Saturday, July 26, 2003
NIGHT NOTES.
I keep a small clip board fitted with half-sheets of used typing paper and one-sided junk mail pages, on which I jot notes to myself during the night. I collect them each morning and some become daily themes, while others go into a file which I raid from time to time to re-read, re-write or toss out. Here are some January 1, '01 nonsense jottings from my Night Pad....
“I have added on another pound.
I ate fish last night!Never fails.
I know it was the fish.
When weighing , I saw scales. A.L.M. Jan. 30 2001
“How do you tuna fish?
By adjusting its scales.” A.L.M many years ago
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“I swim like a fish. I flounder around a lot”. A.L.M Jan 30 '01
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“Have you ever watched a flounder
A'swimmin' in the water?
He swims by flopping up and down!
Not the way he ougther.
I've never understood
How flounders swim at all.
Goin' up and down..okay,
But, standing up he'd fall!” A.L.M. from Note Pad night of Jan 30, '0l
“A bee may thrive within the hive
But die if left outside.
A boy or girl secure at home
may fail if far they roam”.
“Hive dwellers know know they're hid
From dangers of the World.
Children must be made aware
By older folks how much they care.”
Worker bees and the royal queen
Strive to make more honey'
and skimp and save at every turn
'cause bees call honey money.
It doesn't work that way with us
Our youths grow up. Depart.
Youth finds youth .They mate and breed
A family to start. A.L.M. from Night Time note pad some time in January '0l
I want to buy a purple cow
I hope you've one more.Done.
I want to put it on my shelf '
to really prove I've really seen one!. A.L.M...... some time in Jan '01
This may prove to be a place to put some of them rather than simply tossing them in the trash.. Note pads offer good exercise in writing forcing editing, pruning, re-doing and discarding.
A.L.M. July 25, 2003 (from January 31, 2001file] [c512ds]
Friday, July 25, 2003
HEAR ME NOW
We will get a good laugh fifty years from now, when we look back at some of the things we are doing today. Or, you will, rather, because I will be long gone by that time.
During the last few years of the old century we had phase of “CB-itis”, it might be called. It became suddenly fashionable for everyone to have “Citizen's Band Radio”, or two... one installed as a base station at home, and all others in every movable car, truck or other vehicle they possessed, leased or borrowed. It all came about, I seem to remember, as a result our being urged to be ready for war which didn't start until we were in the new century. If the threat of an invasion was not real enough, people felt they needed CB radios in their cars for “safety” reasons. One never knew when they might be stranded in a wreaked vehicle a hundred miles from anywhere. The CB put you in touch with what you thought might help you in your predicament.
The truck driving portion of our nation's population - then growing to be a goodly number - took to it CB's feverishly and served as a model of sorts for “regular” users. The special code-like language the truckers came to use supplanted English as our national language to a large degree for a time and number, and combinations of them, such as “10-4” became the basic element of our linguistic culture. Very shortly the CB language slithered into being risque, feisty, smutty and bisque. Then, dirty, profane, obscene and permanently tainted. This helped to kill the entire CB craze. The countless thousands of antennae mounted on cars and trucks disappeared but modern technology was ready with another, more private mode of transportable communication. From Europe came the cellular phone and no spot in the civilikzed portions of the world has escaped its grasp.
We became a nation of one armed drivers quickly and completely. One hand on the steering wheel is enough The less apparent danger was the loss of mental association of drivers much more concerned with their phone conversation than with any traffic danger. Finland lead the pack, I think,and we're still trying to catch up on th Europeans ownership of cell phones. Together with the E-mail facility offered by computers in our homes and offices “cell-phone-ism” has clobbered the First Class mail tonnage at the U.S Postal Service.
The tiny communication wonder - wireless and world-wide - at now mutating into becoming camera, VCR, TV and computer with e-mail.
And we thought the CB craze was big!
A.L.M. July 24, 2003 [c464wds]
Thursday, July 24, 2003
ALL B' HOLDIN'
“We are all b'holden' to somebody!”
An old man told me that many years ago and I must admit I did not accept his view completely at that time. Over years, however, I have found it to be very true. We owe someone in our past a great debt for help they gave us.
This “man” I quote was not a learned man in the usual academic sense. He was, as he called himself “a colored man” - which was the accepted form in use at that time, when one made any reference to an Afro American.
His name was “Carrington”. It was never shortened to “Carrie” or anything like that. It was always a dignified Carrington and he was a dependable, solid person in every way. He played guitar with a small group from his section of our semi-segregated Virginia community.
Without actually saying so, we knew that Carrington thought of parents as being basic to what a child might become. We owe our good parents a debt we cannot repay save by fulfilling an identical role with our own children... modified, censured and improved as needed. We should remember, too that parents are not always perfect not will we be in our time.
We owe a great many other people.
“They ain't nobody really free!”
Carrington said that because he was aware of the debt we all owe to our school teachers, our pastors in our religious, life, our doctors - in fact, the hosts of butchers, bakers and candlestick makers!
That group has been augmented greatly in this computer connected era.
