COSTCOOOOOOO!

So over the weekend the news dropped that Costco will build a store in Idaho Falls.

Judging by the reaction to the news, you’d think we lived in a retail wasteland where the only choices for groceries were the corner convenience store or the Farmer Maggot Farmer’s Market and Hay Rake Emporium.

Many wondered if both Costco and Sam’s Club could coexist in town. Clearly Costco thinks Bentonville needs some competition, and while Sam’s may lose some members to Costco, I hardly think Sam’s will fade into the background. After all, Sam’s Club has coexisted with Idaho’s home-grown non-membership-required behemoth, Winco, for a long time in town. Add one more to the mix and maybe the other stores will be a little less crowded. But probably not to the point the average consumer will notice.

Because we don’t one-stop shop anymore. Sam’s is good for certain things. Winco is good for others. There is some overlap, but there’s not enough equality or duplication between the two to make one much more attractive than the other. I suspect the same will be the same when Costco comes – though our access to discount funeral caskets will take a great leap forward.

Caskets brings me to Costco’s surprising choice of location – kitty corner to the Lincoln Cemetery. Costco will build on farmland on the northwest corner of Hitt and Lincoln roads, adjacent to the new roundabout.

At, the roundabout. It’s been one of those you love it or you hate it deals since it got put in by Bonneville county oh, six or seven years ago. When the county widened Lincoln from Hitt to Ammon Road last year, they also increased the number of lanes in the roundabout. I’ve been through it in busy times, and to tell the truth it’s not all that bad. Traffic flows much more regularly than it does at stoplights.

But you have the ninnies who don’t know how to use a roundabout, or try to treat it as a four-way stop, which it is not. Recently, I saw someone in the right turn only lane panicked about what to do – even though they had their own lane to go through the roundabout in.

People will complain about the roundabout and the traffic, and worry that Costco building there will add to the problem. But the solution isn’t a stoplight or convincing Costco to build somewhere else. The solution is getting people to learn how to use the roundabout correctly. Or, if they can’t do so, changing their routes so they don’t have to go through that troublesome bit of asphalt.

I was momentarily puzzled by Costco’s choice of location until something hit me: They won’t be called on by the city to make road improvements in the area, as the roads are already improved. There are some whinging about Costco getting some tax benefits from the city’s economic development program. But the same people wouldn’t complain at all if Costco opted to build in another location and was forced to widen roads and put in stoplights, which has happened in other locations. Building where the roads are already improved is a shrewd move on Costco’s part. And the location, while a bit north of the center of population, is still very central to the city.

Because I’m a map nerd, I got to wondering what Costco will look like in the neighborhood. I wondered about layout, and whether there was enough room at the location they’d picked (I’m sure they did their homework, but still the questions lingered in my head). So using Google Maps, I looked at the Costco location in Pocatello, which also clocks in at about 150,000 square feet, the same size as the store proposed for Idaho Falls.

Making sure the maps were the same scale, I took screenshots of the Pocatello location and also the land in Idaho Falls where the store will be built.

Looks like it’s a perfect fit.

The picture isn’t perfect, as it cuts out, on the south, the location of Costco’s gas pumps in Pocatello. (Also note, the Pocatello location is oriented east-west on its long axis; here it’s been flipped 90 degrees.)

If the adjacent satellite retail locations at Pocatello are included, the lot looks like this:

So the lot in Idaho Falls isn’t quite as big as the one in Pocatello, but is nearly the same size.

What’ll also be interesting is to see what happens to adjacent property. The open land to the east of Costco is pretty big, with the original Lincoln townsite to the east and a few homes and gravel pits to the northeast. I’ll wager that land starts to fill, or at least its asking price goes up, fairly quickly.

CAMPOUT!

So Troop 1010’s first campout is complete.

And it may sound totally lame to say the girls (and their leaders, myself included) camped out in our backyard and cooked dinner and breakfast on a Cache cooker in the garage.

The lameness fades, however, when I consider this: Five-sixths of the troop was able to be there. Had we not camped at home, we would have had half of the troop there. One of the attendees is on the fence whether she wants to continue with the troop. Also, two of the girls had 8 am obligations the morning after – as did their leaders, who had to head to a merit badge scramble. So this campout was, in my book, a great success.

