Sheet Lightning

I don’t know why it was called that. Sheet lightning. And when I was a youngster, I never questioned it. Why should I? When they called an apple and apple, it seemed that it was an accurate word, others agreed and applying it to the object could be quite useful.

So, until now, many decades later, the thought that it was a “funny” word or expression never occurred to me. At that early age, I knew that it somehow signified rain, and rain was precious, desired and essential for the farm in that arid part of central Nebraska.

How many times I heard, “Well, we could’ve gotten rain, but it went around us.” This was in the day before every drop of rain, every “hook echo” and every blast of wind was announced in breathless awe by the ratings-conscious weather announcers.

Sheet lightning teased us; it never resulted in rain for us, just for others. Looking off to the south, over the irrigated-but-still-dry corn, away in the distance, it flickered and promised rain to others, but not to us. The weather on the Plains is fairly predictable in that it travels in a generally eastward direction. From the north, cool air swoops down the east side of the Rockies, pulled by the earth’s rotation into an easterly flow, and smacks into the air that travels north from the Gulf. No wonder we had severe weather, the formula was predictable. But not if it was already far south, moving east. Not here. Not tonight.

The Thirties were not a distant memory. Just twenty years prior to the time when I would lay cross wise on the bed in the sleeping cabin and yearn for the storms that I saw to come our way. I couldn’t remember them, but adults did. The terrible sustained heat, the wind that created the famous Dust Bowl and the lack of rain. Corn would grow a couple of feet and die in the field without coming close to pollination or production. That was the year my parents were married, in 1934.

Twenty years later, mid-century modern was storming the country, the ’57 Chevy was being designed and pink-ish Formica with designs like boomerangs was the miracle for modern living. And it was still dry, but not as bad as the Thirties. Conservation had made a small impact, and it would continue to do more over the decades, but in that part of the country, it is still dry, more than a half century down the road. It is just the nature of things.

When it did rain, it rained too much. I guess part of that whole business of the moist air and the cool air; and the creek was out of its banks seven times in 1950, the year they thought I would die from the fever. Now I would blame contamination of the water, some sort of typhoid fever, but they flew in an experimental drug, possibly erythromycin, and I was well the next day. Except for the sore spot on my butt.

If the rain was going to come, it would come from the west, through the trees to the northwest or across the valley to the southwest. Sheet lightning would not announce it; the loud sizzle and crack of a bolt hitting one of the huge cottonwoods gave you a jump start in the middle of the night as an introduction. Then the cold breeze, the gust front that challenged anything foreign in its way, like trees. Trees were foreign, they didn’t belong. The vast herds of bison were not tolerant of a tree in the way, but it was the prairie fire that wiped the face of the Great Plains free of anything but grass, miles and miles, thousands of miles of grass. Tolerant to the severe cold of the winters, the constant wind and the dryness. The oppressive dryness that sucked the life out of people and things less tolerant.

The weather of the Plains may be predictable, but it is not yet understood by science. They chase tornadoes, trying to figure out what is happening and why. I have been in two tornadoes, little ones, and saw the aftermath of the Joplin storm. You have to respect and love these phenomena of nature. And the result, as someone said, is that humans owe their existence to six inches of top soil and the fact that it rains. Due to the great eruptions from the moving volcano that is now Yellowstone, the top soil there was rich and deeper than six inches.

Well, it never rained enough. Before the advent of newer, conservation-oriented agricultural practices that conserve the soil’s store of moisture and nutrients, before the newer forms of irrigation and, especially, the newer hybrids of corn, there was never enough. As a child, I was not going to understand the science of weather, the history of the place where I lived or the concept of a tall grass like corn being hybridized, but I fully understood the need for rain and the consequences of the absence of rain.

The little one-room school house would be drained of children regularly as the families “dried out” and went to California. The view from the house at one time contained as many as nine or ten family homes, and right now only one. Absent the dairy business (which was frankly too difficult and required too much discipline for most of our neighbors) we would have been “Okies,” too.

It was too hot to occupy the second floor of the un-insulated house, much less sleep up there. Bad enough in the bitter cold of winter, but impossible in the heat and humidity of the summer. We were fortunate enough to have a “sleeping cabin” that was just big enough to contain two double beds with a path down the middle and enough room at the foot to slide along. The sides to the north and south were nearly full windows that lifted up on hinges and hooked to the rafters leaving screens for the sides of the cabin. If there were any breeze at all, the tiny place under the shade of the trees was comfortable. That is where I would gaze out at the far distant sheet lightning. The reflection off the sides and tops of the great thunderheads would create that flicker, that promise of the rain.

And I would hope. I have never quite figured out why people dislike rain and storms (except the constant drizzle and gloom of the northwest that just isn’t the same). To me, they were hoped for, prayed for and welcomed with excitement and glee.

Many times in my life have I watched the “sheet lightning” of events and human behavior, hoping for the desired result without success. I should have learned that sheet lightning is a provocative, sensuous mistress, beckoning me with promises and never delivering. I should have learned…but I didn’t. I still watch and hope and pray, believing that the rain will come despite the fact that it is “going around us.”

The Table

For years, at my age that probably means decades, I thought my parents’ wedding anniversary was May 10, but I now know due to the newspaper clipping that was sent last year, the correct date was May 12, 1934.  The clipping was an artifact sent to me by a woman in Shelby, Nebraska who I know only slightly, but who found it among her mother Gertude’s things after she died. Now there’s a name you don’t see much of any more. Gertrude was my mother’s maid of honor at the wedding.

We are so critical of today’s journalism, but the wedding announcement was very brief and just about had all the information in it.

That was nearly 80 years ago.  My brother was born in 1940, and that was 72 years ago.

You have all heard me give my favorite “dimension” of time when talking about Grandma Carstenson.  I was almost 13 when she died in 1958 and she was 16 when Lincoln was assassinated.

One of the rules ought to be that people write their memoirs when they are young as they tend to drift off and have difficulty separating the significant from the insignificant in their stories.  Evidence—the above paragraphs.  These meanderings are not trying to offer the significant, so stop reading if that is your expectation.

The date was selected for two reasons:  Norma taught school and that was after school was out, and Wallie was farming, and that was after the corn was planted.  Corn was supposed to be planted no later than May 10 back then.  Anyway, it was well over 100 degrees that day, it stayed very, very hot and dry and the corn crop never had a chance.  The times were tough. Wallie shoveled snow that coming winter for $1.00 per day, bring your own scoop.

By the time my brother was born, they bought a kitchen table and chairs as a commemoration of the event.  That is the same table and chairs that Linda and I took to Oregon, and before that to California, and then back to Kansas City. And now to Virginia Beach. Frankly, my mother would never tolerate such homelessness.

We just realized how many meals have been served and eaten on that table.  Let’s say 72 years, three times a day:  Given that the table was in the basement for a few years, let’s say 75,000?

Let’s see…fairly thrifty and can’t stay in one place.

I'm a Lucky Man

Every day, I try to repeat that mantra, I’m a lucky man. Not in the sense of winning the lottery, but in the parts that are important to me.

The following was started in July 2012, abandoned and restarted in December.

LEAVING OREGON

Don’t expect anything as entertaining or profound (or profoundly disturbing?) as “Leaving Las Vegas,” but we are in the process of leaving Oregon, and I always have opinions and observations.

Despite the century-topping temperatures in the Plains, I have a deep connection and satisfaction with Nebraska and Kansas City and probably don’t appreciate the current “summer” weather in Portland. The weather is a topic, though, since most of the people that know us have been, or should have been, mighty tired of our complaining. From arrival here the first week of December, and coming back at the first of January, we experienced four days through the middle of May that it didn’t rain. Just gloom when it wasn’t raining. And I have never been this cold, despite living in Fargo. Forty-one degrees and rain is damn cold.

Enough of that.

I think I would be “sixty-eight” if I lived in a lot of countries, Korea for example, where your birth is considered your first birthday. Makes a lot of sense, like the way they tend to structure names and labels. Family names first, given name(s) next. Makes sense. Year first, then month, then day. Makes sense…and it is easy when labeling computer files in that you can have the same name for several files, but keep them in chronological order by just naming them that way. That's the way I file my computer documents, too, with the end being 20121212 for today's date.
 

I am so fortunate that I am able to continue to be challenged and interested in a bunch of projects through my brokerage practice.

Continued December 2012:

We have arrived in Virginia Beach. Right now I am busier than I expected to be, and that is good.

We just purchased tickets for a performance of “The Pines of Rome” by the Virginia Symphony and I will be going to the Van Gogh exhibit in Denver. Need to get back to those things.

