Working it out

Slipping anchor (1981)

2008-12-27T18:33:00.000-08:00

When I was younger I spent some time as the designated slave labor, er...first mate, aboard a sail boat (a 54 foot schooner ridged ketch if it matters). As a matter of course I slept on deck (if anything went wrong at night I had "watch"). We sailed the South Pacific, mostly around the Kingdom of Tonga.

One night we anchored in probably the best anchorage of the tour, forty feet of water with a sandy bottom. The anchorage's only problem was that it was very narrow and the shelf plunged very swiftly. We arrived early in the afternoon to let the passengers play on the sandy beach while we (er me) fixed a barbecue.

We turned in after sunset and set the evening watch. The night was a crystal clear moonless night. All aboard went to bed (or deck as the case may be) and most slept soundly. At about 6 bells (3:00 A.M.) I suddenly awoke. I looked up to find out why I woke up. As I looked around I noticed that the stars were moving relative to the islands in front of them. Hmmm, stars don't move that fast, neither do islands. I went forward and saw that our anchor line was limp. I went back to the captain's quarters to explain our problem (we were drifting into the Pacific). Using star light alone we sailed back to the anchorage (about 1 hour). When we got back we redropped the anchor. In order to make sure the anchor was set I dove in 40 ft of water and physically set the anchor. Everyone, save me, went back to bed. I baby sat the anchor.

I did not get paid as it were for the job, instead I was given 3 weeks in New Zealand and Australia. Meet lots of great people and had a wonderful time. I look forward to going back sometime.

As a side note, I found out this Christmas that my brother was an environmental consultant for the Sydney Olympics. He spent a few months touring Australia, ah...studying the environment, yeah we'll go with that one.

Did anybody get the license plate of that truck?

2008-11-18T15:18:00.000-08:00

In the early days of Los Alamos, the town was in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town was Santa Fe, which was 40 miles away over dirt roads. People that worked on the bomb here were outdoor oriented. In the early fifties my dad and two friends started a gold mining company called the Golden Bee (Boyd, Ennis, Emigh). The real purpose of this company was just to organized campouts. Fact is, in over twenty years of panning my dad has an itty bitty flake worth about five cents. By the time I came and was aware the pretense was basically over.

My first Golden Bee memory was going to a lake in Colorado. The only reason I remember it is thanks to my two brothers. They were using an iron pipe to toss rocks in the lake. As they were doing this I walked up behind Ted and was promptly whacked in the head with the iron pipe. I got three stitches from that hit (and my brothers got to see a little bit of skull). But in the end it was all worth it, I got a really nifty Tonka Truck construction kit. I am also convinced that that the hit made a physicist out of me.

Just as a side note, the scar disappeared for good two years ago, unlike my single Chicken Pox scar which persists.

Thoughts in the (Sleepless) Night, a Haunting

2008-10-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I seriously wonder how my mind works. Last night, out of the blue, I started to think about Andy McQueen. He was among my oldest brother's best friends. I believe it was a target pistol he used to end his life in 1965, but frankly I think he would have found some way to kill himself that day. He suffered severe depression (and in my opinion he was probably bipolar).

When Andy was around it was OK for a 12 year old to hang out with the older boys. After he left to go home it was time for me to disappear into my own room. He was the first person I met that had genuine charisma, everyone liked Andy. Like my brothers and me he was a member of Explorer Post 20. We specialized in running rivers. In 1965 we ran the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. But the McQueens had just moved to the valley and needed Andy's help to settle the family in their new home. So he could not join us.

The Middle Fork is in Idaho. It took us 3 days to drive up in our World War Two era bus and 2 &1/2 ton army surplus truck. After we ran the river (an eight day adventure) "Stretch", an adult advisor, called home to say we had run the river safely. After the call the advisers had a conference and announced that we were going to drive home via Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. As we approached Jackson Hole, Wyoming we turned to drive east on a rugged road to a church in the middle of nowhere, a minor tourist destination in itself. The church had a huge picture window with a fabulous view of the Grand Tetons.

As we got out of the bus the advisers told us about the suicide. Among the 25 or so boys there were three general reactions: anger, sorrow, and bewilderment, which was my reaction. (I have to admit suicide still bewilders me, even though I have known about a dozen people personally that have made that "choice".) I am sure there was not a dry eye among the boys. We spent about an hour at the little church with each boy consumed with his own thoughts. The rest of the trip was very quiet.

But this is really about a haunting. Every so often his suicide invades my mind and I can not get rid of it for weeks. And of course, I replay each and every other suicide of people I have known. But the only other one I would blog about, was the father of a good high school friend of mine. What makes that one so interesting is that her mother remarried about 5 years later to the mayor of Albuquerque. I will never blog about Scott's suicide because I do not plan on ever forgiving him. Welcome to my haunting.

Being a dad, a random tour

2008-10-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

This is not about my two girls and me, but rather about my dad and his three boys. I will remind you I am from NM and distances are vast. It is 4 and 1/2 hours from home to Roswell. In my day high schools were three years, freshmen were in junior high.

Buzz: three years football (center), three years track (discus and shot put)
Ted: three years football (two years bench warmer, one year all-state center), three years track (mid-distances, all in relays)
David: Three years Cross-Country, Two years track (long distance, I was Will Parker in "Oklahoma" as a senior).

Me dancing, heh. My dad taught me how to tap, during the depression he tapped for nickels in bars. If I tried that I would probably have to give all the patrons dimes.

Dad never missed a meet. I remember going to Roswell to watch Ted's football team get crushed and Ted sit on the bench. We followed the team bus home and got home at 5:30am (school busses back then were really slow). The best trip was up to Raton. To get there we had to go through Eagles Nest Pass. It was October and the trees were changing. The mountains were literally aflame with reds and purples. The trip there was so stunning I don't remember what happened in the game.

Partial list of rivers run

2008-10-14T18:01:00.000-07:00

Just to put a time line on all this, I ran rivers from 1963 t0 1974, during the summers I sailed Schooner rigged Ketch's from 1974-1982. I never got my Captain's license and I am sore tempted to get it now. But I got married and other things became more important. Actually we got engaged in May 1982 and she was a tad put out that I disappeared for the summer (sailed the south pacific, very few ports of call).

