower. That is usually a summer bloomer. Our fall weather has been so mild that they have continued apace.

The three photos before the leaves are a whirling butterfly guara, pineapple sage and a cosmo.

The birds were singing too. Even the crows seemed to be trying to caw musically. Lovely day, somewhat dusty, but really terrific.