Paranoia

So I seem to be in the back of an SUV with it's back seats down - a couple of us are traveling as cargo, sort of.  I seem to know the others in the vehicle with me, although there's a vagueness to them.  It's dusk-ish.  My shirt slides to the side and the guy next to me sees that I'm carrying.  I don't know what I was carrying - appeared to be a semi-automatic of some sort.  "Are you CRAZY?!  We're in Maryland now!  You can't have a gun in Maryland!"  Oh crap!  Panic - I don't want to be caught with it if only because I don't want to lose the gun.  So I pull up the mat we are laying on and tuck it under there.  Then - ack! - I seem to have my .38 on the other hip!  Ack!  Hide it! Hide it!  Just in time, because we arrive at our destination.  Which seems to have something to do with a class of some sort.  And the dream goes on and on and all the vehicles look exactly the same, it's always dim-approaching-dark, and we are never in the same vehicle twice.  I have no idea where my guns are. And I'm really bummed.

Then I wake up and now I know where all my guns are and I don't live in Maryland anymore and that's a very good thing.

C'mon baby...

Read-y Goodness

After a dry spell with fiction that was only temporarily improved when I pulled out E.R. Burrough’s A Princess of Mars after seeing the “John Carter” movie, I’ve hit the jackpot with every book I’ve picked up over the last week.

First up, because I was really naughty at the Air and Space Annex gift shop:  How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, by Mike Brown.  The loss of Pluto has always annoyed me.  When I was a kid I walked ten miles to school. Uphill. In five feet of snow.  Both ways.  And we had nine planets. The model I made in elementary school, assembled out of a bike wheel with painted styrofoam balls attached to the spokes, was lovely, deserving of an A, and perfectly represented that nine planet system.

I was good with the discovery of more moons, and really good with the discovery that Saturn isn't the only planet with rings.  But then, just as it looked like they were going to ADD a planet to the system, Pluto got downgraded to a dwarf planet, which isn't really a planet at all, just a large object in the Kuiper Belt.  Bleah.

I was seriously bummed.  Haven't got over it, either.  But I'm feeling forgiving now.  Mike Brown tells the tale of how he found planets beyond Pluto and then worked to have Pluto and those planets stripped of planet status, mixing the science with the story of a man who was passionately searching the solar system and making historic discoveries at the same time as he was falling in love, getting married, becoming a first time father.  Note to sleep deprived new parents - don't keep the powdered laundry detergent and the clumping cat litter sitting next to each other in the laundry room.  Popular science, clearly and humorously presented.

Then I jumped back 2,000 years to Cleopatra, by Stacy Schiff.  Turns out the cover picture for the book is perfect:

What we think we know about this last of the pharaohs, the Ptolemaic ruler who mostly is known for romancing both Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, is, at best, minimal, and a popular creation more based on Shakespeare and Shaw than the real woman. The last of the Greek rulers of Egypt, Cleopatra reigned longer than Alexander the Great did. She demonstrated her appreciation for Ptolemaic tradition by marrying and eventually assassinating her brother, as well as removing other siblings who stood in her way.  The Ptolemies, it seems, could make the Borgias look like good guys.

She did try to consolidate her power through an affair with an aging Caesar, which produced the male heir Caesar's marriage didn't.  That didn't bring her the guarantees she hoped for.

When Caesar was assassinated and a power struggle broke out she sided with Marc Anthony, carrying on an affair that lasted years and produced three children. In the end, she backed the loser, and Egypt was absorbed into the Roman Empire.

The descriptions of Alexandria at its height, of the court, of traditions and rituals, and of world politics are fascinating and well drawn.  And all this plucked off the shelf at the local Good Will store.

Then there's my current read by Janet Wallach:  Desert Queen.  

Gertrude Bell - Victorian woman, explorer, adventurer, passionate Arabist, friend to Lawrence of Arabia, major force behind the redrawing of the national borders of the Middle East as the Ottoman Empire disintegrated.  She traveled where the Turkish authorities were afraid to go, smuggling her rifle past border guards by wrapping it in her petticoats, the ammunition hidden in her boots.  When she wasn't climbing Swiss peaks.  

Amazing woman, but driven by loneliness, suffering the tragedies of lost loves, filling up the silence in order to keep the pain out.  This is an incredible look at the Middle East 100 years ago as well as the story of an utterly fascinating woman whom Bedouin sheiks welcomed to their fires and called a queen.

