Category Archives: Writings

Nuthin’s for Free

Some learn that energy is conserved, and that energy can neither be created or destroyed. Put another way, what you put into something you get out, you get what you pay for, or nuthin’s for free.

Since the late 1990’s, Google’s search engine has refined its ability to produce references to answers as we chase about the things we might or do need.

In the older days, librarians and their libraries played the role of producing answers to questions, and assisting in our research. Then we would have been climbing narrow dusty steel stairs in poor lighting to a fifth or sixth floor stack, where books organized by Dewey could be pulled from the shelves, and their pages explored.

Hopefully portions of solutions could be derived from the readings, often by tenacity and chance, when we would carry the books back down to the main floor and pay a fee to stand in front of a Xerox machine, shifting facedown open books and grabbing facsimiles of the relevant pages.

The time and effort normally allocated to investigation and research, now deferred to Google, whose distributed computing model is extensive, and mostly delivered with equity, at least for those who have access to the Internet.

But nuthin’s for free, even Google. In exchange, we stomach the search algorithm’s perceptions of what might prompt our attention through admittedly what seems to be mostly benign and unobtrusive advertisements.

Scary is that only days earlier when looking for vintage Campagnolo derailleurs, like a big brother, Google somewhat with bias, dishes up an alluring series of available and related bike components to consider among a seemingly non related query.

But mostly, when subtle and smart, I nod thankfully for the time saved. After all, better advertisement than paying a subscription to search for solutions from any of the search engines available these days.

Enter artificial intelligence, computing algorithms that have been trained by the masses to produce even more relevant searches to solutions of our problems, identifying vendors for derailleurs in fewer clicks, better quality, more reliability, even creating accurate prose that might argue why newer technology would make for a happier ride in comparison to the rebuilt relics that are preferred.

Now inspired to drop some money on the new technology, deserving to the selected bike shop is that shop’s agreement to pay a fee to the search engine, a sort of finders fee. After all, nuthin’s for free.

Enjoy A.I.’s seemingly accurate and timesaving production of information that benefits your lifestyle of choice. Eventually you will have to make a choice if paying for the information is worth your effort, because inevitably the precision and accuracy will be offered at a cost.

Otherwise, you will have to go old-school and figure out the solution yourself through experimentation and possibly serendipity.

Will’s Neutrino Story

The surface of the sun is hot, but even more so, at its core is a crazy intense pressing together of  hydrogen atoms, that pressing called nuclear fusion.  

Like being deep underwater, when your ears pop from the added pressure, the huge sun presses down at the core, sparking radiative processes that chase photons and neutrinos outwards.

The photons struggle to get back to the surface, but the neutrinos zing out.

If you were to point at the sun while reading this, even if at night, when people in China are enjoying daylight, the number of neutrinos coming from the sun and going through the tip of your pointing finger, is immense; trillions every passing second, that’s a 1 followed by 12 zeros, or one thousand billion neutrinos.

Fusing hydrogen together spawns neutrinos, in that case neutrinos which are kin to electrons, as both are produced in that fusion process.

Our Sun is the mother of a solar system of eight planets, and a couple dwarf planets. Each and every star out there is some solar system’s sun. Each is fired by the same fusion process that produces neutrinos, their sister electrons, and both visible and invisible light.

There are hundreds of billions of suns in the Milky Way galaxy, maybe thousands, and a similar number in our nearest neighbor, Andromeda.

Wow, so many neutrinos are zinging around the galaxy, should we learn more, and study these birds?

Other particles are produced in deep space, protons for example also are chasing around, some of which find their way to the Earth, sort of like flashing shooting stars, penetrate the highest reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere and bump into the nitrogen and oxygen that eventually we breathe.

These cosmic protons, like the solar-born neutrinos, are moving fast, very fast, and therefore pack a punch; consider that speed to be 186,000 miles per second – woh! That’s the same as the speed of light.

Protons are very light weight, as well as being tiny in size. Too tiny to see with microscopes of any kind, although with modern technology seeing molecules is nearly possible. In your body there are approximately one trillion trillion protons – cool.

Despite their fast speed and small size, these Earthbound protons have a lot of energy – like imagine how good you feel when you sleep well, and are excited about the coming day, lots of capacity to do things, lots of energy.

With that high energy, the incoming protons shake up the nitrogen and oxygen they fly by, high altitude interactions fired by their electrical and magnetic natures; the result is that a different particle is born, these are called pions.

Electrons are easy to make because they are among the smallest of particles, as are pions. In collisions of subatomic particles, for example protons on protons, pions become commonplace.

Pions being bigger than electrons, think mass, not size, their tendency is to exhaust themselves and become an electron. Sort of like if a marble were released from the rim of a large bowl which sets on a tabletop, in short order it’d naturally find itself at the bowl’s center, and motionless, its energy zapped. It turns out that pions becoming electrons is a multistep process but occurs in a flash of time, very quickly.

Charged pions traveling in mostly the same direction as its parent proton was, become “massive electrons” and neutrinos. This process is called decay, in this case pion decay, but what are massive electrons?

Well these massive particles are in every way the same as electrons, but more massive; think of them as overweight electrons, and we call these electron-like overweight particles muons.

That is, Earth-bound cosmic protons interact with nitrogen up above where jet airliners fly, produce muons, and then decay into electrons and neutrinos.  These types of neutrinos are deemed muon-type neutrinos, as they are spawned from muons. And yes, the neutrinos that emanate from the sun are electron-type neutrinos.

Albeit much much more rarely, muon-type neutrinos interact with matter (the denser the better) to produce muons, and electron-type neutrinos produce electrons, each with a characteristic signature.

So nature provides us with interesting phenomena, neutrinos have types, physicists call those neutrino flavors.

And finally, nature allows for “obese electrons,” but we will be nice and call those tau-ons, and the corresponding neutrinos are then, tau-type neutrinos. These are mighty but rare, seldom “seen” particles.

Summarizing: that’s three neutrino flavors: electron, muon, and tau-type neutrinos. And I trust this dialog has helped with your question on neutrinos.

There is a great amount of history to learn that goes back almost one hundred  years when neutrinos were first postulated (thought to exist), but no one had “seen” one until the 1950’s (election-type), the 1960’s (muon-type), and in 2000 (tau-type).

Experimentalists like myself are interested in learning more about what neutrinos are, and how they do what they do.

At Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory, near Chicago, sometimes called Fermilab and named after Enrico Fermi, many physicists alongside engineers are working to understand these neutrinos. We are building a massive experiment called the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) to learn more. 

Check this out: at Fermilab, we create an intense beam of protons which are pointed at graphite (carbon) to produce pions, which quickly decay into muons and muon-type neutrinos.

Those muon-type neutrinos are aimed towards Sturgis, South Dakota, having to have been pointed downwards into the Earth at Fermilab because the Earth is a sphere.

At the depth of one mile, we are building a huge detector, sort of like a camera, to take “pictures” of the muon-type neutrinos interacting inside the detector, albeit in a rare process. I should mention that computer scientists are working with the DUNE physicists because the so-called camera images are mightily large, and we anticipate too many to count.

I alluded to this earlier, but neutrinos rarely interact with matter, and all those neutrinos going through your Sun-pointed finger, keep going, through the floor of your house, into the Earth, right on through the entire Earth, wow, and onwards going way way far away.

But occasionally, yes these neutrinos do interact. So what we have to do at Fermilab to encourage neutrino interactions is to make a whole bunch of them just to see a few of them tickle our deep underground detector.

So here’s the special part, told by colleagues on other particle physics experiments trying to do similarly to DUNE scientists, that is to figure out what a neutrino is. Together, we have learned that when a muon-type neutrino is created at Fermilab, and aimed through the 800 miles of rock between Illinois and South Dakota, some small fraction change into electron-type neutrinos.