This is just a list, I have some of these on tape and the others are from memory. I will list the ones on tape first. If you wanna watch me flip a boat in heavy water, arrange a time and bring popcorn. And yes being under the weather is lonely and I am desperate.

On Tape (these trips lasted from 8 days to 22 days, we got REALLY smelly):
Westwater Canyon on the Colorado
Delores River (were I putz around in a boat that is 6 ft long and 3 ft wide)
Cataract Canyon on the Colorado (with flippsie David)
Grand Canyon to Phantom Ranch on the Colorado
Salmon River and the Snake River in Idaho/Washington
Middle Fork of the Salmon River (with added Waldo adventure, see below)
Gates of the Ladore on the Green River (Near Dinosaur National Monument), cool fantasy name, eh, I kept looking for elves? (By the way this loosely means the gates of gold)

Not on Tape, The next are not on tape and we did them several times over the years and they lasted 1-3 days:

Whitewater Canyon, Toas Box (one time to pick up an 18 year old floater, very disturbing, it was his birthday and he did nothing wrong, just very bad luck), San Juan Pueblo to the LA Bridge (greenie run) and Big Bend all on the Rio Grande

Chama River
Gila River
Pecos River
The Box, Silida to Cotapaxi, and Royal Gorge all on the Arkansas River
Gunnison River (starting just below the dam)
Salt River
Rogue River in Oregon (just once)
San Juan River

We also did some spelunking. We did several caves but the only name I remember is Cottonwood Cave (near Carlsbad) and we stayed in the cave for the long weekend.

Eagle Scout

2008-10-14T17:26:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I am an Eagle Scout. ALL the boys in my family are Eagle Scouts, no choice. Notice the present tense, once an Eagle always an Eagle, Eagle scouts are allowed to wear their medals on their formal uniforms in the military.

To get the Eagle you have to do a special project. I worked with the National Forest Service to thin trees on a particularly hazadous piece of land. I helped mark the trees to be cut and by myself cut down over 300 trees. That was in 1970.

In 2000 the National Parl Service accidently started a fire that burned down 50,000 acres of forest. The forest service was able to use my plot as a fire stop to divert the fire from downtown Los Alamos. I'm so proud.

This is what happened to the trees not in my area. The picture was taken 6 years after the fire. By the way, when I was a kid everyone could help fight fires, so the fire in western area burned less then 1000 acres. Everytime there was a fire John and I would get on our bikes with a shovel to go help, for one fire we rode 15 miles and about 3000 feet up to get into position. In 1990 the Forest Service decided we couldn't fight fires. So we went from 300 professionals and 5000 civilians to just 300-600 professionals. No forest fire since has burned down less than 5000 acres and several up to 10 times that. Hey guys, how did that "professional" crap work out for you?

A Short Story and an Apology

2008-10-13T16:22:00.000-07:00

Early in my Post 20 career we ran the Chama river (as a Co-ed trip) in New Mexico (very close to Los Alamos). As I recall it was on Memorial Day Weekend. The river was not very tough, but during the spring run off it had some nice big waves. Everyone got soaked. That night we hung our clothes out to dry. Being a desert the days were very hot, even this early in the year. What we forgot was that since the air was (and is) very dry the temperatures would plunge at night. This weekend the highs were in the Low 80’s and the nightime lows in the mid 20’s. Needless to say all of our clothes froze solid. Our socks looked like bacon and our shirts and pants were frozen slabs. We spent the next morning gathering wood for a fire and getting breakfast ready in the comfort of our sleeping bags. Think bag races.

As a side note, and this comes 40 years too late, when I think of running rivers and girls I think of Valerie Vandergust. She enjoyed running rivers as much as I did. She also, for about a year or so, fell in love with me. I was a complete idiot and liked the birds in the bush rather than the real gem (and I mean that) in my hand. What can I say, I was an idiot teenager. Val, wherever you are, I wish you Fair Winds and Following Seas.

The Carbon Market

2007-02-25T12:01:00.000-08:00

As I was reading various blogs, I read the following very interesting comment following this link.

“As Gore has said many times, he offsets all his carbon expenditures. He’s carbon neutral, more than can be said for most of you. “

Now as many know what he is talking about are “carbon” commodities (carbon dioxide). Under Kyoto every country (save a few well known exceptions) has a carbon allowance. If your industry makes carbon over your country’s allowance you are supposed to buy carbon from a county that is below its allowance. The idea is that the demand would outrun supply, thereby making carbon commodities and futures dear. Well a funny thing happened on the way to the commodities market. Carbon crashed. Hard. Almost none of the industrial countries are paying into the scheme. This makes demand very low and supply is quite high.

In today’s market I could make my household carbon neutral for about six bucks (high fives all around). Does this mean that some industry somewhere will alter its behavior to produce less carbon? Nope, it means that some country like Botswana gets chump change for the sale (brokers in a crashed market tend to make most of the money that changes hands). Perhaps I could go to a country like Sudan, buy their carbon and get them to shut down a carbon producing unit (we call them villages).

Now Al Gore is producing millions of metric tons of carbon a year from flying privately all over the place. He goes to the carbon market, pays the wergild, and gets to claim himself carbon neutral. The world for his travels has millions of tons of carbon more than it would otherwise. Period. Tonight Al Gore will travel to the land of carbon over indulgers to no doubt receive an Oscar. And all will feel so good about themselves because they care.

Requiem for a Car

2006-10-23T14:06:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I was involed in a high-speed two-car head-on collision with a gentleman who had decided to self-check himself out of the hospital. He went to sleep at the wheel, crossed the median, and did in my 1993 Geo Prism (he also did in a telephone pole and killed the electricity for 2 towns for 4 hours). So you don't worry, I only got a wicked seat-belt shaped bruise and some minor cuts. When I showed my daughter my bruise she made the "Oh, Dad, that looks horrible" noises. As I was leaving the family room she was on the phone with her boyfriend and was saying, "...you should see my Dad's bruises, they are so cool". That's my girl.

