Notes From A Bear's Journey

   At this time of year, one is usually receiving catalogues and many of them are featuring tee shirts or the like.  For some groups, this will be an elaborate image or logo, one either fashionable or one advertising their group, say an animal group or another non-profit.  Walk into most any store and you'll find the other set of "brand" names and logos, the Nike swoosh or the Callaway/Orvis/Reebok name...or a bazillion others.  Let's face it, advertisers want to create something unique enough that you'll actually pay money to advertise for them, and do so proudly.  Cigarette companies can't do this, although at one time some of the manufacturers were quite successful, offering everything from heavy suede coats to rather fancy satchels.  Go on a nice cruise and there's their carry-on bag.  Your favorite rock band, your favorite park, your favorite whatever...or in some case (often if it's free) your not-so-favorite group/liquor/band/team.  Bu...

   It's the classic announcement as the bells rattle in alignment with the metal gates, the dirt churning as the racehorses bolt through the openings free to break away from their locked-in status and charge around the track.  The Kentucky Derby, the Belmont, the Grand National, the Dubai and the Melbourne Cups.  But I --as admitted before-- know little about that world, that world of thoroughbreds and that even more expensive world of quarter horse racing.  Dressage and English saddle riding, halters and colic, paddocks and hay, it's all foreign to me.  My wife loves horses and given the choice, would have planted me on a barn at some point and had me stacking the bales (turns out you can have the bales dropped off or pay an extra fee and have them stacked...about $9 a bale* when I had some unknown reason to check).  They're interesting animals though, breathing only through their noses and unable to throw up; block their throats or nostrils and they'...

   Two days ago, yesterday was tomorrow; and just the other day, yesterday was today.  If that all sounds a bit like semantic Sudoku, it boils down to that phrase of "what a difference a day makes."  From exhaustion to recovery, the outlook my wife and I have undergone is a shift and with it a recognition that we all have our differences, from our outlooks and opinions to our health and our skin colors.  What a person is or isn't thinking is something that only that particular person can know, for what we might see on the surface might not be close to revealing what is bubbling away underneath.  It is much the same with the geomagnetism of our planet, our earth's molten "core" slowly moving and providing our protective magnetic shield (from solar radiation); but it turns out that scientists actually still don't know exactly how it all works says Smithsonian : The geomagnetic field is generated by the liquid iron in the earth’s outer core, says Elizabeth ...

   This post will be short and sweet, as they say.  Today is Thanksgiving, although I'm not sure how the words got turned around, for the day is all about Giving Thanks.  Yesterday was difficult for my wife and I, minor issues that seemed to keep piling up until bedtime when we gave each other a puzzled look as to why we were exhausted.  My mother-in-law is now staying with us due to health reasons, and I had just finished cooking the seventh turkey, an annual practice (although usually five and not seven) of bringing turkeys and the resulting add-ons down to the homeless outdoor facility located under one of the freeway overpasses.  Last week I was talking with Jennie who has run the operation for well over 20 years, and she asked me what motivates me to come and bring such food donations week after week and with such regularity (it's something I've done now for nearly 17 years), and I told her that it's a reminder for me that it is a fine line between sta...

   Las Vegas, the What-Happens-Here-Stays-Here city, has been in the news a lot as of late, and not much of it for the better.  There were the abusive guardianship cases making headlines there and which I wrote about earlier (if you missed it, at least read the main article from The New Yorker which mentioned Vegas but was trying to highlight the level of elder abuse throughout many states), and of course, the recent shooting that killed 59 and injured 528 others (more on that later).  Add to that the opening trials of rancher Cliven Bundy who violated federal laws by grazing his cattle on federal land without a permit or paying taxes for 24 years, then held federal marshals at bay with a group of armed militia...hmm, sound familiar? (Bundy is now saying that the federal government overstepped its power, but has little backing from his neighboring ranchers who do pay taxes and have permits for their own cattle grazing)  But none of that seemed to matter as my...

   We've all been there, stuck with the guilts of a good friend telling us about a movie or a song or a book, only to discover that it wasn't too our liking (or worse, that we didn't have the guts to just say "not interested").  It's tough, because often we're on that other side recommending something to others.  It was the best, we say; or it got all the top reviews; or everyone's going!  Here's how the rather famous writer of nonfiction, John McPhee, put it in his recent collection, Draft N. 4 : Readers are not shy with suggestions, and the suggestions are often good but also closer to the passions of the reader than to this writer's.  A sailor named Andy Chase wrote to me from the deck of a tanker, describing the grave decline of the U.S. Merchant Marine and detailing its present and historical importance.  Yawn.  Then he said he felt sure that I couldn't give a rate's ass for the fate of the Merchant Marine, but if I were to come ou...

Within days, all of this trees leaves will have fallen    The temperature this morning was 29 F; not really that cold but a signal that the days of cold fronts arriving and leaving and the days springing back to warmer temps are probably gone.  Winter is near...tomorrow morning is predicted to be 19 F.  The few trees that still show leaves are now far fewer in number and within days or with the next wind storm, they will likely give in.  Even the pine needles are shedding their old fluff and bracing for the coming months of steady cold.  One signal visible to me is that of the birds and the bees.  I leave my hummingbird feeders out (the hummers are long gone) for the bees who congregate in droves to catch the last bits of carbohydrates from the sugared water; same with the flowers who are valiantly making their seeds before succumbing to the temps.  Most of my neighbors have already trimmed their decorative grasses and yanked up their beds of ...

   Bill Nye's told this tale when he joined Sundstrand Data Control as an engineer designing accelerometers: ... ultrasensitive devices that measure small pushes and pulls.  When I say "ultrasensitive," I mean ultra ultra.  Even back then, the accelerometers were so precise that they could measure the Moon's gravity from the surface of the Earth; that's a pull of about 30 micro-gees of acceleration.  To put that in more concrete terms, my home scale says that my weight on the surface of our planet is a mean 70 kilograms.  When the Moon passes overhead, its gravity pulls me slightly and I weigh a bit less.  Precisely speaking, if I weighed 70 kilograms on the scale before, my weight decreases by 30 parts per million to read 69.99979 kilograms...No, you cannot notice a tiny tug like that, but the ultra sensitive autopilot in a jet airliner most definitely can.  Instead of measuring the Moon, the accelerometers in autopilots sense the effects of the...

   Over the past week or so the process began, that of moving my wife's mother out of her apartment (with three sets of stairs) to an independent apartment facility with scheduled meals and elevators.  It was a move she did not want to make, her feeling of security and routine firmly etched into her mind even if my wife and I viewed it differently.  This was not an easy decision for us to make yet is one that many have to undertake, that of switching roles and becoming the parent instead of the child.  For some, this means taking away the car keys or taking charge of their banking affairs, decisions that are usually made by family members.  But imagine knocking on your parent's door and discovering that they are gone, as in all the furniture moved and them physically gone, an empty house all within a day and with no notification.  This is just one of the convoluted legal processes where a court guardianship enters the picture and overrides the wishes o...