A lot has happened in the time since we left Portland, and one of those things is that we have been living out of suitcases, literally, since the end of July. Too long. Hope we can get in a house soon.

On January 1, 2013, I will be 67.5 years old, and as the days pass the value of relationships and the value of friends becomes more and more important to me. The old friends, the ones from Sigma Nu who have been with me for about 50 years now; the correspondent in Brazil who was a high school classmate; the girl who worked with me many years ago and had a baby daughter on my birthday in the early 1980’s.

Speaking of her, I had lost track of her for 15 years. She caught up with me on LinkedIn.

What a life, eh?

John D MacDonald

Again, something I like from an author who I have found to be entertaining. It ain't Shakespeare, nor Proust for that matter, but it is just ok for me. Someday I hope to write something that is half as good, but days are running short. Do you think if I just do the "monkey at the keyboard" thing, something good will pop out?

FROM THE DEEP BLUE GOOD-BY

BY John D. MacDonald, copyright 1964

Cathy introduced us, Christine stood there inside her smooth skin, warm and indolent, mildly speculative.  It is that flavor exuded by women who have fashioned an earthy and simplified sexual adjustment to their environment, borne their young, achieved an unthinking physical confidence.  They are often placidly unkempt, even grubby, taking no interest in the niceties of posture.  They have a slow relish for the physical spectrum of food, sun, deep sleep, the needs of children, the caresses of affection.  There is a tiny magnificence about them, like the sultry dignity of she-lions.

Garden of Eden

I really like this article and wanted to share.

Humans survived ice age by sheltering in 'Garden of Eden', claim scientists

By Niall Firth
UPDATED:18:26 EST, 27 July 2010

The last humans on Earth may have survived an ice age by retreating to a small patch of land nicknamed 'the garden of Eden'.

The strip of land on Africa's southern coast - around 240 miles east of Cape Town - became the only place that remained habitable during the devastating ice age, scientists claim.

The sudden change in temperature wiped out many species elsewhere around 195,000 years ago.

Researchers believe this could account for the fact that humans have less genetic diversity than other species.

Some scientists even believe that the human race's population may have fallen to just a few hundred individuals who managed to survive in one location.

Professor Curtis Marean, of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University discovered ancient human artifacts in the isolated caves around an area known as Pinnacle Point, South Africa.

'Shortly after Homo sapiens first evolved, the harsh climate conditions nearly extinguished our species,' said Professor Marean.

'Recent finds suggest the small population that gave rise to all humans alive today survived by exploiting a unique combination of resources along the southern coast of Africa.'

Humans would have been able to survive because of rich vegetation that was available in the area.

The sea would have also been a good source of food as currents carrying nutrients would have passed by the shore, bringing with them a plentiful supply of fish, the team will say in a new research paper.

Professor Marean said the caves contain archaeological remains going back at least 164,000 years.

Professor Chris Stringer, a human origins expert at the Natural History Museum in London, said he agreed with Professor Marean's views on the early evolution of intelligence.

But he said he was not convinced by the argument that one band of humans were the origin of modern man.

'However, I no longer think that there was ever a single small population of humans in one region of Africa from whom we are all uniquely descended. We know, for example, that there were early modern humans in Ethiopia 160,000 years ago and others in Morocco, and populations like those may also have contributed to our ancestry.'

Many researchers believe that modern humans are thought to have evolved about 195,000 years ago in East Africa, and within 50,000 years had spread to other parts of the continent.

It is thought that 70,000 years ago a dry period caused Red Sea levels to fall and the gap across its mouth to shrink from 18 miles to eight miles.

A tribe of as few as 200 period took advantage of this and crossed to Arabia.

Last year Professor Morean's team announced that they believed stone age blacksmiths mastered the use of fire to make tools at Pinnacle Point.

Knowing how to use fire may have helped the early humans who left Africa 50,000 to 60,000 years ago to cope with colder conditions in Europe.

It may also have given them a big advantage over the resident Neanderthals they encountered.

By 35,000 years ago, the Neanderthals, a sub-species of humans whose own origins were in Africa, were mostly extinct.

Professor Curtis Marean, , said: 'The command of fire, documented by our study of heat treatment, provides us with a potential explanation for the rapid migration of these Africans across glacial Eurasia.

