Lessons of Astrophysics

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. For all of those who readily accepted the media’s tales of doom and gloom, who hovered around loved ones, exhausting themselves in an effort to keep them safe, there was nothing special about the eclipse that will make you blind. The opportunity for retinal burn exists every day. It was just as dangerous on Sunday. It was just as dangerous on Tuesday. It will be just as dangerous all 2416 days until the next solar eclipse in the US.  To which, I am happy to say that the Sharritt Air BnB is now taking reservations. Yes, we are pleased to say that SharrittLand is in the direct path of totality. We, once again, will be left totally in the dark. We will not guarantee that the cloud cover will allow you to see the eclipse. However, we do have good internet connection so you will be able to see it on the HDTV that we will purchase with the funds you so graciously provide.

 It is sad that someone probably did not believe all of the warnings about the brightness of the sun and stared at it and consequently destroyed their eye sight. We are all somewhere on the bell curve. A few people went into the basement and covered their heads and a few said “we don’t need no stinking glasses.” The rest of us to one degree or another took precautions and enjoyed the eclipse and kept our eye sight. I personally, was probably the only person and my large office building carrying a welding mask into work. I could not get it jammed into my back pack. Thankfully, I was able to evade security long enough to get inside. 

I remember an eclipse from my childhood. In school, the  “Weekly Reader” was our town crier. Oh, those were the halcyon days of print media. The scions of the Hearst Media Conglomerate were bringing up another generation of newspaper readers. The Weekly Reader warned us that we could go blind staring at the sun during the eclipse and a few weeks later, a follow up “I told you so” appeared; reporting on a girl whose sight had returned after losing it looking at the eclipse. Bible Belt miracle? The regenerative power of the human body? Hoax? Hysteria? Who knows? It made great Weekly Reader fodder.

Getting back to the over reaction in some circles to the possibility of injury from the solar eclipse. Some schools kept their children inside during the eclipse to protect them. Some even kept them after regular school hours because ironically that pesky sun doesn’t get on board with daylight savings time. If the sun had believed in DST the eclipse would have been over by the end of school and the sun would have lost its super natural ability to make you blind only during an eclipse.

Why do we give the eclipse super natural powers? It is an interesting phenomena. It happens so seldom that to some appears to be random, to others it appears to be super natural; a sign of the end times. But it isn’t random; it isn’t super natural; it isn’t prophetic at all. It is just physics; actually astrophysics. But you get my meaning. When you have the sun doing its thing over and over again without any concern for the earth (we are not the center of the universe), and you have the moon doing its thing over and over again with concern for the earth (we are the center of it’s universe), things from time to time line up. So the eclipse wasn't random. If it were, we wouldn’t be able to sell you space at SharrittLand AirBnB in 2024. We know that it is going to happen.

We also know that the sun’s intensity doesn’t increase retinal burning levels during an eclipse. The sun has been emitting photons at nearly the same intensity for about 4.6 billion years. Those photons go screaming out in all directions and a tiny percentage manage to hit us. They warm our cats in windowsills on cold winter mornings. They trigger complex chemical reactions in plant cells taking carbon dioxide and releasing the carbon emitting oxygen for us to respire and hook a carbon back on to it. That reaction does a lot of other things like making your sweet corn sweet but I don’t have time to teach you all of the things you should have learned along time ago. Those photons react with your skin and manufacture vitamin D, which does something important like help you absorb calcium and phosphorus. Once again kids pay attention in school.

So yes, the sun is a good thing. But beware children, it will still do you great harm. It isn’t out to get you. It is just out there emitting photons. It's intensity allows all of those good things to happen. The intensity for the good things will also blind you if you look at it.

So remember. Kids keep your heads down, and nature isn’t out to kill you. It just seems that way.

Take Care.

Roger

Winner of the 2017 Limerick Costest

Dear Blog Reader and Limerick Writers.

Yes siree it is that time again. Each year at the end of July the lovely Miss Beverly in recognition of Doyle Hoover’s (her father) birthday, calls together the tribe an others in the limerick challenge. Doyle was a dairy farmer by calling and a limerick writer because farming didn’t fill every moment of his waking hours. Actually, have you ever milked 40 cows two times a day for 40 years? I haven’t either. But I did a stint (evenings only) for 5 years from seventh grade until I made my escape after high school. That two hours (or 4 hours 2x a day) every day leaves one with an internal dialog that takes years of counseling to make go away. Doyle turned his internal dialog to good by working on limericks that he would share. Some he shared with everyone. These G and PG versions were cute and delivered with a grin and twinkle in the eye. The bawdier versions were delivered with a twinkle and impish grin from ear to ear.

Limerick isn’t only about a short five line story with rhyme. It is a slave to cadence: AABBA if you read the text books. And the words have to fit together with a certain rhythm. I was working on a limerick exhorting more participants last Saturday night. I had the 9 syllable first line but it would not work. The rhythm was all wrong. It wouldn’t work until I found another 9 syllables to fit the correct rhythm. I think that dairy farming uniquely trains a person for writing limerick. Not only are you in a barn with no one to talk to for 4 hours a day, freed to let your mind wander, you are in this environment surrounded by machinery that counts out a beat with the cadence of a militant metronome. The machine is called a pulsator. It is complicated and and explanation will not get us closer to the announcement of our winner this evening. Just know that listening to it day after day you would know all there is to know about meter and rhythm.

So Doyle was unambiguously trained to write and enjoy limericks. He knew that they were not only created for his own enjoyment but for the enjoyment of others. It is a shame that we didn’t know enough to write them down or tape them for posterity. We can only shine a dim candle on his craft by whole heartedly throwing our oar in the water and giving it our best shot. Next year’s theme cliches?

And best shot it was. Thank you everyone for your efforts in this year’s. Over 40 limericks were submitted, and you did great. But this is a contest. No participation trophies here. (Or is that participation pie) There was a log jam at the top, and in the end one did rise to the top like cream in Doyle's bulk tank.

This year’s theme “animals” provided fertile ground for these budding bards. In judging them, I was struck by how many of us had our worlds expanded because our parents didn’t participate in “fixing” our animals. It seemed like our cats were particularly reproductive. Fat cats becoming thin in bedrooms and out at the barn. There were super pigs, and an animal called a squabbit. I must say when a practicing pharmacist starts writing about squabbits it may be time to step away from the dispenser. I'm just saying. There were surprised and dying ground hogs, and grand champion steers. Dogs were well represented from Iowa to a drool covered frisbee catching, tree climbing Busy and one who likes getting stuck on a retaining wall. While some pigs saved free falling damsels in distress others were my personal heros named bacon and sausage. Who knows? They maybe frozen in aisle B.

Enough of the drum roll of suspense, let’s get down to it.

Honorable Mention;

Danielle Grandholm

Watching Busy climb trees like a fool

Was fun to do after school

That dog loved to fly

Up that tree really high

To catch the frisbee smothered in drool

Cindy Pyle

Sam Ting was my favorite cat

One summer she became quite fat

I took her upstairs

Both parents unawares 

On a towel in a box she sat.

So after hours did loom

I worried about my doom

I confessed to my dad

But he never got mad

Yes, her kittens were born in my room

Lyn Ellis

We once had some pigs that were pets

Can we keep them daddy? Oh let’s

We knew what they were

By their new monikers

Sausage and Bacon, you bet.

Stephen Warner

From all around these parts

We’re bombarded with cow farts

The methane does rise

And the poor ozone dies

So we all bake in the sun like tarts.

Joyce Young

Being hauled where gloved hands would pluck her

That sly hen evaded the trucker

Dad gave her a lift

Fine eggs she did gift

And to that rig she clucked, “I’m free, sucker.”

Jim Rogers

In a lifestyle that’s suited to me.

I haul animals in my truck you see.

In boxes galore,

I deliver to the store.

You will find them in frozen aisle B.

Bill Hoover

On my Oliver Tractor, I was dishing.

Fat groundhog didn’t know he was risking

Heavy crescent wrench in hand

Babe Ruth swing I did land.

Home run or Dead varsity it’s a WIN thing.

Congratulations to all of the honorable mentions. You did great. Keep practicing and working on it. You were so close. Maybe next year will be your year.

As I wrote earlier, there are no participation awards. There is only one pie eater here.

Congratulations Stephen Warner

On the course, I golf is a squabbit

The cross of a squirrel and rabbit.

I try but I fail

To grab his red tail.

But I never quite seem to nab it.

Steve, like I said, if you are seeing squabbits you may want to step away from the pill dispenser. Great story, funny, structure and rhyme. Good work.

Until next year, when the lovely Miss Beverly puts out the call for your finest limericks . . .

Take care

Roger

Oh the Possibilities

Dearest Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. Although I am recovering. I know what you are saying. “That Roger he’s always recovering in his blog. Just get over it. Life isn’t that hard.” Your’e right. I embellish. I make up things. Life isn’t that hard. But you would read it if everything is fine. Nobody wants to read stories or watch TV shows about vacation days leisurely passing by, getting up at noon, sitting by the pool, reading books, going out to eat with the lovely Miss Beverly, binge watching three episodes of the Walking Dead only to go to bed and wake up on day two of vacation and start it all over again. Even when we watched Seinfeld all of those years, we didn’t want the show to be about carefree, easy breezy days. Seinfeld a show about nothing, They didn’t do the things that we did. No they killed off their fiancées with toxic wedding invitation glue. They were not being served soup by a soup Nazi, They even celebrated festivis instead of Christmas, because we don’t want to watch people do the same things that we are doing.

So yes, I am still recovering. In fact, the last blog was being composed in the middle of the chaos that I am currently letting ebb away. It was the week of Ben and Lisa’s wedding. I am sure that she will some day become known as the lovely Miss Lisa. However, that is Ben’s blog to write in another place and time should he decide that is what he wants to do. 