I loved that car. I used and abused it and it always purred for me. It went out to New Mexico a couple of times and traveled the midwest extensively. (Ouside of Florida I think it had been to every state east of the Mississippi). I took that car on back-country dirt roads that spooked the heck out of my wife and daughters. She (my car) had seen the Badlands, ghost-towns, and too many volcanoes to count (NM is a volcanic state, though all are dormat right now). Well, I should count my blessings, I am fine and I had 13 years with a truly good car.

My Youngest

2006-10-20T13:42:00.000-07:00

My youngest daughter has always been a doer. When she was about 2 years old she started to tie knots in EVERYTHING: strings, ropes, ribbons, electrical cords, etc. If it was tieable, she tied it.

One day there was far too little noise coming from her bedroom so we decided to investigate. What we found was her stuffed panda tied up with string, blindfolded with a blue sash, and mom's red lipstick smeared on the panda's "lips". Sometimes I am concerned for her current boyfriend ;>).

Then there was the time we went down to the basement and found a thin layer of our garden lime everywhere. We didn't even have to guess who might be responsible. So my wife decided to interview our 4 year old.

Mom: Did you make the mess in the basement?
Her: Yes.
Mom: WHY?
Her: I was frolicking.
Mom: Frolicking?

My daughter made motions like she was throwing the stuff straight up in the air. One of her knicknames now is frolick

This was around the time she felt her bathroom needed a fine layer of vaseline on all the surfaces. She claims today that she did it when she discovered that she could lay down a layer so thin that you couldn't see it, she is still particularly proud of the job she did on the toilet seat. She was so successful that it was very hard to clean up as we couldn't see it.

She is one reason that I am glad that I have children (her sister is the other).

Some Resources for the Academically Talented Home Schooler

2006-07-08T14:01:00.000-07:00

When my youngest daughter was little we lived in a town whose school had a talented youth program and she thrived. Four years ago we moved to a new town that had no such program and she felt that she was getting dumber and dumber. At that point we decided to home school her for a year (the High School has enhanced programs). We had several resources at our disposal, some dirt cheap, some fairly expensive. Let's start with the cheap:

In many states home schooled can attend the local community college starting somewhere between their 14th and 16th year (my local community college accepts 15 year olds, though my 14 year old was let in as she got an 1150 on her SAT). The community college environment is generally a good one as it prepares the student for a more traditional college education. It also gives the kids college credit. Families that need financial aid home schooled children can participate in work study. We have several students that have full academic loads (16-18 credit hours) and 20 hours of work a week. This will pay for the semester and books if the young person works over the entire semester.

Now, about her getting an 1150 on the SAT thing. My young lady was identified as talented by one of her 7th grade teachers and who urged us to look into Center For Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University (http://cty.jhu.edu). Anybody can try to get into CTY through this means. By scoring well on the SAT (which she took essentially on her 13th birthday, ok pardon me for being proud). This allowed her to take the full range of classes offered by CTY.

For her home schooled year she took her math and composition through CTY with a summer course at Sienna College in astronomy (also through CTY). We supplemented this by having her take two history of science courses, a humanities course, and a geology lab course at the local CC. She also participated in a local choir for the year (Sang the Messiah with the Hartford Symphony). I think this was a well rounded year for her. In later summers she took cryptography and music theory. She also takes a Humanities course at the local CC each spring. By the way, all of these courses are college level (though the CTY does not give college credit). The summer courses are intense 3 week courses.

By the way, CTY has programs for younger kids, but I am not familiar with them. Finally for young kids many CC's have "Kids Academies" for quirky special interests

Dizzy and Me

2006-02-17T14:44:00.000-08:00

When I was 10 years old I got it into my head to learn the string bass. My school had a great music program and they taught me well. The first year I was eligible for all-state I was first chair. But when it came to playing jazz, well the less said the better. Every year my high school paid a well known muscian to play with the band and jazz band. So one year I played with Doc Severson, another the Herb Albert from the Tijuana Brass, and finally the last year was Dizzy Gillespie. Usually the people would come in, practice with the bands, give a short master class and disappear until concert. Dizzy had other things in mind. He practiced with both bands, gave a master class, and then he insisted that my drummer friend George, his pianist, and I spend the rest of the day just jamming with him. He was very gracious with the mediocre bass player and taught me several bass riffs. At the end of the day he had to be pulled away to go to a planned dinner. He was a class act through and through.

Gulf II Critique

2005-11-18T10:36:00.000-08:00

I realize this is cliché, but never-the-less it is true. The military always starts by fighting the last war. This has never been more true than the beginning of Gulf II. I am not going to talk about what we should have known, but rather about the complete surprises this campaign brought. Nobody I Know (including me) expected the Iraqi army to melt on first contact, but it did. In far too many causes the soldiers just dropped their weapons and walked home. We were apparently prepared for hundreds of thousands of enemy war prisoners which just did not materialize. Many of these walk homes no doubt became part of the terrorist insurgency. If we had an opportunity to imprison them we might have prevented some of that.

The U.S. military is trained to pursue and we did that in spades. On several accounts this particular pursuit was a mistake. First we outran our logistics and in the end did not have the CORRECT manpower to protect that logistics tail. Our ignorant and terribly ill-informed (not to say biased) press thought they were seeing a quagmire, the opposite was true, the military was successful beyond their wildest dreams. Any intelligent observer could see after the first several days the army and marines needed to wait for the logistics to catch up. I do not think that the military went in without enough manpower, I just think it is the wrong manpower. We had too many heavies and not enough military police in the first place. In addition one of the lessons of this war is that some of our MPs need to be more heavily armed and of course, armored. Secondly, we should have slowed down to pick up and detain unarmed and fleeing troops. Usually, you bypass these men as they are no longer a military threat in the short run. You bypass them to retain your contact with the remaining combatants to keep them off balance. However the military knew and planned for an insurgency and did not see these people as future insurgents. This was a serious mistake. Thirdly, the US military continues to do a relatively poor job in protecting the logistical tail (remember the number of our trucks captured in Gulf I if you need further proof). Again this calls for more MPs.