We should be aware of these obligation. We should not feel crush and unable to repay them. We can't do that, but we can pass our precious wealth along to others.
A.L.M. July 22, 2003 [c312wds]
Wednesday, July 23, 2003
PLASTIC TIRES
Am I too far out if I ask if acceptable automobile tires could be made with plastic materials?
I have asked that question before, and each time I do, I am greeted with scathing looks which seem to tell me my hearers think my Alzheimer's must be kicking in a bit early.
I still wonder, however, about th potential of plastic tires and I would like to know why it can't be done.
I realize such a tire might not be the perfect gem as far as riding comfort is concerned. Solid tires do not, generally, suggest soft-pillow like passage, and there is nothing that says such plastic tires would have to be solid in construction. It just seems the logical way to get started.
I remember when truck tires were solid. I recall seeing heavy U.S. Navy trucks - both electric and combustion-powered models - in parades in Norfolk,Virginia in post WW- I days. The heavy tires on big, spoked wheels were solid, but with two-inch holes cut through them about six inches apart to allow for some buoyancy.
I find plastic materials being used freely in toys including wheeled craft for kids. They could be done far more sturdily than these creations, but the process is well on its way.. When I see fence post and entire fences being made of just a bout indestructible messes of stuff such as used plastic shopping bags boiled down , I am more convinced than ever that the same sort of thing, made in proper doughnut-style circles would serve us well as tires.
Certainly such an industry would meet with acceptable by environmental control people - whatever happened to be in style at the moment. The snail darter would be safe; the pleated-plaid gobble worms secure!. We would also be cutting down on the national trash bag piles,as well. We could look forward to a time when used tires would simply be ground up and used again, rather than saved in horrendous accumulations which always seem to catch fire and burn for years polluting most of Earth with fumes of burning rubber.
Has any major firm be engaged in such a plastics venture? Has anyone done any real testing in the field? If, so why don't we hear about such research and study. It may be that it would be too much trouble to build it up and then turn it over to China. Let them come up with their own scheme for once!
Either the idea of making tires with plastics is so despicably stupid that it does not even merit discussion, or we are, purposely avoiding any development of new ways to build better tires - of even just passable economy types - for fear of upsetting someone's profit cart by doing so.
Now, who could that be?
A.L.M. July 22, 2003 [c491wds]
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
LET'S HEAR IT FOR HANS!.
It's late! Far too late!
A man by the name of Hans Lippershey , a eyeglass maker in Holland in the early 1600, put together a presentable telescope well ahead of others. He made it when school children held lens types together and found they could bring the village church tower closer. Two lens types, held in line could work such magic. Lippershey slapped a tube over the two lens and it worked even better.
It's time we set the record straight
Lippershey called his invention a “Looker”,,“kilker”, in his native Dutch language, and in 1608 from his home in Middle burg, Netherlands he applied to the Belgian government for a patent. It is reported that he was well paid for his invention in his own time, but one of the strange quirks of history is that Belgian officials refused to grant a patent for the odd reason that: “it was felt the invention was so simple that it could not be kept a secret.”
That odd decision strikes us as being a bit weird today. We no longer thin patents as protecting our secrets.
Galileo Galilei is not the only contender, and historians say he was aware of Lippershey's creation before he came one of his own. Some historians beat the drum loudly in favor of one Giambattista della Porta, who wrote about the recently discovered convex and concave lens advancements, but Galileo has been credited by the general public as the inventor of the telescope. But that has not been the end of it all. Two other Dutch spectacle makers, Hans and Zacharias Janssen, who lived about the same time as Lippershey (1570-1619) are said to have invented a telescopes apparatus, and a Dutch diplomat, William Boreel, who apparently knew all three of them during their lens making days in Middleburg, claimed openly that Lippershey stole the idea from the Janssen brothers. He make the accusation so loudly and so often that, in time, people discredited his overly zealous support of the Janzzens.
In far off Naples, Giambattista della Porta wrote about the newly discovered lens and their qualities of being concave and convex and surmised that ”if one knew how to combine them exactly they could see both distant and near objects larger than they would otherwise appear and very distinct.” One fact that sets Hans Lippershey ahead of the others is that he was the first to describe the telescope in documentary form, while other talked about the potential of such an application.
Now that we have “Hubble” out there in space churning out sizzling photographs from far off places beyond our wildest dreams
what can re-hashing all of this telescope squabble mean to us today?
Imagine, if you will, what future arguments are being fed and fattened even now by a score or more of young men and women all over the world - generating inventions to be discovered any day now! They are contenders and they are all around us. You may be one of them. I have no way of knowing, but wherever you are be sure to put your ideas to written form. Get your ideas past the “expert” patent people of our time and put a mark on your rightful place among our great inventors and benefactors of Mankind.
In the meantime, join with me. Let's hear it for Hans Lippershey remembered today by so many as just another also-ran.
A.L.M. July 21, 2003 [c614wds]
Monday, July 21, 2003
EXPLORIN'
In 1924, when my father managed to gather a little over three hundred dollars together in one place, he purchased a bright new Ford Model “T” - our first car.