Because of this campout:

1. Troop unity improved. Particularly because two of the girls, who had late afternoon obligations, were able to attend, since we were closer to home (literally) than we’d originally planned.

2. Troop rank advancement progressed. The troop finished their final activity for their Cyberchip awards and completed almost all of the rest of the requirements for the Scout rank – as well as getting a leg up on the Tenderfoot rank. Not as important to some, but important to at least two of the girls, who have eyes on earning their Eagle Scout awards.

3. Equipment was tested – and found lacking – but was repaired. We field tested two tents donated to the troop. One had a mild mold problem that we cleaned up the following day, and the other featured weak brass hooks that kept breaking – so we replaced the hooks with carabiners so when we go camping in the wild, the tent won’t be falling down on our heads.

And since we’re starting this troop from scratch from an equipment standpoint, we were able to make a list of the things we need to make future campouts bigger successes. Clearly, I need to start scouring the thrift stores for big pots in which we can boil water. Something we should have done earlier when our son worked at one of the local thrift stores and had an employee discount.

I hope the girls went home Saturday morning thinking they’d had a good time and would go with the troop again the next time we camp. The location will certainly be better the next time we go.

Maybe Mos Eisley Isn’t all that Bad

Mos Eisley the spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.

Social media is often described as Mos Eisley from Star Wars, and rightfully so. There we find all of the world’s bad actors, trolls, button-pushers, traders in falsehood for cash, and other idiots and ne’er-do-wells who range on the scale of evil from bumbling to absolute.

But you can bet your boots if things got “so bad” in this country that the government took steps to shut social media down, folks would not react well.

Though the thinkers, or at least some of them, seem to think it’s a good idea.

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, writing at Slate.com, speaks of the government-sanctioned “shutdown” of social media in Sri Lanka following Easter Sunday attacks on Christians by purported Muslim extremists, and how cries of “Good” over the shutdown demonstrate Western ignorance of how things actually work outside of liberal democracies.

Wijeratne writes:

In the West, many praised the most recent social media block. Kara Swisher wrote in the New York Times, “When the Sri Lankan government temporarily shut down access to American social media services like Facebook and Google’s YouTube after the bombings there on Easter morning, my first thought was ‘good.’ … because it could save lives … because the companies that run these platforms seem incapable of controlling the powerful global tools they have built … so many false reports about the carnage were already circulating online that the Sri Lankan government worried more violence would follow.” Swisher acknowledges at the end of her column that “shutting social media down in times of crisis isn’t going to work.” But she seems unaware of the actual source of the problem here. 

The Sri Lankan government has tried all this before. It shut down social networks in March 2018, in response to riots targeting Muslims. In the events leading up to those attacks, the government didn’t do anything about the anti-Muslim hate speech peddled on social media by the far-right Buddhist organization Bodu Bala Sena and its affiliates; they’re monks, after all. This negligence is precisely what caused organized mob violence in the first plane. The government let hate speech run its course, then took the rug out from everyone—even, for some bizarre reason, blocking my own author website (my political blog was left intact)—and then blamed the scapegoat of the day, Facebook. Media attention was focused at the time on the role of Facebook in violence in Myanmar, and Western journalists lap this stuff up.

So we should count our blessings that our national media, though at times error-prone, isn't in thrall to the state.

Yet.

And we should take heart that our government, despite its many shortcomings, is not outright incompetent.

Yet.

So in the meantime, maybe we ought to put up with the shortcomings of our social media. It may spy on us. It may sell our information. It may make money off the crap we post. But at least the government isn't shutting it down and we're not forced to go to the bad actors of the internet for our news. Or our "news."

Yet.

Funny Times

We live in funny times.

The popular media is flooded with images and stories on the new and final season of Game of Thrones. Or rather, with images and stories about all the sex and violence in the new and final season of Game of Thrones.

Anyone who says they don’t watch the program appear to be branded as haters, as in “Hating something that’s popular doesn’t make you a unique person.” That’s as may be. But liking something that’s popular doesn’t make you a unique person either.

Funny times, I said. Because at the same moment, Kate Smith is in the news. A long-deceased popular singer, well-known for her patriotic songs. She’s on the track to becoming an unperson because, back in the 1930s, she sang some songs.

[Whispered] They refer to “darkies.”