Although the insurgency was expected, I am not sure the multifaceted one was foreseen. We should in the beginning have played the Baathist remnants against Islamofacists. We were not clearly ready for the in Iraq propaganda needs. I not sure we thought that we would need to explain to people why we are the “good guys”.

Finally, we should have expected not to find WMDs. With today’s information we are sure that Iraq knew we were absolutely going to attack at least a month in advance of the start of conflict (perhaps thanks to Senator Jay Rockefeller). It seems clear that the WMDs were then destoyed or moved to Syria (and then some on to Dafur?).

So IMAO, I believe that the future military needs to be in general lighter (fewer heavy units and more logistics protection and counter-insurgency units) and more willing to throw off old tactical precepts. Sometimes air contact is enough to keep in contact with a defeated unit, the ground units should spend more time retaining coherence on the ground and contact with logistics.

And as a little aside, armored units that are doing house to house dismounted should get infantry badges, period.

A Night at the Opera

2005-06-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of opera. Near Los Alamos, New Mexico is the Santa Fe Opera, which is world class opera house. When I was young the opera was a genuine outdoor opera (if it rained you got wet) . Sadly that opera house burned down in the late ‘60’s. The replacement was also a genuine outdoor theater (whereas today's house is only vaguely out door). Sometimes my mom worried that she was dragging me to the opera, but it turns out that they only go to the opera when I drag them. The best opera I attended at Santa Fe was Mozart’s Magic Flute (summer 1971). But this has as much to do about nature as the opera itself (without nature I liked their Faust and Gianni Schicchi performances best). The theater was open in back with a stunning view of the Jemez Mountains framed by the back of the stage.

In the Magic flute the antagonist is the Queen of the Night, a subtly evil character (if you do not know the opera you do not find out she is the bad guy until the last act). Her first entrance has the darkly spectacular aria (O zittre nicht) which frames most of the action for the rest of the opera. The Santa Fe Opera decided to really jazz up her entrance. For this opera they put her “grotto” on the elevator part of the stage. Then they used dim lighting and carbon dioxide fog to give a dark cavelike effect. When it was time for her entrance the stage went dark and the grotto arose on the elevator from below the stage. As the grotto slowly rose a brief storm broke out over the Jemez. So not only did you have the stage fog swirling around the grotto, the lighting effects of opera, but you had the ragged flashes of lightning in the back ground. By the time the coloratura was done singing her aria the storm had ended. Thanks to nature this was a most spectacular entrance I have ever seen.

Dr. John Bardeen

2005-05-07T13:22:00.000-07:00

One of the most beloved men at the University Of Illinois Physics Department was Noble Prize Laureate John Bardeen. The graduate students fondly called him either smiling Jack or silent John (both are apt, he almost always smiled and was thoughtful and quiet). In one of the seminar courses I took Professor Bardeen attended regularly. After any presentation he had amazing questions and comments on the science. The following are stories about Dr. John Bardeen, the first is department mythology and the second is one of my lecture encounters with smiling Jack. He had won two Noble Prizes, the first for the invention of the transistor (with two others) and the second in superconductivity (also with two others).

In 1972 Prof. Bardeen was awarded his second Noble Prize. After that announcement the department decided to throw him a party at Loomis Labs (the main physics building on campus). The party was set for 3:00 pm.. Well 3 pm came and went and the Professor failed to show up. Everyone thought this to be odd as he was usually prompt. Finally after about 20 minutes his friends were getting worried. Dr. Shriver volunteered to call his house to see if anything was amiss. He ran up to his office to place the call. After five minutes Dr. Shriver could be heard laughing uproariously. When he got back to the gathering he told about his call.

It turns out that Dr. Bardeen had got himself ready for the party and was going to leave his house at a half hour before 3 pm. He went to his garage, pressed the button to open the door and nothing happened. His transistorized garage door opener failed him. He was too embarrassed to call the lab to get a pick up. He was trying to fix the door opener when Dr. Shriver called.

The second story involves his visit to China as part of Richard Nixon’s normalization of relations with that country. When he got back the physics department asked him to give a lecture on his trip to China and his views of the state of science in Communist China.

Posters of the lecture were posted all over the engineering campus at Illinois. On the day of the lecture Dr. Shriver came down to the graduate offices (actually zoo’s with 10-12 of us to a room) and he indicated that we were to attend the lecture. Well, duh. We were all rather excited about the event. But even weirder he asked us to sit in the back and watch the front left of the lecture hall (stadium style seating). And off he went. I went to the lecture with 4 of my friends and being obedient we sat in the last row. The lecture started and finished with a slide show. We saw pictures of Jack with the President, Jack at the airport in Beijing, the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City, his hosts, etc. I was happy watching the lecture and forgot to look at the front left. About two-thirds of the way through the lecture one of my friends jabbed me in the ribs and pointed to the front left. Sitting there were a couple of engineering professors and they were clearly agitated.

When the lecture was over and before Dr. Shriver had a chance to thank Dr. Bardeen a red faced engineering professor shot up and started to sputter. “Professor Bardeen, this was supposed to be a lecture on the state of science in Communist China and all you give us is a damned travel log.” Frankly, I thought he was going to pop a vein. With his usual smile Prof. Bardeen addressed the gentleman, “ I thought it was perfectly clear, there is no science in Red China” The lecture hall erupted with laughter as half a dozen angry men stormed out of the lecture hall. And yet again silent John was our hero. By the way, it was clear to me that Dr. Bardeen believed there was no science in China at that time.

River Cherry Cobbler

2005-05-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

This will complete the Middle Fork of the Salmon River series (the first two being the Waldo series). The last supper on any major river trip was called the formal supper. In order to be served you needed to wear a tie. It could be a regular tie, a knife sheaf, a folded Playboy Centerfold, etc. I usually tied a rope into a noose.

