Will It Blend?

We've all done these things in school.  You get a piece of paper, for a test, that has a picture of a circle, with things floating inside of it, and lines coming off each part of what's depicted.  In this case its a cell.  So you write the name of each organelle, membrane, Golgi apparatus (perfect terminology there), and what have you, and when the blanks are filled, you raise you hand, having passed the test.  Unless you simply filled in the ones you didn't know with your favorite rugby players.

When I was young that's how I viewed all aspects of the body (and organisms in general.)  When I touched you, you were really a kind of solid cartoon, virtually never, until I was older, providing me tactile clues as to how your body works, and what's going on under your skin.  And that's for the best... given my rich confusion about far more obvious matters (and more relevant ones to a normal existence as well.)

When I touched my arm only only imagined dimly that it had anything at all to do with cells, or even muscles, really.  Surface was, and to a great extent it must continue to be, everything.

For a long time I have been young enough to look at things somewhat fresh, and with a sort of naive astonishment.  It is the privilege of the young to do this (though as I reminded a friend of mine, who's comments were reminding me how old we are, my privileges are running out.)

I'll never forget a wonderful drive home I had seven years ago, to Elletsville, where I lived with some punk rock kids and two little girls: Ona and Florence.  I had just bought my girlfriend the new Dixie Chicks album, and had plans with her that night for her birthday.  I had been working at the Bagel Bakery that morning, then come home and taken a nap and dragged myself about of bed (poor guy had to do something nice for his fetching girl...) to go to the bookstore and buy the present, then come home, clean up, and take her to dinner.  Having had a cup of coffee (from the bookstore) and feeling the anticipation of her pleasure and joy at my attentions, my mind was wandering pleasantly as I turned onto Ratliff road, my road, and climbed the last hill in the whitish late afternoon sunlight of autumnal equinox.  

I looked out at a hillside, for Elletsville is thick with beautiful examples, and saw the expected beauty that the late afternoon sun so regularly produces for those with the eyes to see it.  Something seemed odd though.  A part of my brain went back to a time in the early '90's when I noticed, while working for Orkin Pest Control, one day, that the shadows of the grass and tree's seemed doubled, or something, like an extra, dimmer sun had passed overhead.  To this day I can't say exactly why it seemed like that, but I remember extremely clearly pulling into an auto body shop and asking for a welding mask to look at the sun.  While waiting I punched a hole in a piece of paper and saw the image of the sun being slightly occluded by a round object, projected onto the back of my hand.  The very nice proprietors of the auto body shop, fascinated to say the least by this mad bug guy, came out and gave me the mask, I glanced up at what I already had seen, then gave the mask to the proprietor, and we grinned with mutual admiration at our pipsqueak lives, full of Wheaties, work and top forties tunes, and rarely touching in any sense on the sun and the moon.

Something about the light, as I drove up that hill on Ratcliff road reminded me of that partial eclipse in the Spring of 1994.  But, even as I smiled at the memory, I knew that it wasn't a change in the sun, but something about the quality of the appearance of the grass...  I just looked at it one more time, and then looked across the street to the east and saw something different, something different in the appearence of that grass.  Whereas the grass on the west side, between me and the sun had a kind of stained glass quality, the grass on the east side, reflecting the sun (the light of which was passing over my car and I) back into my eyes, had a buff, almost arid quality.

The grass on the western side was not reflecting light much at all, from what I could tell.  "My God," I said to myself, "it's glowing."  I wondered, rather dumbly, how long it had been doing that right before my eyes.  So, I realized for the first time, grass accepts some percentage of light, and lets it pass right through, just like stained glass.  Everywhere I looked, for about 180 degrees from the seat of my vehicle, there was, an aspect of the landscape that was not reflecting the sun, but transmitting it.

Photographers know all about the strange tricks of light, and probably know an additional thousand details about the way to look at things, when looking and choosing is your bread and butter.

But biologists and chemists and physicists  know all about why things look the way they do.  And in the next few posts, along with that test that you took in school about the way cells are constructed, or at least we were taught they were, I'd like to sing a little body electric, and make an even better case for the Church with the finest wrought windows:  'cus these windows were made for the sun.

Turns out that our little Test that we took of the cell is fine, if you only want to know some of the things there are to know about what's happening in a cell.  Back when I was a kid, most biologists had some pretty straightforward training as to how to identify the various proteins and lipids and enzymes that made up the interior of the cell.  They blended up the cell, and extracted from the smoothie what they could, then purified it, and studied it.  As science has probably shown you:  this method has worked marvelously.   We know an astonishing amount of stuff about the nature of the molecules that comprise our bodies.  It wasn't easy, but scientists have painstakingly figured a lot of our building blocks out.

There are a few details, however, that the Osterizer setting #7 (liquify) might have not helped much with.  For example:  what is the nature of the spaces in between the organelles and within the membrane of a cell.  Typically, as a kid, I just labeled it cytoplasm, a term meant to sort of conjure the space for everything that wasn't a nucleus or organelle:  I don't know, proteins, water, and the kitchen sink, or what have you.  Everyone I ever talked to about it seemed to believe it was about two kitten whiskers to the side of salt water.  Plus some enzymes and stuff.

And for most of my life, most people, for the most part were happy with such a picture.  Painter philosophers (and half drunk art lovers) love to point out that the canvas makes a significant contribution to the mature accomplishment of a painting, and one could hardly be accused of rudeness for simply reasoning that the "white space" in a cell was sitting there keeping the rest of the cell full, and the organelles and stuff from bumping into one another.

Turns out that blending the cell (and viewing it through microscopes) gave us a ton of valuable info about its building blocks.  But, like the difference between a huge pile of bricks, and a house, those building blocks had led us not only to edification: sometimes knowledge can lead you astray.

This is not to say that our understanding of cellular structure is a facile endeavor.  As I said before:  we have achieved incredible resolution of knowledge about all manner of aspects in Molecular Biology and even the structure of the cell.  I recently read about the endoplasmic reticulum, which I am not sure it was pointed out to me as a child, is a system of three-dimensional canals and spaces involved in intracellular transport and occupying a large proportion of the cell volume.  That's funny, I had thought that my cells transported nutrients through gross flows of fluid exchanged over gradients of salinity, or what have you.  Canals transporting water?  In a cell?  I found that rather surprising.  But then, after a learned a few more things, I found it, like I find mycelium, engrossingly delicious.

According to a book I am currently enjoying immensely, The Rainbow and The Worm, (The Physics of Organisms) by Mae-Wan Ho, until recently most biologists regarded the organelles of a cell to be comprised mostly of inert structural proteins, and the cytoplasm to be richly endowed with dissolved proteins and enzymes, floating randomly until plucked by the cell's metabolism for use.  The exceptions to this scenario involved respiration and photosynthesis, but basically the cytoplasm was regarded as a reservoir of sorts.

Further investigation has recently shown that the proteins thought previously to be dissolved in cytoplasm, are in fact complexed into into intricate structures, throughout the "body" of the cytoplasm.  These structures, while hardly well understood, are quite a shock to the old concept of storage and warehousing.  The structures appear to have some use, and are thought to be in intimate contact with the hydrogen bonds of the cytoplasm water: perhaps, somewhat shockingly, meaning that the proteins play some role in structuring the watery interior of the cell.  Far from being in solution (in the typical sense) they form an organized, unified structure, to accomplish some crucial role in the life of the cell.  The cytoplam is a structural matrix of protein, enzyme (a type of protein) and water.

Now do you see why blending might have obscured some of the structure of the cell?

Perhaps none of this means much of anything to you.  So what? you might be wondering.  So their is structure to cytoplasm.  "Next time I'll be sure to put some squares and triangles in the white space when I take the test on the structure of a cell.  Ok, Andy?"  Ok.  It's a start.

