Category Archives: Observation

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.

Imagined Empathy

Sun’s earlier rise welcomed, winter’s hold loosening, turkeys perched in the surrounding oaks rustle; arm cocked, elbow high to trigger the dark rich flow of caffeine; the wooden deck pops loudly under steady weight, expansion natural when warming; across a deep frozen but narrow river, a crackle is noticed westerly, assumed to be morning foraging deer, meditations of early settlers bank-side easy, until a muted metallic snap pierces the cold dry air; 

leafless and sagging tree branches span much of the snowy intersection, some 100 meters of undulation after a steep descent from where I now squat; two red laser dots reflect shakedly on the half open glass door behind;  as aims are refined, gasses stir in my stomach, heart rhythms shaken, enemy is no longer an illusion;

surrender pointless, I contort and slither across the doors threshold into protection and collect my weapons of defense which include inconspicuousness; fortunately partner and three of four pets heeded wise calls for a southern exodus;  for this hinterland homeland, a sustained unimagined attack is as real as the blue steel greed that caustically erodes long friendships, divides a fearful faltering nation, scraping away more than a half century of enlightenment.

Oak Grows

Sensing the young oak tree grow the day after a soaking rain, its leaves erect and capturing the blue-skied sunshine, he reckons his curation as essential, and inevitably, lost in time.

Freezing Four

It’s pushing late autumn, early winter, the sun in the northern hemisphere has shifted its rise and set to more southern latitudes, days have given way to night, darkness is in the majority. The sun packs an energy punch, especially when farm fields are freshly harvested, and the dark soils shown, energy transferred as heat to the ground. Then those warm soils dissipate into the nearby air via convection, keeping the air temperatures moderate. At some point, however, it snows, the lands are whitened, and sun power is reflected away without air warming. Alberta clippers blow in from the northwest, cooling via evaporation both the snowpack, or any soils peeking through, as well as the tops of any bodies of water, such as a docile lake. That lake top water cools, considers freezing, and at some point its temperature drops to four degree celsius, a temperature where liquid water has some god given characteristic of being as heavy as it can ever be. Each bit of that four degree water, being heavier than any of its non four degree neighbors sinks, and in unison stirring up the water top. The convective winds continue to blow away heat from the lake top, more four degree waters fall deeper, until eventually, in an annual dance, the bottom depths are coated with heavy four degree water, the catfish thankful for a “warm” space to hunker down to bottom feed. In that dance, the top layers of water ice over, thinly at first, sometimes uncertain on whether to thicken, but as we all know in the northern hinterland, the lake freezes thick as winter’s convections, conductions, and reduced radiations throttle spring’s eventual return.

Nature Prevails

As our river house sees nearly annual snow-melt floods, the lowland becoming long soaked in murky waters, and when retreated, a muddy mess. With warmed air, deep-rooted grasses and indigenous ferns sprout first, claiming the land and shunting the growth of non-native weeds that had previously encroached the area. Later, with mild winds, top-heavy box elders crash to the ground, roots rotted by the repeated floods, nature prevails.

Listening to a Flood

A wet wet autumn, tossed flags, the listeners initiate awareness.

Running mildly, the river bifurcating metropolis spanning two northern states, grows heavy with lowered temperatures, its freeze atypical, the listeners remain aware.

Living in the Hinterland has its challenges, remote, fewer who articulate, more clustering, when its not in my backyard should I care, are you listening?

Days length grows, sunshine less oblique, air warms, in turn a frozen river thaws slowly, some become clarions for what will come, their motivations suggested as biased, struggling listeners await personal decisions to act, residing on longstanding easements and manufactured hopes.

It’s here, the river rises to a point of action, daily increase of volume suggest peril, most are hopeful, yet the river dwellers activate vigilance, knowing that a major flood extends over many weeks. From past events, these listeners prepare for a long haul battle.

