Category Archives: Stuff

by Tom Shafer

March 1, 2025

So, I have reached back into the archives to recall a writing I titled “Greed is Good in aMErica,” in which I discussed how selfishness was permeating all aspects of American life and politics. After the ugly display of New Americanism that came from a late February Oval Office meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and president (purposeful lower case) Donald Trump — oh and amateur vice-president JV (no sic) Vance — I knew that I had to dust off this prescient entry and repost it for some requisite reeducation. Since Trump’s “America First” agenda is very rapidly descending to an “America Alone” world positioning (think Gulf of America, tariffs for all countries including allies, the jettisoning of migrants seeking asylum, the shuttering of USAID), the rebranding of aMErica is even more necessary now, if only to instruct the rest of the world about our new global posture. Oh, how I wish it weren’t true.

Greed is Good in aMErica

by Tom Shafer

April 24, 2022

As the pandemic is slowly coming to an end (again), and as I watch “conservative” politicians not-so-slowly dismantle what America stands for, I now realize that we should stop pretending to portray what we the United States aspire to be and simply brand ourselves as what we are: aMErica (uh·mee·ruh·kuh), not America.

If our Founding Fathers truly wanted us to live and govern under the collective “we,” they missed the perfect opportunity to trademark us with the vision of the Preamble to the Constitution: 

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It’s right there with the first word “we.”  Why not name us the United States of Awerica (uh·wee·ruh·kuh) instead?

Okay, so it doesn’t slide off the tongue quite as readily, but with practice, we would have been okay with it.  If we can handle “Worcestershire” and “quinoa,” we can certainly handle “Awerica.”

Of course, every American child knows (?) that our country was named after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, a man who visited the New World twice (1499 and 1502) and recognized that the “Americas” were not part of Asia but were instead their own separate continents.  Then, when German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann were creating a map of the world in 1507, one of them (historians point to Ringmann) used Vespucci’s first name (feminized because all countries were seen as feminine – and who am I to disagree).  Other cartographers followed their lead, and well, the rest is history. 

Some researchers have even suggested that because news travelled the world so slowly at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Ringmann may not have been aware that Columbus had actually beaten Vespucci to the Americas.  Otherwise, our country may have been named Columbia or the slightly more awkward Columbusia.  And given the infamous history of Columbus’s experience in the New World on the island of Hispaniola, today we might be watching our culture unravel even further under the weight of a renaming of the country!  How much fun would that have been?

Oh, and by the way, neither Italian was first to “discover” the New World. The Natives already living here had discovered it at least 15,000 years prior (perhaps even 30,000 years), and the Vikings, led by Leif Eriksson, actually established a settlement (L’Anse aux Meadows) on the northern tip of Newfoundland 500 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. So really, we could just as easily be called Clovusia (after the Clovus people, perhaps the earliest to cross Beringia, the land bridge that once connected Asia to the Americas) or Vikingland or even Leifia.

But seriously, as we are witnessing in real time the erosion of our country and subsequent standing in the world (please read my thoughts in “Shine, Perishing Republic — and Geminids” under the For Your Consideration tab), those German cartographers got it right with the name America.  The blame then falls to our Founding Fathers, who could have rebranded us aMErica with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, right there at the advent of the aMErican Revolution (see how it works!).  Of course, in their defense, they were working very hard to keep our fledgling democracy on her feet – which was no easy task.  Remember, after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked (likely by Elizabeth Willing Powel, a prominent society figure and wife of Philadelphia Mayor Samuel Powel), “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?”

Franklin (now famously) responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

But back to my naïve notion of Awerica.  I guess I had always thought about us (the collective U.S.) as part of a whole (think e pluribus Unum, Latin for “out of many, one,” which adorns every coin minted by the U.S. Treasury).  But after the treasonous January 6, 2021, attack on our Capitol, it quickly became apparent that the splintering of our country was becoming a chasming instead, as traitors to the Constitution that day are still being viewed as patriots and heroes by thirty percent of Republicans.  Even today, “conservatives” continue that assault on our Constitution with new rules and laws that are taking us closer to 1830 than 2030, now undermining the individual rights and civil liberties, long fought for, that have protected all of our citizens and enhanced their lives.  Perhaps a rewording of that Latin definition is in order now: “one, out of many,” emphasizing the individual instead of the collective.  The word Unum, meaning “one” is even capitalized.  I should have noticed this long ago.