Anyway, on this trip we came across an abandoned sour cherry orchard. The cherries were ripe. We now had cherries, sugar and a iron Dutch oven (an advantage of boats over backpacks). Unfortunately we had finished the Bisquick that morning as dad made another batch of his notoriously bad pancakes (really, truly bad and he made them every year). While coming down the river we saw several houses on the other side of the river. Near our camp site was a footbridge across the river. I was told to take a pail of sour cherries and try to barter for Bisquick or flour (we had the other needed ingredients). So I took my pail and wandered off. The first couple of houses did not answer my knock (and I suspect at least one was occupied). Finally at a rather large two story house an elderly man answered my knock. I told him what we needed and he invited me in, but he was not interested in the cherries. Instead he told me all of his stories of his life.

He had come to Idaho in the mid-1930’s during a small silver rush (he was sad that he missed the Alaskan gold rush and wasn’t going to miss this one). He had mined the area for several years making just enough to make ends meet. He built his house by hand and had a family (though his wife got tired of the lifestyle and took his two kids and went to the "city"). He lived here because he had no use for the federal government and in particular the IRS. This was kind of ironic as when I met him he was living on social security and monthly food packages from his kids. I sat there for almost 2 hours listening to some really good story telling. Sadly I cannot remember any of them (we did not blog in the late 60's). As I left he gave me a box of Bisquick. I offered the cherries again but he said no.

So I went back to camp where we made cherry cobbler. I never have had a tastier cobbler.

Recipe for River Cherry Cobbler:

For best results use an iron dutch oven and a huge fire. Before starting, light the fire with enough wood to leave a bushel or more of ashes.

2 Cups Bisquick (see below to make your own cobbler)
1 Cup Milk (more can be added if mixture is too crumbly, perhaps 1 Tablespoon more)
5 Cups pitted sour cherries (2-20 oz cans sour cherries or cherry pie filling)
1 and 1/2 Cup sugar (this needs to vary for individual tastes)
1 Tablespoon Water
3 Tablespoons of corn starch (or a little more flour)

In bowl mix the 2 cups Bisquick with the milk. Stir until completely blended.

In the dutch oven combine the cherries, the water, the sugar, and the corn starch (add sugar to taste). You may wish to add 1/2 teaspoons of your favorite extract (almond, vanilla, etc) or 2 teaspoons of lemon or lime juice to the cherries. Heat this mixture until it boils, stirring the whole time. Continue to boil the mixture for one minute. Mixture should be thick.

Cover this mixture with the dumplings (drop dumplings on mixture with a an over full tablespooon).

Campfire Method:
Put the cover on the Dutch oven. When the fire has burned down to burning ash (some flames but little if any unburned wood left). With a shovel dig a hole in the ashes for the Oven. Place dutch oven in hole, making sure there are hot ashes below and around the oven. Cover the oven with hot glowing ashes to about 3 inches of ash. If the ashes seem to be too cool, building a small fire on top of the oven is fine.

Allow cobbler to cook for 20 minutes. Check the cobbler to see if the bread is done and the cherries bubbling (probably not). If not cook for another 10 minutes (be sure not to get ashes in the mixture). When the cherries are bubbling and the bread is browning cook for an additional 5 minutes uncovered. Serve family and nearby campers.

Oven method: Heat oven to 400. Place in oven without cover for 25-30 minutes. You can check all you want to see if it is done.

Making your own cobbler (you can over time play with this recipe until you get exactly the right taste and texture for you):

2 Cups Flour
3 Teaspoons baking powder
1 Teaspoon salt (or less)
6 Tablespoons Shortening

1 Cup Milk (from recipe)

Mix the flour, baking powder, salt and milk. Cut in the shortening one tablespoon at a time. thoroughly mix and then roll into a smooth ball. Again you drop the dumplings onto the cherries one tablespoon at a time.

Waldo Redux

2005-04-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

I was watching Myth Busters on the discovery channel and was reminded of another Waldo story (The Myth Busters were trying to make quicksand). When we ran rivers we frequently played in the fine grained sediments on the banks of the river with the intent of making a sort of quicksand. We would find an area near the river that looked potentially muddy and would start walking around the area making a very thick, very sandy mud. Then we would goof around in it trying to see how far we could make ourselves sink into the mud. Actually one time when we were on the Delores River in Colorado we worked the mud so hard that it became a liquid. In this case we decided to hold mud swimming races.

Anyway, on the same trip that Waldo did the cliff stunt we had stopped at a nice beach for the night. And sure enough there was a suitable area for mudding. After preparing the campsite those who had no chores that night started to work the mud (though I don’t remember for sure I think I was on kitchen duty that night as I do not remember playing in the mud). Some of the guys were having a wonderful time goofing around in the mud. Then the dinner bell rang (ok dinner shout). Everybody came to get in line except Waldo; he was still trying to dig himself in. What nobody noticed was that the river level was dropping. As it dropped the water in the mud also lowered. As we were eating supper Waldo shouted that he couldn’t get out. We went over to see what was wrong and sure enough he was encased in hard dirt almost up to his chest. It took the guys about two hours to dig him out. His reward was to clean all the iron cooking pots.

Not quite three coins in a fountain

2005-04-17T11:17:00.000-07:00

My girls are in Arizona looking at ASU today. ASU is where I got my bachelor's degree. They called to ask me if they were at "The Fountain". When I was a student there a friend of mine got some ramsden dye (a dye that stains bacteria red). We decided to put it in the fountain to see what would happen. As we approached the fountain he got very nervous and well, suspicious looking. So I told him to go away and I would put it in myself. I sauntered up and put the dye in and wandered off. The fountain turned blood red (at least that is what I was told; one never goes back to the scene of the crime). The administration was furious and the student paper had some pretty angry remarks from the president. The next day a letter to the editor from several biology professor said the problem was the administrations fault because if they kept the fountain clean the dye wouldn't have stained anything. Finally the school decided that that fountain should be chlorinated and cleaned three or four times a year.

