Cold Never Bothered me Till Recently!

This is our eighth winter up here in Northern Vermont! It was interesting at first - a challenge - something to write home about. Well, now I live here and it is home and, quite frankly, it's just too darn cold for too darn
long Elsa! Enough's enough. You can take your fractal frozen wonderland - I prefer Miami this time of year!
Just kidding! Winter is just one incredible experience. The snow is pure white and quiet - perfect to sleep by at night. It's deep and dark and beautiful. We've just passed the solstice tonight and we're headed straight for the summer. What a great voyage this is!!!!

Sukkot in Vermont

My family was never very up on Jewish customs. We celebrated only Rosh Hashanah with a special meal the night before and on Yom Kippur we fasted - well as best we could. My dad usually just slept the whole day and got up when the fast was over and had dinner! He actually worked very hard all the time and this was a good holiday for him. He had not got along too well with his own father as he told it and seemed to hold it against Judaism for that and for a difficult life altogether. He never had his Bar Mitzvah and seemed to resent that too. Nevertheless, we had a very happy homelife, but we grew up in a vacuum of Jewish tradition. This changed when my mom died and my father followed her a few years later. It was sad in our house where it had been happy and I didn't want to stay there with my brother. Israel was in the news as they defeated the Arabs that surrounded them. It was David and Goliath and the world celebrated their victory with them. I felt proud for them and I decided to take a break from the sadness at home and visit Israel with my brother for a  while. It turned out to be four years! Meanwhile, I had married an Israeli girl and my son was born. He now has three children who were also born there in Israel. As a result, I have a very different view of what Judaism is and what the holidays mean.

I can relate to the Sinai desert now, having lived very close to it. I can understand what it was to wander forty years there before finding  the much better living conditions further north. People take water and vegetation for granted when it is all around them as it is in most of the temperate areas of our world. When you live on the desert, you see things differently. You thank heaven for a few drops of water and for any kind of food. The roots of the Jewish people are way back there in the desert of Sinai. A new slant on a  "wandering people"  eh?  Perhaps restarting then on this this "learn as you go" version of an ancient yet totally new and unique religiion, keeping its records and carefully marking oases and divine pheneomena so that their grandchildren and their grandchildren might have it a bit easier!
Well, I didn't build a special structure, I used a shed I had put up for sheltering tools and machinery against the winter snows. I did, though, say my candle prayer for the holiday, which was a first for me and I ate a donut instead of dipping "challah" in honey, but it worked for me. Reaching back thousands of years, with the help of memories of a Bedouin tent we'd sat in many years ago, I could just about see the early Israelites celebrating their good fortune in the midst of all that sand for enough water and perhaps some fruit and a small shelter to protect them against the cold of the desert night.
"The palm tree will provide for you!"

Smarty Jones and The Belmont Stakes

      The Belmont Stakes

     This one goes back a few years and is taken from a web-page I kept up for my science classes at Philadelphia Regional High School. If your interested, it still runs at: http://members.tripod.com/mrgoldsteinpa

I did a couple of cute stories for the students under "The Adventures of Wooples the Cat", about my cat Wooples who learned things very quickly and totally surprised me one day with his command of the English language!!

Anyway, here goes;

It was a terrible day in Philadelphia. It was raining fairly heavily and kind

of cold too.  I had been watching the running of the Belmont Stakes with Wooples, my cat. Wooples rarely watched television but he would keep me company if I was interested in watching a program. He preferred watching the birds on the front lawn. He'd jump up on the back of the chair by the front window and peer out between the vertical blinds with an intensity that reminded me of documentaries of hunched lions peering at prey through high grasses.  But today was different. We were going to watch Smarty Jones win the triple crown of horse racing and have a Smarty Party.  I had been caught up in the Smarty Jones excitement that had  swept through Philadelphia. Smarty was going to win the triple crown of horse racing and Philadelphia was going to be famous and the whole world would be happy.

     I had explained all this to Wooples during a commercial about Visa credit cards. Wooples assured me that he would help me root for Smarty and that he felt confident that Smarty would win the triple crown of horse racing and Philadelphia would be famous  and the whole world would be happy.  

      The rest is history. As Smarty got nosed out toward the finish, I turned the TV off. I couldnt bear to see or hear any more. I was thrown back to 1960 when the Phillies lost the national league pennant.  We were ten games ahead toward the end of the season. All we had to do was win one game, one game in ten. We lost them all! Goodbye world series. Goodbye famous Philadelphia. Goodbye happy world. It just wasnt in the cards.