And actually, now might be a good time to revisit and reconsider the opening words to the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I love these words, especially because these words represented then the beginning of a new era of thinking about how men should govern men, that power over life should reside with every man, woman, and child.  Of course, back then the words only pertained to white men who would still wield power over women, children, and all people who were not white, but these baby steps would eventually evolve into longer strides as our little democratic experiment slowly embraced all who resided in America.

But as our erosion continues with alarming speed, this “self-evident” statement needs amending, and I think I have found the perfect replacement for it, from the perfectly ‘80s movie Wall Street.  In the film, a young stockbroker, Bud Fox, full of ambition, is clawing his way up the corporate American ladder.  He convinces (through a little insider trading info) the successful corporate raider Gordon Gekko to mentor him on the finer points of making money in the market (including illegalities), all to enhance his standing as a broker among his peers.  Eventually, he does acquire the lifestyle he has been coveting (including all of the trappings), but he has also attracted the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission for some of his questionable dealings.  In spite of some slight moral anguish, all seems to be going well, but when Gekko dissolves an airline company where Fox’s father serves as union president (the insider trading deal that first drew Gekko’s attention) – a dissolution that purges all employees and their pensions and triggers his father’s heart attack – Fox ultimately plots a scheme that takes Gekko – and himself – down. 

But back to that reconsideration of the opening to the second paragraph of the Declaration. During a contentious Teldar Paper shareholding meeting, Gekko (who owns shares but desires controlling interest of the company) concludes a speech to shareholders with these words:

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

Okay, so we’ll have to rework some sections here, and leave out that Teldar Paper reference, but the essence for our new aMErica is here, especially the seven uses of the word “greed.”  All we have to do is plagiarize it (which is perfectly aMErican) and move on.

Oh, and in case you think that I am expressing myself with a little too much hyperbole here, let me conclude with the part of that Franklin anecdote that no one ever hears.  When Franklin responded to Elizabeth Powel’s question with “A republic, if you can keep it,” Powel purportedly inquired, “And why not keep it?”

Franklin cryptically responded, “Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.”

Here in aMErica, we have done just that. 

by Tom Shafer

January 22, 2025

So, I haven’t written anything in a while, and frankly, I have little to blame except for my sheer laziness and slothful nature. But here I am, once again, firing up my idle synapses, trying desperately to jumpstart my sluggish neurotransmitter to create a meaningful – or any – impulse of thought. In reality, though, back in the fall, I did complete a rough draft of sorts about crickets – actual crickets, but I never did quite finalize the process – which I intend to rectify here and now . . .

As Hallowe’en approaches and Mother Nature prods slowly along here in the northern temperate zone, I am well aware that winter is lurking around the corner. Now, to be honest, our winters here have been quite mild for several years, so “lurking” might be a rather extreme descriptor. “Loitering” might work better for my purposes.

Anyway, each evening as I slip into my hot tub, a nightly ritual for me year-round, the winter sky inches westward. This year, Jupiter, a sentinel of the fall firmament, leads the way, followed closely by the lovely Pleaides, a star cluster also known as the Seven Sisters. There are actually a thousand or so stars populating this cluster, all born from the same gas and dust cloud, but only six (or seven) are visible with the naked eye. Giant constellation Orion is just now awaking in the southeast and will soon dominate the overhead night sky. These late fall visitors are always harbingers of winter that is coming.

When I hot tub, I sometimes cool the jets – as in not running them – so I can listen to sounds coming from nature and my woods. On this particular night, a singular great horned owl is trilling his iconic “hoo-h-HOO-hoo-hoo” while coyotes are yipping and yawling down along the Little Miami River. I can also hear raccoons and possums rustling among the leaves, likely looking for grubs or bird seed kicked from our bird feeders. A few insects are making their own noises, including crickets that populate our deck area.