'They were masters of fire and heat and stone, a crucial advantage as these tropical people penetrated the cold lands of the Neanderthal.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1297765/Last-humans-Earth-survived-Ice-Age-sheltering-Garden-Eden-claim-scientists.html#ixzz2B44oKhrv
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1297765/Last-humans-Earth-survived-Ice-Age-sheltering-Garden-Eden-claim-scientists.html

Horses Asses

Disclaimer: I didn't write this, just transcribed it. The writing is a lot more fluent and interesting than mine...but it was over a year ago and I've slept since then, so I cannot give you the source, regrettably.

Subject: RAILWAY TRACK 

I thought you'd like to know...about...railroad tracks.  With the dispensing of such info, my life is now almost complete. 

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.  That's an exceedingly odd number.  Why was that gauge used?  Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the US railroads.  Why did the English build them like that?  Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then?  Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? 

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. 

So who built those old rutted roads? 

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since. 

And the ruts in the roads?  Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. 

Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.  Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.  In other words, bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process, and wonder, 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right.  Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. 

Now, the twist to the story: 

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank.  These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.  The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.

The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.  The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.  The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.  

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. 

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important?  So, Horse's Asses control almost everything...Explains a whole lot of things, doesn't it?

Halloween

We have just endured another October where the candy companies entice us to make the dentists rich, and where everyone talks about the pagan roots of the celebration.  Because of my mother’s birthday, Norma was born on October 31, 1910, I have always had things to consider on that day other than the public celebration.

All Hallows’ Eve

While it seems that every society has its version of the “Harvest Festival,” and they are well-documented from pagan and Roman times, this holiday has a history that isn’t a straight line. 

The name, All Hallows’ Eve literally means “the night before All Hallows Day or All Saints Day,” which is November 1 with All Souls’ Day celebrated on November 2.  The early Christians believed that souls wandered in purgatory until these dates when they got their last chance to enter heaven.  It was the responsibility of the living to pray for their souls, and they wore masks and costumes to disguise themselves from the souls who got their last chance to get back at living people who had wronged them in life.

Now comes the good part.  The part that means something to me, personally.  We did not celebrate Halloween although there was always a little party at our one-room school.  Some background and I will ask that you bear with me a bit on this journey:

1.    On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther posted his ninety-five theses on the door of the church.  These theses, Luther was a priest and scholar, condemned the Church for corruption and, specifically, for granting “indulgences” to parishioners who paid money to the priests.

2.    The ensuing “Reformation” created another opportunity for people to kill people in the name of religion, but it also established a line where the new “Protestants” protested the celebration of Halloween as “papist” because purgatory was an invention of the Pope and another way to extort money from their parishes (see “indulgences”).

3.    Most of the early settlers to the US were Protestants, and they were not interested in “religious freedom,” unless it meant that they had the freedom and everyone else did not!  So, you were not exactly “free” to celebrate Halloween because it was either pagan or papist, take your choice, and in the world of religion, there is always a reason to persecute or kill the other guy.

4.    There is virtually no reference in US almanacs from the 17^th and 18^th centuries that note Halloween.

5.    The Lutheran church, and my mother, were big fans of November 1, All Saints Day, as were Roman Catholics, but I seem to remember that she referred to the date by another name…which I can’t find.  Anyway, when I was growing up, it was celebrated on November 1, but today it is moved to the Sunday around November 1. 

6.    Back then, there was a movement to celebrate Reformation Day on October 31, but it never caught on but is still on the Lutheran calendar.

7.    With the immigration wave from Italy and Ireland, large settlements of Roman Catholics were formed in the cities, and their tradition of Halloween started to be popular in the early 20^th century.

8.    Here’s the personal part:  I remember only one neighborhood trick or treat time, when I was in kindergarten.  I know it was then because our school house blew up in a propane gas explosion the day before I was to start school (1950), and I attended school that year in a vacant house.  A school mate that year was a boy who was a little older, an Italian from Cleveland whose parents moved to the farm with lofty ideals, little idea of what to do, and tried to operate a dairy farm.  They found grinding hard work, cows that got sick and quickly moved back to Cleveland…along with their ideas of trick or treating.  To get from one farm to the other (they had been warned) we hopped in a farm truck.

9.   And another personal part: October 31 is when Linda and her brother landed in the United States from Korea. A very special day.

It is logical that I would remember my mother around her birthday and that this day would have a special meaning to me. I am not going to speculate on the logic of writing this personal stuff and expecting my kids to read it, but there you are.