     Wooples was lying on the floor with his chin on the carpet, his eyes nearly closed. He turned and looked up at me. "He ran as fast as he could" he said, and shut his eyes. He shuts his eyes whenever hes sad or sympathetic. Sometimes he shuts his eyes when you scratch his back or pet him but then he purrs too.

"I dont know what happened Wooples"  - I offered, lost for an explanation. "He was supposed to win. Everyone said he was going to win. The odds were 1-5!! for heavens sake."

     We let it go for several hours. Wooples was still brooding. He broods when he doesnt understand something. "He tried as hard as he could" he said. "He ran with all his heart Smarty probably feels real bad now."

     I felt bad too. I imagined a large number of people in Philadelphia who had to cancel their Smarty Parties felt bad as well. No triple crown. No famousPhiladelphia. No happy world. No champagne. Just a big let down. "Sometimes you lose Wooples. When you lose, youre supposed to feel bad." "OK", he said, and we brooded together.

Bob's New Job

A bright northern New England sun cut sharply through the cool morning and rapidly warmed the small house where Bob slept. The birds chirped and the dog barked and mixed with beeps from a phone that finally worked to pull him out of his bed. Without a job things had been difficult, but that would all change this morning.

"Hello," Bob answered and found himself totally mystified. "What is a Home Wizard?" he asked bewildered. "Oh the online job from Team Mates."  Now he had an idea what this was about. He had been curious about this job. He had never done this kind of work before. He'd  taught math as a substitute teacher, but he was a business management major. "Your home is probably the largest investment you've made. Put it to work for you." He repeated what  this fellow was saying on the phone. "Sure it makes sense," he replied. "So, how does it work? What does it do?" He was curious again.  "It's a free subscription to a weekly newsletter about how to put your house to work for you." Again he repeated what the guy was telling him. "Then we sell him stuff that matches his answers to surveys about improving the value of his home." "Oh I get it,"  Bob said, 'but can't you just go down to the store and buy the mop or whatever it is that's going to raise the value of your investment...". "Not this mop." The fellow jumped on Bob's exact example. "That's the beauty of the program. That's how and why it works. These items are really good buys. They're made overseas and they look good and they are really functional. There's a free trial. Really. No one ever, or nearly ever, asks for their money back. They're inexpensive and they do work. They're attractive, and so is the packaging. There are a lot of little tricks that make this work, both for our customers and for us."  "Takes five minutes and we'll send you all the gear you need."

A few minutes later and Bob was looking at a web page with a large banner that read: "You're in Business.  Congratulations! ...Just five easy steps and you have your own Online Business"

There he was with pictures of brooms and vacuum cleaners, towels and detergents, dishware of all kinds, everything from vegetable choppers to trash cans, and his choice of his sample assortment, which, by the way, included  very attractive cutlery sets and glassware which were easily worth more than the $49.95 new member start up fee. "Why not give it a try." he thought and had visions of huge sums  of money coming in to his "Pay Pal" account"

A New Job

It was a beautiful morning up in Vermont. Bob was glad he'd moved up to go to school here away from all the noise of the big city. Still, there were times when it seemed too quiet and all he could think to do was lie down and nap.

Good Habits

I just wanted to get back in the habit of writing more frequently. If nothing more than whittling words, it still beats watching TV or playing computer games!
Today was a particularly beautiful day, cool after yesterday's heavy rains. Clear blue skies dominated overhead and it seemed like our birds sang new and brighter songs to note the change in the weather.
I ran to the crest of what we call "Desperation Hill", so named for its steep grade that just continues up and up somehow well past your expectations and hopes. It was quite tiring, too tiring for exhilaration at the completion, but certainly serving  to help keep me in better shape!

Labor Day Weekend Winds Down

Well here it is, late afternoon on Labor Day. The whole lay back and rest up weekend is just about gone. You know - besides washing my pick-up and cleaning up the garage a bit,  I didn't take time enough just to snooze. I'm going to do that right now! Thanks again America!

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July!!

Wow - it's been about five months since my last entry! I've been very busy - you can imagine!!

I wanted to write up what I call  "My Bear Story". I've told this story a couple of times in class. My students seem to like it. I like it because there's a moral and it seems to fit so many others' lives as well as my own.

