Saturday, April 24, 2004
RAINBOW CONSTRUCTION
When viewed from above, the rainbow is a full circle, not an arc. That means that what we think we perceive is an illusion and not a reality at all. It also gives the lie to the idea that the rainbow, since it is a circle has no end a which there rests a ever overflowing pot of gold.
It can be said to have no beginning, as well.
The rainbows which become apparent in our lives become apparent when they appear as detailed point of light up welling into being from the edge of differences in temperature and moisture. Sunlight feeds the illusion and we see a group of colorful sparkles as an arch, which is really a circle, we cannot control or modify by any direction of ours.
We all strive to construct rainbows.
We all try to do so from time to time. We don't call them by that term, of course, or even admit that we are doing so partial by partial by all the light of serious understanding penetrate our creative process. When we meet with difficulties we work seriously and intently to better our situation, to ward off the storm and to strive for a rainbow of confidence and assurance that the trouble has been thwarted. We work seriously at building for what we see as being improvements, changes, and worthy advancements, We like the soft, pillow-like structure of the rainbows composed of all shades and colors - every basic essential of creative attainment - as it occurs in the mind's eye long before it becomes apparent on the other side of involvement worktables. There is no better place to witness yourself building a dream to be real, than when you are in love with someone you realize is to be your natural mate and co-creator. If one follows that guide line of making children is bringing rainbows into being which meld the past and the future together. The child is a completed rainbow constructed in love by a man and a women. Too bring a child into the light is an act of bringing to all the gift of a colorful span which is truly a perfect circle seen often in part only in the world of man's understanding.
We all build rainbows. They are fragile, but the are essential to the enjoyment of the fullness of life. Tend yours with special care.
A.L.M. April 23, 2004 [c422wds]
Friday, April 23, 2004
A PERCHER
We laughed when a kid called Carl joined us in the community who insisted that his Grandfather was a railroad engineer. He was proud of the distinctive fact that his Grandpa was a “percher” and to be of great importance to the success of the railroad. Without Grandpa on the job the railroad would be doomed. It would be forced out of business.
No one man is ever that important, we thought and, as kids we decided to find out how the little boy could be so stubborn as to insist on his Gram pa being of such worth to the railroad. One of our group asked the kid's mother what her father did for a living and she, too, prujdly told us he was indeed a railroad engineer. Furthermore, she added:”He's a percher, too! He's the only one they have, so they depend on him a great deal.”
In time Carl showed us photographs of his Grandpa standing on the bottom step leading up to the cabin of about the biggest steam locomotive ever built. It as a monster. Granddad was a small person under a big shock of white hair and he had a cheerful smile very much like little Carl, we realized.
It all turned out to be a dialect problem .Those folks were from across the mountain from us and they talked differently from people on our side. I think that was the first time I come to understand how such differences could divide basically kindred people from each other. Carl's granddaddy was , indeed, a true railroad engineer,a lifelong employee of the railway company, and in his semi-retired status was the engineer on an ancient but still powerful steam monster which was needed to push the cars of coal over the mountain grade. Carl was correct in claiming that Granddaddy kept the railroad going and when I got to know Granddad better myself, i learned to agree with him on that point. they are shared/ It was his job to wait on a siding and tag his engine to the rear end of the long coal train from the mountain's mines. He pushed the long row of cars across the mountain and waited on the flatlander side to help push extra long trains of empty cars -well over a hundred across the ridge to be refilled and sent back to the collier's waiting in Hampton Rhodes and the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia.
Carl's family had some other strange word usages they used. We, in time, I now see, absorbed them as ours and they took ours over as their own.
It strikes me that might have been a good thing for all of us. It is good to have someone who can willingly take over our mistakes, help you us through hard times, be ready and waiting to help again and through the hard times, and be ready and waiting for anything which might come along to impede our progress. Rewards are more enjoyable when they can be shared.
A.L.M. April 21, 2004 [c517wds[
Thursday, April 22, 2004
RACING CHANGE-A-ROO
In the time you and I will be sitting here talking about it, the very nature of Stock Car Racing will be changed!
I'll agree with you that's biting off quite a trackful,, but you have to you have to keep up with what NASA has been doing recently to realize how racing has been given a boost which may well change the very nature of the sport.
We have to learn to use a newly coined word..
Get used to this mix of letters: NiCrAIY. It is being pronounced as :”nick-CRAY-ly.” It is an alloy; a mix of nickel, chromium, aluminum and yttrium which has a boiling point of over 3800 degrees. Think of it all as finely powdered materials which, when mixed with just the proper amount of zirconia – a ceramic thermal barrier - becomes a gooey substance which can be sprayed on metallic surfaces.
NASA has developed systems of spraying that depart from the usual routines so the substance can be sprayed as ultra-=thin layers. The system, being called “vacuum plasma application”- makes it possible to apply numerous layers on metal surfaces. It is applied to the molds for for making the parts and product surfaces themselves reedy to take on excessive load of heat.