A Lunar Saint

You might say this poem is about Monsanto: (it's been on the left margin of this Blog for awhile)

When too clever by half

Kicks the door in our house

And tens thousand shades

Cast over this land.

The simple seeds left,

What with water and dirt,

Will be as sand.

Blown into a small hill

For the winds to carry,

And water to deposit,

And earth to nurture;

Be disabled,

By too clever by half

And our friends.

Yes, there comes that day when

Uprightness is wrong.

And there comes that day of

Entropy's throng.

For the winding rendition

Of a green twister slowly

Twisting to a theme.

Maybe to hungry swallows

Following the winds hungering...

It's appetite for grass

And leaves

Like locusts

But twisting beyond a scientists

Game.

If you believe in magic

Why not imagine this loss?

What might my house be without

The roots and stem and leaves

That a seed used to

Be able to grow?

And what would become of my world?

When all the fields are fallow

Once sown.

Though, I actually think this poem is about me. You see I have been warned my whole life, by many numerous sources, literally since I was born, about the impact that my culture has on the world. I learned as a small child about the ozone hole and global warming, which just goes to show how odd it is that only recently it seems certain factions have come around. Crazy me, I thought the matter was settled in 1986. Apparently I was unaware of the manner in which we come to "know" things, or "understand" them. "That makes sense," is a privilege not extended to everyone (which you would think I would have remembered growing up in the non-sensical Christian world.)

Well... I remember very well when I first heard that among his duties in perestroika, Gorbacheav, took a tour with Reagan, of a large American farm. I've heard this story so many times, it in fact may be apocryphal, and yet I feel that I can see The Gipper and Gorbie standing there, straddling a few short rows of corn, a slight moire effect crossing your eyes as you look to the horizon behind them. For the sake of simplicity, lets say the farm was 1000 acres. Perhaps 3.5 percent of Americans were farmers, at the time. More than three times the number today. Around seven million seedcaps, adjusted for the population then.

So, Gorbie turns to Ronnie and says, "I suppose many American families are at work in these beautiful fields each day. Many, many families to tend this vast farm." But Ronnie smiles at yet another example of KGB failure, and says, "Only one family owns this farm. Only one farmer. And his John Deer tractors and combine."

Gorbie gasps. Suddenly besotted by the very symbol of his countryman, the hammer and sickle. No sickle could ever touch this field, not in the hands of one man. So Gorbie, an honest man, tells his fellow statesman, "A country with a farm such as this, run by a single man, is unstoppable." Or something like that. It's been a few years. I think I might have seen Gorbie on C-SPAN a few years ago. Then again, maybe not. It's been a long time.

When I first heard this story, it didn't particularly surprise me. My entire childhood was filled with nationalist propaganda: the space shuttle, olympics, and various different film strips at school vaguely showing Americans in smart western clothing, while folks in other countries never seem to rise above their perpetual agricultural posture. This, as crazy, as if Americans had routinely been depicted sitting on a toilet as their most typical national pastime (and take their toilet away, and you might be forced to wonder.) But seeing the inevitably dark, and always smaller than the land, peoples of the world, stooping to conquer, only seemed appropriate next to my countryman's seemingly endlessly exciting lives. We fly! We go to the moon (first!) And we grow tens of thousands of bushels of food, whilst in air conditioning in the cab of our combines, listening to G. Gordon Liddy. There was no Rush Limbaugh at the time, save Cape Girardeau, MO. At the time, as a kid, a skinny kid at that, I savored our manifest superiority. Sort of.

You can't completely blame us. We're a young country, full of land, and our adolescence coincided with the international draft of the first world wars and industrialization. When my Mom was a bit younger than me there was little more seemingly telling of where we were going in the world than a 747 (even intellectuals, Marxists too, would jump on those planes not knowing when they'd be back again. Still do.)

And when my parents were my age, 35, The Love Boat seemed to speak of power, freedom and a new life and romance, and as some songs have put it, "that's [where] we needed to go." Things (whatever they were, or still are) blow over on the seashores of old Mexico.

So even if Gorbie had been testing us with reverse psychology, which he very well might not have been, it would have been hard for us to notice, given the fabulous crew on the Enterprise (space shuttle, but also television shows) and Captain Steubing and his Pacific Princess: not the flotilla of the Hammer and Sickle, but The Love Boat. Sort of a mixture of a Trojan Horse and a Don Juan.

With a John Deer Green machine, we Americans could yawn through a 1000 acres.

This ignored, of course, the rather constant news of farmers going completely broke, due to the new agriculture. But just like the vast green meadows of Britain, where men have been free to settle down for three millennia, something had to clear the land, and I'm not talking about trees. The emerald beauty of a bucolic setting can say as much about a heartbreaking absence of human endeavor, as it suggests in its seemingly timeless aesthetics.

So my poem above asks various questions. I wrote it in about an hour, and have tinkered with it for a few years (since June 18, 2006, just as I was beginning to read Biology for most of a summer. To the exclusion of much else, save music.)

The first stanza hides its meaning behind the phrase "too clever by half." "Too clever by half" seems to be an attacker, kicking the door in, and bringing with his terrorism a banshee like collection of shades, and other fertility killers. "The simple seeds left/ What with water and dirt/ Will be as sand."

But the earth and water still flow to nurture sand like seeds. They are disabled, however, by "too clever by half," us, our scientists, and hubris, and our friends.

This poem might seem at first to be angry and apopcalyptic. But really, it's embarrassed and confessional. These are problems and processes I have known all my life about the seeds and soil. And I still contribute my two cents worth of encouragement to the problems, every day. For example, Canola Oil, is my main cooking oil. I buy as much of it, by weight, as I do coffee. And where does it come from? From the Western US, and Canada mostly (Canola means Canadian Oil: the plants original name is Rapeseed, wonderful plant, terrible name.)

For perhaps two decades, in the '70's thru the '80's, Rapeseed was merely a particularly fruitful plant. It's seed heads were gargantuan, and I think, though I am not sure, they are related to Turnips and Rutabaga and Mustard (brown, from whence all Brassica descend, through a single seashore species, to this day, on the chalk coasts of Britain.) Seed heads regarded by argriculturalist's in the '70's as one of the alternative crops to save the world from hunger. A good used bookstore will have shelves of volumes from this era with titles like, "Protein Concentrates" (taking the protein out of grass and processing it into a digestible form to feed people. It's been done, but for some reason Emeril never noticed.) and "New Food Crops To Feed The World." Such volumes can say, what else, volumes about the anxieties of an era.

So how was it, exactly, that I found myself, twenty years later in 1997, eating at a chain of steakhouses, Ruth's Chris, where a top tier eater like a steer, fed on grass and fattened on corn (the farmer I worked for had a group of machines called, no joke, Steer Stuffers?) Clearly something changed between the late '70's and the late '90's. Something had changed. My steaks weren't made with Soyelent Green, or protein concentrates off the prairie. They were made the old/new fashioned manner: with one grass to grow them, and the mutant varietal of grass, a tropical plant called corn, to fatten them. Had everyone stopped starving?

Most of us know that it wasn't so much that everyone stopped starving, as much as the Green Revolution found a way to feed most of the people, most of the time. Drought, coinciding with political meltdown, still provided for plenty of famine (such as the famous Ethiopian archetype that so many mothers mentioned to their children, or joked about, in the middle '80's.) But extremely large strides in fertilization, globally, and computerized logistics and shipping had effects not dreamed of by the phlegmatic old doomsayers of the '70's (the demise of old school Longshoreman, and two century old techniques of packing cargo onto ships, had a more than salutary effect on the efficiency of the movement of goods across the Earth.)