I was a physics student at ASU and my friend was in Astronomy. Another trick we liked to play involved liquid nitrogen. On any given Friday night we would go to the basement of the physics building and get a liter of liquid nitrogen. Then we would go to the roof of the astronomy building. We would wait for a drunk to come staggering up the sidewalk. When he got close we would spill the LN off the roof and as it evaporated the water in the air would condense and envelopment the guy in a fog. They we would add to his "alien" experience by shining a red laser into the cloud and all around him. Usually the drunk would start swatting the air around him and in a couple seconds the cloud would dissipate and his alien encounter would be over.

Hans Bethe has died

2005-03-08T13:12:00.000-08:00

This is a rather unhappy day for me, but I will tell of my encounter with the physicist Hans Bethe:

As a grad student I had the great good luck to be Hans Bethe's lackey for a month. He was the nicest, easiest man for whom I have ever worked.
I was studying for my qualifiers and sat in his outer office at his beck and call. One day I was working on a particularly hard mechanics problem and was oblivious to the world. All of the sudden there was a cup of coffee at my elbow. I turned to watch Dr. Bethe walk back into his office with his coffee in hand.

He was preparing for a conference in Santa Fe on high energy physics. When the conference came I went to the sessions that interested me and saw little of Dr. Bethe. On the last day of the conference he insisted that I join him. He was to attend a meeting for invited physicists and I was to go in case I was needed to run an "errand". So here I was at a modern day Savoy Conference with the leading lights of the field. I sat in a chair away from the table listening like a fly on the wall. No errands were run. When the meeting was done I walked out of the room and my boss wanted to know what had happened. I confessed that I didn't understand a word of it. As he walked by Hans Bethe said with a twinkle in his eye, "That's alright, neither did I". That was the last I saw him that summer.

Sauce for a thick Pizza

2005-03-05T16:38:00.000-08:00

When I was a grad student I lived in the only house in Urbana that was on California Street near the university(house is no longer there). 10 of us lived in the house and we called it Hotel California. What was so ironic is that you could not have found a group of straighter grad students if you tried. None of us did drugs and only 2 or 3 had tried marijuana at sometime in their life. Almost all of us enjoyed cooking (that and Sci-Fi were our common interests). When we left Hotel California we made a cookbook, here is a sauce from that book.

Pizza Sauce for thick pizza:

The nice thing about this sauce is that you can double, triple, etc. and store it in the freezer for later use (a lot later).

1 6oz can of tomato paste (try Italian for extra flavor)
16 oz of in season local tomatoes (or a 16 oz can out of season)
2 tsp of olive oil
1 clove garlic minced or to taste
salt to taste
black pepper to taste
red pepper (optional, I don’t use this) to taste

Thyme
Oregano

Chop up the tomatoes, mix with the tomato paste and place in covered pot on low heat. About ½ hour in the process add the garlic, salt, black pepper, and red pepper to taste. Once that is done start adding thyme and oregano (in a three parts oregano to one part thyme) until it just barely becomes too bitter to taste. Don’t worry, when you put it on the pizza the flavor will be diluted. Then let it heat for another couple of hours, stir occasionally (at least 2 hours). You may need to add water, but keep the sauce somewhat thick. Pack in two cup portions for freezing (2 cups/pizza).

Hint on thick pizzas: The art in fixing a good thick pizza is the order of ingredients. On the dough put ½” of cheese (yes, cheese first). Then add your veggies (sauté mushrooms) and your pepperoni. Then you lay down the sauce in thick cross-strips. Cover about ½ the pizza with the strips (baking will spread the sauce out).

Put the rest of your meats on top. You may want to fry your meats beforehand and add to the pizza for the last 10 minutes of baking. Letting your meats cook with the pizza may dry them out if the crust is particularly thick (like mine). Don’t go wild with you toppings, it eventually becomes to hard to bake, I usually have no more than 4 different toppings on any part of the pizza.

Finally you need to brush olive oil on all the exposed dough or it will burn. You might want to guess what the exposed dough will be and do this first, I usually get a weird mess when I do this last.

Rain Forest Experiment

2005-03-05T16:36:00.000-08:00

While I was at the University of Illinois some of my friends lived in a house on Iowa St. We called the house Starbase Iowa, ok so we were geeks. One night one of the guys in the house decided to make some killer chili in a crock pot. After he finished cooking it he basically took the crock pot to bed with him and ate out of the pot. When he got sleepy he just slipped the pot under the bed. He forgot about it for a couple weeks (months?). When he finally found the crock pot the lid was steamy and glued to the pot. He decided that he didn't want to deal with it and put it back under the bed.

We called it the rain forest experiment. Hours were spent wondering what was brewing in the crock pot. Since it was an isolated system we conjectured that something Darwinian was happening inside. When he finally moved he cleaned up the crock pot while the rest of us kept our distance (measured in miles).

Chili Verde

2005-03-05T08:40:00.000-08:00

Carnival of the recipes (http://rocketjones.mu.nu/archives/069986.html) is a weekly post with lots of recipies. This week they have alot of chili sauce based recipies. Sure you can buy green chili sauce, but here is a recipe to make green chili sauce.

Roasting green chilies (works for all types of hot green peppers including Jalapenos): Rinse and dry the chilies. Make a small cut (or fork) to prevent popping. Place in broiler 4-6 inches (10-15 cm) from the broiler elements. Roast the chilies turning them frequently until they are completely blistered. They may blacken in the process, this is okay. Remove from oven and place on a plate under a damp cloth for 15 minutes. Roasted chilies can be frozen with the skins on for future use.

Peeling the chilies: With the pairing knife (I have used a scaling knife successfully) peel the skin starting at the stem and pulling down. You can do this with your fingers but I find the knife is easier. Cut the chili open, remove the seeds and the stem.

Green Chili (Chili Verde):

2 T Oil or lard (lard is “authentic” but I use olive oil for taste)
2 Cloves Garlic crushed or minced(or more or less to taste)
½ Cup minced Onion
1 skinned, seeded and minced Jalapeno (or none for a milder sauce, more if you are from NM or nuts)
1 T plus a pinch (if you add Jalapeno) Flour
1 Cup Water
1 Cup diced Chilies

In a heavy suace pan saute the garlic, onion, and jalapeno. When the onion is clear blend in the flour. Add the water and chilies. Bring to a boil and simmer. Stir frenquently. For a hearty sauce about 5 minutes will do, mild sauces simmer longer.