Using Dolbear’s Law, I know that the temperature tonight is around 54° – which is pretty mild for 1 a.m. this time of year. If you are wondering what Dolbear’s Law is, well, that’s why you are reading this. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, physicist Amos Dolbear noticed that crickets “chirped” at varying rates depending on temperature. Of course, in science class you learned that a cricket chirp is created by him rubbing his wings together. And if you were paying close attention, you noticed the “him” that I just used, purposefully because only male crickets chirp – which they do because, you guessed it, they want to have sex with female crickets. Anyway, as temperatures rise, these males chirp more, and Dolbear started counting the chirps. After many weeks of data discovery, he realized that if he added 40 to the number of chirps made by a single cricket in fifteen seconds, that number very nicely correlated with the actual air temperature (in Fahrenheit) within a degree or two. An unfortunate caveat to this law is that crickets don’t chirp under 50° because, apparently, they are warm-weather sex seekers. Maybe performance is an issue here, or the regrettable “shrinkage” factor that plagues many males of all orders, classes, families, and species – and Costanzas (think Seinfeld).

A few crickets have been entering the house through our back patio door and have quickly become hapless toys for our two young kittens. I save the ones I can by returning them to the backyard, and I do understand their draw to the relative warmth coming from our home. But the reality is that even if they survive the homicidal kittens, the crickets won’t survive their short mortality.

Typically, crickets live only ninety days, so they have a limited period of time to fashion meaningful lives (?) and procreate. They are nocturnal and live all over the world (except in colder climates above the 55th latitude), and they can survive – and thrive – in many types of environments. They prefer to spend days hiding in loose undergrowth or burrows that they dig themselves. And though a few species are herbivores, most are omnivores, so they’ll eat just about anything. However, given a preference, most favor chowing down on decaying vegetation or fresh leaves and flowers.

Of course, as all of us remember from our youth (and oldth, I suppose), crickets are great leapers – thanks to their powerful hind legs. They can jump three to four feet, which is quite remarkable. For some interesting perspective here, if a human were equally endowed with similar hind legs, he or she would be able to “fly” 300 feet! Makes me wonder why the Marvel universe hasn’t created a more mainstream cricket superhero, not unlike the Mormon Cricket Man, a book about a do-gooder half boy, half Mormon cricket.

But back in my hot tub, I am listening to two crickets, very close by, clearly communicating with each other, taking turns, mocking one another. It being a colder night (for crickets), I wondered what they were “talking” about. Were they competing for a bodacious female, hoping to procreate one more time before hopping off to that great cricket compost pile in the sky? Were they complaining about colder temperatures, the coming of winter? Or were they bemoaning their fantasy football teams, questioning once again the rationality of their early round choices? Of course, I speak little-to-no cricket (though I have been known to chirp about my own fantasy football team), so I have no idea what they were communicating. But I would like to think that they were good friends, just a couple of cricket pals trying to figure out what they were wearing to their Hallowe’en party. I’m thinking Crick-o-lantern or Crickenstein – or is it Cricket-o-lantern or Cricketstein. I suppose I’ll never know.

by Tom Shafer

April 19, 2024

Are you kidding me?? There’s no such thing as an “average solar eclipse.” And no, the little NASA experiment near Chincoteague Island in Virginia (firing rockets into the atmosphere during the event to test and analyze changes in Earth’s magnetic and electric fields) did not produce unseemly rituals performed by “Masonic, Satanic, Esoteric, Gnostic, Brotherhood of the Snake and other occult-like groups” — as claimed and promulgated by idiotic online influencers. And no again, the eclipse did not usher in a new world order as right-winged (or Reich-winged?) conspiracy blowhard Alex Jones theorized. Actually, given the state of our planet right now, perhaps a new world order, a nice, healthy one, would be a refreshing change of pace.

Now that the long awaited solar eclipse of 2024 has come and gone, of course, I’m depressed. I had impatiently anticipated this event since I witnessed the 2017 eclipse (then in Eddyville, Kentucky, and of which you can read about under the Naturelated tab sporting the title “The Coolest Thing Ever Seen!”). But now that the sun and moon are back to normal, what astronomical happening will quench our collective thirst for an encore? Yes, we will experience all of our typical meteor showers (the Eta Aquarids in May, the Perseids in August, and the Geminids in December being the best), and we do have a couple of comets to look for (Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS should be naked-eye visible from late September through mid October — if it doesn’t crumble to pieces as it traverses our solar system). Then, the harvest full moon will undergo a minor partial lunar eclipse on Sept. 17, where the moon will graze the Earth’s dark shadow from 10:12 to 11:16 p.m. But at its peak (10:44 p.m.), only 9% of the moon will be eclipsed, so it will look like a dent or tiny nibble has been taken out of the top of the moon. Cool, I guess, but not solar eclipse cool. I suppose I will have to suppress my celestial excitement until a full lunar eclipse occurs on March 14, 2025.