Another thing that happened hews more closely to the row my poem attempts to hoe. Genetic engineering. It's been said that the Green Revolution was mostly a matter of breeding better seeds more suited to environments where they previously might not have prospered. And I think that is half the truth. For one thing, in the late '70's damn little true genetic engineering as we imagine it today, where recombinant DNA is utilized to genetically modify cells, and eventually organisms, was possible. But breeding was reaching a zenith, as many biological technologies seem to, just slightly lagging the geophysical sciences. Where the '40's, '50's, and '60's seemed to speak of nuclear energy (or war,) space travel, and an establishment of a jet set on the 747, the '70's, '80's, and '90's brooked no seeming barriers to an establishment of an artificial form of agriculture, and some hoped, life itself. Biology seemed to be the new black science destined to reveal new paradigms.

So one day Rapeseed was genetically modified by Monsanto (in the late '70's to early '80's) and a marker put in its genes making it identifiable through exposure to certain chemicals (a characteristic, normal Rapeseed, doesn't have.) This Rapeseed is robust, and resistant to pests, and gives great yields to farmers, so it is planted by many, many farmers and then pressed into most of the Canola oil that we have become so accustomed to. Most of the oil I buy almost certainly comes from these plants. Farmers, at first, were probably only slightly frustrated at the cost of the seed. One of the stipulations of Monsanto's contract, however, is that you cannot keep seed at harvest to replant the following season. How strictly does Monsanto regulate and enforce against such a time honored practice?

Get this: some farmers were suspicious of such agriculture from the beginning, and so, even when most of their neighbors were planting Monsanto's rapeseed, these farmers were going organic, with open pollinated, rapeseed of old. A few years passed and these organic farmers heard at the local donut shop from their conventional farming friends and neighbors that the cost of using the Monsanto seed was even higher than advertised due to the restriction on keeping back some portion of the crop for next years' planting. This caused the organic farmers even greater confidence in their decision to stay away from Monsanto. Then one day Monsanto knocks on the organic farmers door, and presents the organic farmer with evidence that he had planted Monsanto seed, without contracting to do so with the company. The organic farmer in a fit of certitude denies and deplores the accusation. Fair to say he "knows" it is a lie. So Monsanto takes the poor seedcap to court and wins against him in trial, since Monsanto had snuck into his fields, and documented without a doubt the genetic fidelity of their product to what the farmer had growing in a fair percentage of his acreage. Monsanto wins, and the farmer is forced, by law, to destroy his crop and pay serious money to Monsanto. The farmer never planted one Monsanto seed, so what the hell is going on here?

It's a good question, and yet, all over North America this has happened. In many cases putting tiny organic acreage outside any possible certification save conventional monocropping of rapeseed: by Monsanto. There are many documents of this carnage. And the pattern is clear: the planting of Monsanto's products (it's seeds) pollutes the genetics of open pollinated crops in the surrounding fields. Since Monsanto owns the genetics, their right to the organic fields is rather similar to the rights transferred where a man establishes paternity, through a genetic test. It's not the way things are supposed to work... but it's the way things are for now. And the way we eat (more and more.) Regardless of the books we read. Regardless of where we "Shoppertain" ourselves with narratives distant to the plight of a farmer who doesn't reap, even remotely, what he did in fact sow. Parables be damned. "When all the fields are fallow/ once sown."

The half not pictured in this scenario for agriculture and biology, had to do with the changes in the worlds financial banking, and the programs put into place to establish a greater footprint on the globe of modern agricultural methods. The Green Revolution had as much to do with Greenbacks and fertilizer, irrigation and politics, as it did breeding (to say nothing of genetic engineering.)

This is important for so many reasons that I hesitate to even wade in. But since my poem is supposedly the reason I got writing about this, I will attempt a small gesture on the subject.

The bottom line was that that the breadbasket of America was gradually producing more and more, throughout the '50's, '60's and '70's. But the market for that "bread" was fixed, as long as it was constrained to the borders of the breadbasket's namesake. I mentioned in a previous post the tension in the definition of ecology throughout the '70's between pure scientists and somewhat more adventurous souls who wished the concept of ecology to move beyond that phrase in my old ecology textbook, "The Experimental Analysis of Distribution and Abundance." By whatever economic, or ecological terminology you wish to use the problems of food supply, in our world, have more than a little to do with that constraining phrase, that some found far too narrow to describe even aspects of the Biome.

It turns out that many populations in the world (perhaps, even, all) self regulated in terms of their fertility and infant mortality due to the quantity of food available to them. The classic case of such supply and demand was the Irish potato famine, which might have played some role in my being an American (or rather, existing at all.) One quarter of my heritage on my fathers paternal side, is Irish. The reasons that Irish family ended up in Kentucky is lost to me. But it might have had something to do with the Potato blight. I've certainly always assumed it did. How strange, really, my existence might have been impossible if not for a disease. Then again, in this modern world, it is a comfort to see the postmodern habit of thought, rendered solid, in the nineteenth century. Save me, please, from assumptions of novelty.

The bottom line in Ireland was that an American crop, a Peruvian potato, somewhat modified, called "The Lumper," had arrived on the Irish scene somewhat near the beginning of the 1800's. Within decades, the population of Ireland had increased substantially, not only in numbers, but in health. The average height of it's population went up a great deal as well as other metrics of vim and vigor. By the 1840's, Ireland was doing great, especially if compared to its state fifty years prior.

Then, in 1845, Phytophthora infestans met the Irish miracle. 1846 and 1848 as well (thanks to Michael Pollan for recapitulating this information for me in his wonderful book, The Botany of Desire pgs. 229-231.) This fungus darkened and killed the potato clones (for that is how potatoes are reproduced in modern agriculture today, and then.) A dark remembrance of the shadow of fertility took hold of the country, and where strides had been made, graves now were dug. An "analysis of distribution and abundance," indeed.

It wasn't, according to Pollan, until researchers returned to Peru and found the "Garnet Chile" potato, that Ireland could again return to eating it's mainstay. We had to return to where a plethora of potato varieties were grown (not in monoculture, as we continue to farm, to Gorbie's admiration and alarm) before we could vouchsafe some remnant of the Irish population under siege.

So, the complexity and diversity of Peru's more "primitive" agriculture (of the America's) saved a "modern" monocrop, and it's dependent population.

American grapes saved European vineyards, in a differently played out, but similarly ironic, fashion. The failure of the monocropping rarely is regarded as a function of the practice, and habit of the farmers. Disease becomes the boogieman of chance, risk and "acts of God." Even when such things have happened, more or less, like clockwork. All European grapes had to be grafted to disease resistant American grape rootstock in the last seventy years. Outside of that option, European vineyards would never work (as you see them today.) Pretty strange that Europeans literally grew their grapes on top of American ones while looking down their noses at the notion of our vineyards ever growing into something delicious and noble. Talk about good versamilitude: grapes grafted to grape stock look like nothing more than grapes. Then again, should the Europeans have their hands forced (in any non traditional direction) I can imagine nothing worse then the Monsantification of their Vinoculture. So, to the extent that their laws, and prejudice, protect them from treating their grape growers the way North American Courts treat organic farmers (and would be meat processors, and ect. and ect. and ect.): good for them.

In the past the North American agriculture scene has been faced with extreme losses, but they were losses bridgeable, time and again, by dipping into wells of genetic culture at a distance from the closest "fence" of the First World. Our modern Agriculture enjoys the Hybrid Vigor that it does, in part, due to it's distance up until today from the "genetic banks" of traditional agriculture found in third world and second world countries. This is one reason why I sometimes wonder why we don't ask ourselves, "Is there really such a thing as 'modern' agriculture?" It isn't a semantic exercise to point out that there is so little separation between our problems (and our erstwhile solutions) that most of the modernity to be found in the farm is simply a matter of cultivation, not "---culture."

And so with this strange house of cards we live today. Knowing, without really admitting it, that we have no clue as to the risks we face with this living thing, this strange world, this frontier to which we have kneeled since we quit hunting and gathering all those thousands of years ago: farming/ agriculture.