This sauce can be refrigerated for up to a week. It can also be frozen but I think something is lost when it is.

Color that country in

2005-02-24T15:19:00.000-08:00

When my wife and I got engaged I gave her a choice: either get an engagement ring or take a 3 week trip to Europe. The smart women choose Europe.

As part of the tour we stayed a few days in Zurich (each day we went to some other place in Bavaria or Switzerland). When we left Zurich our next stop was Munich which is fairly close as Eurail goes. So instead of going directly to Zurich I decided she should see the medieval part of Salzburg. As expected the Swiss trains were efficient and the station times were always correct down to the minute. That all changed the second we hit Austria. Just inside Austria the train stopped and we sat there for 4 hours. Apparently somewhere along the track someone had committed suicide by train. I could never get the full story as the Austrian I was talking to was so excited I could barely understand his German (at least that’s my story and I am sticking with it).

Anyway, it was too late to go to Salzburg, so we got off the train in Innsbruck to find a train to Munich. I noted that there was a train, the Dalmatian Express, going north due in about an hour. We waited the hour, no train. We waited another hour, still no train. Finally after three hours a train arrived, the Dalmatian Express. So we hopped on and went to a seat. My wife promptly went to sleep and I gazed out the window (Austria is really a gorgeous country). After awhile I noticed we were climbing up a very pretty pass. Half way up I saw a sign the said “Brenner”. The name was familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why. My geography is good, but not so good as to recognize small name places in Austria unless something important happened there.

Then it hit me, Brenner Pass is where Erwin Rommel learned the art of war in World War I. Of course that means we are on the border between Austria and Italy.............. Opps. I wake my wife up and tell her that we are in the wrong country. The train came to a stop in Brenario, we flash our passports to get off one train, flash our Eurail pass to get on the next and off we go back to Innsbruck. So my wife has officially been to Italy. We eventually made it to Munich late that night (after spending yet another couple hours in the Innsbruck station).

By the way, if I had been asleep we could have found ourselves in Tito's Yogoslavia without a visa and probably in deep trouble.

Slipping Anchor

2005-02-04T11:38:00.000-08:00

As noted in an earlier article, the navy taught my father how to sail a sailboat. Thanks to that I have had many sailing adventures (British Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Florida Keys, US Virgin Islands, etc.). But one of the best adventures happened in 1981. My dad was taking my mom and several other women on a trip to the south Pacific and decided that another male was needed to help sail the 49 foot yacht. That somebody was me. As reward for being a cabin boy/pilot mix after the sailing we went to New Zealand and Australia.

On the boat all of the rooms were taken so I slept on deck. One night we had anchored on a very narrow sand bar next to an island. When night fell and after my eyes adapted to the dark I could see the outline of the islands in just the starlight (the moon was new so it wasn't out that night at all). We all went to bed (ok to deck) and I went to sleep around 9 pm local time.

I awoke. Something didn't seem quite right. I looked at the mast and noted that the stars were moving. I sat up quickly and looked at the island. It was also moving. We had slipped anchor.

I went below and woke up my dad to tell him we were going out to sea. Fortunately we were able to see where we were by the starlight. In about a half-hour we navigated back to the sand bar and reset the anchor. This time I had to drive in thirty feet of water at 3 AM to make sure the anchor had set. Then we went back to bed and slept soundly for the rest of the night.

Island Car

2005-02-04T11:09:00.000-08:00

A year after we married my wife got a job as a math professor at the College of the Virgin Islands (now UVI). For the next three years I worked here and there; book store clerk, astronomy lecturer at a local resort, adjunct professor, and full time professor.

We lived on the top of the island on an old sugar estate. We had brought a car with us to the islands, a yellow Mercury Bobcat hatchback with "5" on the floor and bucket seats. We had to drive just about everywhere, so this poor car was very much over worked. Furthermore as time went on it started to rust out, becoming an island car.

First the left rear foot of the driver's seat punched through the bottom of the car. As a fix we put a flattened coffee can on the floor under the foot.

Then the driver-side door started to fall off (but never quite did). We could no longer close the driver door from the inside. Well no problem, just get in the passenger side and crawl over the stick shift.

That's when the passenger side door decided to no longer be open able from the outside. Now we had to have a routine: 1. Open driver side door, 2. Open passenger side door from the inside, 3. Close driver side door from the outside, 4. Go around the car, 5. Enter the passenger side, 6. Close that door, 7. Crawl over the stick-shift and drive off.

Finally a few months before we left the right side front light fell out, as it had rusted out from its moorings. Of course the light was still held by the wires and amazingly still worked. For several days as we drove at night the light would bounce around shining at all sorts of random things. Eventually we were able duct tape the thing in, but we really never could quite aim it correctly.

This was what we left in the island not to mention an almost rusted out hood and wheel wells. In three years we turned a little yellow car into a beloved rust bucket, our little island car.

Update: My eldest daughter reminds me that we had to use a crochet hook to reset the carburetor after starting the car towards the end.

Waldo

2005-01-16T10:19:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid in Los Alamos, NM I belonged to an Explorer Post (and yes I was an Eagle Scout). Explorer Post 20 specializes in running rivers like the Colorado in the Grand Canyon. In the early days we used army surplus rafts with homemade rowing platforms.

One of the real characters in the Post when I was a member was Waldo. Waldo wasn’t his real name, but he acted in such a way that the kids in the post decided he was a Waldo regardless of his given name. Waldo was perhaps a bit over 6 feet tall with extremely bright red curly hair. He was a bit on the large side, but he wasn’t fat or overweight. Waldo was a fun guy whose elevator didn’t go up to the top floor.

In 1967 (?) the post ran the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho. The trip took about 16 days. Late on the trip we found an ideal campsite for the night. The river took a sharp right hand turn. On the inside of the corner was a very large sand bar, ideal for a camp. The corner itself had a gentle rapid (cataract), which we could run in our life jackets. At the bottom of the rapid was a very deep pool ideal for swimming or bathing (which was sorely needed). On the outside of the corner was a small cliff (30 feet high or so). The kids used this cliff to dive into the pool. Sort of like a scene out of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.