Yummy

Where's Bo?

h/t to WCBM.

Exquisite

From Creative Minority Report.

My Sunday

The radar looked like this starting Saturday evening:

We desperately needed rain, so it was welcome.  Lot's of work remaining outside, but this soaking is fine.

Had lots I needed to do inside.  Like finishing cleaning the Glocks I borrowed from Murphy's Law.  Instead, Sunday went like this:

Lay in bed draped with purring cats and listening to birds and falling rain
Move to sofa with blanket, coffee, and book
Re-drape with cats
Read
Eat
Re-drape with cats
Read
Change water filter and scoop cat pan
Re-drape with cats
Read
Eat
Re-drape with cats
Read
Go to Mass
Put on pjs, re-drape with cats
Read
Sleep

It was a lovely day.


P.S. It's a nor'easter, and this is what it looks like in some areas to north and west today:

Rocket Summer

I grew up on Burroughs and Bradbury, Heinlein and Asimov.  My formative years were years when the U.S. was reaching, reaching, reaching - first into the upper atmosphere, then into deep space.  The Mercury flights would have been at the edge of my consciousness, although I don't specifically remember them, but I do remember Gemini and Apollo.  And then came the shuttle program.

Their design was a bit disappointing.  In my world, heavily influenced by books and movies of the 50s and 60s as it was, regular manned space travel would be done in sleek, needle-shaped craft that lifted off and landed on their own power, always setting neatly on their bases.

But still, despite my disappointment in their appearance, the shuttle program was wonderfully exciting, because eventually it made space travel, even though it wasn't into deep space, a regular thing.  Not a regular thing for most of us, but, still, so regular that we often forgot that we had crews in space.  Space travel as almost boring.

The news of the program's ending made me incredibly sad.  It seemed to announce that, for the first time in my life, we had stopped reaching for the stars.  I can't imagine that anymore than people of centuries past could imagine not setting out across the oceans to explore.

I almost didn't go to the ceremony at the Air and Space Annex yesterday. I got up feeling rough, but in the end my disappointment at not seeing the flyover and awareness that it was a historic occasion that wouldn't come again pushed me out the door.  I'm glad I went.

Enterprise was already pulled out. She'll be flown off to another museum today.  She never went into space, but, still, she was the first.

Discovery was waiting just beyond the trees.

Of course, it's not like they could fire up the engines and roll her over on her own power, but it was still an emotional few minutes as Discovery was brought nose to nose to Enterprise.

The difference between the sheltered lady and the work horse is quite obvious.  NASA Administrator Bolden (ret. Major General, Marine Corps) commented:  "You try re-entering the atmosphere at 3,000 miles per hour and see if you don't get a little singed, too."

About half of the former commanders were there, as were some crew members.  My vertical-challangedness made getting pictures difficult.  I would wait and wait and people would finally shift out of my way and just as I hit the button they'd shift again and I'd get this:

But I did grab a couple at the right time.  Tried to grab screen shots, too, but that didn't work very well.

Thankfully, I did manage to grab a shot of the Icon of Space Icons, John Glenn:

The man is 90 years old, yet he seems ageless.  And he made it clear in his comments that he felt the program had been ended prematurely.

It was clear that astronauts are still rock stars.  Folks pressed against the barrier to shake hands, get autographs, take pictures.

I poked around at some of the displays, regretting that my daughter wasn't with me to enjoy the museum with.  I was feeling rather sad, and would have appreciated her company.  And then I came across something that made me happy again.

This is the core of the Orion program.  This is what will take us into deep space and back again, with a mandate to be on Mars by 2030.  Retro-looking because it's the best form for re-entering the atmosphere from deep space, and being built by excited young physicists like the woman I talked to about it, who obviously has passion for what is being done.  Still doesn't look like a proper spaceship, but I'll take it.

First deep space test, I believe, is in 2014.  Knowing that, I can happily dream of a rocket summer again. 

Rocket Summer

One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.

And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town. A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to melt. The doors flew open. The windows flew up. The children worked off their wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear disguises. The snow dissolved and showed last summer's ancient green lawns.

Rocket summer. The words passed among the people in the open, airing houses. Rocket summer. The warm desert air changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before it touched the ground.

Rocket summer. People leaned from their dripping porches and watched the reddening sky.

The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land....

    Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles