Story Time (with A and Coop pt II)

The mall was pretty dead last Friday night. We're waiting for Ariele's friend to arrive from Ft. Sill in Lawton, OK. It is her first time to meet Robert in person, who is in the Army and just recently returned from South Korea. While waiting we decided to visit the Waldon Bookstore. Besides being sick with the flu all week (please excuse in advance my cough and all), I wanted to be there for the occasion. Here is a rare moment of Cooper being still long enough to read us a story:



He made it through the book and nearly broke out in his metal voice a couple of times near the end... not easy for him to keep from it even while reading "Corduroy."


Feeling better now thanks to lots of green tea, back to homework and the laundry...

Naked Eye Observations - 2

This week, in addition to doing naked eye observations in Astrology, we had to dissect a baby pig in biology lab. We had no volunteers at our table of four who were willing to do the dissecting, something I vaguely remember with a frog in a high school class before. Ours was a small baby female pig. I decided to begin so we could get it over with by thinking of it like cutting up a chicken to get past the initial grim thought of cutting through the skin. Then I named the pig "Pearl" and thought about Ichabod Crane in the movie "Sleepy Hollow," the coroner who fainted easily, and rolled up my sleeves. Once I got started, I became more interested by the details of the different organs. By the time we were finished, I was ready to look at the brain, one of the most interesting organs to me, but we found out we couldn't include anything above the neck. I can see why Dr. Frankenstein became so obsessed, there is something fascinating about understanding how things work that makes it hard to know when you've gone to far. (Never give me a scalpel unless you really want me to use it.) I had a small following before it was over who were also interested in looking at the brain. I'd say it went well, with a stretch of the imagination, except for the missing blood, white lab coats, the electricity, the storm and the castle - I shouldn't have read Mary Shelley's "Frankentein" the semester before I took biology, things tend to overlap a bit and I like to relate all things to art and literature. This kind of procedure could even be considered a work of art by the cut-ups, although the use of preservatives made me wonder what the universe could be saying to me in the "now". The song playing in my head through the procedure was ohGr's song "Cracker" and Death in June's "All Pigs Must Die," but I'm not sure what that means except that I don't think it means literally that all the pigs must die. And not to ruin a good piggy song, but I am sorry that this one had to die.

A few weeks ago I had a similar but alternate experience when I went to the Asian market with two friends, Cooper and Ben from the band Warped Corpses. Ben wanted to cook dinner for us all and he sometimes makes his own sushi. This time he wanted to try a frozen octopus. I was already sick that evening, so I rested on the couch while they were doing all the preparation for the dinner. It turned out that they had to clean it before cooking and the size of the octopus was similar to the little pig except they also had to remove its eight long tentacles. I wondered if they were enjoying themselves much more than they should have for such a gory task. I don't think I heard them laughing and "cutting up" so much before and I realized that they were more interested in exploring the dinner than actually cooking or eating it. I was tempted to look in on them but I didn't want to spoil the magic, and unless like Tom Green on "Freddie Got Fingered," I might find one of them wearing the octopus on his head. They weren't being obscene or disrespectful of its being, but just having some good clean-ing fun, and although the laboratory and scientific observations were missing, the wonder of exploring life and playing like children seemed more connected to the nature of life as a scientific naked eye observation. But then, maybe I have gotten used to their peculiar sense of humor. I didn't get to eat the dinner since I was sick, but it turned out to be a really nice meal when it was all done.

A quote from an article from a previous project I did about William Burroughs and cut-ups:

In reading "hermann nitsch' orgien mysterien theater- the artist as high priest," an online article, I recognize a correlation between the artist as painter and the cut-up method of writing in the following paragraph:

"When paint turns into intestines and painting into slaughtering, also the painter must be drawn into such vortex. Whereas formerly he used to disappear in the canvas, he now places himself in the forefront as an actor staging the act of painting. The canvas is literally turned into a mere backdrop. Already action painting introduced ‘das Schaumalen’ - ‘painting as a performance’, as Nitsch has it (p. 49). In the footsteps of Pollock he begins to ‘paint and splash huge planes, jumping around on the canvas and to let himself go’ (p. 61). The trend is accomplished when the product is wholly replaced by the process: from painting to ‘Aktion’ – the German word for 'happening.'"

The dissection wasn't what most would consider high art, but we all knew it needed to happen. I also remembered that I have been and hopefully not again at the other end of the scalpel.

Naked Eye Observations

Historically, the zenith of naked-eye astronomy was the work of Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), who built an extensive observatory to make precise measurements of the heavens without any instruments for magnification.

Under typical dark sky conditions with a minimum of light pollution, the naked eye can see stars with an apparent magnitude of up to 6 on the apparent magnitude scale.



The scale now used to indicate magnitude originates in the Hellenistic practice of dividing stars visible to the naked eye into six magnitudes. The brightest stars were said to be of first magnitude (m = 1), while the faintest were of sixth magnitude (m = 6), the limit of human visual perception, the naked eye (without the aid of a telescope). Each grade of magnitude was considered twice the brightness of the following grade (a logarithmic scale). This somewhat crude method of indicating the brightness of stars was popularized by Ptolemy in his Almagest, and is generally believed to originate with Hipparchus. This original system did not measure the magnitude of the Sun. The scale works in retrospect, rather the brighter the star, the smaller the grade of magnitude, where the sun would be an apparent magnitude of -26, and as we know, the naked eye would be damaged by direct observation of the sun's brilliance.

Some of the faint light of distant stars and planets which would be perceived with color are not perceived by the naked eye with color due to the detection of weak optical signals by the neurons within the human visual system which are detected by optic nerve rods rather than cones.