To emphasize, we know how to identify the stuff that is “captured on film” in our detectors as the anticipated muon-type neutrinos make themselves known, and separately the unanticipated electron-type neutrinos. But where did the electron-type neutrinos come from, were they not first muon-type neutrinos?

It’s weird, it’s like the neutrino starts out as a cat, then as it travels to South Dakota, it somewhere became a bird. And when we also consider the tau-type neutrino in the process, the original cat became a dog.

Yeah, a cat can become a bird, and/or maybe a dog. If that could really happen you’d wonder if you were reading a Harry Potter book.

We call that ability to change flavor on-the-fly, neutrino oscillation, and unlike any other subatomic particle (almost) neutrinos are special, and we therefore want to know more.

In fact, as neutrinos are the most abundant particle in the universe, except for photons which is the name we use for the particle version of light. And studying the wierd characteristics of the neutrino is likely to get us an understanding on how the universe was first formed some ten billion years ago, and hopefully solving other problems such as, are protons for forever, or what Black Holes might be.

DUNE detectors will also be sensitive to the neutrinos produced when stars larger than our Sun explode – yes, stars are born, and stars die, and when they go, neutrinos are yet again a big part of the picture.

Will, I hope that this story inspires your curiosity.

Your friend, David 

More on DUNE: https://www.dunescience.org

Cars and Guns

Back in the day there were cars, leaded gasoline, catalytic converters were just moving from experimental to full production nationwide, and there was noxious smog.

I spent the first twenty eight years of my life in Louisville, Ky, a geographic area which is fraught with a tendency to enclose hot humid air, the Ohio Valley, and cars were barely realized as a primary source of the smog laden air breathed by each a Looavullian’s lungs.

Burning coal for electricity was another misunderstood source. [1] Policies for emissions from coal plants could be more easily negotiated, as there were only a relative few to negotiate with, but for car owners, reaching a unified perspective was another story. In the United States, according to the Department of Energy, as way back as 2014 there were 800 cars per 1000 people, that is 0.8 per capita, topping all other countries in the world, and trending upwards. [2]

In the late 70’s a goal was to curb automotive emissions and thus constrain the smog that was leading to an increase of asthma in our children, and what was determined later, the deterioration of blood vessel walls in adults. It became apparent to some that the necessary regular maintenance of an automobile could not be de facto trusted to their owners, and thus a law was written, and Vehicle Emission Testing (VET) monitoring sites were established. [3]

Beyond maximizing the efficiency of the balance between consumption and emissions for the notoriously inefficient internal combustion engine, another concern was ensuring safe operation of the cars we drove. Put simply that tires, lights, windshield wipers, and brakes were up to snuff. In all some two dozen points on a car were checked – I specifically recall watching a mechanic attache a jig to aim headlamps most interesting.

Rest assured, after a run through of your car from a VET professional, typically a local small shop mechanic who fortuitously realized the financial and optimistically the healthful opportunities in leading a certified VET center, the safe operation of one’s vehicle was validated in a short twenty minute appointment.

My parents separated when I was becoming a teenager, their four children born in five years. Partly because of the hard times, my father struggled supporting us. Hand-me-down cars were typical in our home, my sister Anita shared her 1982 Ford EXP, a burnt orange car that kept Ma from taking the bus to one of three jobs, and the grocery.  Said differently, there were zero excess dollars to spend on an annual VET inspection and likely repair bill, nevertheless she routinely complied with the law to verify emission levels and to certify the vehicle.

Fortunately, when that less-than-efficient car did sputter and fail, there were straightforward policy mechanisms to extend the length of the test period, citing hardship for example; I recently stumbled onto my letters requesting VET extensions annually, even after moving to Minneapolis to attend graduate school in physics.

The bottom line is that with honest responsibility demonstrated, it was fairly easy to get an extension and keep driving legally on public roads. There might have been a sticker that was attached to the license plate to announce certification broadly. Moreover, trucks used by licensed businesses were exempt from testing, suggesting thoughtful, even non-onerous latitudes were built into the policy. 

The point to be made is that there was a law created because for-whatever-reasons we could not trust our neighbors to maintain the efficiency of their automobiles, and who seemed removed from the collective effects of car ownership, “oh shucks, what problem could my little old car have on noxious pollution and health the good people living in Louisville?”  When multiplying 0.8 cars per capita by the metro population of 612,890 (using 2014 census data) for the integrated effect, plenty. [4]

This morning a news story captured my attention: last year, just short of 50,000 people were killed by guns in the United States, a horrible and large number. For perspective, these include homicide, murder, unintentional, and defensive use. For 2023, mass shootings and mass murders totaled 339 (as of June 19), from all of 2022 that sum is 682. [5]

For the dead 50,000, there are another four who were directly affected by the loss of their loved one, and another ten who were at least moved spiritually when attending the funeral services. That is, an estimated 750,000 were affected by gun violence in one year. Let’s call that estimate 1,000,000 annually, a horrible and large number.

A logic statement is that gun violence touches many and is a recurring problem in the United States, and for-whatever-reasons we can not trust our neighbors to maintain an efficiency at owning and using guns, and now must create laws to ensure (societal) function and safety.

Like the VET centers and the multi-point inspections, we propose Gun Ownership and Use (GOU) centers, where good people are certified for ownership and use, those ignorant to the goals of the program are enlightened, and gun ownership for bad people is squelched.  

Who among us would comply with a gun certification process? Why of course gun owners – if you do not own a gun you need not jump that hurdle, but then again, you might elect to proactively be certified for ownership; for example there are numerous passport carriers who do not travel abroad.

To be clear, the proposal is that there would be regular checkup on gun owners analogous to the practice of monitoring emissions and safety of cars, because we can not trust people to manage themselves.

If you want to own a locker full of guns, fine, that is your right, and my right is that gun owners schedule an appointment at the GOU to make sure the metaphoric “tires, lights, windshield wipers, and brakes” are functioning properly. That is, when the rubber hits the road, you can see the realities of ownership, and stop transgressions personally, collectively, and possibly you might influence others to similarly good practices.

The basic ideas is that people would meet with a trained professional to verify their responsibilities associated with gun ownership.  The GOU could be populated with trained bachelor degree-ed psychology majors to save costs so as to not constrain the already taxed psychologists who are working through an unprecedented mental health crisis in our nation, allowing for a more seamless growth of a new practice. 

For the first decade of a gun ownership law, costs could be fully absorbed by State governments, funded through block grants by the Fed; devising the funding model and the program’s ROI is better left to law makers. 

Certification levels could be decided on: own one hunting rifle, no problem, own three hunting rifles and two pistols, that’s okay, or twelve of both, or any quantity, go for it, after passing a “multi-point inspection,” a person’s certification for gun ownership might be reported on a drivers or hunting licenses. 

In service military, police, fire, and ambulance personnel, pilots, even TSA-certified fliers could receive expedited gun ownership certification.

Suppose you are that retiring sheriff who has been collecting guns to sell as a supplement to your retirement years, you’d receive a stamp of approval to own some range of guns: 1-3, 3-10, 10-24, 25-100, 100+ for example. The point, ensure latitude in the law’s implementation. 

It might prove that visiting the GOU annually is too frequent, similar to obtaining a boating license once per three years, or like a passport once a decade. The more times I see the dentist for checkups, the better my dental health is with implications for my overall health, but going once per month is superfluous. Again, let the people and law makers sort out and monitor the effective frequencies.

My parting shot: ensure reasoned gun ownership for hunting wild game and for protecting one’s life and personal property by ensuring operation and safety of guns for the masses through regular center-led evaluations and certifications.