At this time girls where not a part of the post and we were in the middle of nowhere. So most of the guys were in their “birthday suits”. So here we have 30 guys diving, swimming, and washing in the river buck-naked. Among the divers was Waldo.

On rivers like the Middle Fork of the Salmon professional oarsmen (in dories) take groups of people on trips down the river for a vacation experience. These trips can be anything from a day or two to a couple weeks. I suspect that the Middle Fork of the Salmon was/is a seven or eight day excursion.

Anyway, while we were goofing around a professional group approached. There were perhaps a half a dozen boats with three or four families with young children. So the guys who were bathing crouched low in the water and the kids on the cliff dove in the water. Except for Waldo.

Waldo panicked. Everyone in the water was screaming for Waldo to jump. Not knowing exactly what to do he did the first thing that came to his mind. He covered his face. So here is the rather big guy with flaming red hair (everywhere) standing in all his glory on a Cliffside covering his face. The adults in the excursion where busy covering up the eyes of their small children and everyone in the water was laughing.

Still Here

2005-01-10T09:35:00.000-08:00

As I said, I will be posting infrequently. The new semester will start in a few weeks and I want to get many of the stories I tell in class posted for my online astronomy students. Look forward to Waldo (personal story), Isaac Newton (actually several), Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the death of the Pythagorean number cult among others. But first I need to finish this neat dungeon crawl game I got for Christmas.

Francis Bacon Stuffs a Chicken

2004-12-19T07:17:00.000-08:00

By training I am a physicist and a science historian. I found out late in my grad career that I just do not like writing long papers. Fortunately I found a community college that needed somebody with a varied past (checkered?). Anyway, the joy of the job is I get to tell stories in class.

Sir Francis Bacon was a renaissance lawyer, historian, and natural philosopher (I guess I should get a law degree). He is an important figure in the development of the experimental method. When Isaac Newton talked about standing on the shoulders of giants Francis Bacon was clearly one of the giants.

In March of 1626 Bacon went to market to get a chicken. It had snowed in London that day and there was a nice blanket of snow on the ground. Bacon had his driver take him to the market in his carriage. He was in bedclothes with a blanket (fur?). At the market vendors brought their wares to his window and he chose, among other things, a chicken. On the way home he was looking at the snow and wondered about the effect of freezing on meat decay.

He orders his driver to stop the carriage, jumps out, and stuffs the chicken with snow. Unfortunately, since he was ill dressed for the task, he caught a cold. The cold eventually becomes bronchitis and on April 9, 1626 Bacon passes away at the age of 65.

As a side note, in 1601 Lord Essex and cohorts hatched a plain to kidnap Queen Elizabeth. The plot is uncovered and Bacon successfully prosecutes Lord Essex for his part in the plot.

I owe my life to a censor

2004-12-19T06:43:00.000-08:00

By the way, these stories are as they were told at my parents 50th wedding aniversary (they have now been married 58 years).

When my dad was at Los ALamos all of his mail (both incoming and outgoing) was censored. Everybody's mail address was a PO Box in Santa Fe (1663?). The method of censorship was cutting the offending words or lines out, so some letters looked like swiss cheese.

My dad had two girlfriends at the time and was corresponding with both. Every week or so he sent each a letter. One day he got his two most recent letters back from the censor with a note asking if he had put the right letters in the right envelopes. He hadn't. So he switched the letters and sent them along. We are all pretty much convinced that if mom knew he had a second girlfriend she would have dropped him in a second.

So here is a libertarian thanks to a goverment censor.

Some serve who never fought

2004-12-18T06:20:00.000-08:00

My father served in the US Navy in World War II but never saw combat. Never the less his story is rather interesting. He did his undergraduate work (before the war) at the University of Colorado and as a senior he worked for an engineering professor on an early proto-type radar. That made him one of few people on the planet that understood radar. After graduating he went to work for Westinghouse in Boston.

When the war started he was exempt from the draft as he was in a critical industry. In late 1943 an army officer showed up at his door and told him that his exempt status was being dropped and in addition in 2 months his number WAS going to be drawn in the draft lottery. Wouldn't my dad rather be an officer in the service of his choice?

Dad joined the navy. He spent the next several months in boot and then in officer training. I always thought it funny that the training included spending 8 weeks learning to sail a small sailboat and ettiquete. Here the war is at its peak and dad is catching wind in the Chesapeake. But I guess I should thank the navy for the times in the Carribean and South Pacific.

He finally was sent back to Boston to continue work on the radar and to await orders. In late 1944 he got his orders to go to Chicago and then catch a specific train to San Diego. He thought he was going to be a radar officer on aPB4Y (long range 4 engine recon float plane) that was being fit there.

When he got to Chicago he showed his orders to a WAC officer and she took him to his train. The scene was the usual, guys on the train saying good bye out the windows to parents, wives and girlfriends. The WAC took my dad to a car the was a bit different then the others. All the windows were closed and the windows were painted black. When he boarded the train he was assigned a seat and was told not to talk to anybody else. There was over a dozens guys in the car all looking at each other wondering what was going on. My dad and his companions road this way for about 36 hours when the train slowed to a stop. A sargeant came into the car and pointed about 6 people, including my dad, and told them to get off the train. So my dad and his companions found himself literally in the middle of nowhere at 1 AM. All that was there was a boarded up building and a train platform. As they stood there the train left. About two hours later they spotted something with blackout lights approaching them in the distance. It was a bus with blackened windows and a thick black curtain between the diver and passengers.

They got on the bus and after two hours they were deposited at the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He recognized it as the Hotel starred in dozens of nickel westerns in the thirties. The next day they where told to cross the plaza go up Palace road to a doorway. They went threw the door and were escorted to the bus in waiting at the back door. Three dusty hours later my dad was working on the Manhattan project in Los Alamos.

First post

2004-12-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

This will be an infrequently used blog. I have many things I would like to talk about, but frankly I have never enjoyed writing.