Nevermind that one of them was regarded as satirical, even at the time, and was also recorded by one of the most notable African-American performers of the time.

And no matter – for the moment, at least – that others of the time also sang songs featuring the derogatory term (including Bing Crosby, who’s probably next for unpersonning). Kate Smith is now on the Unperson List. Soon to follow, Woodrow Wilson, founder of the League of Nations, because he watched “Birth of A Nation” and liked it.

I could suspect Elmer Fudd is a racist, as he sang, at least in part, “Oh Susanna!” whose full lyrics are, ahem.



The song was composed by Stephen Foster, who had a statue in his honor in Pittsburgh until recent times.

You have probably sung some of Stephen Foster’s songs, which include:

“Old Folks at Home”

“Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair”

“Beautiful Dreamer”

So you, reader, might be a racist. Or at least associated with a racist’s not-so-racist songs.

Does it matter that Kate Smith’s rendition of “God Bless America” is the song that is performed, or that the performer, nearly 90 years ago, sang something questionable?

We must utterly condemn and shun and unperson people of the past for their sins, and it mattereth not if they still live or if they are conveniently dead. And we must watch sexy times and the blood flow and like it or at least remain absolutely quiet about it, or risk being labeled a “hater.”

One could argue the songs are racist and Game of Thrones is not. And one might be right.

But one could counterargue that both the songs and the show are offensive, albeit hitting different offensive-sensitivity underbellybuttons. And one would be labeled a racist-supporting Puritan prude h8er who is out of touch with modern times.

You don’t win arguing with some of these people. Thus the funny times.

So I end on this note, from James Lileks:

As I said before, somewhat joshingly - 1984 is coming to pass not because it's imposed, but because everyone is volunteering to do their part.

The Summer of Oh Boy . . .

via GIPHY

Shortly after we moved into our house in Ammon, we decided we needed a sprinkler system. Since my younger brother had experience with them, he came over and looked at the one that was already in place and decided we could either spend the summer trying to fix it – that included digging randomly in the yard to find long-buried sprinkler heads – or start over.

I opted to start over. He helped to lay out a basic system which I added to over the next few summers. It’s finally buried and done and only occasionally do I have to fix things. But there were two summers at least I spent some evenings and all weekends digging trench after trench after trench with a pick and a shovel. Should have rented a trencher, but I was determined to do it by hand.

This summer is making those summers look easy.

PROJECT ONE: Siding. Last April, a hailstorm turned the siding on the back of the house into Swiss cheese. We spent that summer replacing shingles on the roof, which were worn and also hail-battered. Then we paid for part of the house – the tallest portions – to be done professionally. So the siding matches, I decided I could do the rest of the house. The siding now sits in the garage waiting to go up on the house. My lips are numb just thinking about it. But at least the tall parts are done. . .

However, if I want to park the car in the garage come winter, the siding has to be dealt with before the snow flies. So I think my plan of attack is this:

1. North side of the garage, then wrapping around the lower front portion of the house, including the garage (should be simple, mostly a big garage door on that wall) and then the front of the house under the porch. The bay windows are going to be tricky, but JR, the guy who did the siding on the back of the house, gave me a little coaching on fitting the tiny bits in there.

2. That’ll leave only the back corner by the bathroom/electrical boxes to finish. The bathroom wall should be a piece of cake, though it does involve a bit of a gable going up the side of the garage. Getting around the electrical boxes might be trickier, but I do have an electrician up the street I can consult when it comes to that.

3. Then the harder part – the upper front part of the house should be OK, but the other gable end is a bit taller than I remembered, especially on the back of the house. Not quite sure how I’ll do the tall bits there, but I’ll have to figure it out.

Then there’s painting of the soffit and fascia. Maybe we should just save up our money and have it clad in metal next summer . . .

PROJECT TWO: Fencing. Thanks to Carl, our neighbor to the south, that part of the fence is done. But the rest is weathered and falling down, with one portion only being held up by the neighbor’s bushes. So I’ve got to do some fencing this summer. Likely I’ll get one corner done (eliminating the stress on the neighbors’ bushes), and hopefully also the bit between the house and the new fence on Carl’s side, so it all looks the same over there. Liam, who will be doing a service mission locally starting next week, should be home and available to help with some of this work. This could be our summer to get to know each other better – past summers have seen Michelle and the kids at Scout camp while I’m at home working. Depending on the state of the fence posts, I may be able to get more done than this, but I’ve got to concentrate my efforts on the siding.