Snowbirds

Clunky thuds sound under the hopeful hammer of a woodpecker, frozen box elder bugs in beak’s reach. The birds are masters at winter living, masticated ice crystals keep them hydrated, downy air pillows under pine needles layer warmth; always busy these birds.

Mild days by his standard follow a surprisingly sustained bitter cold and snowfall that threatened early, penetrating the deep south, challenging many who are unaccustomed to the technology of layering, neck wrapping, stacking toboggan caps and fingerless woolen gloves under suede choppers.

Is it rectitude that initiates an ability to manage the grueling cold days of winter? Are the associated blue skies, as day’s length in slow ascent a helpful exchange? Does an opportunity for sleep warrant a healthier soul?

It is the depth of one’s breath, practiced patience, and focus that provides the meditative state necessary for winter’s survival. Like antifreeze, it runs within the entrails, circulating warmth, sustaining hibernation, until, inevitably, the longer days warm the air making habitable life again.

Five

Five fingers tall, curious or rejecting, as a circular gold salute, or as a siren blaring red, a gesture shaped by a contoured conversation which rendered music and people quiescent; an unanticipated rendezvous, again, possibly the fifth. 

Yet another colocation, this with a swift response, ten fingers tussle, words hidden, interplay sequestered, a story hinted; with respectful pause, then latency, four turned to two, then, you left, nothing said.

Entranced from what was once your perch, silhouettes crossing the darkened lot peer back with curious cadence, an anchored Hepburn skip, then spilling westward aside wooden blinds, stardust lost.

A scenic river tour now urbanized, music sought, rolling pedals over and over, winds calm, eyes open, singing, we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Gold produced from bare metal

Science is sorcery to the simple minded, his locomotion preferably focused essential.
All her aim is on truth manufactured from experiment, impervious to life’s murder.
Too few suffer the difficulty of a sustained investigation, instead become saturated in the thoughtless grind.
A mistake of the educated is in their inability to empathize with the blinded.

Ice On

An early snow, brisk winds force only short outings for the two chihuahuas living under this roof, their thin tooties just not able to insulate, although Stray prefers nights out, his orange coat fully down and adapted from his feral days, now “domesticated” for what seems to be three years when we were adopted.

The bitter air comes early this year, overhead are heard the squawkings of southern bound geese, even in dark of night, the city light amplified by the low heavy clouds. Standing on the porch admiring the contrast of a running river against the semi-white embankments, imaginations of heavy snow has me donning skis for a riverside trek; then a fox slurries from Ruth’s blue spruces after hearing my boots crackle the icy wood below.

This morning Poppy heard silent howlings “Letmewin,” our six legs triggered to walk a maze to the sunny riverside door and calls greeted by a Stray after his trackings through five inches of teen degreed snow. Waggling hard pacing alongside the cat, smelling and kissing on what he imagines are remnants of meesies ingested overnight, Stray bold, gentle and without concern aims for the bowls of dry food that “those indoor kitties choose to eat,” and freshly milk poured.

Winter’s entry this year in the Hinterland has flavors of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, sort of racy and settling chords of inevitability, of the need to sustain a pace in order to exit the other side to springtime. Hunkering down was seen in this years festival of the oaks where spawned acorns suppled armies of squirrels and deer, and with the numerous birds who enjoy the black oil seed only to cache them away in remote locations that somehow they revisit in time.

Critters frequent the landscape between the house and river where comforts are numerous: Woodpeckers peckering on the downed trees whose demise the result of contiguous spring-time snow melts of overwhelming proportion, tree bases soaked and stifled, aforementioned fox, squirrel, days ago a deer languishing, snow on its back and sauntering between seed baskets and locating the cups of seed thrown in her direction, activity that generally is reserved for the nesting turkeys that have now retreated to the wind-protected refuges upstream.

This early winter deprived change in the leaves, instead stinging their green with seventeen degree air, curling and sizzling their hue away, many ash leaves left clinging, while the heavier oak leaves fully defoliated, the sun’s rising shadows, long, illuminate a river now frozen, with another night and subsequent morning, I have to ask “Where is Stray?”