Oddly enough this innovative method has a strange advantage in that it it is not take anyhing away from Bernays th Agna way from the treated surface n or didoes add anything. It may BE SAID tha titinterpoosed something helpful to both sides. Normally there are sharp bounderies between coatings and the combustion liners. As the exceedingly thin layers of NiCrITY are sprayed it provides a cushioning effect between the two surfaces, smoothing the surface out rather than imposing anything between them.. Often there is a harsh exchange between such surfaces which creates heat. Less stress means less heat.
Of course, many factor will be found which may may well keep this advancement at a distance for some time, such as cost, but it is obvious that when it does arrive the nature of racing could change a great many ways. Cars will faster, be more efficient and demand less maintenance delay and expense,when engines can be made to run smoother, faster, longer and without excessive heat problems in sustained track action. It will. Not doubt, come to be used in automobiles of street use.as well with their six to eight thousand rpms, as compared to racing's 12-thousand plus peaks. Both can be better performers with coatings of piston heads and engine block cylinder heads with NiCrITY and with better combustion, higher efficiency and hence longer periods of use.
We shall see, If more speed results some of the nation's short tracks may face some new worries. If , however, greater efficiency is possible racing may become more reasonable for everyone.
It may be a dream, but the the cost at the gate can be made more realistic, perhaps, so more people can enjoy more days at the races.
A.L.M. April 21, 2004 [c504wds]e
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
SOME WILD IDEAS
I don't remember who said it this past week. It may have been a travel-minded lady on TV recently or there a dozen places in which I might have read it.
She lamented the fact that she had just a few years left in which to spend some time in the romantic and historical City of Venice. She said she was in a hurry to do so, because she wanted to see the city before we it “sank beneath the sea.”
Venice is disappearing but not at the dire rate her urgent wish might indicate. It is a double process, really, which recent studies indicate that the water level of Mediterranean's Sea, and hence of the Adriatic Sea upon which the City of Venice has been located for centuries is showing increasingly higher levels at times. It is not a constant factor, nor even a seasonal problem, but there are growing indications that the foundations of the city are being eroded and have been weakened by excessive immersion in sea water. It may well be, too, that modern maintenance practices are not so “personal” as those those undertaken by people seeking endlessly to maintain their family heritage.
This is no a new problem. I can remember it being discussed at great length many decades ago in magazines such a “Popular Science” magazine. It was urged by that publication that a system of siphons might be installed crossing the Atlas Mountains of Northern Africa which would take Mediterraneans Sea waters into the vast Sahara Desert area where it would create a new inland sea. prevailing winds would carry the moisture northwards and the falling rains along the Atlas Range would feed fresh water to those areas in so much need of it.. .making possible major social and economic improvements for large numbers of deprived people.
A crazy idea? Think about it before you classify it too rigidly.
The second idea which has come up the news this week is that of gravitomagnatism. You have to be a devotee of Dick Tracy comics to recall when that was a favorite subject under discussion and development. I don't recall the trick name of the genius Doctor-Somebody who developed magnetic power to power his fleet of space craft on the Dick Tracy comic strip. We can put a lot of the blame on him if wish to do so or you can get busy right away figuring out how you can reverse a ;Lazar beam focused on a black hole and in some way “pipe” the gravity fed power back to earth. So far all we can get is about ¾ of an inch sideways jiggle out of it. Find a way to tap the radiation at the black holes which seem to be a source of such a such a galactic source of power in tremendous amounts. Rig up things you think might do the job.
Get busy at it as soon as you can or someone else will come across the simple – why-didn't-I-see-that??? - set up that will do it. Get busy with your own untamed ideas. Such wild wish-I-could ideas may well be the basis of our future.
A.L. M. April 29, 2003 [c549wds]
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
STAGE STUCK
The celebrated bard, Will Shakespeare, was correct when he suggested that all the world is but a stage upon which we act out the individual role to which we have been assigned.
We lend unique qualities to that role, of course, so that
it seems to be not to be controlled by any force than our own. We act beyond self more than we realize, Shakespeare illustrated that point quite often as he depicted men and women acting out their “fretful hour” on stage. Much that we do, if we are to be counted excellent in our role, came from the writer, the director and, yes, from the willingness of your fellow actors to hear you out. They fit you into their lives, or, at least, accepted your presence upon life's stage with them as being just and good and logical.
I shall always be grateful for my short but memorable experience during my teen and post-teen years with the Radford (Virginia) “Little Theater.” group. Things I learned then about myself and others who acted out parts with me have stayed on as valued assets. The most prominent lesson among then, I think, might be that it was then I came to know that the most common actions we take are dramatic in a real sense. I came to find that concept of value in writing and have done passages in which I had little or nothing to do with other than serving as a funnel of sorts used to transfer the action to paper for others to heed, read and do.