Probabilistic forecasts based on history and current conditions are adjusted with silent frequency, arm chair quarterbacks challenge from a comfortable distance, no real skin in the game, relying on the suffering of others in advance, their warning.

This canary watches and waits, prepares for the worst knowing that few others will be bothered with his fight, but this, his preference. A cresting river and its highest flow rates approach, will it rain heavily at its peak, please, if you must, snow instead and stay cold; she does.

The ride to the peak is long coming, not surprising like a tornado, the prepared listeners resilient, how long can this crest remain?

The ride down, even longer, the days merge into nights, he walks the bag line inspecting for leaks. A stressed basement runs hard, newly installed sumps keeping up with the pressures of a high water table.

In a retrospective, the graphed peak is behind and offers a deep breath, he choosing vigilance, continues the careful monitoring, not relaxing until the river returns to her constraining banks, controlled, or at least an ample ways from the next crest.

Lady

The beautiful, so committed to beauty, you no exception.

Eyes unmatched, amber pockets bursting sparkles from within a green glow,
illuminated by the sun steeply setting over my shoulders.

A smile relentless, pearls set among a broad crimson suppleness.
Your face, geometric.

This is what all see first, many mesmerized, some eternally grateful.

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.

Gala

The two intwined, her the elder, with intelligence
Caressed by the supple shapes, smitten, eternal
Walnut hardened her soul, magic enabled
The attraction ferromagnetic, nothing superfluous, then and now.

Meandering Outdoors

A recreational plan is being developed by the Fargo Parks District for the quarter mile wide trench which will become a direct pressure relief valve for tens of thousands of welcoming homeowners in a proximity to the Red River of the North.

Reach 1 Artist Rendering of the Diversion Project at Fargo

By Tammyjoanderson.taft

Cyclists, runners, and horseback riders will navigate unencumbered, a meandering and contoured multi-use trail spanning the bulk of the thirty mile channel, enjoying spectacular summertime sunsets and far reaching thunderstorms that only the horizons in the Dakota’s offer.

Skiing groomed cross country trails under the brilliantly sunny January skies will prove again the robust resilience of the upper-midwesterner. Labrador accompanied snowshoers will be trolloping in heaven. Snowmobiles whirring by in the main channel demonstrate the friendlier features of the new electric machines.

Spanning the Red are two young smart cities, Fargo and Moorhead, both software-enabled, recursive innovation a key theme. Young minds, young bodies require the outdoors and music. Bring on the F/M Area Diversion Project, please.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo-Moorhead_Area_Diversion_Project

Meditating Squirrel

“Seems the ones that grow best are those the squirrels plant,” said the forestry guy offering proximal oak, dead standing and soon to be hewn.

The many oaks on the point are big and strong, spraying acorn biyearly, a sprouting white oak many years from participating, volunteers growing often at a disappointing rate, leaves diminutive and crowded.

What is their technique, depth, softened soil? Might the buried seed be cracked, enzyme triggered? Location genius?

Coded biological instruction: bury some fraction of the haul for tomorrow, that is for sometime beyond dozens of years, at a time when the individual squirrel is no more, only tribal progeny.

Meditate on that.

Poppy Plays Fiddle

Thermally crystalized water, snow layering ground, blizzard drifts exacerbate projections, melt, flooded river, flashed water, repeat.

The banks of the Red swelling, almost predictable, chance drives vigilance, sustained sobriety, then abating waters?

Sedimented ground, cracked polygons lingering until quenching rains moan and when under a warming sun, fiddleheads unfold into happiness.

Poppy-Plays-Fiddle

Apparent Brightness

It was not Neptune, but Saturn when her moons were glimpsed in alignment. Ten years ago, flashed instance not revisited, poetry shelved until reached for, dusted then opened. Quiet observation, retrospection without comment, keen, the universe her audience. After a musical rendezvous, the  tattered cashmere scarf blows from his neck spinning pedals home.