Abundance

With more, fear of loss, conservatism, not the relax of shared abundance.
With more, anxious pride, superiority, not humility nor secured comfort.
With more, righteousness is assembled to preserve their perfect world from dilution.
With more, new wealth segregate and climb into deserve, church fails.
With more, we seek greed, hate overwhelms, brotherhood transforms to selfish populism.

First Flight

Sliding from the top of a large white balled light post, a robin’s perch precarious,
Squawk, squawwk, squawwwk, another two birds work distraction from nearby branches.

Stray-kitty ponders the toy morsel, plump from its Ma’s attentive feeding, worms abundant in this riverside haven, fresh rains have top soil moistened for the savvy winged workers.

Realizing an apparent ground fodder, I whisk the tired but wide-eyed cat from its playful perch looking down atop the hill and the young robin, he seemingly content to let the frightened youngster alone.

Wondering if bruised or maimed, I make periodic health checks between coffee sips, chihuahuas wrestle, and some email, the morning sun shining obliquely on this hallowed solstice day.

Mom now continues mild mannered chirping on a branch above, a blunted worm hanging from its mandible, but the babe now not obvious, however her tenor convinces me that all is fine.

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The grass cut, winters sugars exhausted, the shallow plane making for either small two legged or four legged critters a chance to bounce uninhibited across the cool damp morning grass, mom dropping down to the base of a favorite box elder, bushed heavily by spring growth, that worm an offering to the youngster who emerges unscathed.

Popping up and down with relative joy, baby bird wanders in and out of the sun and into tall green grasses, mom demonstrating flight to a vertical branch in a nearby tender pile which awaits a blazing, her cajoling bit by bit, by day’s end, nubile junior has become a master flyer.

Alter (Old-Age)

Alter

Das aber ist des Alters Schöne,
Daß es die Saiten reiner stimmt,
Daß es der Lust der grellen Töne,
Dem Schmerz den herbsten Stachel nimmt.

Ermessen läßt sich und verstehen,
Die eigne mit der fremden Schuld,
Und wie auch rings die Dinge gehen,
Du lernst dich fassen in Geduld.

Die Ruhe kommt erfüllten Strebens,
Es schwindet des verfehlten Pein
Und also wird der Rest des Lebens
Ein sanftes Rückerinnern sein.

Old-Age

As I reflect at an older age,
I am less bothered by the unnecessary,
I take pleasure in the brightest significance,
while anticipating the bitterest sting.

Whatever the circumstances,
any who have regrets remaining,
seek forgiveness with best abilities’,
learning patience when reprieved.

Anticipate calm when persisting,
as dormant pain fades,
living eases into death,
and memories become gentle.

Alter by Ferdinand von Saar (1883-1906)
Interpretation of Alter for David DeMuth by his son David, 12/2016

Almost December

The air so damp, a mild breeze, barely
Resonation between the tree’s tentacles, electric
A condensate of precarious drops, large
Falling with candor, below branch only, cadence
No signal of ice, the river racing north, nearby.

Sunlight Dancing

The constant harmony of the river’s waters, reflected sunlight dancing briskly, vaguely green and resilient leaves clingingly flutter in an unusual warm November breeze, not a cloud seen, soon stars bright above a crescent moon, mars on her shoulder.

Matthew

Days before the announcements, where will he land, beating the crowd we stow basics for three days, adding ice to our freezers, a generator on backup.

Weathermen, civic leaders pronouncing danger begging heeded warnings, mandatory evacuations in reality subjective, considered by any whose probabilities exceed threshold.

Where he’s been, devastations, unbearably the downtrodden recanoider, striving forward after being stung by nature.

Where he’ll go is certain, to dissipation but when?

There is solidarity across disasters for those who have fought their own battles, while the inexperienced might empathize fractionally.