I learned from Fernand Braudel's sensational "The Structures of Everyday Life" that the transition to agriculture for Europeans resulted in a net decrease in their health (individually). Did you read that correctly, for I certainly had to ask myself if Braudel had again written something amazing (but only in the apocryphal sense?) The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture resulted in a net decrease in the health of Europeans (individually.) And when you consider what agriculture was back then (wheat, barley and other grains made into porridge and bread) it isn't hard to wonder that people didn't simply die of scurvy in the winter time. Were it not for Summer, they certainly would have. For the constricting of diet that Agriculture always creates due to its basic economic effect on the character of the ownership and usage of land, leads always to more habitat for "what's Caesar's" and less for you and me. And what's habitat for you and me? Weeds and green plants to pick, animals and fish to catch and eat, mixed hardwoods and softwoods to build our lives out of, and a diversity in behavior and diet that hones the cunning of a culture, and keeps the nose far "from the grindstone" (perhaps the most gilded of prescriptions for virtue in America.) Agriculture took that description, and recognized the waste that it implies from an "economic" point of view. People became stakeholders in a few things, instead of dozens, and were paid by the "fruit" of their labor: almost never their cunning.

That is how Monsanto convinces the farmer today: no farmer, in modern agriculture is rewarded by industry or government for cunning: his only reward is to quit the whole business of agriculture altogether and start growing things again (sometimes literally expanding the garden behind his house into a business, then going from there.) All over our country (and the world) people are abandoning houses (but I'm not talking about sub-prime mortgages this time.) They are abandoning houses of worship for modern agribusiness. They do it out of desperation: the costs of the implements and feedstocks, seeds and chemicals, exceed the market price for their crops. Even with government welfare. Much of the organic movement is desperation. And many farmers are surprised what sunburns and no G Gordon Liddy can do.

So...

If you believe in magic

Why not imagine this loss?

What might my house be without

The roots and stem and leaves

That a seed used to

Be able to grow?

And what would become of my world?

When all the fields are fallow

Once sown.

What has become of your world? It's not about Monsanto (the Lunar Saint!) It's about us.

The Greatest Experimentalist of All Time

I first encountered Michael Faraday in a book I read about the atmosphere, and eventually gave to my Mom (so taken with it, I was), though I'm disturbed to realize I cannot recall it's name. I want to say "Up in the Air," but that's a book about flying and airports (strange sort of throwaway book.) So I cannot remember it's name, but my mother owns it, for I bought it for her after I read it at the library.

Michael Faraday is portrayed in that book as a genuinely fascinating character, and I think, a lovely man. He seems to have suffered for his prodigious moral character, his faith (in some strange sect of Christianity,) and in his youth, his poverty. He is actually one of the few enormously successful physicists who started out outside the middle classes. Newton was a servant as well as student in his early years of College, but there seems to be some reason to believe his Mother could actually have afforded him a more normal education. She seems to have been rather parsimonious. Then again, should I endure a modern Black Plague, there's no telling how thin my dimes might become!

So, Faraday was unusual in his coming up from nothing. As is often the case (and ubiquitous among successful people) a great many people took notice of him and helped him along, which bothered them no little amount when later Michael Faraday eclipsed them; their ward became the Warden.

Faraday's greatest contribution were his theories on, and experiments in, electromagnetism. This was in an era when many, many ideas were floating around which would prove to be wrong and in some cases completely rediculous. Theories on heat being a particularly rich proving ground of crazy speculation.

Faraday seemed to have a considerable gift of creativity, noted by none other than Einstein, multiple times (Farraday's work midwifed much that Plank and Heisenberg established near the birth of Quantum Mechanics. His work, more or less began the debate about the split between the behavior of the very big and very small. He was also one of the first to seriously contemplate the notion of gravity as a force in the typical sense. Newtonian physics was more than equipped to describe the behavior of Newton's Apple, but had a great deal of trouble dissecting that force with any sort of ready classification for it's behavior. Farraday ran straight into the maul of that problem as he mused on "forces" and "fields" that Physics had happily, up to then, regarded as indescribable.)

But Faraday had a problem that, along with the depth of his insight, contributed to him having to wait till a fairly advanced age to see many of his ideas accepted. He was unable to do Calculus. He could just barely perform advanced Algebraic calculations. Kind of amazing, when you consider his genius. You can bet his inability to move smoothly through the language of science (Math, Calculus) was a black mark on his Physics. His contemporaries (in Theory) considered him barely a Physicist at all. And today, of course, nobody would regard him as one.

So, while he made penetrating insights into the nature of electromagnetism, few of his contemporaries listened outside of the Royal Institution (where Faraday lived on the top floor, lectured on the ground floor (famously giving lay person lectures on Science) and kept his laboratories in the basement, from his youth through old age.) Despite the fact that he invented the first electric motor (of a kind) few Theorists cared at all, since Faraday's description was far from the vernacular of Physics. Kind of makes you wonder why he didn't just go ahead and give six months to the darn calculations. There are, unfortunately, few in depth Biographies on the man in print.

In case you think this electromagnetism stuff is old news, you might ask yourself how well you understand it. Chances are, if you're like me, you simply have discarded any real attempt at penetrating the phenomena of magnetism, and electromagnetism, due to the perfectly obvious observation: the whole thing is vaguely magical, and otherwordly. It sure is.

Consider the basic ideas behind an electric motor, and tell me if any of it has an address in your subdivision of common sense.

For one thing: somehow or other scientists figures out that magnetism creates forces in regular lines (the iron filing experiment you did in school. Where you see lines of force coming off a magnet, by sprinkling iron filings onto a piece of white paper and placing a magnet on the other side. The lines of force are regular, and don't move or change.)

And: those forces, when crossed by a conductive metal, or wire, create a small amount of current in the metal or wire. When you move a piece of wire, perpendicular to the forces you see your iron filings describe, a small amount of electricity can be detected in your wire by a device that measures such things.

Faraday was the first to perform this experiment and the first to grasp it's essential weirdness. The first thing he realized was that these forces were not, more or less, explainable, given what he knew of the physics of his day.

If you stop and think about it, why should crossing a magnetic "force field" around a magnet or electromagnet create a current in a metal wire? Can you think of any reason that explains such an action (the production of electricity) at a distance (the magnet doesn't touch the wire, and vice versa.)

When you look inside a generator, trust me, all you will ever see is a bunch of wire (windings they are called, due no doubt to some clever cad tasked with performing the creation of them.) attached to a sort of spinning case (that looks like a bike pedal.) Some kind of device that allows electricity to flow through a spinning axle allows the windings to spin freely past many, many wires. The windings create an electromagnet, and the electromagnet creates lines of force, which when they move across the surrounding copper wires, create a great deal of electricity, compared to Farraday's first experimental model.

Again, the power that comes from a generator (depending) can be enough to kill a man. And all of that deadly electricity is produced by wires moving through magnetic fields. Why does copper moving through a magnetic field produce electricity? I think a description is easier, than an explication here, but this isn't the place for either. So many things in life can (eventually) be described, but somehow a description is often out of scale with the human imagination. Perhaps that's why it takes some degree of study and experiment in the first place!

Isn't it great that so many things are basically mysterious and unknowable, even as we conjure them with the flick of a switch? Why so much confidence in the unknown? Because the question, "How's it work?" doesn't obviate that it does!

Anyhow, Faraday is a delicious character to read about, and his interest in experimental physics on the bench, coupled for him perfectly with lectures (still in print) on "The Chemical History of the Candle" for an adoring lay public. He got the difference between science with a capital "S" and it's origin: somebody being hooked on a feeling that led to revealing, through their various disciplines (but also courage.) I read the other day a review of a book that pointed out that anything can be explained if it's purpose is allowed to hook the interest of the reader, or listener or friend. To often in life, the orator, or writer, of husband, or parent, or friend operates on the "just because" method of giving out info. Very efficient if I could only remember why...