But the April 8th, 2024, total eclipse DID eclipse all expectations! Fortunately, I didn’t have to travel this time and was able to experience it fully in the comfort of my backyard. Again, for the uninitiated, a total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and Earth, completely obscuring the face of the sun. As the moon begins this passing, it appears “to take bites out of the sun” until it is gone at a moment called totality. At this time, the sky appears darkened like dusk or dawn, so stars are evident overhead and wildlife is briefly confused, thinking and behaving as if nightfall is approaching. During totality, the sun’s corona is visible, its rays radiating outward in hues of yellow and orange. Just before and just after totality, a phenomenon called Baily’s beads occurs, where the moon’s surface of mountains and valleys juxtaposed against the disappearing sun create a rippling effect along the edge of the eclipse. And, approximately ten to fifteen seconds before and after totality, a “diamond ring” becomes visible: as the sun “disappears” — then “reappears” — it dazzles like a diamond set in a ring. The path for a typical solar eclipse can be from 75 to 150 miles in width, and depending on the viewer’s position in the path, he or she can experience a few seconds of totality up to seven minutes. I experienced two minutes of totality here where I live outside Yellow Springs, Ohio, while others in the Miami Valley experienced up to four minutes.

I viewed the 2017 event with my eyes only (in four minutes of totality I took three quick photos with my phone’s camera), but I wanted to capture this one with my Nikon camera while concurrently observing it through my Celestron reflector telescope. I also utilized my Celestron solar binoculars, with which I often inspect the sun while scanning for solar flares and sunspots. For several days prior to the assigned date of the eclipse, the weather forecast was not a favorable one, with many computer simulations predicting clouds and potential thunderstorms. But as the weekend progressed, the prognostication continued improving, and Monday dawned clear and bright with only a hint of high cirrus clouds overhead. Fortunately for us, this weather held for the rest of the day.

What follows (in sequence) are the photographs that I took throughout the entirety of the eclipse. Enjoy!

Sadly, the next significant total eclipse for America won’t happen again until August 12, 2045, and Ohio won’t witness another one until 2099. If I’m alive and still kicking somewhat, I will perhaps travel to catch the 2045 eclipse (Arkansas or Florida would be my picks). And, for a little more perspective about these types of events, our country has experienced just twenty-one total solar eclipses (now twenty-two) since its inception! I have to admit that it would be nice to glimpse that twenty-third one. Just one more reason to stay alive!

by Tom Shafer

March 1, 2024

So, meteorological spring commenced on March 1st, as it does every year, but “spring” in Ohio is being redefined as our climate continues to warm. I noted last year when reporting on the first annual crocus sighting — which I will get to — that I rarely wore a heavier coat during that winter. In fact, last year we experienced the second warmest February ever here in Dayton — including the warmest average high temperature in recorded history (51.9° F). That trend carried through to this year, and though the average high was only 46° by comparison, we absolutely shattered the record for average nighttime low temperature with a 37° aggregate (the previous record had been 32° in 1998!). Providing more evidence of regional warming, ten of the last fifty Februaries have witnessed average high temperatures of 45° or better, while the previous hundred Februaries totalled only four. Perhaps I should be donating my winter coat to a Goodwill further north.

Anyway, many of you are aware that I have been tracking the beginning of spring with a singular purple crocus that has taken root here in my backyard. When I first noticed it back in the mid-twenty teens, it was blooming in mid-March, but in subsequent years it began flowering earlier and earlier. Then, last year it blossomed on February 26, a full week before any previous year. So, yesterday, I was not surprised to witness this leap year gift:

It looks a little freezer burned, likely the result of some wild temperature swings in the last half week or so. And actually, these weather changes produced some early morning fireworks (complete with a 4:45 a.m. tornado warning) on February 28 as two tornadoes (an EF-1 and an EF-2) ripped across our area, both very close to our stately manor. My home weather station even recorded a wind gust of 91 mph as the front moved through. Tornadoes are a rare phenomenon in Ohio in February, but with climate changing, this may well become the norm. Unfortunately — or fortunately depending on your point of view — winter itself is shrinking right before our eyes.