Let us pray.

Heat

All those days previous summers lost to faded memory, some wrinkled others not, the exercise of long outdoor days, sculpting the fort castle inviting birds to feed, the constant pulse of a river running north, marking time that once was.

Perhaps a Poem Written

Toward futures end, afterwards more honestly
In the ramblings consistently captured, with frequency and responsibility
Freed from the constraints of negotiated existence
Metaphors and description rolling naturally downhill, melting like heated ice
Self-deprecatingly the gods he is slave to are slain one by one

Perhaps someone agrees God is the fact that we exist
In that community perhaps that  their worships are otherwise

A provocative dichotomy requiring reason, emotion modified, while action seething disdain, retribution, and reaction becomes patience in exchange for digital longevity

Perhaps more reading becomes necessary .

The Book of Disquiet – 22

Absurdity is divine.

The Greatest

Seeing him mid to late afternoon near the University of Louisville’s student center humbly standing one afternoon at the rear of a short moving van, handing out the Quran, nearly no one around, must of been ‘85 left an impression that his intents were sincerely with love of humanity.

60 Minutes w/ Ed Bradley: http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-greatest/

Muhammad Ali / Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.

Oak Tree

Pulling carbon from the air, his girth becomes established
His leaves young, supple but enlarged, fortitude signified
Branches bifurcate in age, breadth designed by probability and his curators hand
Eventual it’s canopy broad and strong, sheltering cooling providing refuge for an extended family of carbon breathers

Hobo and Bart

Chocolate brown, showing grey, she manages at an appropriate distance, trailing 

Occasionally he has to coach, she taking every opportunity to saunter, but navigating as a reliable pair, a quiet dialog sustained

Once they cross the doubled  lanes,  she falls back gesturing to the bag man: “you know, the food is not all that great.”

Native Sun

A product of environment, triggered intellect in response to thoughtful solutions, patient and aggressive, but waiting, operating under restraint imposed by the normalized, commitment to country preceded by his accumulated travels throughout his home state, cities dispersed rurally, most in advance of global connectivities, a back turned to naive hope, as a native sun’s capacities are lost, progress slowed.

Life or not

Self important and lonely, granddad weebles mask-fully around the coffee shop where I sit.
Anxiety expressed when a brother, thin and food conscious is diagnosed for a heart transplant.
Fear for a beauty whose nose pearcing went awry.

Remaining conservatively dormant for longevitys sake allows for Saturday morning coffee parties where nothing is said; sometimes instead over drinks.
Only children matter in suburbia.

Ground gaming

At two he sits in Daddy’s lap,  pretzels, beer, third down replay, call reversal, then the game changing score, the youngster, bouncy yet robust-fully buoyant, landing back down on the leather couch up watches outrageous jubilance.

At six, balls are chased, kicked, catching learned, the sun blazen with vitamin D branding activity as necessary.

At fourteen, fighting biology and adolescence, he reigns approval from distant dad in showcasing atypical abilities in coordinated outdoor competitions.

At twenty five, college days behind yet tailgating emotions continue as resources  are redirected, armchair quarterbacks abundant, triggers of those bouncy memories exponential.

At forty, managers steer their teams toward production utilizing that prevalence, purple and white colored cake sliced as celebratory reward.

Each game binary in its outcome, a winner, a looser, no ties allowed, a three sided die exacerbating the dichotomies, and stadiums crumble by the impassioned.

Politics: go red go blue!

Supernova

From the medium a protostar coalesces, driven by gravity. In its environmental assemblages, albeit extended in time, pressure builds at its core, eventual is a hydrogen furnace, then balanced competition between that gravitational pressure and its outward radiation, thus are the majority of stars.

For an eternity, that assemblage of substance is the fuel that fuses into time, or age, for life as a star is ephemeral on a universal scale that our minds struggle feebly to digest. ironcore

For billions of years, she burns, gathering and expending mass, burning hotter, eventual is helium, carbon, oxygen, sodium, neon, magnesium, silicon, sulfur, phosphorous, and silicon, then in a finale: a core of iron and nickel.