It was a 3-1/2-door “touring car”. In those days the door on the driver's side was merely impressed on the metal so that there appear to be a door there. No handle. It didn't open anyway. I don't remember if Dad had to pay additionally for some of the “extras” the new car sported, but it came with a bag of isinglass curtains you could hang “all around” if you got them
n snapped into place before the rains got to you. The car had running boards on both sides and the one on the left held a collapse able, metal ''luggage rack.” It was clamped to the step and was usually kept folded to fit the “non door” area on the driver's side. We also had a windshield wiper which we boys took turns operated by twisting a small handle as the first raindrops spattered against the high, vertical windshield glass. We also carried a spare tire mounted on the back of the car, and we soon learned that the “tire repair kit” and tools (i.e. - a crank, a lug wrench, an air pump,and inner-tube patches of various sizes as well as a small, tin container of glue.)...were essential for all travel.
With that momentous purchase, a whole new world of exploration opened up for us as a family. My Dad had a special sense of semi-controlled wanderlust. We were a church-going family so after Sunday School and morning worship services at the Presbyterian Church in our section of town, we had our Sunday Dinner and, then, “took a ride” in our car.
Dad loved to explore side roads he'd never used before. When he wondered what might be at the other end, we often found surprises awaiting us. One such Sunday afternoon we ended up in the front yard of a fine, old farm house where the entire family came down from their chairs on the spacious front porch to bid us welcome. The were so glad to have anyone even total strangers off the dusty road to call” on them. After Dad and the Father and Grandfather of the farm family walked around the car, kicked the tires and inspected other features, we all joined the family on rocking chairs, straight chairs, stools and and benches on the the wide, wrap-around porch and sipped minted tea with our new found traveler friends. The youngest girl, maybe six or seven, led my brother and me down creekside to the left of the big, white house and showed us how she could catch live crayfish “by hand.”
On another such adventure, Dad selected the worst looking road at the fork. We left the main dirt road and embarked a rocky trail leading downward through dense woodlands. We found ourselves riding along a valley beside a fine, fast-flowing stream. We had only a poor idea of where we were. When Dad saw an old man sitting on the lean-to-porch of a lean-to cabin leaning toward the river,and just a few feet above the water, he stopped the car and inquired of the seemingly friendly old man as the name of the river which flowed past his home. It was plain the old man heard the question, but he took his own, sweet time deciding what his reply might be. Finally, he poked his old gnarled sapling cane out toward the water and said: ”Well, now! I can't rightly say. I ain't lived here but seven year.”
We found out later the stream was a tributary of the Roanoke River called the Staunton river by folks down stream. With Dad as our leader, our family explored much of southwestern Virginia in the '20's. Even today I find myself wondering at crossroads where we might end up if we took that side road.
A.L.M. July 21, 2003 [c719wds].
Sunday, July 20, 2003
BIGGER BROTHER
There is nothing wrong with our being “big brother” to many of the world's smaller nations. Trying to be a Father unto them, or even a “Daddy”, is both illogical and dangerous to all concerned.
Once a nation accepts the Father arrangement with a more established power, it will never be free on its own. It seems to work that way in history. Entire nations have been absorbed and in such a manner. It comes to be natural for the stronger power to continue to dominate the lesser group regardless of changes which should have altered such a relationship.
Rome never gave up any major portions of its extended Empire. They dissolved at home and ceased to be in a political or military sense, but continue to “rule” the subject peoples through the cultural clutter they left behind in the far flung domains they once ruled.
The Viking invasions left their mark in far-flung areas and they, too, faded away at home rather than surrendered the power they had attained in lands far off. Six hundred years of their presence as the “Dane Law” in eastern England left behind linguistic, social and economic concepts which are evident to this day
There is something like unto a “fatherly” feeling concerning the affairs of the nation called Liberia, right now, and in this me of crisis we are apt to give such feelings precedence because, years ago, we were in a father-like role in creating the state to start with. It was supposed to re-order the lives of free black slaves who had been sold in slavery and transported to our shores.
Just what our feelings might have been in recent incursions into Somalia, in Panama, in Haiti, Croatia, and Serbia, and, more recently, in the Bahrain area, Afghanistan and Iraq. It is difficult to say. I have feeling it was a mixture. The brotherly instincts therein have been in conflict with the more permanent nature of the Fatherly instincts found in our attempts to change the peoples involved.
It seems to me, that our Fatherly and Brotherly intentions are in conflict with each other in many of our incursions in our affairs. We need
some time right now in which to determine what it is we wish to accomplish. I, personally, am confident that we have suitable people in place right now to bring about such a determination, and it will be to the advantage of all of us if they are allowed to do without distraction from their task because of petty re-election-centered barbs from opposition individuals.
Right now is a time when unity is in special demand. It appears we have very little such feelings of working together among those n ow seeking political each. “Spam-ing” C-Span with daily rants of criticism is not the way to go about building strength through unity.
A.L.M. July 18. 2003 [c466wds]
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