Hopefully, like the proverb teaches us, with March roaring in like a lion, it will exit like a lamb.

Welcome Spring!

by Tom Shafer

January 13, 2024

Okay, I don’t need to tell you that we are suffering polarization in almost every aspect of our lives, from social to cultural to political issues — even to what foods we like and our favorite sports teams.  And some of you might be thinking, “What can we do about it?”  Well, I’m here to tell you simply this: I want to make it worse.  Because it recently dawned — really mooned– on me that our moon, the Moon, doesn’t have a name.

Now, you are probably asking yourself, “Wait, it does have a name — and you just used it!”  But technically, that’s not quite right.  According to National Geographic, “a moon is an object that orbits a planet or something else that is not a star.”  NASA states that moons are “naturally-formed bodies that orbit planets, also called planetary satellites.”   The word “moon” is merely a generic term, a common noun if you will, that refers to a general person, place, idea, or quality — and not a specific or proper one (like Pacific Ocean or Ohio River or Rocky Mountains or Vin Diesel).

Additionally, to this date, the NASA/JPL Solar System Dynamics team has validated a total of 290 moons in our solar system alone — most of them named.  And none of them are christened Moon — except ours.

Saturn may have as many as 146 moons — the most in the solar system — and sixty-three of them are officially named.  Jupiter boasts seventy-nine moons, of which fifty-three are certified and named.  All twenty-seven moons of Uranus (BTW, Moons of Uranus is a great name for a philharmonic-punk band) are officially designated, twenty-six of them after Shakespearean characters (like Ariel, Oberon, Puck, Cassida, and Juliet).

The biggest indignity in this planetary — or moonary — scofflaw is that even non-planet Pluto has five titled moons — including Hydra, Charon, and Styx from Greek mythology.

Some of you may be thinking that I am making a moontain out of a moonhill, but I beg to differ.  Imagine the utter chaos at a dog park if every canine was named Dog.  And how confusing would it be for motorheads if all automobiles were called Car:  “I love the new Chevrolet Car — oh, and the impressive Chevrolet Car!  But I hate the Ford Car, and the new Hyundai Car is downright hideous!” 

This could even be potentially dangerous if it were injected into the pharmaceutical world: “Grandma, did you take your Drug and your Drug and your Drug?  Nooooo!  You can’t take your Drug with your Drug after eating grapefruit!!”

So clearly this is a problem.  But I’m not here just to point out the problem; I’m here to propose a solution.  We need to Name the Moon!  And an election, a world-wide election, would be the most democratic way to get this done.  

Human beings love elections, and I can already envision world-wide campaigns for various names: Selene (Greek goddess of the moon), Jericho (Hebrew for moon), Ayla or Aylin (Turkish for moon), Luna (Spanish and Italian for moon, and also the Roman goddess of the moon), Chandra (Hindi and Sanskrit for moon), Mona (Old English for moon), or Hina (the Hawaiian moon goddess).  There might even be a campaign for the name Keith — after the late drummer of the Who, Keith Moon.

What could go wrong here?

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, our sun, Sun, doesn’t have a name either.

You’re welcome!

by Tom Shafer

October 4, 2023

I was sitting on the back patio a couple of nights ago with outdoor cats Boots, Rainbow, and Luna, fresh from an enjoyable vacation to Colorado, when four of our resident bats began swooping and diving in the backyard.  For the next hour or so, I viewed their antics with equal parts amusement and wonder.

Of course, being late September pushing October, I knew that these nightly visitations would be coming to an end very soon.  Here in Ohio, we do have bat species who migrate to warmer states and Mexico, but the vast majority of them hibernate, and hibernation begins when their food source, mainly insects, disappears.  Because of our chillier nights, insect population has begun to dwindle significantly, and it won’t be long, perhaps mid-to-late October, before their numbers decline enough to send the bats to their winter slumber.  