It's a true story. I grew up in Philadelphia. The closest thing I ever knew about the "wild" was the park across the street from our house in west Philly. I was actually born in Camden, NJ, across the river from Philadelphia, but we moved in with my mom's relatives when I was eight years old. No, there were no bears in either Camden or Philadelphia, none that I can remember, that is. There were bears in California though, large bears!
I happened to be in Los Angeles in about 1975 and decided to join the army. We won't go into why I made that decision or why I happened to be in LA.  I make extraordinary decisions sometimes. They seem perfectly reasonable at the time and rather strange later on. Needless to say, I did my basic training at Ft. Ord, CA which is now closed I believe. I had visions of leading an artillery assault on the Berlin Wall and finally giving our side a win against the "commies". I was very patriotic then. I still am. I just needed some catching up to do on reality - political and otherwise. Certainly bears!
So I shined my boots and ran and jumped and marched and did push ups. I also threw things that blew up and fired my weapon and signed up for the field artillery. Then it was all over and we had to wait a while to transfer to our advanced training. Mine was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
Now, you have to understand that preparing your mind and body to destroy people - whether large scale or small scale, affects you emotionally. I was not feeling particularly great about people at all. This was not the movies. This was real life. It's different. I am not naturally like that. I like people. I don't like bad people, but most people are not bad, at least not the people I've met.
I had a couple of weeks and I had to break out of a particularly dark mood. I went down to the PX and rented a back pack and a little pup tent, an entrenching tool (a fold-up little shovel) and some other camping gear.
I caught a bus and headed down to the "Big Sur". I just wanted to get away, particularly people and cars and
telephone wires and helicopters and noise. I wanted to hear birds and start my campfire miles away from any town or vestige of civilization. Heat up some water in my canteen and mix in some instant coffee and sugar and powdered milk and light up a cigarette and take a deep breath of the peace and quiet of the wilderness. I could taste the coffee already. So I'd bought some salami and rolls, mustard and potato salad, coffee, donuts and a couple of packs of cigarettes from a store near where I got off the bus and just started wallking into the forest. Further and further, until I couldn't hear a car engine or see a power line. I walked until it started getting dark and picked a spot and pitched my tent. I built a large fire and brewed my coffee just like I wanted, sat back on a log and took in a deep breath and realized something that hit fairly hard.  You know how you can suddently know something like, "I forgot the keys"? It hits you. I knew. I simply knew,  "there's bears in here". I could just about smell them.
I felt like I'd really dug myself into a hole  -  deep! I was way too far into the forest to reach any kind of help. There were no cell phones in those days. It was nearly dark and I certainly coulnd't make my way back. I'd made sure of that!
It was me and the bears and my entrenching tool!
Gosh! "Why do I do this"? I asked myself. There went me and nature and my salami sandwich and my perfect night of rest. You have no idea how a first sergeant booming into your barracks in the middle of the night can spoil a good rest. Now this was worse!
"OK - think!"  There was no way some old bear was going to get at my food. I put all my food into one bag and inside my tent. He was going to have to get by me if he dared and I was a basically trained American soldier. I felt sorry for that bear if he came anywhere near me and that entrenching tool! I learned later that the last place you store food is anywhere near yourself. You throw a line over a tree limb and tie your food onto it so no animal can reach it. But, hey, I grew up in the city.
Here I was as far away from any kind of help as you could get and no way back till morning.
Well "OK!" I built the fire up very high and stood guard. It must have taken a full hour before I fell totally asleep!
I woke in the morning. The fire was nearly out. I threw some dirt over it to make sure it wouldn't blaze again.
In an hour or so, I heard traffic on the highway. Then I could see it and telephone poles and the general store where I'd bought my coffee and donuts. Let me tell you something if you haven't yet guessed. I was very very happy to see and hear people again, cars and busses and telephones.

God bless America. Have a great fourth of July!

Denouement

Denouement

It was hard to believe that there would be so much relief to be back in Vermont. Jim had learned more than one thing about life and happiness on this trip. He wondered too about the way of things for people; how much was pre-ordained, if anything, and how much depended on their own decisions and considerations. He never would have been with Nomi, and certainly wouldn't have appreciated her either without their little adventure. He would have considered her just some spoiled little co-ed, which she wasn't at all. For that matter, he would never have met Heshy, let alone form the friendship that they did, except for his Dad's insistence on the career he didn't want. "That must be it", he thought.  "That's where all this came from, my father gave it to me."  He paused and looked at the thousands of generations of men before him with their hard learned lessons, all looking back and smiling at him. "They knew", he thought. "That's where all that force came from" . "Gosh". He looked at it all and at the sun setting over the mountains in the west and understood a piece of life. 

Needle in a Haystack

So that was it. Two months minimum to wait for assistance from the DSA. The only other choice they had was the tiny light duty dingy. This ship was kept at remote stations like this one in order to ferry passengers and equipment and to handle emergencies that were close by. It was not designed for long distance runs, certainly not anything like the run back to close space which they would have to make if they were to survive. "What about the Armstrong Heshy?", Jim broke the silence. "Forget it, with all the luck in this part of the galaxy and twice the supplies we'd be able to stuff in, I'd give it half a chance to ever show up on the radar. That's how close we'd get. No Jim, I don't want to freeze to death out there and that's what would happen." Heshy sounded really hopeless. "We could rendezvous with the cutter that's much more realistic. I've been going over the figures for the last hour. It would take the best math we had to get a line good enough to make it on the available fuel. We'd have to make little tiny corrections as we went." "Doesn't the computer do that automatically?", Jim asked. "Only if it has reliable position data. Here one thousandth of a percent would translate to hundreds of miles. You can't rendezvous like that. We have to monitor our position more frequently and more accurately than is normally done." Jim was well aware of the importance of relative velocity in docking maneuvers. It took huge amounts of energy to make even relatively small course changes at the extremely high velocities that they would be travelling. This far out, rendezvous were very expensive. "I think it's worth a try Heshy!" 

Getting on with the Story

No story, no happy! The whole trick is to make a happy here! It's hard not to be happy - on this world at this time or on any world at any time - almost! You have to work at it! There are exceptions and, of course, the news seems to carry only the exceptions lately. "Man hits thumb with hammer in Delhi India" - and then you get the whole story with all the details - "ouch", he said. Then his mother is interviewed. "Yes, I was in the other room and heard, "ouch", etc. No, we're not here to suppress emergency communications. There's a place for that, and there's a place for exceptions as well.
"Dance of the Deep" is supposed to be a funny happy story that happens about 300 years in the future, It is intended to be as realistic as possible and create a pleasant imaginative background, characters and situations that invite the reader to help in the creation of a better future for mankind. In other words, a happy story.
There are times, though, that it is difficult, or seems difficult, to be happy. Exceptional times. These times are lacking good creative input which means low level help at best. "Who cares", or "same old baloney", are the attitudes about sharing the best we have to offer for each other. We are working against a bad creative particle - "cold grayness forever" for example, or even worse - chaos - no ordered time or space - in other words - no  understandable future, or a future where "cold grayness forever" seems pleasant by comparison!

Well this is one analysis of "writers block", at least for science fiction that aims for happy endings.
Recognizing this, and responsible as creative writers, we get on with our story:


Nomi's fear was palpable. Even if they could outrun the Vulture, they risked a long dangerous journey in a craft not designed for the stresses they were sure to experience. The radiation exposure alone was almost enough to force a longer course line further from the sun. Fuel reserves prohibited this. Food, water and power were also major considerations that they hadn't yet quite worked out. Jim knew that Heshy could and would solve this. He knew something else too. He knew that the success of their return depended on how much they cared about each other. Heshy was very sensitive to the operational limits of their little ship and knew they would need to be pushed. Jim was equally sensitive to the operational limits of Heshy, Nomi, and himself and was likewise aware that these would be pushed too. He felt Nomi's fears and listened closely to Heshy as he whispered to himself about course possiblitites. "Remember that seafood restaurant in Massachusetts Heshy?", Jim asked. "The Lobster Tails?", Heshy returned. "Yes. The first thing we're going to do when we get back is treat Nomi to dinner on that dock. It'll be July, perfect weather for us." They all chuckled as the fears melted away.

Some Creative Philosophy

The Trick

There are times when everything "clicks" just right. When it is enough to watch the rain fall from inside the window. There is a comfort to present time itself and it is sufficient experience to satisfy the senses and the being as well. It doesn't really matter what it is. A snowflake falling from the roof cuts into your field of vision and reminds you of good times. You walk across the carpet in your socks and recall playing with your brother and family. You smell eggs frying in a pan in the and hear someone say "good morning". The communication values are high and there is no suppression, no threats, no bad lingering news on your mind. You are secure in yourself and what you know from now and till as long as you'd like. There's a lot of this for many people in childhood. Life and people and whatever looks over us, helps and supports us. The "trick" is in the creation. A bad particle is a bad particle. You win the grand slam in tennis and your nose itches and you can't forget what she said to you before the match. Life looks and feels bitter no matter what occurs. Snowflakes fall in possibly the prettiest array in several dozen winters and settle on the trees and ground and it irritates your senses somehow. Nothing can be right. A missed swing from forty years ago in a playground baseball game soured any possibility for happiness for anyone anywhere ever. This is bad creation. It can be done on purpose or in error, but the intention still has to be bad or it won't have much force. This is the stuff of creative suppression. It's downright awful!