PROJECT THREE: Bathroom tile. This is becoming a bigger priority. Might have some water infiltration to deal with. But I have the tools and the talent, so it’ll be Miller Time on that.

"So It Begins"

So a new semester begins at BYU-Idaho.

Now we’re in Canvas, a new LMS – learning Management System. It seems pretty straightforward, and with the Canvass app I have on my phone, I’m now able to better use the downtime I have on the bus in the afternoons to respond to emails and discussion posts, freeing up more time in the evening when I get home for family-related stuff. And ensuring I respond in a more timely fashion to those posts and emails. I’m looking forward to that. Because when burnout sets in – as it inevitably does – the discussion posts tend to go by the wayside as do the emails, at least in a timely fashion. So I’m hoping the new app will help me cop a better attitude.

But Canvas still has mysteries.

The Faculty Journal, for instance. I found it once over the weekend and thought, hey, this is a great place for me to keep my teaching journal, since it’s built in to the software and I don’t have to go looking for it.

Ha ha, he said. Because since I used it that one time, I have not been able to find it anywhere. So back to other, more old-fashioned ways of keeping that journal, such as on this blog and, most likely, little to not at all.



You may get the feeling I don’t enjoy teaching all that much. While it’s not my chosen profession, it’s not all that bad. I’m not sure I could do it full-time, though maybe soldiering through full-time for a while might be okay if it brought other benefits. And it’s still better than journalism. Which has been my mantra for quite some time now.

My dream, of course, would be to teach creative writing. But that would probably mean I’d have to do some creative writing of my own. And maybe even publish some of it. See “fringe benefits” of teaching full-time. But I let a lot of excuses get in the way of me and my creative writing, so switching careers wouldn’t likely do all that much to help me out. I mean it might for a time, but I need sustainable change. Journalism didn’t allow that, or at least I didn’t allow that for myself as a journalist. There were so many things wrong with that particular career choice. It’s neat for people who find that niche, but it wasn’t working for me any longer.

Enough of that. All this angst upsets my stomachs.

Back to the teaching journal thing.

I have hopes that, going on to my second semester of providing a lot of advance guidance on the argumentative synthesis paper, and supplying my own example of such a paper as the semester progresses, that I have at least tamed that beast a little bit. I still had some students not get the paper, but far more got it last semester with my new approach than did in the past. I’ll see if that holds true this semester.

If I see that holding true, I want to spend more time this semester helping my students see the relevance of learning how to annotate articles, pointing out the benefits not only for this class, but for any writing or research they have to do in the future:

1. Highlighting is only part of it. You have to write in the margin to remind yourself WHY you highlighted. You might remember some of the why, but you won’t remember it all.
2. Highlights and annotations in digital or physical media mean you have your thoughts captured on paper so you can compare and contrast sources and have them ready to insert as you write.
3. Having your annotations on the source you want to use will make writing a works cited page easier.

I’ll have to noodle on this and see if I can add some more advantages or nuance to what I’ve already got.

Good Intentions Mixed with Fiddle-Faddle

I’m about halfway through Madeline L’Engle’s “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art,” and, eh.

This book is a well-intentioned discussion on Christians, art, Christian art, and art by Christians and such, but it really lacks coherency. A Goodreads reviewer put it well when he describes the book as “like listening to your erudite upper-class grandmother wax poetic about faith in relatively bland, indefinite terms while she sips chamomile tea on a rattan chair in an immaculately kept garden.” It’s a peek inside her faith and what she believes is the Christian artist’s duty but comes out as muddled as the content of a box of Fiddle Faddle.

Still, there’s much good to consider for writers and human beings in what she writes.

 An example:

“I need not belabour the point that to retain our childlike openness does not mean to be childish. Only the most mature of us are able to be childlike. And to be able to be childlike involves memory; we must never forget any part of ourselves. As of this writing I am sixty-one years old in chronology. But I am not an isolated, chronological numerical statistic. I am sixty-one, and I am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thirty-one, and forty-five, and . . . and . . . and . . .

If we lose any part of ourselves, we are thereby diminished. If I cannot be thirteen and sixty-one simultaneously, part of me has been taken away.”