The pileated are more interactive when the river swells, their echoed reverberations chasing across the misty morning air.

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?”

Without Beer

Without beer, what is music –
Live, outdoors, wind swept sunsets, thousands
Forever seeking, redirecting, the music pours as a thin veil
Memories triggered, driving to Colorado,
a CD becomes a friend, its pulsed beats, revisited lyrics,
Evaluated players impressing, smiles, cheers
Waves of opulence stir emotions,
Without beer, what is music?

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.

Serendipity

Staring up and dodging water droplets which fall as condensate, outside temperatures very cold
Guarding, resourceful, a desire to meaningfully contribute to a curious solution
Scratching ponder, a picture captures a moment with celebrity backdrop
Aside in a paused stand, politeness is manifested, then into the brown warmth a deep dive
Both iris glisten with a twinkle, a discovered past anticipated
Intentionally, interaction follows into a regular pattern of discovery, fingered words distant
Method new and mellow, into life’s return the slow goal.

My World Spins

My world spins
    sun illuminating fractionally
heated surface alternating obscuring clouds
    weather pulsing change, predictable(?)
dormant days, followed by extreme
    life folds into the available
inertia barely controlled
    patterns ephemeral
jet stream, eddied dissolve, stochastic
    elbows bleed in abrasion
death managed said the fool
    yet skies whisper inevitable
soon rises sun, daylight
    shattered, a tree branch splashes river running
floated drift,
    hosting the occasional reptile sunning
utility until tumble falls
    soaked, buoying deeper, soggy deteriorent
electricity gravity agents apparent
    particularly as lightnings strike.

Riverside

Shared space, trees before I quietly fall, pushed over by winds wet, the dry rot recorded in its spring floods of old, box elder mostly while ash or willow provide crutch, western sun steepened by age, summers memories settle until shadows no more.

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.

Punked Beat

It’s a drab Saturday afternoon,  most are dormant and disengaged from workday frenzy, light snow layers the spotty slick ice, a cold breeze cuts through my snow laden scarf, unobtrusive to any, walking is slowed by a tested concern for falling.

On the fringe of suburbia,  middle class houses straddle the road, I walk river in sight, nearing home, supplies packaged in a backpack, my center adjusted, returning from a grocery run, an excuse for exercise the motivation.

Ears muffled by two hats, the outer woolen and billed, my cadence shifts with sounding beats, gangster rap pulsing moderately, the low bass tones coherent, “Thump  Thump  Thump,” a vehicle’s rubber tires pierce the frozen sand embued surface and crackle a casual approach.

As a turquoise tinted olive sedan passes, a driver hidden behind the half opened darkened smoke window murmurs “Bang   Bang   Bang,” hinting manifested superiority at the pistol grip of a gun, my sprawled bloodied body now lifeless,  crimson melting icy white below, the punk not missing a beat continues his troll for the others deserving of his righteous requiem.

Hovering Birds

A busy bird day, mid-afternoon, the widest variety, collecting food with a vengeance, curiously after an ephemerally dense snowfall which followed the short-lived strokes of the sun, the valley’s chronic cloud cover responsible for an atypical run of sunless days.

The buckthorn, one of two that remain purposefully for diversity sake is discovered, the seed of frozen cherries the goal, like hummingbirds one species hover for an extended time while picking that fruit one by one, the tree’s canopy buzzing with action.

A black oil seed basket serving so many who share the resource, queued and rarely simultaneous, but persistent, hopping branch side and smashing the hull to ingest, or caching seed for surviving the thrills of a winter notorious for lingering well beyond February and March.

I imagine for the bitter winter survivor its a day by day challenge to consume energy and to make water, to nest as blizzards storm, or as Orion gleams brightest in the longest and coldest of nights, certainly its not an old bird’s game.

It could be that my own two wings and feathers deserve attention, survival never certain, winter blowing hard can unseat the most taloned of birds, the most prepared of creatures.

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.