There is also a consideration of dark stars, how they are detected and how to determine which is the darkest star. I'll write about that another time. But so far, since the observation cannot be made with the naked eye, and a dark star is a dark matter, here is one candidate for The Darkest Star:



One more:

Sources: Astronomy course material/UCO, and info from http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Apparent_magnitude and Youtube.com

Update on my Killer Birthday Party:

Ariele-Carlos

Well, as expected, the day did include a crime scene with yellow tape, just not at a party in the way I had imagined it (in a previous blog)...

I had the day off and at 11am it was time to pick up my daughter from the bus station. She was returning from Dallas where she went the day before to see a killer concert. I was so glad to know she made it on the bus home safely because she was determined to go alone to Dallas this time, and also no one to meet her when she arrived there and she also planned to attend the concert alone. She was hoping to have a chance to see the person she wanted to talk to while she was in Dallas but it never worked out. She left at 4:30 am to take the bus there, after a six hour bus ride wait all day downtown for the concert to begin after only a couple of hours of sleep, then make it back to the bus station after the concert ended at around 1:00am and get on the next bus home which didn't leave Dallas until 6:30 am. Her cell phone died before she made it back, but she finally made it safely back onto the bus.

I arrived downtown near the Union bus station 40 minutes early. The street from the Greyhound station going west two miles is one of the most dangerous areas of town. Many of the homeless men who are addicts and alcoholics congregate there, drink and sometimes fights break out. This morning there was already a crime scene van, several police cars, the coroner's maroon car and all the usual yellow tape. Just then I got a call on my cell phone from an unknown number. It was my daughter, "Mom, where are you?" I said, "I'm just getting to the bus station, where are you?" She said she was at a corner down the street from the bus station where she had walked to find a phone. It turned out to be the same corner as the crime scene. I said, "What?! Are you okay? did you know there has been a murder there?" She said no, she didn't see any ambulance. I said, "Didn't you see the crime scene van and the coroner's car?" She said, "No, I just saw some policemen with clip boards and I asked them where I could go to use a phone." I said, "Okay, stay there, I'm at the next corner and I'll be there as soon as I turn around. I just passed the corner where you are." She said, "I'll just walk and meet you down at the McDonald's, it'll be easier." (The street from the corner where she was all the way going toward McDonald's is truly one of the worst streets in town and she wanted to walk through just after a murder.) I said, "DO NOT leave that shop until I get there please... I'm right outside." She didn't understand why it was dangerous and yet she just spent a whole day and night alone in Dallas in the same kind of area of town and her cell phone died before she made it back... I think I'll have that birthday drink now.

Ariele was hungry and although tired she wanted to go with me to our favorite restaurant, Tokyo's, and we had a beautiful and triumphant lunch where she told me all about her adventures and the concert in Dallas. I had their famous box lunch with some chilled Pearl Silver sake in a small glass that fits into a masu, which is a little wooden box. They pour the sake to overflow the glass into the box and when the cup is empty, the extra sake is poured from the box into the cup to end it. It is symbolic for good fortune to overflow in your life to have sake in this traditional way, which I didn't know until they told me later. The lunch was beautiful as I sat basking with the warm sun coming in over my shoulder and the presentation of the meal in an artful display which is always half the fun, and of course I enjoyed the company of my daughter too, even though we were both saying "Oh Crap! you/I just wandered through a crime scene!"

Kids are so precious, with usually good intentions and are so innocent to danger, sometimes oblivious. Life can be so beautiful in its innocence and yet sometimes so ugly and frightening too, some make it through and others are not so fortunate. The person who was killed was once someone's child. I felt fortunate that my daughter made it home safely. She is eighteen and she is determined to do things her own way, which can be good and also frightening for a parent. I have determined to believe for the sake of my sanity that the 40 year old "crack addict" lady who lives under the bridge in Dallas, who befriended her on her way back from the concert to the bus station while she was there was really an angel with a few bruises. Ariele bought the lady breakfast at the bus station in Dallas before coming home, she kept saying that Ariele must be an angel, which made my day.

Ariele was too tired to wait for me to finish my sake, and since I had to drive I didn't get to "end it" in the traditional fashion, but that leaves some extra to share a toast with you to good fortune and the future.

One of my questions at lunch: So, how does an eighteen year old pack for a bus trip to Dallas?
A: "A backpack, a cell phone, iPod with earbuds, a fake mustache, super cool shades, a fairy princess toothbrush, brass knuckles, pepper spray, cigarettes, some cash and I.D., deodorant, "Kaddish" by Allen Ginsberg, Rumi's book, "The Glance" a book by H.R. Giger, and a clean change of clothes." (This alone tells me she's growing up. When she was nine we went to Mexico. After packing her bag for the trip, when we got to our first stop in Mexico I found that she had removed all her clean clothes I packed and replaced them with her favorite toys while I was out of the room. I never thought to check it before we left!)

Mom's last tip for the next Greyhound trip: Don't forget the Billy Bob teeth we got in San Antonio on our trip to Mexico, you never know when that might help you out of a jam.

Ariele's response to my advice:

For Jacob

its not an easy thing to say goodbye the way we did today
though I haven't known you for as long
as others here could say
but how could I forget your smile
your laughter and warm embrace?
how could I close my eyes
without a memory of your kind words and face?
and still you met me at the door
with open arms today
though silently as tears flowed
as I felt the sun extend his rays
while your family and friends all gathered around
to speak their words of love for you
you were only 13 Jake just last month
today was the last day on earth you knew
and I too will miss you Jake, and I will remember you

In loving memory, one of Jake's favorite songs: