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.