So the "trick" is in putting out top notch creative particles and attacking the suppressive sources as well.



Remembering the Winters in Vermont

Their desperate situation and the view of the extremely cold and lonely OP16d port field started Jim thinking about a cold winter in Vermont when he had to cram for finals. The future refused to admit any warmth or humor for him. It was all hard work and suffering, followed by endless cold and ultimate failure. He was forced to review his life and compromise his hopes for success. He could remember nodding off and waking in the morning still dressed and under his blanket. Heshy had come in and brought coffee and it was snowing heavily outside the window. It was going to be alright. Heshy would help him through it. One thing at a time and they would be done and ready. A little chickadee flew over and settled outside on the window sill and looked toward them and then flew away. It was so darned beautiful out there. What in the world was wrong with him. He was in the best school in the Eastern USA. He was young and had everything going for him, great friends and family. This was how it was in life. Sometimes you really had to work hard to prepare for the rougher times in life. This was school. He expected one day to have to face real tests like these.
And here he was and here was Heshy himself with the answers. "Whoever designed this facility deserved an award", he thought as Heshy brought in a fresh pot of coffee.

Kind of Cold Lately

Handling the Cold

Just pulling out of a really rough one today. Had the pets in last night, expecting extreme cold that never really got that bad. The forecast was for minus 26 or 28 or something, so I brought them in. It got down to maybe minus 13 or so, which was not quite so life threatening. So I missed sleep again for about the third night. I was up at about 5:50 from the dog barking to go out, and that was that. There was a faint light of dawn in the east south east about 6:17 when I headed back in after setting the dog back in the garage and the cat with him. I had warmed the garage up to about 40 degrees or so, warm enough for the animals, and I set up the "milk house" heater to keep them warm in addition. I came back in, had breakfast and laid back down for about two hours. It was a good rest this time. I have to go back out now. It's about 7:13 in the evening and I started a wood fire in the wood stove. I have to check it.

OK - The dog - "Snuggles" seemed very comfortable and the cat - "Tina" was very playful, as usual. The wood fire was just about out and I closed the air vents so that the fire would go completely out relatively safely. That's the problem with burning wood for fuel. It's cheaper, but it requires continual monitoring for safety. After heating the garage for about 10 minutes, the temperature rose to about 48 degrees Fahrenheit. Without a strong wind, and with the electric heater going, it should stay a bit above freezing till tomorrow morning. The current forecast from NOAA is a low of -22 tonight. This is about five degrees warmer than last night's forecast which never really got below minus 13, so we'll chance it. Last winter it was good for minus 20 with the electric heater on. This is fine except for the cost! Heating with electricity is very expensive in Vermont. Still a few cold nights is a cheap enough price to have to pay for living in probably one of the most beautiful places in the US. The people up here are very aware of the values Vermont offers. They also don't like it to be so very cold in the winter. 

Coming Clean - Almost

It was time to get out of this mess. There was nothing left to do but get back to where he was before all of this started. For Nomi's sake and for Larry's and his own, he had to make a clean cut away from all the nonsense. This meant fronting up to what the Vulture actually had on him. These silly false salvage operations. These games they'd been playing had been wrong and that was all there was to it. That would mean the end of his career. He might be able to get Heshy off by taking all the blame himself, but that was it. All the college, all the technical training, all the time on their salvage missions, was over for him. He had to do it. He sat down and started to report his emergency. "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday..." , he began. "Hold it. What are you doing?" Heshy interrupted. "I'm sending out an emergency call", Jim quickly answered. "What are you going to say? How will you explain our being here?" Heshy insisted. "I'm just going to tell them the truth Heshy. It's time to own up to all the wrong decisions I've made." He was resigned to get it all out on the table. "Not so fast Jim, I'm part of this too you know." Jim dismissed this. "I'll tell them that you just did what I told you to. You had no idea what was going on." Heshy looked right at him. "That's not true Jim, and If that's what you're doing, I'm not going to let you take all the blame yourself." Jim had forgotten all that. Now he realized that it wasn't just him and it wasn't quite as simple as he thought. Something had intervened and it wasn't going to let Jim's life be totally destroyed. "Tell them we got raided and marooned here." Just then his mayday message was answered. OP16d this is the Great Beyond we received your mayday. What's going on?" A nearby ship was on their screen. 