Even now as I sit here typing these words, in a sense may well
be activating a role. I have wondered why Shakespeare did not differentiate between an actor and “ham” actor. The play - the drama of living - depends largely of what the individual makes of it.
A.L.M. April l9, 2004 [c330wds]
Monday, April 19, 2004
BY THE NUMBERS
That quantity which is now known as ”a baker’s dozen” and President Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” have each played a decisive role in my life.
That, of course, does not even come close to what some crypto-zanies insist we live by some system of mumbo-jumbo numerical oddities.
All I am claiming, is that those two patches of numbered history have guided me in much of my life. I suggest that you might examine your life and see if you, too, have lived “by the numbers” from time-to-time.
I learned, as a kid, that the “baker’s dozen” of anythings came about in French Revolutionary times when “big business”of that day – the local bakers – tried to eek out a little more profit by counting “eleven” of anything as being “twelve” - one dozen. That was not too difficult to do when the buyers could not really count anyway, and even easier if you could keep them talking about other things while filling their grocery order.
Someone blew the whistle on the wayward dough boys and those running the country at the moment try let it be known that any baker found short-loafing the peasantry would lose his head at the next guillotine gathering.
Not only did the short-loafing stop but baker’s – to be sure heads stayed attached to their neck- started donating an extra loaf or bun to each full dozen. That became our “Baker’s Dozen” - which is about the only time we find thirteen posted on the good side of life’s ledgers.
Knowing that story taught to develop a sense of fairness u dividing the blessings my older brother and I shared. Then, nine years later, the arrival of three new siblings enabled us to teach them to so treat each other; teaching them to do the same with each other. Behind it all, of course was parental guidance and the potential of parental punishment if things went otherwise. I, for one never tested the the theory completely,but just enough to know such authority was there somewhere.
Concerning Woodrow Wilson's “Fourteen Poiints:
My Sixth and Seventh Grade education seems to have been fashioned on creating congresspersons because we did a lot of debating which was “in” at the time. Among the assigned subjects: - worked to death for these formal arguments was - “Resolved: That the United States Should Be a Member of the League of Nations”
I remember being assigned to be windbag for both pro and con sides of the argument. I became acquainted with Wilson's fourteen points enough to spout endlessly about the ones which were working out and those that were not developing as Wilson had thought they might. Such actions caused confusion with the debating enemy and we won more often than lost.
In political affairs today one an use such lists and compilations to advantage. Few opponents will be strong on all points of contention and one has to be ready to exploit that lack of factual knowledge concerning any weaker link.
Both tactics still apply to living today.
A.L.M. Apil1 8, 2004 [c518wds]
Sunday, April 18, 2004
WRECK RACKETS
Advertising which offers you an opportunity to contribute to “your favorite charity” has been a marked area of fraud for many years now, but the offer continue to multiply which indicates that the scam is growing.
You have certainly see such ads, which encourage you to be generous by giving you old car to a church, orphanage, or to some other fund. drive. Evidence is abundantly available which shows that very little of the amount of money so raised ever gets to the charity it pretends to be sustaining. Ten per cent, at best, ever actually gets close to the target and the rest goes in to the pockets of the organizers. It has grown into a multi-million dollar fraudulent scheme.
It is so easy for an individual or an affiliated church group to see such offers as new way to give by donating used cars to those who will resell them and send the profits along to the charity of your choice. The “wreck” - which is the misleading name given so often to an old car - can be refurbished a bit and re-sold or it may end up in a “chop shop” where certain parts of a specific car will be removed and sold to advantage. Some particular; models will bring a worthy return on the used car markets in South American and other areas.
Numerous warnings have been issued concern this type of fraud, but the practice continues unabated and is even growing in some areas. The cheater who runs these frauds may, from time-to-time, actually make token gifts to certain genuine charity organizations from who they will then solicit words of appreciation, recommendation,and even written testimonials for their “fine work.” The opportunity can. then we extended to a new set of car-donaters to join in this modern way of giving to the needy.
This particular form of charity cheating fit the American personality well, too. Many Americans are “in love with the automobile” and this works to the charity cheaters advantage, We hate to part with our old car which has been ,in a sense, a member of the family: and has served us well. We don't like the idea of it being sold on a corner lot, or taken apart or sent to the scrapyard press jaws changing it to a chunk of metal for use in seaside landfill or pier project of some sort. It seems proper to many Americans that the way to part with such an old wheeled friend might well be to pass it along to others who do not have a car. If there are people offering do the actual work of physical transition of the vehicle to those in need one should make it as easy as possible for them to do so.
If you wish to sell your old car and donate the proceeds to your favorite charity, go ahead , but don't count on any crooked convoy to do the actual changing for you.
A.L.M. April 17, 2004 [c513wds[.
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