I’ve heard many, many others talk of this quality, particularly writers who want to connect with younger children. Those who do it best are those who have kept that childlike part of them as they grew older. This may be why I struggle, as I was kinda born old.

There are other things, however, that L’Engle says that are jumbled and nonsensical (cue the image of the erudite upper-class grandmother).

She claims, in passing, for example, that NASA astronauts heard a program of “nostalgic music” while in space and thanked Mission Control for sending it to them. Mission Control, she says, confessed they didn’t know what the astronauts were talking about. Research discovered the program they’d heard was broadcast on the radio in the 1930s.

She accepts this anecdote on faith, stating:

“How do you explain it? You don’t. Nor can you explain it away. It happened. And I give it the same kind of awed faith that I do the Annunciation or the Ascension: there is much that we cannot understand, but our lack of comprehension neither negates nor eliminates it.”

Now I put a lot of stock in faith. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I have faith in modern prophets, continued revelation, additional scripture, and many other things that many Christians – likely L’Engle included – would find incredulous (in fact, L’Engle says for modern “mysics,” she looks not to religion but to science).

And maybe I’m being unfair to L’Engle. One of the scientists she quotes, Dr. Freiderich Dessauer, says this, as quoted in her book:

“Man is a creature who depends entirely on revelation. In all his intellectual endeavor, he should always listen, always be intent to hear and see. He should not strive to superimpose the structures of his own mind, his systems of thought upon reality . . . At the beginning of all spiritual endeavor stands humility, and he who loses it can achieve no other heights than the heights of disillusionment.”

But even if we have faith like unto a mustard seed, that faith must start with something. Because despite what she believes about this NASA episode, as far as I can tell it did not happen, or at least is not documented in a way easily found on the Internet (Aha! You may claim: That’s where faith comes in!)

Faith also tells me that if NASA astronauts had heard a broadcast from the 1930s still inexplicably bouncing around between the Earth and the Moon, it would be documented somewhere. God provides scripture, prophets, individual revelation (if Dessauer and L’Engle’s interpretation of Dessauer holds true). And note how I say “provides,” as my “Mormon” theology dictates.

Other eerie “space music” is heavily documented, viz:

It is true that the Apollo 10 astronauts did hear something they could not quite explain cutting through the crackle in their headsets when they were on the far side of the moon. It is true too that they called it “music,” though only in the way a whale call is described as a song because of its rising and falling tones. (In the transcript, command module pilot John Young describes what they’re hearing as “a whistling sound,” and lunar module pilot Gene Cernan imitates it as “whoooooo,” which is not exactly the kind of song you wind up getting stuck in your head and singing all day).

Video in this CNN story reproduces eerie “space music” but what they offer is not what the lunar astronauts heard, but rather this:

What was the music? Interference picked up when two radios in close proximity on the spacecraft were turned on at the same time.

We can still have faith in the miraculous; getting to the Moon, “Neat” as Bender Bending Rodriguez would say. That took a lot of faith, particularly in the 1960s. But sometimes faith swings in tandem with Occam’s Razor.

I’ll keep reading L’Engle’s book. Maybe there’s a prize at the bottom of this particular box.

“Nobody Steps on A Church in My Town!”

I have pictures of our visit to Notre Dame somewhere.

More importantly, I have the feeling of visiting Notre Dame.

And that feeling is a feeling of quiet peace that I felt visiting pretty much every church I’ve been to, whether in Europe or the Americas.

There is faith in the grandiosity. A love of God in the stained glass, the carefully-carved and laid stone, the hewn wood.

I admit I don’t feel it much the same in LDS churches, but I certainly do in LDS temples. That feeling that you’re in God’s home.

I served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in France and visited many a church there. I was lucky enough to start my mission in Perigueux, home to the marvelous Cathedral Saint-Front.

I love how the cathedral’s domes and turrets dominate the city landscape, perched close to the Dordogne River.

And I know the church has changed quite a bit as a building over the years, with the domes I love so much appearing in the 19th century. We weren’t always welcomed there as missionaries, but I still loved to go into the building, look at the art and architecture, and imagine seeing God there.

I would love to go back and see it again. Because it is a beautiful building. But also because of the beautiful feelings I felt there. I lived in other towns in France, but when I think cathedral, I think Saint-Front.

