Sidetracked Charley

A friend, and frequent reader of this blog, informed me recently that my weekly chats have not given her the status on various issues in my life. I had not considered my life that interesting of late. But since another friend also mentioned that my status updates on Facebook have been non-existent or evasive I might try to remedy my omissions. Blizzard Lizard: Also known as the VanGo or The Vehicle is still in the shop. My mechanic injured his back and was getting nothing done for a while. He called yesterday to deeply apologize. Fortunately I have had my neighbor's aging Corolla to toodle around in. The mechanic is giving her a free oil change for her kindness. Finances: Still holding fast to the money needed to rescue the Blizzard Lizard when it is ready. The longer this takes the closer we come to more funds available. I am thinking of maintaining this strict economy through May so I can put some reserve funds back. A few pet sitting gigs and a small art sale helped make en...

Easter Morning All day Saturday it had threatened to rain. Drizzle I remember Mother calling that sort of weather. It has always reminded me of the January I spent in Laguna Beach, California. Never did rain but you got wet just the same. But Easter morning looked as if it was going to clear. The sun came out between the clouds and the grass began to green up as you watched. Perfect day to be out with the camera. Even the deer seemed to want to pose. Course they are almost tame around here. Rather used to people with cameras for sure. Top of Wheeler Peak, however, stayed cloaked in the clouds and by mid day the rain had begun in a more or less serious manner. Then by evening it began to snow. Even the elk looked rather wet. They made me shiver just to look at them. On the road home the snow turned serious and at one time it was even a white out but so wet that it melted as soon as it hit the ground.   I love spring in the mountains. You have to be ready for just abo...

Hope Springs Eternal A friend of mine and I were sharing memories of our youth which we were lucky enough to share in part. We were the flower children of the 60's. Sex, love and rock and roll. The good times: No STD's that could not be cured with Penicillin, all war news at least a week old and highly sanitized by the media, if you crashed at a pad with multiple friends it was from choice and not necessity, communes held the hope that we could grow what we needed and it wasn't poisoned, and to some degree we believed Cronkite told us the truth. My late friend, lover and former husband, Marc, was fond of saying, "They lie to us all the time." That seemed so infinitely clear this week with the Japan nuclear disaster dropping off the radar while BP told us that the fish in the Gulf in Mexico and coastal bayous was now safe to eat. Even the bottom dwellers like oysters and crawlfish. I think I will just content myself with how much I loved to eat them once. I...

Nuclear Reactor Test Facility I admit I am on a bit of a science bent these days. I love science if I do not have to pass a final exam in it. I love the theories but hate all those Latin words. For decades I took the magazine Scientific American and so am probably armed with too much information and not enough real knowledge. A critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction in case you were wondering. But when I Googled critical mass this morning looking for an image and a definition I cam up with the international bicycle event, swarms of people during rush hour in Tokyo, and army ants dripping off a tree. And, of course, the mushroom cloud. All of which got me thinking of tipping points. A tipping point is the point at which an object is displaced from a state of stable equilibrium into a new equilibrium state qualitatively dissimilar from the first. All of which ties in with my blog on cascade failure and angle of r...

Angle of Repose for Sand dune My last blog here was about cascade failure. It is one of my favorite scientific theories. Others include Chaos Theory, Queuing theory, and paradigm shift. And the subject of this blog: Angle of Repose - in short you can only pile sand (or shit or any other substance) only so high. (Note: the precise angle of repose varies per substance and moisture content but more of that later.) I choose sand as my illustration here because as children this may be our first encounter with the laws of physics as we sit in our sandboxes with our pails and shovels. I noted in a recent local news article that the Questa Moly Mine is putting off clean up of waste for 18 years. This is relevant to our topic because it has piled slag and dirt from its above and below ground mines to beyond the angle of repose. This is possible by misting the piles to solidify them. And it works for a while. Erosion by rain and wind can steepen that angle artificially beyond the natural an...

I have been thinking a lot of cascade failure of late. A cascading failure is a failure in a system of interconnected parts in which the failure of a part can trigger the failure of successive parts . It is currently demonstrated in Japan with their desperate attempt to get the nuclear reactors under control. But I always think of that children's rhyme:  For Want of a Nail For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail. This winter when a firm in Texas decided to ship natural gas intended for New Mexico to Oklahoma where it could get more money we all faced a cascade failure of the electrical grid here because of the over usage of electric space heaters to avoid freezing in -43F temps.  Yes, all dire situations but yesterday I found myself thinking in terms of cascade failu...

I found myself thinking of Elkins, West Virginia this week. Elkins was just a sidetrack in my life but it is a recurring theme. For instance this blog is titled Sidetracked Charley probably due to Elkins. I was living and working in Washington, DC. Home was 604 A street NE and I worked in the New Senate Office Building (New SOB for short). I was a mountain girl trying to work through the system for political change. Off hours I marched for peace (Vietnam war), saving the mini skirt (our right as women to chose our fashions) and the ERA (Equal Rights for Women which we never got). When I got sick of politics and homesick for mountains like Heidi I went to the Monongahela National Forest just outside Elkins, West Virgina. The ability to climb a mountain and see for miles did a lot for my homesickness and urban claustrophobia but it rains a lot in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia. And even when it isn't raining the mists make you feel wet. Instead of doing a lot of h...