But here in the backyard, my bats weren’t worried about sleeping – they were desperately trying to fill their bellies!  In rapidly waning light, the bats navigated the gloaming by utilizing their echolocation, high-pitched clicking noises which produce sound waves that bounce off of nearby objects.  On two occasions, individuals dove within a couple of feet of my head – and I was thankful that they were feeding on the last of the seasonal mosquitoes and not me!  

Remarkably, a couple of our little friends have likely lived with us since we moved here in 2014.  They were quite visible back then, enough so that I quickly installed a bat house along the border of our woods for them and others.  Unfortunately, I have never seen any bats in this little home. But, because they can live up to thirty years (though twenty is more the norm), I like to think that at least two of them have been with us from the beginning.

And if you are wondering what kind of bats are residing here, so am I – though I do have three distinct possibilities because of their smallish size, their brownish fur, and the habitat they have chosen (a forested area – with nearby stream – that is also semi-residential): the little brown bat, the evening bat, or the Indiana bat. Until one lands on me to allow for further inspection, I am left only to educated speculation.  

This is also mating season for bats, so some of the evening activity – wing-flicking and specific vocalizations – may be precursors to the reproduction process.  Due to delayed fertilization, any ovulation and fertilization that occurs now won’t be fully realized until spring when females will birth their “pups.”  Though completely helpless at birth like most mammals, the pups will be almost fully autonomous within four to six weeks.  And, in case you were wondering, yes, like most mammals, bats do have belly buttons!

Again back in my darkening yard, the four bats continued their assault on unsuspecting insects.  As they tracked and pummeled their prey, these insectivores were easily reaching speeds of sixty miles per hour – and some species have been clocked at close to a hundred mph! With a waxing quarter moon rising in the east, I vacated the outdoor world confident that the bats would continue to fill their bellies.

As winter approaches, I have no doubt that I will see my little friends in the spring.  These unique mammals – the only ones who can fly – have a safe life here in country suburbia, with few if any predators (except the disease white nose syndrome – though that is more prevalent with bats who congregate and hibernate in large colonies).  I know that these critters often get bad reps from misinformation (like blood-sucking and rabies) and unfortunate YouTube videos, but I absolutely appreciate their unique qualities – and their ability to perform as nature’s best mosquito repellent.  Go Bats!

by Tom Shafer

July 28, 2023

I hope we can still turn it down now. And, though I seldomly-to-never agree with former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on policy issues, his stance on global warming is spot on: “The most important thing about global warming is this. Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it’s all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it.” Amen, brother Huckabee!

by Tom Shafer

July 14, 2023

A couple of amazing space images were revealed to the public this week, and I couldn’t resist posting them here for your perusal. One comes from the James Webb Telescope that orbits our earth and transmits remarkable pictures of our universe, including objects that are too distant, too faint, or too old (in universe time). This one is local, as in our own solar system, and frankly, it needs no formal introduction.

This new image of Saturn not only provides a more detailed view of the planet’s ring system, but it also captures four of its moons – including Dione, Enceladus, and Tethys. And, frankly again, this representation looks more like an artist’s rendering than a photograph! If you would like to learn how this portrait was collected (and to see better close-ups), click here to access the NASA James Webb Telescope webpage.

The other image is easily the coolest GIF ever created, and comes to us compliments of the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, which is now permanently planted on Mars. The craft just celebrated twenty years of space duty, and to commemorate this significant anniversary, the team in charge of the program decided to turn its camera toward Earth and the moon.

This image clearly illustrates and exemplifies the sheer distance between Mars and Earth, and exhibits just how impressive a technological achievement traveling to the Red Planet really is.

The team intentionally tried to draw a comparison to the famous Pale Blue Dot photograph taken of Earth from NASA space probe Voyager I in 1990 as it exited our solar system — a request made by famed American astronomer Carl Sagan — an image that moved him to reflect on our fragility here with three famous sentences — and just six words: “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.”