Notre Dame I visited with my wife in the late 1990s. The feelings I felt in Perigueux I felt there, walking in the cool light shining through the windows.

To see it burn this week hurts. Because a house of God has burned.

I have no doubt it’ll be restored. Whether for secular or spiritual reasons, the cathedral is important. And whether they replace the oak and lead with more oak and lead, or do something more modern with steel or aluminum, I know God will still be there. That feeling will still be there.

And when churches burned in Louisiana earlier this year – smaller churches, less architecturally-significant churches – I still felt the pain. No one deserves to have their place of worship taken from them.

Or stepped on, as the case may be.

The Usborne Spy's Guidebook -- A Fantastic Feat in Technical Writing

It should be pointed out, makers of spy movies – particularly for kids – the Usborne Spy’s Guidebook does not once mention dangling from nearly-invisible wires as a method of infiltration. Nor does it mention bombs, guns, explosions, or any of the other things that tend to get Hollywood producers and Beavis and Butthead excited when they think of the movies.

Instead, the guidebook is filled with codes – including what they call the Pig-Pen, which I used as a kid because my mother showed it to me (I naively thought she made it up and that I would henceforth be able to send secret messages without any chance of being discovered) – disguises, trail markers and other more mundane bits of spycraft that a clever kid could reproduce if he had enough friends interested in playing real-world Spy vs. Spy.

Yes, it is indeed a book for kids. But for someone like me who is mildly interested in the world of spies thanks to things like The Conet Project, it was fun to read. Enough to see a glimpse of the spy world without getting too muddy. And certainly enough to keep kids – and willing adults – busy with their own spycraft should the mood arise.



There seem to be quite a few editions and iterations of this book – with one going for $104 currently on Ebay. So maybe this is a luckier 50 cent thrift store find than I originally thought. (The price does appear to be an outlier, as Ebay also has copies available for $4; there might be something I’m missing about the more expensive version.

To go on a different tack for just a moment -- I marvel at this book as a feat in technical writing. The text is crisp, the descriptions are clear, and where an illustration is needed you don't have to go looking for one because it's right there. A casual reader might breeze through this book and not think much about its construction, but since I have my technical writing hat on I'm marveling at how they pulled everything together. You could hand this book to an eight-year-old or an eighty-year-old willing to learn and they could master these spy techniques pretty quickly. The book even includes activities disguised as games where the reader can apply what's being taught.

BLACK HOLE!

Two things:

Science has, for the first time, photographed a black hole.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity still looks to be accurate.

And I guess technically what we’ve got a photo of is the “environment at a black hole’s event horizon,” which is probably the closest we can actually get a getting a photo of a black hole.
The photo itself, given what other wonders we’ve see in the universe, is underwhelming. But not really. It’s actually pretty cool.

Both Space.com and Ars Technica have good reports on the discovery.

Wired does a nifty job explaining why it’s such a big deal that this photo exists – getting one is extremely difficult.

On to Einstein. This is what Space.com reports:

If the observed silhouette matches the theory-informed simulations, "then Einstein was 100% right," [Dimitrios] Psaltis [an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona] said. "If the answer is no, then we have to tweak his theory in order to make it work with experiments. This is how science goes."

And we learned today that no tweaks are needed, at least at the moment: EHT's M87 observations are consistent with general relativity, team members said. Namely, the event horizon is nearly circular and is the "right" size for a black hole of that immense mass.

"I have to admit, I was a little stunned that it matched so closely the predictions that we had made," EHT team member Avery Broderick, of the University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, said during today's news conference.

And Einstein didn’t have an array of telescopes as large as the Earth. He had his mind and a motorcycle.

And I sure hope someone played this music as they viewed the pictures.

Bonus: Clair de Lune

Stokowski does a fine job with the orchestrations here (in this bit from Fantasia that was cut for time) but I think the original piano is so much better:

This is the one the Hermit of Iapetus would listen to.

The Hermit of Iapetus -- Clair de Lune

On the nights I can't sleep I listen to “Clair de Lune,“ because it relaxes me and stops me from sleeping.

As I listen, the light of Saturn pours through the porthole and leaves a moon-shape on the floor. Night into day and into night, the moon-shape stays the same shape, though over long periods of time it will dim and brighten as Saturn changes from a full squashed circle to a crescent.