An Invitation to Dance

                                                               An Invitation to Dance

Wheelock Technical Center for Near Space Exploration was located just west of the main campus of what was once Dartmouth College. It was called "East Coast" by the undergraduate cadets which distinguished it from "West Coast",  the only other major Space Exploration Academy in the US.

Both Jim Wallace and Larry Herreschoff were juniors at the academy. This gave them a special altitude among the freshman and sophomores. They had been close friends since their freshman orientation week, finding their major study concentration areas similar and the total "disorientation" they were experiencing  solid enough reasons to form a crew of two against the confusion. The concept of "Freshman Disorientation Week" would continue to bring smiles many years into the future, as would the way freshmen, particularly, would attempt to mimic the attitudes, jargon, and even the study habits of the upper classmen. At times, Jim and "Heshy" would play with this, making up expressions that they would feed to the freshmen. "Rare" was a classic example of theirs. "That's really rare George. Great work." Shortly it would be all over the school. It was not a particularly kind thing to do and would get them into trouble from time to time. It was not "super sharp" as Jim and Heshy had picked up when they were freshmen, and who knew where that had come from. The best of us surely harbor a cruel intention or two somewhere. This one belonged to Jim. He didn't really want to be studying engineering and navigation in this school, or any school for that matter. It was his father's idea and Jim protested this in his own way.

Today they had cooked up what they hoped would lighten up a very heavy class on emergency communications with a bit of "rare" and "super sharp" communication technology of their own. Heshy, who was very gifted in most of the technology they studied had imported a new holograph program which had been designed to fit a social "meet your match" commercial system. In this case he was able to interface some of the girls in the class with both himself and Jim on a "shall we dance" get to know you invitation program. Girls and guys would appear dancing the latest steps to current popular music all smiles and fun. It was very well done, and considering the context, very funny. What they didn't realize was that the lab that they were using for class had been wired to record and publicize all pertinent notes into one corner of the viewing deck. This was common sense when you thought about it. It allowed all members of the lab as well as other classes in the school to view and comment on another's notes if there were enough people interested in an item. The "rarity" and "super sharpness" of the little dance with swirling glowing dresses and laughing girls and guys definitely worked to attract more attention than the pair of them had intended. Heshy couldn't understand it at first when "sure I'd love to dance with you" and "when and where can we meet" started coming in by the dozens and then hundreds. The stir in the lab with laughter and comments coming out of the cubicles and growing louder soon answered their questions. They had a hit alright. One that was carefully reviewed by the Dean of Students who, if he hadn't had a sense of humor and an appreciation for good communication technology would have handed out a serious suspension to the two of them. As it was, with all of them viewing the recording, all they could do was laugh at the whole thing. It was a very clever program and very well integrated into the emergency communication class.  

Reflections from a Distant Outpost

Jim could see Nomi's face reflected in the polythermo window. Suddenly It was like one of those special moments when you could feel a heightened importance, like before a major examination at the academy or arriving for an ultra important meeting. Jim couldn't quite define the sensation.  He thought about what she was experiencing and he thought about how far away they were from anything familiar. "We're lucky they let us go." Jim said and turned to her. "I know", she returned. "It's a tough situation, but we'll get out of it." Jim was reassuring and Nomi appreciated his effort. 

What they didn't quite understand was that they had just experienced a primary recognition node. Like an eclipse of the sun across a planet, millions and more persons had moved through a sort of spiritual refection point, a punctuation, not unlike an alignment of planets or the sweep of comets around a star in an unusually symmetrical pattern. It could have been some great astronomer hundreds of years ago, a Newton or a Galileo or even someone thousands of years before or more, watching the stars and understanding their motions, whose enlightenment echoed through time and touched the human spirit. 