A statement from the Mars Express team is not as succinct, but it lays out directly this moment’s inflection point for our planetary home:

“On the special occasion of Mars Express’s 20th anniversary since launch, we wanted to bring Carl Sagan’s reflections back to the present day, in which the worsening climate and ecological crisis make them more valid than ever. In these simple snapshots from Mars Express, Earth has the equivalent size as an ant seen from a distance of 100 meters, and we are all in there. Even though we have seen images like these before, it is still humbling to pause and think: We need to look after the pale blue dot; there is no planet B.”

I truly wish that all of us could at least agree to this.

by Tom Shafer

July 2, 2023

I love nothing more than to slip into the hot tub just after a nice thunderstorm has rolled through our area.  

Now, that’s quite the hyperbolic statement, but hyperbole has taken a significant hit in the age of Trump.  I actually love many things more than popping into bubbling, warm water after a storm.  But caught up in a post-Trump world, even a wordsmith like me can let down his guard and slip into hyperbolic malaise.  Given that the greatest hits of hyperbole according to Trump (“I alone can fix it,” “everything is rigged” or “everything is a scam,” something is “the best it’s ever been,” another thing “is a total disaster,” “I’m a very stable genius” — think “person, woman, man, camera, TV”) are now entrenched in verbal and written etymology, perhaps I can be forgiven for my most egregious error ever.

Anyway, this entry is not about Trump or hyperbole — it’s about thunderstorms.  And, everybody loves a good thunderstorm! — sorry, more hyperbole, and no, everybody does not love a good thunderstorm.  My cats, in general, hate them, and so do lots of non-cats.  But I find them fascinating and am drawn to them like moths to a flame or kids to cotton candy.  

Last night’s storm blew in quickly and was gone less than an hour later.  Before the sun set and as neighbors were sparking a splendid fireworks display in advance of Declaration Day, low gray clouds were scudding in from the west, precursors to Mother Nature’s more impressive fireworks that would follow.  Then, just as the artificial pyrotechnics were ending, low gutteral booms could be heard in the distance, undeniable signs that our weather was due for a change.

Of course, that thunder was generated by lightning which wasn’t quite visible yet.  The creation of lightning is complicated, but is not unlike the little zap you might get from touching a doorknob after shuffling across some shag carpeting.  That “shuffling” creates a “static charge” on your skin, and static charges are constantly seeking escape and will do so (that “zap”) when they find another thing (that “doorknob”) which conducts — or receives — electricity.

Inside a cumulonimbus cloud, winds are very turbulent, and many water droplets at the base of the cloud are lifted to the upper heights (as high as 65,000 feet!) where colder temperatures freeze them.  As these frozen drops fall, they collide with other droplets heading up (shuffling), and electrons are stripped off in the process.  Once the bottom of the cloud becomes negatively charged enough (as compared to the positively charged top), that imbalance (like a static charge) starts looking for an escape route, and when it finds one (the doorknob), ZAP!, a bolt of lightning occurs.  

Sometimes that escape happens inside the cloud or with another one nearby (cloud to cloud lightning), and other times that negative charge in the cloud seeks a positive charge on the ground, perhaps a tall tree or telephone pole or building (cloud to ground lightning).  Either way, the result is an electrical discharge that produces nature’s most impressive and powerful energy source — enough energy, at least 1.21 gigawatts worth, to power the flux capacitor of a DeLorean that will take you through a wormhole Back to the Future!

Now, the thunder that you hear is fashioned by the lightning itself.  The flash that you see is incredibly hot, as much as 50,000ºF, and as it explosively heats the air around it, a shockwave is produced.  As the air cools, it contracts rapidly, which creates that familiar CRACK sound, and the rumbles which follow are audible proof that the column of air is still vibrating from the initial shockwave.  

Back in my hot tub, I wasn’t thinking about any of this science.  I was merely enjoying an incredible light show Mother Nature style.  And, in case you were wondering, I was perfectly safe soaking in my bubbling water — which is actually a good conductor of electricity.  Because light travels faster than sound, I could estimate the distance between me and the storm by counting the number of seconds between a flash and its companion thunder.  It takes about five seconds for sound to travel one mile, so the thirty seconds that I counted told me the storm was at least six miles away.  So, I was relatively safe — barring some rogue, human-seeking thunderbolt!