The sun, too, casts a moon-shape that grows as Saturn wanes, but it is far dimmer.

Sometimes I put bits of crystal in the Moon-shape, and the light dances on the walls. Or with a mirror I set the light to bouncing off the ceiling, the walls, and through bits of cheesecloth I have hanging near the ventilation shaft.

As I listen, I try to remember the Moon and its light.

I like to think Claude Debussy worked late into the night trying to capture the light of the moon with the ivory and ebony keys. Maybe many nights he watched moonlight slide across the floor over the hardwood and carpet to illuminate the dust bunnies in the corners without writing a note.

I like to think he watched moonlight crawl across lawns and cobblestones, sear through the leaves of trees wobbly in the wind, haunt the clouds on rainy nights.

Then, when he had the piece done, he played it late one night, coaxing the keys but long enough until Madame Debussy came into the room, pissed at her loss of sleep and his thoughtlessness of playing – even quietly – his new rolling tune.

Maybe as she entered the room turned and smiled impishly at her, finished playing, and played it again as the moonlight trickled in through the billowing curtains.

I like to think he played the music for hours, as the moonlight crept across the room and finally up the wall and then faded as the moon set. Maybe neighbors, also roused by the unusual noise, lay in their beds listening to the music and maybe they too watched the moonlight creeping.

Or maybe he and Marie boinked on the carpet on that dusty hardwood as the moonlight continued to play his melody and the neighbors slept lightly, wondering for a few moments if they had heard a tune or if it were just their minds playing tricks in the moonlight.

Either way, it’s only then I, the Hermit of Iapetus, can get some sleep.

And sometimes I wake and my player has nearly exhausted the hundreds of versions it has of the tune and is playing the one by the Russian on a theremin.

And I wonder how one might make music in the vacuum between Iapetus and Earth.

Now THAT'S What I Want to See in A Power Bill

This may be the first time since we got solar panels installed last spring that we had a zero bill from the power company with a surplus on top of it.

We've had zero bills before, but they came in months when we'd overpaid a bill because of reasons. So to see this -- even if the credit is less than a dollar -- is nice.

So looking at the production for the past month (March, for the slow, like me), it looks like this:

I could make some wild guesses here, but that would be uneducated. All I can really figure is that we sent back to the grid slightly more electricity than we used from the grid, with the magic number for the past billing cycle being somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 watt hours.

That gives me hope that we can eventually get this figured out so we're producing lots more than we're consuming. To do that:

1. We've continued replacing incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs and fixtures with LEDs.
2. We installed additional vents in the attic above the house, which has greatly reduced the temperature difference between the upper floor and main floor, hopefully resulting in less use of the air conditioner.
3. This summer we're going to change how we use the air conditioner entirely, so we're using it less and hopefully building up a good reserve of credits with the power company to make up for the solar we can't produce in the winter.

I'm optimistic things will go better this year over last, as we figure out what works and what doesn't, and as we get a good spring of production. April last year wasn't good because we installed the panels late in the month, and May was off because of an incorrect installation and because we had to have the panels removed for a week to replace the shingles on the roof.

What's even better is that thanks to the IRS and Turbotax, I was able to get the federal residential solar power credit done on our taxes for 2018, meaning we hit the target balance with our loan company so our payments don't go up. And we're that much closer to having the loan paid off. So good news all around, so far.

What I've Been Watching: Corner Gas

A few weeks ago, a Facebook friend whose identity I've forgotten recommended the Canadian TV show "Corner Gas" as a good watch on Amazon Prime.

Because I was desperate for something to watch while grading papers, and wanting to use our Amazon Prime membership, I decided to give the show a try.

Glad I did.

First of all, this is NOT going to be an "I'm so enlightened because I'm watching a Canadian TV program and they're SO much better than what we produce in the United States" kind of post. Because maybe the rest of Canadian TV is just as bad as what I'm familiar with here, and maybe there are great American TV shows out there that I haven't watched.

I don't watch a lot of TV. I am richer with TV from the '70s and '80s than I am anything more modern.

Anyhoo, "Corner Gas" is a hoot.

I won't go into a synopsis or introduction to the show, as that's what the Internet is for.

And while it's tempting to say "Corner Gas" is what "Napoleon Dynamite" could be if it were a TV show, the comparison is only apt in that both the show and the movie have a small-town setting. Okay, and quirky characters. But the goals of each are different.