Powdery Vines

Well,

One of my cantaloupe's finally ripened a great deal, and I picked it up today, and wondered why it was so darn light. Turns out that a rodent of some variety had drilled into it, like James and the giant Peach, and the darn thing was chewed clean, little rodent dental lines inscribed into the soft orange flesh of my fruit.

Oh well... it's easy to say you believe in sustainable things and organic things, but the reality of food production has always equated my mouth and the mouth of many others. It doesn't really matter whether you are sentient or not when it's a cantaloupe you are considering. What's to consider?

Most of my cantaloupes are lying around on the ground (there are too many of them), but twelve or thirteen are up on trellis. The ones on trellis are going to be fine. So I 'll just trim down the plant, and remove whatever food that isn't outside the grasp of unwelcome mouths.

The other problem is a bright white bloom of fungus all over my plant. I can't believe it's good for the plant to suffer this white talcum bloom. But then, I'm not sure what could be done about it. I haven't really had inclination to take drastic measures this late in the season. I feel it is unlikely that the fungus (on the leaves) will lead to any problems in the flesh of the fruit. I know there are allotoxins (sic.) that enter foods covered with fungus, so the common sense approach to slightly moldy cheese, ect. (cutting out the bad and eating the good) has been swept from the guidebooks as possibly dangerous to your health. Should I see active mold growth on the fruit, I'd be more concerned. Just a powdery bloom on the leaves. I'll see what I can find.

Try This (at home)

One day I hope to have half a dozen blogs that differentiate my various interests, so as to protect the few readers who care about me from trespassing lands that bring them no pleasure. For now, I do not have the time (my business requires still more physical exertion, than mere deskwork, and though I enjoy exerting myself, I will one day simply not be able to afford it (as it exists today.) When my business matures to that state, I will have a great deal more time and energy for other things, even when I am "busy." I imagine assigning a day or two per blog and consolidating my various thoughts (most of them occurring while I work, my work not being a particularly intellectual field.) through a blog every couple days. Something like that, to cover my interests, and provide a particular slice of myself to this delightful form of self expression. Oh, how the world spins at the finger of one's ego!

Anyhow, on occasion I wish to write about stuff like the history of science, where I realize my interest to be finally the flowering of a number of years of consideration on my part, about something of a pet interest of mine. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, so long as I can properly explain my motivation for writing about any particular subject. But it is none the less the truth that it is hard for me to realize how accustomed I have become to some subjects, commonly regarded as boring, as windows of wonder, even ecstasy. I am more than forgiving if you do not agree. Had you walked with me from the beginning, had you had the time, and a case been made for your interest, I know you would be as enthralled as I. This blog cannot retrace such experiences, with any sort of fidelity. As to the fact that it might sometimes bore you, I can assure you that you are in fantastic company.

The subject of thermodynamics is one that tends to loom, rather than chirp, like a piccolo, in the orchestra of the scientific disciplines. Maybe it is something of a bass instrument, producing sensations of longing, even as it stands back, supportive to, rather than defining of the harmonies that you discern from the audience. And this metaphor, while ignoring the basic problem with thermodynamics: its complexity in argument nearing an opacity for the casual observer; works none the less, due to the harmonizing capacity of thermodynamics to explain all manner of phenomena, from the stars to the dandelions that bring me to my knees (and cyclically to thermodynamics.)

It is not my interest here to pretend to teach you anything about thermodynamics. Not exactly. My fascination is the manner in which it came to be: the world (and communities, and individuals) that lived before it, and provided for it's birth, and the power, utility, agency, and usefulness that it represents, regardless of it's reputation on the street.

My encounter with thermodynamics is from thousands of references to it over the years, in periodicals and books. Even in literature aimed at the science world, it is often mentioned with a smirk, like a hippie might discuss acid with a ten year old. "If you haven't done it, you couldn't understand, man." Such statements make more sense than they deserve to. But that's a different discussion (though fruitful, from the world of cognitive science, and the narrative structure of human thought.)

If you haven't "done" thermodynamics, you still can understand. I basically haven't done them, and I continue, with pleasure, to walk her wild country roads, deep into the mundane mouths of wonder that I first stared upon, holding my momma's hand.

Two subjects in the last few years grabbed me by the collar and shook me regarding thermodynamics. One of them was the biology of vascular plants, especially photosynthesis, and transpiration. Engine's on two very different edges of an organisms systems. But meshed by a common mandate: to make real the mutterings of a plants genetic code. Only harnessing the difference between states of heat and cold (and harnessing the redox potentials of just about everything, ahem, under the sun.) can result in this fabulous work off anti-entropy: life.

And that's just it: we stand in life, awaiting the rain, awaiting warmth of the sun (but not only the sun, also the wind and water, warmed by it. For a winter day is hardly without the sun, the air and water are the more efficient means by which we truly encounter our home star.) Our elaborate organism's systems, break down carefully crafted structures made to eat or entrap some of the sun. The structures are not, as we are not, literally made of energy (well, deep in the workings of physics and thermodynamics, they are, but at the macro level, not so much), but they certainly have grabbed ahold of it, and embrace it in clever choke holds, so all of life might occasionally escape the entropic tilt of our physical reality. You and I and our food... all of life presents a great surprise to the laws of the universe. Such a surprise that a great deal of religions vim and vigor point best to God, by holding up his fallen creation: not our souls, not our spirit or our dreams, not our beliefs: but our bodies. The substance of faith! Pathology!

Fine by me, as I sort of feel it too. Life is unbelievable (or rather, best believable in a religious sense, ha!). But so to is a lot of other stuff. So the fun is in the trying to believe, to climb that cloudswept mountain.

The other subject is mechanics. Something I never expected to become terribly interested in learning more about (even though, as a child, I assumed blithely that I would one day work with metals, and other primordial materials of robots, and other cool stuff. For Christ's sake, listen to your childhood dreams.) Strangely enough (though it's seeming more normal to me every day) working with your hands changes your brain. You start to look at the world, somewhat like a linguist starts to hear the world, once another language is acquired. What once was a jumble of disintegrated shapes and systems, have become in the last four years for me, the parts of an elaborate puzzle, which even just glancing at throughout the day, start to fit together in your mind. I would never have guessed that my dabbling in the infrastructure of my town would have led to a similar set of fascinations with machines. I suppose the kid in me simply put his foot down and asked not kindly, "Say, are you someone who's going to listen to the common sense, that you aren't capable of certain things, or are you someone who is going to at least try a little grease monkey action." The kids tone, notwithstanding, I liked the sound of grease monkey.

Before I knew it, whereas before I could hardly bring myself to change the oil in my lawnmower (I destroyed my parents, rather expensive, Lawn Boy, as a kid by not adding oil to gasoline, a requirement due to the remarkably clever operation of a 2 cycle engine. Smoky, but damn powerful for the weight.) today I love to take lawnmowers apart and give them their due, beside the high school frog dissection, as elementary and enlightening to the inexperienced like me. To date it is a fresh miracle when I can change a spark plug (especially when it's beneath the engine of my truck, or van (!!!)) But I know what one is, and where, for example, it wont be. Like in a diesel, or a steam engine. They produce power through a different set of phenomena. And given my interest in electricity production (perhaps even doing it myself, one day) I couldn't avoid asking basic questions about what exactly the benefit of one engine vs. another was. Or what components were required to achieve a workable end, say, with a ram generator in a stream of water. Why does the water need to fall a certain distance? Why a certain flowrate? What's the difference between, say, an alternator (a motor run backwards, generating electricity for the systems of a car.) and a ram generator, and a regular motor, ect. ect. ect. Looking at the modern world the questions can seem to stretch forever. It didn't take long for me to begin to wonder about James Watt's steam engine, and the early days of internal combustion. A lot of this stuff was simply learning different different broad concepts like "energy density", which went a long way to explaining why we do the things we do to get around (and pay what we do for the pleasure.) But when I began to discuss this with some of my friends, it rapidly became clear the the most basic questions of machinery and energy came down to thermodynamics. There are a lot of details, that are basic chemistry and math. Physics looms around every corner of the subject of infrastructure, certainly electrical infrastructure. The reason high tension power lines are extremely high voltage comes down to the physics of impedance. It isn't worth going into here, but it sure is fun to talk about with people who work in the industry (while driving past maybe 800 miles of your subject matter.)

One of the things that has constantly inspired me, pushed me forward despite my ignorance, fear, and insecurity are some of the historical characters sketched with great vigor by some of my favorite books authors. I love these people. The carpenter who invented the toothpick didn't do it with a chisel, though it is tempting to wonder, how exactly it occurred to him not to go that route. Most of us sort of stick close to the margins of our circle of competence, which it turns out is not only smart, but efficient societally, and evolutionarily. So it is with a great deal of admiration that I read about the inventor of the toothpick, in the nineteenth century, forging machinery, and building with his solitary, bare, hands the necessary apparatus to take whole trees, steam them, carve veneer from them, and then turn veneer into toothpicks that have changed almost not at all in the intervening one hundred plus years. Against this leviathon of energy and competence I have to restrain myself from not hating my seeming retardation, given the host of available tools and expertise I have at my constant disposal 24/7 (even the 7/11, for a big gulp. The carpenter didn't have that!) A girl at the bar might say to me, "you can make walls of two by fours!" God bless her, I'm pretty impressed with myself as well. But Jesus! What is that next to the carpenter who invented the H2, housed in Greenwhich observatory (where sometime soon I will travel and stare at it for an embarrassing length of time.) which was the most improved of his three chronographs, the device that made possible a firm establishment of longitude, and therefore safe passage for the captains of seafaring vessels. Prior to a carpenter devising the chronograph, the state of the art in navigation was what was known as "dead reckoning." Perfect words for what often happened at sea. To some extent, not completely, but to some extent, a carpenter, someone untrained in mechanics, devised a machine, essentially a spring loaded clock of insane accuracy, which closed Mr. Davey Jone's locker. Next to this carpenters enormously beautiful H2 (which looks like a five or six inch wide, elaborately scrolled silver watch case) the McMansions built by dudes like me seem a bent plastic freakshow.

I could go on forever. And I intend to. For it isn't just inspiring to feel for these craftpersons, or instructive to realize you can do anything (today, especially.) It gets to the most essential truths of science to read into the narratives that comprise a disciplines growth. They came from somewhere. And that somewhere is not the rocks of the world, or the metals beneath a grinding mill. The Garden of eden of a scientific discipline is not the electron, or the atom itself; it is not the flower, it's pistils, stamens, bracts, and petals; it is not the allele's of abstract trait, that bend to a language unknown in any of their particulars in Linnaeus's time, not for another hundred years to be spied in an x ray crystallography; and that Garden is not even in the sun, as it warms your face, and curdles the DNA in your skin, inviting your very own body to a pathological improvisation: it is in the place science has hardly ever probed, much less described. It is in your head and heart. In the head and heart of the participants of wonder, and questions, and desire. It's so simple. And yet it is quite a challenge. How does this work?

Something as simple as boiling water, is deceptively complex. I didn't really know how water boiled. I used to stare at the pan, and see the bubbles coming violent off the bottom of my stainless steel pan. I was twenty three, and preparing dinner for my friend Tony, or myself. I think I was making pasta for Linguine in Clam Sauce. I stood there after a long day working on the farm, in the middle of the summer, with NPR babbling about the latest atrocity, which for some reason I craved to hear about. I stared down at the pan, nothing to do, really, but wait for the water to boil, and occasionally stir the olive oil, clams, and minced garlic that were contentedly pulling the skirts of their flavor into an approaching curtsy. I'd see these little waves of motion in the tap water reservoir of my metal pan, little fans of illusion, like summer heat off of blacktop (something I had a recent acquaintance with, be assured.) And I knew, "that's convection." I knew it wasn't conduction, or radiation, or some sort of optical illusion. Energy, I knew, was for some reason flowing from the hot bottom of the pan, to the cooler top. But the little bubbles that formed, and their relationship to this shimmering beauty in my pasta water, seemed frankly, unrelated. Convection was just something that happened in all fluids bounded by two different temperatures (the cool surface of the water, the hot bottom of the pan.) I should have realized that convection was actually an important part of boiling water, and very much related to the bubbles, for I knew something of the folklore of a microwave, and that was attempting to signal my pea brain into at least a fragment of a full blown inquiry. And what is that? Well, you know... When you microwave a hot cup of water, remember how before microwaves had turntables it was possible to superheat water? What does that mean? Well, it was possible to heat the molecules of a cup of water to well above the temperature where they were merely near boiling. To heat them to almost 213 degrees F. They couldn't really get there, but most folks don't realize, that due to convection, boiling water enjoys a range of temperatures inside a boiling container of water, only a small fraction of water boiling is in fact at the temperature of boiling. The rest of the water in the vessel is cooler, and that's how it sustains the second arm of the circle from the bottom of the pan to the top and back to the bottom. Once the water molecules are excited to the top of the pan, they cool at the top and return to the bottom. That actually makes it sound considerably more mechanical than it really is. The fascinating thing is that when microwaves heat water evenly, without the heat being concentrated at the bottom (or top) of a cup of coffee, no convection occurs, for there is no gradient across which energy can travel, so the continuous heating of the cup of coffee traps the energy in a randomized scattering within the cup of coffee. No current of energy "transfer" is possible. So you reach into the microwave and the vibration of your hand to the handle of the coffee cup adds just enough dislocation of the trapped and superheated molecules that a significant number of them vaporize, and seem to explode coffee all over the place. So in a sense, heating water, does not make it boil. Boiling is an emergent phenomenon (a lovely class of systems research, just lovely) of energy transfer. Complex, specific, and nearly as delicious as linguine with clams.

The above isn't to say I understand boiling. I remain enthralled by the drama my ignorance enables. I wrote the above, about boiling, to share my emotions, in a sense, about discovering something deep and profound, but also elementary, and crucially, observable by us all. This is what I love about science, and why I find it so shameful that science and math are presented as considerably harder than Football practice in August (which is ostensibly regarded as a rarified privilege. And I think it is.) The reason folks think math and science are hard is that the work is rarely presented as the narrative from which it arose. While it's certainly true that adult students will never have the time (in formal schooling) to hear the narratives of scientific epistemology, it is a tragedy to assume that you and I should not learn the yearning of ideas, and underlying concepts of the world to be known. Boiling water sings a very quiet song indeed. But you can hear it, and surely have some time as you stand above it, staring dumbly into it's swirling vortex.

All the disciplines of science have been composed by feelers as much as thinkers. Someone felt that it mattered how such and such worked. Since they felt, they then thought, and thought, then tried and tried until they felt they had something to share. You see how this is not a dry and cold process akin to the digital processes computers employ in our stead? Thinking about things is sometimes a mere obligation to a nearly abstract duty: like "just doing your job." But damn little of the wondrous world was first described by such a work ethic. The fruit that hangs at your library (and in the person of your friends, neighbors and selves) hangs with a potential energy invested it with passion and storied love.

I started this post, which I know is a bit disorganized, talking about thermodynamics. It is a credit to the scope of that field, and not my ability to stay on a subject, that some of this post has actually dealt with thermodynamic concepts: they are everywhere.

But I hope you sense that in talking about such a maligned subject to the person on the street, such a "abstract," rocket science like, field; It was my wish to share with you why these scientific disciplines should have been named "scientific shores." For it is more akin to swimming, and with a sense of exploration, perhaps even a frontier spirit, that one dips their toe into thermodynamics. There is more than it first appears to the black smoke that pours from one of a cinematographers favorite subjects: the locomotive smokestack. What you rightly consider received beauty, hides her delicate beauty in that smoke: but hear me man, she'd love you to ask her hand.

A Visit To The Burne's (For The Third Time)

This is a blog post I wrote at a friends, without access to the internet, and forgot to include at it's appropriate place, in July.

Good morning heartbreak. The last few days were instructive in a millilon ways, as well as indicative to me of the gold behind a willingness to stretch beyond what I would prefer, to the new place of stasis with my friends.

I have visited Chris and Caryl Burne three times now. And while I always enjoy myself, and State College Pennsylvania, the beautiful locale that is their home, I also always see the play of the generations on a number of my friend, David's, oldest friends. And the whole is a sort of class reunion, of broken, and otherwise relatively unscarred people, coming together again.

The most remarkable would be Toonch, of Turkish extraction, but now middleaged and very much a expert of and afficianado of, American pop culture, and Jazz. It's easy to discount the guy upon aquaintence: he's as pale as a vampire, chain smoking, and staring into the distance punctuated by small bursts of contention against yourself, or perhaps merely the sunlight. Once you think of something to say, and it becomes obvious this thing is not a minor insult against Toonch, he may grant benevolence upon your choice of subject with one, perhaps two short grunts. You'd be surprised the pleasure these grunts bestow upon your person. Who can say why?

Toonch grew up with David, in State College. I forget why Toonch's parents ended up in State College for, but I suspect something related to Penn State. In any case, Toonch was alone in David's school cafeteria, repelling his fellow man, through some strategy of antisocial self expression (something to do with captive flies, go figure) and David, as repulsed as a wad of sticky gum, sat down next to the sad little guy.

In no time, I'm guessing, David was eventually regaled with Toonch's deep knowledge of esoteric subjects, especially subjects important to children, and began his fascination with the man that carried him all the way to my person so many decades later now. Those little boys, sniffing each other out, and not overwhelmed at the odor, are still inhaling now, nearly forty years on.

I could carry on about Toonch. I was not surprised to hear that his muse (name forgotten) has decided to no longer play the role she once did as curator of the Howard Stern wing of his house. As impressive as his filing system was, and as somewhat bohemian the clouds of cigarette smoke always seem to suggest, the hopeful glinting of that woman, at least, was a seriously odd contrast to the cold, dark, certitude, of a man so in need of shelter. Not in those arms, Toonch.

This would be far sadder, had one not witnessed the realm of their creation. As it was, it stood once as a vision of Toonch alone... still does. This is far less sad than it would have been were the creation truly mutual. Toonch suffered in his loss, of course, but... what's strange and delightful abount Toonch was never that woman.

There are a number of other individuals less quirky than Toonch, who brained me with the Pathos and nuance of their lives:

Chris Burne: son of a famous chess grand master, and early childhood friend of David. PHD Mathematician specializing in a few games of his own, namely game theory. Designs weapons systems for the Pentagon, and consults with Quantico once a month, on who knows what. He skipped Quantico to party with us. I guess you can skip Quantico. File that away.

Caryl Burne: Married to Chris for years now, mother to three daughters, and homemaker. Extremely quiet, perhaps introverted, it's difficult to say. The whole of her voice comes from high in her chest, in the manner of a different era of American femininity. Methinks a fair portion of this end of the register can be accounted for in her petiteness. She weaves, in their beautiful open vaulted living room (obviously constructed, by them, over time... it really is something, their house) tapestries, and other gorgeous works of textile magic. Her face quickly moves between a grin and the pausing look of a good recipient, or listener. At her age, her bone structure and figure seem to indicate that she was a hell of a beauty when young. She's still got a chin you could park a yaucht beneath, and twinkling eyes. Her pictures of her over the years, however, display a woman who never much enjoyed attracting visual attention. Three years ago, when I asked her, while walking in the small neighboring town of Fountaine, "Did you enjoy your single years? My parents in many ways never had any." She answered in the most emphatic term, "No."

"So you were glad to meet Chris?" I asked in my usual manner of pretending to not understand the simplest thing.

"I was simply so glad it was over." One of the most nuanced, and honest descriptions of happiness (for a time) I have ever heard. Hit me like a ton of bricks.

I could go on. Caryl avoided our merry, smoky, boozing band like the plague. Never once, really, do I remember her enjoying her house with us. This is, of course, very strange. It is none the less the case. Staying in her house you get the feeling that you are being endured. But, also the feeling that this woman endures much that is not accountable for, by a stranger. "Don't make assumptions," comes to mind. However glad a person might ever be, it is rarely over. Till it's over.

Last, for now, was Caroline (not her real name) wife of Carl. When I met her, it was in the yard of The Main, a sort of Union for Penn State. It was dark and some smashing Jazz musicians were playing (they had been practicing in Chris' and Caryl's basement, while we all ate upstairs, earlier in the evening.) When I first met her, she merely seemed a dark haired, middle aged woman, with a bald husband, with a quick smile, and extremely broad set eyes. Later when I saw their children her husbands eyes came back at me, incredibly wideset, and beautiful: futuristic, exotically gorgeous women.

As I was talking to Caroline it became obvious to me that one side of her face was somewhat slack, even in the dark. The next day while going to a party, which she'd be attending, David explained to me that she had suffered a stroke, at perhaps, forty five years old. She's maybe forty eight or nine.

"She was a very beautiful woman?" I asked David.

"My God," he said, "black Irish." I could see Caroine inhaibiting such a description, and fought my rising pity. At the party I made an effort to ease my discomfort deciding which eye to setle on, and redirected my probity to asking her questions, and being, how could it be otherwise, delighted by the answers of this beautiful, black Irish, mother of two gorgeous girls. She'd lived in Alaska, she'd done all manner of interesting things. We didn't get a chance to talk long enough, but my God, I felt no pity at the end. More on Caroline later.

Chris Kids:

Adrianne : Abe

Grace

Keleigh (Kee Lee)

Two of Chris kids were there: Grace and Keleigh. Keleigh is nearly thirty now, and fresh out of an investment firm, travelling the world. Highly educated with the most beautiful curving eyes, and the seemingly sad nuanced visage of her mother, but obviously ennervated in a far different fashion by the presence of her jumping jesus Dad. Quite a confection really. And I think, a killer woman. She made a number of attempts to sit with me and share conversation with a number of the extended party members. I felt a huge desire to secretly get away and have converstaions like we'd had in the past, but there was no way I was going to settle my attetnion on this gorgeous woman to the exclusion of these toddering contemporaries of my friend, David. Duh! Anyone could guess whom I'd rather be talking to, though to a certain extent, with some individuals, that was not exactly the case. But yeah, I fantasized about an extremely long night talking with Keleigh about whatever. And I have a feeling we will share a lot through Email. Sort of an ace in my fly... so to speak.

Adrianne the singing, flute playing, keyboard crashing, musician of statuesque proportions, was in L.A. trying as all of the description must, to bust through the paper target, and fall in a posture of stardom. Her fathers face, when describing her, is probably something of a burden to his other children. But you know, beauty isn't very hard to see.

Grace is a very young woman in her early twenties who seems to be just beginning in the department of adulthood. She'd fit right in in Bloomington, with her knarly hair, half shaved and knappy as all get out. But State College has it's own pantry of such delights and I've no doubt, whatsoever, "It's all good."

Not much else to say now about the trip. It was, as I knew it would be, a mixture of pleasure and pain. Though the cast of characters can't help but entertain.

The Lucky 'Ole Sun and The Bonneville Mud Flats

It's difficult exactly to put my finger upon what most excites me, to write about, or talk about, or read or think about. I know at some level I am a generalist, and fairly ignorant of classical frameworks of thought (due to having never formally studied anything at all.) And yet I spy in my (clearly my favorite subject is myself) choices and enthusiasms a certain distance between the parts of me, born perhaps of pain I have experienced (as most do) or maybe just endemic to certain sorts of men ("yeah, endomorphic boys," my friend Rick would say. He underlines passages in the copious magazines and Times articles that he reads, then slips them into his conversations (such conversations comprising something like sixteen hours of his day.)

There are so many tensions between values and certain anxieties you get the feeling "values" and "virtues" were conjured originally to paddock these very things. One of my favorite riddles, in the realm of "values" and "virtues" is the question, "What, really, is the difference between chastity and impotence?" A lovely question to apply, especially metaphorically, to many of the mean emotions our animal selves conjure. How I love to remember the tiny distance between some of my feelings, and the humping dog... I rather doubt lust is elaborately different in a dog and a man. Stand between your lust and yourself, however, and your grey matter will conjure a great deal to explain that thin organ sitting at the seat of it's two hemispheres: the brain stem, the old brain, the thing that helps us higher creatures hump.

But can standing between your ancient, practiced, animal desire, in most any instance really be regarded as a higher purposed behavior, fitting for the supposedly cultivated appetites of man? Is your chastity, even in an instance, just that, a principle enlivened by your flesh. Or is it impotence, an inability to act upon the constellation of your desires; a fear that rejoinder with the old passions of the pack might lead to a crowd dynamics pushing your notions of your self, straight over a cliff.

Kinda funny to imagine that the impotent want it bad! Isn't it? It is only that they don't take it, even if it's on offer, due to some cerebral rationale, or physical immobility. Or keening fear (which Lord knows, can be rational. Rape, STD's, social stigma, Daddy's golden key to the lock around your neck (a common evangelical ceremony that keeps your little sweetheart from whoring around.))

I bring these things up to people on occasion, and let me tell you, opinions vary. The most thoughtful (and possibly most self identified as wimpy) really take to the potential for a mistake to be made as to the allocation of one label to the other. "It's not impotence, it's chastity." Or, "It's not chastity, it's impotence." The important thing to, sorry, the scared and wimpy, is that the universe, or our social and spiritual arena, at the very least, be regarded as somewhat fickle, and random. Bad labels apply to good people.

The vastly less thoughtful (and possibly most self identified as a billy goat or seductress) will consider for perhaps a tenth of a second that a chaste individual is not by definition impotent. Then the matter will be settled. They like this question. To them it is not a riddle, but rather a parable of sorts. Your entire point, in bringing this up, Andy, is to show the chaste man can't get it up, and are therefore looking for a back door. Then they giggle at their homophobic pun, and move on to other issues of similar magnitude. It is easy for me, or rather, used to be, to regard this attitude with contempt. And yet people have limited resources to address most of the issues in their life, and lust can seem more or less straightforward to the self identified as "normal", and as such, be a buoy to far more unpleasant existential questions. There is weakness at the root of all our aims for uprightness. And fear. Looking down on that is like conjecturing the worth of a woman on the basis of her size next to a oak tree. You are much smaller and therefore.... Weakness and fear is the basis by which we operate (and the probable self knowledge that accounts for our marvelous adaptability. Necessity, or feeling better, is certainly the mother of a winter coat. Hairlessness is a weakness, but sewing draws on fear, for survival and strength. A complex network of associations and feedback. Not easily labeled, though, for who has the time to think about this nonsense?)

The weak and the fearful (as I have been, am, and will be) have all the time in the world. The trick is knowing you are weak. And knowing you are afraid. It doesn't really feel that way.

The word "answer" is a fencerow trickster. One moment the terminus of an algorithm. The next the fulcrum of an elaborate curve, meant really, to describe a entire category of points in a set.... and not necessarily concrete (addressable) ones.

I will never forget loving somebody who's favorite line was, "give me a concrete answer." About God, or ideas or feelings about the world. My answers to her about my feelings about her were as solid as a rock. But she couldn't live within my faith in her (actually a beautiful reality about all of us human beings, most thoroughly embodied, sadly, or not, in women. I can't really say. See how it kinda infuriates!) She longed for the company of a people who lived in the forward motion of an algorithm. I have always been moved most by the balancing of the scales in every footstep regardless of intention. "To infinity and beyond! won't get you there," I might have said to her. She liked the rockets red glare, none the less, and bless her, gifted me with a little of the succor of such passion. You see... while the mind and spirit might not exactly meet, Lord can they sympathize. Not exactly a grounds for a proposal in marriage. Lucky me.

It is hardly rational, or interesting, to look upon all relations with this sort of analysis. Plenty of people have the perceptive fiber to understand their place, in relationships, or even the world, as perhaps one not meant to be shared completely, but rather complemented. What a mercy. Is there anything sadder than the fool who longs more for a reflection of themselves than the challenge of somebody who can see as much or more of them, than a crude apparatus that only a type of reflection requires? I have been taught as much by people who ask me questions from the distance of their tradition, spiritual temperment, and culture as I have by some who have strategized to help this man. That, I suppose, is why so many of my friends over the years have been so deeply unattractive to the mainstream of my generation. Mothers of friends, or fathers, with all the wrong sentiments and feelings. Foreigners who only technically deserve the interest of my people (while inviting mockery with nearly every assumption and stylization they template to my dominant culture.) Broken and weakened True Believers, who avoided for too long the cynicism that girds against feeling for the homeless and helpless; eyes best avoided, given the epidemic of depression and mental illness. All of us have mistakenly in childhood, prior to the end of our innocence (if we're lucky, instigated by mere sexual maturity, not violent removal from a sense of security.) chosen friends we later realized were either embarrassing or abusive. The pecking order begins earlier than that, of course, but we learn. And we remember the shame probably more than any instance of embarrassment or abuse.

As adults we are supposedly cured of such circumstances. Suddenly ready to embrace the entire world, in all it's complexity, we look back on the school days as a place of "hormones" and cruelty and stigma. People still come up to me in the street and pour their hearts out, slowly reaching back, further and further, till they finally get to the place where their troubles began. A triumph of humanistic designs on causality, these stories are important to listen to, perhaps even sympathize with, but markedly unpersuasive. We remain our entire lives grasping and cruel. We continue leaving our shame, and those we've abused or abandoned behind, our entire lives. It is only the pure technicolor of childhood, where we are expected to have open disputes under enforced contact with a diversity of people, that sets it apart from the adult condition. Most of my sweet liberal friends would not take well to being teased at an Indianapolis bus stop by a gaggle of giggling bus riders. Trust me, if you ride the bus, you will encounter, should you stand tall, and engage your electrical apparatus, now a common part of your existence, ridicule and provocation. I have seen grown men many times teased, as they silently withdraw into their private realms, their eyes glazed with the faith that their torment will pass, and their feet moving them to the edge of the group waiting for the bus to come. Just come... The mix of mental illness, poverty, substance abuse, cultural misunderstanding, and, of course, prejudice, can make a inner city bus stop seem a place perfect for the pigeon shit that sprinkles it like holy water. My nice liberal friends know when and where to get real. With some exceptions (and many across the nation, thank God) the bus stop is a step to far.

In order for a culture under as much flexion as ours to have the upwelllings of sentiment necessary for a pseudo-democratic change, a certain degree of myth making about who we are is probably what spans the gap. Should I put my boot against the head of every so called open minded, "spiritual" liberal six miles from where I sit, I've no doubt I'd find just as many bobble headed lemmings, as genuinely open minded souls. But that doesn't bother me. For every hopeful person born, someone certified dies. Given the vississitudes of youth, probably more hope makes it out of the gate, and into the world, than the devil had ever reckoned, given our constitution.

So my hopes are fractured floor of mud, willing to hold the roiling waters of change, but just as willing, I guess, to sit in the light of the sun and know that the glare can blind, even as it enlightens.