Yes, when I wrote five weeks ago, the Sharritt household was slipping into the chaos of wedding week. The wedding was to be a blessed affair and along the way there were ten acres of parking lot and wedding meadow to cut, a humongous tent to set up, several pizzas to eat, make up to apply, table cloths to press, (I pointed out to the lovely Miss Beverly, that yes there would come a time when that commercial cloths press with the rolling hot presses would have come in handy. But instead we left our $5 investment to rust in a farm field in Northwest Indiana where it would do us no good some 30 years later), and my favorite, the traditional rehearsal day sports extravaganza where we all gather around the bride and groom playing risky sports on uneven ground daring the fates to give the bride or groom a twisted ankle or black eye. When it finally works those will be very special wedding pictures. We’ve come close. We did have an aunt who fractured her arm for one wedding. We will keep trying.

There is a beautiful 200 year old oak tree that is on the farm tucked away in a small valley. By all rights, it should have been logged out 80 years ago. The family that owned the farm before selling it to my grandfather, logged all of the good timber before the sale. They left about 15 old oaks that were hollow and not fit for lumber. Those old trees have fallen through out the years; returning to the dust from which they sprang. In some strange over sight they left this one. Maybe it was too young at 120 years old. I have no idea. But the tree has stood through 60 years of cows pasturing under it. Idly whiling away the hot summer days under its 100 ft spread; patiently stomping a foot and twitching their tails to disturb the latest biting fly. If their constant pressure caused damaging compaction around its roots, the tree does not appear to be showing any negative effects. It still stands.

I am not sure because two events do not make trend. However, two is the only sample size available to us currently. Any how, the children of the lovely Miss Beverly like to be married under this tree. The intervening 20 years of no cattle had left a classic example of forest succession. The meadow was full of honey locust trees. I know what you are thinking “ah how beautiful and natural, trees that are named after honey.” This is a blatant example of an arborist’s false advertising. Honey locusts if properly named, would be called #@#@# thorn trees. So four years ago, we donned our leather gloves and work boots and cleared out about an acre and a half under this giant oak and had a wedding.

The entrepreneurial Sharritt’s had visions of event planning grandeur. Who wouldn’t want to get married under a two hundred year old oak tree surrounded by nature’s beauty? Indeed, we did have some interest from a few brides who could see the beautiful possibilities. Unfortunately, they were always accompanied by their mothers who could not get past the possibilities of rain, mosquitoes, and 90 degree heat with 95% humidity. So we have set those plans aside and given our money making schemes a rest. In spite of that, last fall Ben and Lisa said that they would like to get married under the tree next July. And just like in Brigadoon, a vision started to emerge. The first step in forest succession is a stand of golden rod killing all of the grass. So last September the weeds were whacked and grass seed was sown. There were a few thorn trees that needed attacking and this spring a regular rotation of mowing the meadow, the wedding parking lot and the reception parking lot: 10 acres in all. No wonder the old farm management loved having cows doing the work for them.

In the picture, you can see the Friday morning picture of the big tree, all the chairs and the wedding arch. You

can’t see is the 3 inch thunderstorm on the horizon at 6:00 pm. That evening. You can’t see the excellent storm water system that the neighboring little town has installed. It is excellent because it dumps all of that water on our farm and it meanders its way to Fall Creek . . . right through the middle of all of those chairs. 

On wedding day, at 7:30 in the morning, I walked down to the wedding meadow and discovered the 4 inch deep stream of water running right through the seating area. I hope that the guests remembered to bring their wellies. High heels were definitely out of the accessory possibilities. 

What do you do with 4 inches of water and 9 hours before the wedding? You bail. You grab a friend, 2 pumps, and build a dam as it enters the meadow and pump the surface water away. After an hour, you realize that two pumps are not enough and grab a shovel, walk 20 yards into the woods and put skills that you acquired in kindergarten to work. You dig a 200 yard trench around the wedding meadow, diverting the water away from the place where 200 well dressed people will be sitting in four hours. Then you go to where the water is leaving and you dig another trench draining the residual water away from the sitting area.

Don’t worry. We moved the chairs a little bit, and no one lost a shoe in the mud. The wedding went off without a hitch. It was a beautiful day. I sit down in my front row seat, looked at my step counting watch and realized that I had logged 20,000 steps and I hadn’t started dancing.

The Kozak's, Low’s and Sharritt’s are blessed to have children that see the wonderful possibilities in life. Children who see the beauty and majesty of a 200 year old tree spread out over the meadow. Children who can discount the risks to get to the benefits. Children who know it may be 90 degrees on July 8 but that meadow will be a beautiful place to get married. Children who know that bad things will happen. Children who know that gulley washers happen. Children who know that challenges can be worked through, addressed and overcome. Children who know that there are shovels for that.  Actually, we are blessed to have young adults who can stay in the moment and recognize the struggle is part of the beautiful journey.

Lisa and Ben may your ditch digging be as blessed as your I dos.

Take care

Roger