Corner Gas feels more like a "slice of life" TV show with a refreshing rural setting. I say refreshing because the vast majority of TV shows I see now -- and again, I don't watch many of them -- have an urban setting, because that appears to be what appeals to the audience and what the algorithms tell producers and writers are where they should be to pursue those coveted eyeballs/advertising dollars.

That Corner Gas has wide appeal in Canada shows that character-driven stories can thrive in even unexpected settings. And maybe there's a Canadian paen to small-town life, similar to the American longing for the 1950s, that I'm not aware of that adds to this show's popularity.

That doesn't matter. This show is fun.

I probably connect the most with Brent Leroy, owner of Corner Gas, who appears to have a job only because it helps him fuel his comic book and chili cheese dog habits. He appears to have no competition and would probably fare well enough even if he had competition, because his laid-back amiability appeals to those around him.

Next is Hank Yarbo, Brent's life-long friend, whose work ambitions are even less defined than Brent's. AGAIN, I HAVE THIS ATTRACTION TO LAZY MEN WHO GET BY BUT HAVE NO REAL AMBITIONS OUTSIDE OF THE SIMPLE DRIVES OF CHILDHOOD. This probably tells you a lot more about me than I'd ever want known.

Anyway, if you have Amazon Prime, give Corner Gas a chance. Unless you're still a strict believer in the Rural Purge.

Put. . . ze Writer . . . Beck

After what I think is almost eighteen months, I’m back at my old place at work, this time MUCH CLOSER to the shouty people who make working at RWMC a lot of fun.

It’s nice to be back to hear those familiar voices.

Working out of AMWTP for that time wasn’t the end of the world, and I got used to it – but we were in a quiet little spot kinda far from the action. Or at least the action I was used to.

I will miss the walking. I got in two brisk 10-minute walks a day, working at AMWTP, as I went back and forth from the office to the bus stop. I won’t miss that walk in the winter when it’s below zero and it’s icy, but now, yeah, I’m gonna miss that walking. I’ll have to find excuses to walk a bit around here.

But that does mean I can get back to where I was walking earlier – out through the sage brush just east of the office building, if they let us walk there now. There’s plenty of coyote scat and I have seen badgers out there. There are also supposed to be rattlesnakes, but I walk like a clodhopper and seem to manage to scare them off. Of course, I walk on a dirt road where the snakes can’t always find the cover they want, so maybe they’re all around me but stay silent so I don’t notice them.

We did miss a few hours’ worth of work with the move, and with computers and phones being disconnected. But it came on a good day when the workload and deadlines were relatively light.

One more positive about working at AMWTP: I got to leave my desk ten minutes early so I could make that walk to RWMC so as not to miss the bus. Can’t do that now, as the bus stop is a mere thirty seconds from where I sit.

Hey – from where I sit I almost have a window, where I could watch the squirrels, if they were married. But this does mean I’ll have a quick way to watch the marmots and rabbits – again, if they’re here – and the kildeer, which look like little sandpipers. Their babies are amazing to watch, scooting around like little racecars.



Moving back will likely mean more drama, as when deadlines approach and tempers flare I’ll be close to that action, maybe closer than I want to be.

But it does feel like coming home.

I Hate April Fools

On April Fools Day, I firmly plant my stick in the mud.

It’s my second-least-favorite holiday, right behind St. Patrick’s Day, which makes it convenient that my holiday loathing can be exhausted in a relatively short period in the year.

The prevalence of April Fools Day jokes on social media may be a part of my dislike for the holiday. Although its pointlessness runs an immediate second.

Pointless, you say?

Yes, I retort with a careful derisive snort.

April Fools Day doesn’t bring jokes. It brings pranks, and pranks are jokes whose cummerbund has fallen into the toilet.

The general April Fools Day joke depends on the gullibility of others for the larff value. Someone has to look foolish for the April Fools Day joke to succeed. Just like St. Patrick’s Day depends on faux Irish solidarity to avoid being pinched; the participant in the joke is often not willing but just as often can’t escape the jape.

This isn’t to say I hate others for liking – or loving – these holidays, or loving to prank other people. Do it all you want. Just don’t expect me to giggle along with you. Or to wear green. Because it ain’t gonna happen.