For the magnificent, that core bouncing to a colossal giant and then to a cooling dwarf, or into a super-colossal nova as an explosive reseeding of its progenitor, permeating waves which jitter the interstellar medium and inseminating its progeny.

Working for Food

Water at four degrees expands, evident by a noted rise in the nearby channel, the Red’s frozen surface glaring, a murder of crow dancing on its surface. Two thistle loaded tubes underhang the riverhouse, providing early reinforcement for finch survival, brisk is the air, the sun brilliant, winter’s clime has arrived.
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His coat blonded orange, his tail perk and tall, running with the speed and elegance of a deer, bounding, but not with direct fear, more with an attitude of simple gaming, for after all Mr. Fox deserves the riverside as much as any of us.

Squirrel populations invite regular thoughts of an inconspicuous urban harvest for a weekend lunch or dinner, their regular rummages continue from yet another heavy seeding from the stately burr oaks that surround their plantation, my southern heritage inescapable.

Greys and reds, chasing about, climbing vertically then crossing the high canopied sidewalks, tree by tree, the smaller red’s being more sinister in their elected winter abodes, gnawing through facia board hidden behind a blue spruce growing on the southern corner of the house provides illustration.

Parallel to the Red’s freezing, longer shadows are cast by the pillars of the tall western facing windows of this riverhouse, as a rhythm of the sun’s intensity continues with only gravitational knowledge of this pale blue dot.

Scrub wood burns in the livingroom’s fireplace, two squirrelly dogs scrambling in the projected warmth, playing, learning about their own natures, the one recently added to contrast the other’s somber mood after being orphaned by Ruthie’s expiration.

Order and balance between the squirrel and the fox remain, both in an objectivist war of self-preservation, and while steering cautious of Darwin when outdoors, whether fox, eagle, or otherwise,  we share in the goal for unobfuscated survival.

Pouncing Pincher

Leaves falling in a slow descent on this sunny windless morning;
    aside, a glassy rivertop reflecting from another State.
Slow is this winters coming, or at least the falls demise,
   the reflected being late sprouted greeneries.
The house vibrating from the pouncing woodpecker pinching peanut kernels
    from within a copper wired tube intercepting the river’s view,
and which waxes this poetry.

Fox Bark

Spotting Cassiopeia’s, he shifted in his chair aligning the telescope a group would later use, the fire pit glowing, crickets hum.

An Equinox barely past, a rare eclipse awaits, on a crossover day he rescends galloping, as the fox barks again.

Flying w/out Wings

Thud!

From a high limb a young chipmunk survives a fall onto a spongy, recently rain soaked ground; stunned, pause, frenetic is his retreat.

Blocking, he staggers away opposite to my curiosities of astronomy, at least those being read as a Sunday morning distraction.

Is and Was

shuffling money, they negotiate balance, me, you, me and on they go, five pushing music, guitars prominent, keys particularly mellow, waiting for harmonica

Fluttering Wings

Softly lips glance, silence, coy invitation, repeat, mild and uncertain jubilance, longing
If mine pursue yours it is not diabolically rather southern, how two hearts separate.
I am in a trance anxious to revisit the tone that we last resonated.
If thoughts invoke in you an energy of positivity, lighting bolts ought to be striking.
Aside, we stretch erect, fluttering, shaking the mites and dust, in advance of flight.
Being: is often surreal.
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Garage Speak

Wake up, laughter, cussing, what happened?
She is just pissed at me – why are you tripping out on me, I asked?
Hanging friends started at the Bismarck, then snuck off to the Empire…
Nice, be nice, hug be hugged, imagined sun and warmth.
South they went on to Dempsey’s…
Gad they are making out, right in front of us – fuck!?
Fuck it – I am getting a smoke, Raz just fucking does not believe me…
Says Zak