Because our weather here is entering an unsettled period, we have quite a few chances for thunderstorms over the next week or so, and I look forward to more light shows starring the dynamic duo of Lightning and Thunder.  In fact, one of those storms is rumbling into our area right now, so I need to consult my NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) weather app to see where it is and when it may arrive.  For those of you who are like me, I wish you a happy thunderstorming.  The rest of you are more than welcome to join my cats under the bed! 

by Tom Shafer

May 7, 2023

Over the winter of 2022-23, I embarked on forging a trail along the creek that defines the eastern border of our woods.  In the years we have lived here on our property in the center of Greene County, Ohio, I have cleared and refined several paths on the bluff above the creek, but I had never formally created an easy route down to it, nor a passage along its slow, meandering waters.  I wasn’t very far along in the process when a philosophical passage from noted writer and non-conformist Henry David Thoreau popped into my rather large noggin, a passage that I shared with my American literature students for many, many years. 

When Thoreau was twenty-seven years old, he realized that he was essentially — in today’s parlance — lost.  He had graduated from Harvard College, spent a couple of years teaching (unsuccessfully), and worked as a surveyor, but he was dissatisfied with the misdirection of his life.  With inspiration likely spurred by neighbor and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau built a small ten by fifteen foot cabin near a pond on Emerson’s property and endeavored to live there in near isolation to “find himself,” and to discover meaning in life.  In a book he would pen about his experience there, simply called Walden, he summarized his experiment with these now-famous and galvanizing words:  “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

In no way am I comparing my “experiment” with Thoreau’s, but a lesson he learned rather quickly was one I experienced as well, and one that speaks to human nature of every time period in history — then, now, and tomorrow.   

Thoreau was noted for his nonconformity, even in his own time, and he explained his nature in his own inimitable way: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”  So, imagine his horror (okay, that may be a little overly dramatic) when he himself fell prey to the shackles — and comfort — of conformity just walking about in his wooded abode:  “I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!”

As a purely coincidental note, I am transcribing this while listening to the British coronation of King Charles, perhaps the most perfect example of our rutted history on earth. 

Back to my own story and back in my own woods, the first order of business for this new trail was to engender a safe transition from the bluff to the creek, so I utilized a pair of trees and some climbing rope to fashion a swinging handrail down a natural wash to the valley floor.  From there, I began removing shrubs, downed trees, and other obstacles above the creek bed, using the unwanted debris to generate “natural” piles for usage by my feathered friends and other small mammals that populate our woodland.  After several days, the pathway started to take shape, and I was pleased with the final product.

Immediately, I introduced my three outdoor cats — Boots, Rainbow, and Luna — to the new trail.  If you have read a few of my other entries, you are aware that I walk my cats daily, much as you might walk your own dogs.  I grew up with dogs, but at my wife’s insistence early in our marriage, we became cat people.  Still, that didn’t necessarily mean that I had to treat these cats like cats.  So, for almost forty years, I have attempted to “train” my cats to be dogs — of course with limited to no success.  However, over time, these three have been more-than-willing companions on frolicking excursions through the woods.

And now, we had a creek to play in!

But what happened with Thoreau happened with me as well.  It is probably a couple of months since I completed my little project, but if I were to walk you along that path now, you might think that it had been there forever, that Native Americans, early settlers, and animals routinely traipsed along the creek, using the water for its necessary and life-sustaining qualities.  Based on the volume of artifacts and relics I have found on the bluff and in and around the creek, a trail (or trails) must have existed at one point, but it (or they) were slowly erased as large-tract farms were created here after the Ordinance of 1787 established a government for the Northwest Territory and opened the lands to fee simple ownership.  

I know that Thoreau’s message about the path from his door to his pond is more metaphorical or allegorical than physical, but that’s what popped into my brain — of which I have very little control.  

Of course, he’s right about the “worn and dusty” highways of the world and the deep “ruts of tradition and conformity.”  I have been railing against the stranglehold of conformity since I was first introduced to Emerson and Thoreau when I was a snot-nosed fifteen-year-old student in Jack Farnan’s American literature class nearly fifty years ago.  But even with recognition of the limitations and failings of conformity, it is strangely difficult NOT to fall prey to its adherence and compliance.

And I have evidence in my own woods — and my own life.