Polar Vortex

I took a course in meteorology several years ago. I did quite well at it. We visited a national weather service station which was valuable experience. My mentor for the course was a well known tv weather program personality. I taught the course for many years in high schools. We had weather stations installed on the roofs. Why all this background? I never heard of a polar vortex - or not that I remember. It might be in my notebook. It could be that a polar vortex simply didn't visit this far south in all this time - about 12 years. Be that as it may, wow, it isn't the 5 degrees or so, so much as the howling winds and the 30 knot gusts. We have minus twenty, even minus thirty around here often, but it never hits this hard!
Whatever you want to call it, it certainly isn't the Beach Boys!
Take cover! Wear lots of extra clothing! Have plenty of extra heating back offs in case of failures. Stay warm and keep your sense of humor! All you need for hot chicken soup is a can of soup, some pieces of wood, a sheltered place away from the wind and some matches!

Even Colder!

The National Weather Service had a forecast which included minus 27 degrees Fahrenheit for the low last night. I doubt it got below minus 12, but that was cold enough for an emergency decision. I brought the pets inside and left the electric heater going in the garage. This morning at about 8:00 am, the thermometer just inside the side door read about 33 degrees; too close for comfort! I barely slept and I'm still tired. The cat was a distraction - she plays with everything, which is cute most of the time, but sometimes not when there are stresses.
She's usually a help though and seems to be very sensitive and helpful during stress times. The dog stayed in the bathroom and so I didn't have my usual shower and slept with my clothes on as well, expecting minus 27 degrees. So I was too hot and had to get up to remove clothing. I also itched and some sores on my hands and neck irritated the heck out of me. Still, I managed to sleep about 2 hours.
It all worked out today when I napped a couple of hours and had a good breakfast. I was really "keyed out" on an apparent whole track perception! Wow!


OP 16d

OP 16d was an abandoned observation post with a still intact and workable landing dock. It allowed careful close manoevering and tight "lash down" for the ship. They could all safely and comfortably transfer to the main building. Thirty minutes or so and the whole thing was up to temperature and all the power was flowing and reporting "pass" on the warm up system check. OP 16d deserved some kind of design effiency awared for its insulation. Jim would read up on its history. About three inches of bulkhead was all that separated the interior from a near total dark vacuum outside. Much of it was clear poly cyclo hc (hydrocarbon) triple layered thermoplast or clear pc thermo as it was usually called. It appeared totally clear, but was not, of course, and was aluminized on the interior side of each "clear" layer to prevent radiation from within the station. It appeared fully reflective from without and wide open clear from inside. The opague alloy walls followed similar construction designs, vacuum insulation and front surface reflective metal ion deposition against radiation heat losses.
"What do they do here?", Nomi asked indredulously. "They make all kinds of obervations and standby for emergencies like ours!", Jim answered with humor that quickly became gratitude and wonder of his own at the foresight. "Do they know we're here?", she asked.  "They will soon, about eight hours or so.". Jim answered. "Where did they go?" Nomi's questions were totally normal and in this case they served to bring Jim out of a state of semi-shock as he reoriented to his work and training. "They usually have periodic patrols. We're spread fairly thin out here. I have to go over their log. I'll see what kind of messages they left."

Getting through the night without freeze damage!

At about 8 pm, I put two propane heaters on in the garage and drove the temperature up from about 38 degrees to about 48 degrees. The electric "milk house" heater is still on since its very safe to leave on over night - even with the pets in there. If it falls over, it goes off. I don't like to leave it on, but I feel confident that the dog will bark loud enough to wake me if there's a problem. Last winter, we tested it to twenty below outside and it still was above freezung inside in the morning. Good insulation and the milk house heater is efficient, albeit a bit expensive. It might still be worth the investment to heat the garage properly, with a large propane heater, and just keep it above 40 all the time in there. I think the quote was 1300 dollars. The real difference would be maintaining the temperature automatically with less worry about fire.


Dance of the Deep - continued

"What is it Nomi?" Jim was surprised to see her at his cabin door. He was a lot more surprised to see the Vulture behind her with some kind of weapon at her back.  "We simply have to do what they want and they'll let us go", she offered weakly and matter of factly. "Ouch, that hurts", she added. It must have been less than an hour later that Jim, Heshy, and Nomi found themselves in the "dingy" with barely enough fuel to make the nearest port. "No telecommunication Heshy, can't you do something to strectch the range?" Jim was seriously worried now. They were too far out to handle most emergencies, even simple ones. He began to understand his job better now, from the other side. He began to understand what serious matters their little  "jokes" had been, and he began get a very faint insight into how he had gotten them into this situation in the first place.