Christina's World

There is a painting that I first saw many years ago—decades ago—and have seen several times since. It is called Christina's World and was painted by the artist Andrew Wyeth in 1948. It is probably his most famous painting.

"Christina's World" by Andrew Wyeth (click for larger version)

I can recall thinking, when I first saw it, that the painting must have come from Wyeth's imagination. But I later learned that was not so. 

The woman in the painting was a real person named Anna Christina Olson. In the painting we have the impression that we see a young woman, but Christina was 55 when she was painted. Her home was near Wyeth's summer home in coastal Maine and Wyeth knew the Olson family. Christina suffered from a degenerative muscular disorder which left her unable to walk since she was about 30 years old. (Wyeth also used his wife as a model while making the painting.) Christina refused to use a wheelchair and crawled wherever she wanted to go.

To me, the painting is mildly depressing. The sky is gray and somber, the buildings are unpainted and weather-worn, and even the grass is more gray-brown than green. The flat, dull landscape and the few buildings on the horizon are the totality of Christina's world. I feel that she is trapped. She is trapped in a body that doesn't work as it should, and that, in turn, traps her in a landscape that is utterly stale and tedious. She is condemned to live an unfulfilled life.

The painting is referenced in many ways in our popular culture. One example: in Arthur C. Clarke's novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Christina's World is one of the two paintings (the other one being Vincent van Gogh's Bridge at Arles) hanging on the living room wall of a hotel suite to which the astronaut David Bowman is transported after passing through the Star Gate. (The painting does not appear in Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of the novel.)

If you want to see the actual painting, you'll have to visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. They own the painting. It is part of their permanent collection.

Tenga Buen Día

(To clarify:
This video was circulating phone to phone until it got to my phone. My phone said it had been "forwarded many times." I thought it was a very nice video and put it on my blog so others could enjoy it. However, I do not know who created it. I suspect it may be part of a longer video.)

Responsibilty

There was recently a tragedy on the set of a movie titled Rust. The actor Alec Baldwin shot and killed the movie's cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and he shot and wounded the movie's director, Joel Souza. 

I've never been on a movie set and I don't know how they do things. But I've handled and fired handguns. It's easy to determine if a handgun is loaded with real ammo or dummy ammo. It's easy to determine if the barrel is clear of any object that could be fired out of it by a dummy cartridge. If someone handed me a handgun on a movie set and requested that I shoot at someone on the set, I would check the gun for live ammo before I used it. But then, I don't trust anyone. (See earlier blog post, "The Boy on the Fence.") People make mistakes, so there are rules to make the film set safer. Even with the rules, a danger remains. People might forget to do a check, or misunderstand what another person tells them, or decide to skip a procedure because they know "for certain" that the gun isn't loaded when, in reality, it is.

People are rushing to Alec Baldwin's defense and are saying it's not his fault that two people were shot. If they mean it wasn't his intent to shoot them, I'm sure they are correct. But when it comes to responsibility, I have to disagree. I think Baldwin bears some blame, if not legally, then morally. If I were the last person in a chain of people handling the gun, then I would have the last opportunity to check the gun. Before I shoot it at someone, I want to know what is in that gun. Is the barrel clear? Is it loaded with dummy ammo? I don't want to take someone's word for it. Let me check it one more time. That's what Baldwin should have done. 

There really is no excuse for people being shot by real bullets on a movie set. It happens when people are careless, or don't know the rules, or don't follow the rules. Someone, somewhere, somehow, didn't follow the rules, and Baldwin was the last person in the chain of people who handled the gun. Maybe it's only me, but I wouldn't fire a gun—a gun that someone handed me—at another human being, without checking that gun myself to determine it was safe to fire.

If I fired a gun, and I injured or killed someone, even if it was because of another person's negligence, I would feel responsible for that injury or death. I'm sure Alec Baldwin feels responsible for the death of that cinematographer. Regardless of the rules on the set, he fired the bullet that killed her. That did not have to happen, and it should not have happened. The union workers had already walked off the set because, they said, it was unsafe. That walk-off should have been a red flag to stop and do some self-examination on the set. This kind of event should never happen again.

Spanish Progress

I've been studying Spanish for only one year, and already I can speak Spanish! Well, not so much speak Spanish as write Spanish. And, not so much write Spanish, as pick out the words I want to use from a group of Spanish words. And, when I say group of words, I mean I can pick out the correct six words from a group of eight or nine words. Sometimes. Sometimes I pick out a wrong word and I get the sentence wrong, but usually I pick the correct words. And sometimes I put them together in the wrong order, but sometimes I put them in the correct order. If I have to put together a short Spanish sentence, I can do it in less than ten minutes! By "short," I mean six words. Maybe eight. Although, I've been stumped by sentences with only two words. "It means what? What?? Whaaaaa.... spell it!"

To learn Spanish, first I went through a Spanish dictionary and I crossed out all the words I knew I would never use. Such as "xilofonista" (xylophonist). No one has ever said the word "xylophone" to me. Never. I'm not sure I still remember what a xylophone is. Is it a musical instrument or a weird game? Either way, I think it is played using balls on sticks. 

I already knew many Spanish words before I began studying. For example, I know how to say the word "macho" in English. In English, it's "macho." That's easy to remember. And I can write "Mexico" in Spanish. It's "México." Although the letter 'e' has that little accent above it, which isn't on my keyboard, so I have to write Mexico like this: Mexico. And "kilo" (the metric unit of weight) is written in Spanish as "kilo."

The reason for so many similar words is because English and Spanish have many cognates. (It's pronounced just like it looks: cog-nate). A cognate has the same linguistic derivation as a similar word. So, for example, the English word is and the German word ist and the Latin word est are all derived from the Indo-European word esti. I have to stop now. I've already told you more than I actually know.

In another year, I expect to be able to say, "Where's the baño?" in Spanish. That, and cerveza, are all I really need to know.

Our Universe

Sometimes I think about our Universe. It’s hard for me to conceive of the Universe having a beginning, but it did. There was a time when our Universe and its billions of galaxies did not exist. Then suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, it sprang into existence. That happened 13.8 billion years ago. We call that event the Big Bang.

We think of space as “empty space.” Of course, space contains galaxies and dust and radiation, but if you take all of that away, what’s left? Empty space. Except, space is something. Meaning, space is not nothing. It is definitely something.

When we point our telescopes at other galaxies, we can see that they are moving away from us. The farther a galaxy is from us, the faster it is traveling away from us. But this doesn’t mean there is something special about our place in the Universe. The fact is, this truth holds for every galaxy. If you could travel to any place in the Universe, you would see all the other parts of the Universe moving away from you.

You might think all these galaxies have some outward velocity, that they’re traveling though space like pieces of shrapnel traveling outward from a bomb, and it’s just a coincidence that each galaxy happens to have a speed and direction that results in its moving away from every other galaxy. But you would be wrong.

What is actually happening is this: the space between galaxies is expanding. Space itself is expanding. Galaxies are embedded in space, and as space expands it carries the galaxies away from each other. It’s like a loaf of raisin bread in the oven. As the loaf rises and expands, the raisins move away from each other. They’re not traveling through the loaf of bread. They’re staying put; it’s the loaf that is expanding and carrying the raisins farther apart.

If space were literally and truly nothing, how could it expand?

Our Universe, apart from the matter and energy it contains, is made of something we call spacetime. Space and time are the components of spacetime. That is why an object’s velocity through space affects the passage of time for that object. Space and time are woven together. If you tug on one you affect both.

The Big Bang created the Universe. But the Big Bang wasn’t something that happened somewhere in space. Before the Big Bang happened, space didn’t exist. The Big Bang created space. And it created time. It created spacetime.

Suppose you had the power to remove everything from the Universe. You remove the stars, you remove the dust and gas, you remove light and x-rays and gamma-rays. You remove everything, until finally there is nothing left but a Universe of empty space. And finally, you remove the empty space. Now, what do you have?

You have the situation that existed before the Big Bang. I call it the Void. The Void can’t be pure nothingness, because if nothing at all existed—not matter, not space, not energy, not potential energy, not even some kind of mathematical framework to hang the laws of physics on—if nothing at all existed, then there would be nothing to cause the Big Bang. (You could, of course, invoke a Supreme Being as a Prime Cause, but that only brings up another load of questions that cannot be answered.)

If we had a time machine, we could travel back 13.8 billion years to a time when there was no Universe. We’d have to be in a very special time machine that could exist without occupying any space at all, because there was no space to occupy then. There would be no up or down or this way or that way, because those terms describe 3 dimensional space, and there wasn’t any. Yet. But something happened. We don’t know how it happened, but we see the flotsam and jetsam it left behind. We see stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters, black holes, neutron stars, magnetars, blazars, quasars, and other wonders. Our earthly telescopes can discern about 200 billion galaxies in a Universe that might be infinite. In fact, there may very well be an infinite number of Universes, each sealed off from all the others, each a part of a vaster Multiverse.

Physicists have theories about how the Universe began and how it may end. In fact, with the recent discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN, physicists tell us the Universe is unstable and could collapse into an alternate reality at any time – a reality in which we won’t exist!

I don’t dwell on these things. They’re thought-provoking but they’re also way above my “pay grade.” For those who are interested, there are many videos on YouTube that discuss our Universe, how it may have begun, and how it may end.

Not You

I have a friend who was (maybe still is) a consulting engineer. He designs specialized hardware and software for industry. He has had plenty of work in his life.

He once recounted a moment that occurred early in his consulting career. He was tasked with solving a problem for a large corporation. He drove to the company's headquarters to meet with their management, and he saw a parking lot filled with thousands of cars. "There are hundreds of engineers working here," he thought. "How can I, just one person, solve a problem that hundreds of other engineers have failed to solve?"

But he entered the building and met the managers and the engineers, and he studied their problem and he devised a solution for them. He told me that he learned a lesson from that early job. "No matter how many employees a company has, all of those employees working together are only as smart as the smartest person among them."

So if you're facing a problem that no one can solve, that doesn't mean you can't solve it. You just have to be a little smarter, know a little more, think a little deeper, try a little harder, than others have done before you. You can solve a problem that hundreds, maybe thousands, have failed to solve. Never be intimidated by the failure of others. They're not you.

That is worth remembering.

Computer Journey

This morning I found myself thinking about the computers I have used. When I was a young engineer, the first computer chips were invented and manufactured. They were called "microprocessors." When they became available to the public, I bought a printed circuit board that contained a microprocessor and auxiliary chips. The board was called the KIM-1, which I think stood for Keypad Interface Module or something similar. It was a learning tool to teach engineers about a particular microprocessor called the MOS Technology 6502.

KIM-1

The keypad in the bottom right corner was used to enter machine language instructions. Above the keypad were six 7-segment LEDs. The first four displayed a hexadecimal address, and the next two displayed a hexadecimal data byte. Hexadecimal numbers go from 0 to 15. The digits 0 - 9 are displayed in standard notation, and the digits representing 10 - 15 are displayed as A - F. If this confuses you, there is a ton of information on the Internet about hexadecimal math.There is also octal math, which uses only digits 0 - 7.

It accomplished its goal: to teach me about microprocessors, how they worked, what registers they contained, and the various addressing modes I could use to access memory. And it only cost $200. Of course, what you see in the photo is all you got. No power supply—I had to build that. No edge connectors either, I had to buy them. But there were two thick manuals that explained the processor, the MOS 6502.

Osborne One

A few years passed and the first "real" computer came along. This was the Osborne One. It had 64 Kbytes of memory, two floppy drives that stored 90 Kbytes each (92K if you counted the disk directory), and a 5 inch black-and-white, text-only monitor. The Osborne One ran the CP/M operating system. It also came with a thick user manual complete with source code for the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) and schematics for the computer board. Due to a health issue, I wasn't working at the time, but I had to have one. In 1982 I plopped down my last $1800 to buy one. I also bought a larger monitor (12"), and I made a little printed circuit interface board to connect the monitor to the Osborne. Later I converted the single density floppies to double density, and then each could store 180K of memory. The Osborne One used a Zilog Z-80 processor, and I got my hands on a Z-80 manual and studied all the op-codes and the addressing modes. I also got my hands on an assembler and linker, and I began writing "real" software that did useful stuff. I remember one program I wrote that simply installed a virtual drive onto the computer. It was a disk drive in memory. That is, it looked to the computer like another disk drive, but it was in RAM. Keep in mind I only had 64K RAM total, and 4K of that was dedicated to the video system, so I didn't have much memory to work with. The virtual drive was only 4K in size, not very useful, but it was the concept that I wanted to learn. I wanted to do it just to learn how to do it.

Along came the IBM PC with MS-DOS and changed everything. Other manufacturers began copying the PC and soon prices came down. When Windows 3.1 came along, I bought a PC clone. Then another, more powerful PC. Then a still more powerful PC. And I began teaching myself high level languages. Technology progresses, and at some point it becomes impossible to keep up with all the new stuff. It was time to let the young engineers choose from the new technology and carry on. I moved over to designing with Visual Basic, designing websites, and learning Javascript. But even with a more narrow focus, technology moves faster than a person can keep up with. 

Maybe I could keep up if I had a reason to do it. But I always learned for the pleasure of learning and for being able to do new and interesting things with what I learned. If we don't learn anything as we go through life, we might as well be daffodils.

The Boy On The Fence

When I was a child, my father told me a story. There was a little boy. One day his father picked him up and placed him upon a tall fence. Then the father stepped back and told the boy to jump.

"No!" the boy exclaimed. "I'll get hurt."

"No, you won't get hurt. I'll catch you," the father replied.

But still the boy would not jump. He was on a high fence and he was afraid his father wouldn't catch him.

"I'll catch you!" the father exclaimed. "I'm your father. I won't let you get hurt. Trust me and jump."

This conversation went back and forth for a while, as the father cajoled his son to jump, and the son refused because he didn't want to get hurt. But finally, the father won the argument and his son agreed to jump off the tall fence.

"You'll catch me?" the boy asked.

"Of course," the father answered. "You must trust me. I'm your father."

So the boy jumped off the fence. His father took a step back and let the boy hit the ground. As the boy lay on the ground in pain, the father bent over him and shook his finger at the boy. "Let this be a lesson," the father said. "Never...trust...anyone!"

That short fable taught me a lesson. I've never trusted anyone one hundred percent. Especially politicians; when Trump gives a speech, and talks to a crowd, I can see right through him like he was made off glass. I can see the manipulation he uses, I can spot the lies that come from his mouth. And it's because I learned not to trust anyone totally, one hundred percent. Everyone has their own agenda. Everyone has their own reasons for doing things. They may wrap it up in a pretty package to make you think they're doing something nice for you but often, not always but often, they're doing it to benefit themselves. 

Sometimes it's hard to see the self-interest because seldom do we have all the pieces of the puzzle. We don't see the network of family and friends and associates; we don't see the behind-the-scenes chicanery that goes on. We only see what the grifter wants us to see. "Look at this," he says, holding out a shiny object in one hand, while the other hand picks your pocket. 

That's not really a good analogy, because the grifter doesn't have to pick your pocket. A good grifter will make you want to give him your time and money. And after he has stolen your time and money, he makes you feel good about it, but only because he has not finished using you. When he's done with you, he'll drop you like a hot potato. 

Remember the boy on the fence. Don't think like a child. Don't be gullible. Leave a little room in your head for for a bit of skepticism. And sometimes, for a lot of skepticism.

Saturday Morning Time Loop

I'm not sure when I went to bed but I went to sleep right away. When I woke up, it was 9:30AM and I jumped out of bed.

I had a dream. In it, I got up and went to my computer to do lessons on Duolingo. Then Nuria arrived from Costa Rica (via Skype) and I continued with the lessons with her assistance. But then, after a while, I went to bed.

No, that was not a dream. That was real. But when I went to bed, I had a strange dream, un sueño extraño. It took place in a house too strange to describe. 

I jump from bed (reality, realidad). Daylight streams through the windows. It is 9:30AM, again. I look at WhatsApp on my celular. I was on Duo at 3:40AM. That's when Nuria got out of bed to help me. So we did some lessons, and all I know for sure is that I made Gallo Pinto again. I know because I took a photo.

I ate at 3:26AM, according to the timestamp on the image. Gallo Pinto with Lizano Salsa and two eggs and two sausage links.

And then, I did some more Duo. With Nuria. Until 6AM. And I watched some YouTube, the "nightly news" from the previous day. Or maybe I did that before I got on Duo. The early morning is a blur.

So I'm not sure when I went to bed, but I went to sleep right away. When I woke up, it was 9:30AM and I jumped out of bed. I remember a strange dream, un sueño extraño, about a strange house. But dreams evaporate into the air like the seeds of a dandelion in a wind. 

Now it is 10:40AM, and I wrote this blog post just because. That's an American expression: just because. It's the reason for doing something when you don't really have a reason. 

"Why did you do that?" 

"Just because."

Oh. That explains everything.

It's 10:40AM and Nuria is going to join me on Skype, for Duo practice. I hope. And I'm already hungry for lunch, because breakfast was at 3:26AM—over 7 hours ago. But there was that time I went back to bed and went to sleep right away. And I dreamed a strange dream, un sueño extraño, and when I woke up, it was 9:30AM and sunlight streamed through the windows and I jumped out of bed and I went to the computer to do lessons on Duo.

I may be stuck in a time loop.

Friday

It's Friday. I got up at 3AM and began my Spanish lessons. Because of daylight saving time, Nuria is 2 hours behind me, so it's 1AM in Costa Rica. She will be asleep for a few more hours. I worked on Spanish, watched some YouTube, and made Gallo Pinto for breakfast. Plus a banana. Plus an apple. 

The clock rolled around to 9AM and I decided to take a nap. I got up again at 12 noon, and I put on my clothes and I went out to the garage. I raised the door and I went inside. The lawn tractor was waiting for me and the grass was getting tall. I raised the tractor's hood and eyed the plastic fuel tank. There wasn't much gasoline in the tank, and for a few seconds I debated driving to a gas station and buying a little more gasoline. It's late in the grass growing season, and this might be the last time I mow the yard. I finally decided to gamble that I had enough gas to mow the yard, and if I didn't and the engine quit, I would be mowing the back yard by then, so I could buy additional gas at my leisure. 

I pushed the lawn tractor out of the garage. I sat down and inserted the key into the ignition. I plugged ear protection into my ears, checked that the tractor was in neutral with the blades disengaged, and turned the ignition key. The tractor roared to life. It's engine is a loud thing. I threw it into reverse and backed from the garage apron into the yard. Then I threw it into forward gear, set the blade height to level 4, a little higher than usual, and I let out the clutch. I tore off up the side of the yard and went around and around the front yard in ever tighter circles until the front yard was done. Then I mowed the side yard and finally the back yard. (In British English, a home's yard is called a garden. This confused me when Nuria talked about her sister's garden, because she really meant yard.)

After mowing the yard, I knew some work was needed with the string trimmer, but it could wait. String trimmer work is low priority. I came inside and got on the computer and soon I was Skyping with Nuria. We resumed my Spanish lessons. I had fallen to #2 but by 3PM I was #1 again. I'm not really competitive about these lessons but it would be nice to finish in the #1 spot for at least one week. Each week everyone is shuffled and there's no telling where I will end up. But at the moment, I'm in the #1 spot. It's hard to get there. It takes hours of study and practice every day. 

Now it's 3:30 PM. I might lie down and see if I can fall asleep for a couple of hours. I never sleep more than about four hours at night, so I get tired early. Or I might decide to eat a late lunch. Or maybe I'll skip lunch and eat an early dinner. So many decisions.

The weekend looms ahead of me. I have chores to put off. I mean, I have chores to do. No, I was right the first time—I have chores to put off.

To be a blogger, sometimes you have to write about nothing. Absolutely nothing. And that's what I did today. If something happens—like, if an asteroid hits my house—I can return and update my blog. Meanwhile, I think I'll grab a bite to eat, after all. 

May all of us have a nice weekend with lots of sunshine and not too many chores. Hasta luego, amigos.

Autodidact

In my previous blog post, I briefly discussed how I learned to write computer programs. I was an autodidact. Simply defined, an autodidact is a self-taught person. Vocabulary.com says an autodidact is "a person who learns things on her own, from books or videos or by practicing skills, rather than in a traditional school setting." I studied and used various computer languages. I wrote programs for the CP/M operating system. This was before Windows and before MS/DOS, when Microsoft was just a tiny company that no one had heard of. Once upon a time, CP/M was the king of personal computer operating systems. It ran computers like the Osborne One and the Kaypro. A full list of computers that ran CP/M is here.

But in 1995, I began learning a new kind or "programming language." It was called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and it was the language of the World Wide Web. This was in the early days of the Web, but I saw its promise and I knew my company should have a website. I decided to create the website, and to do that I had to learn the language of the Web, which is HTML. So I bought a book about HTML.

Back then, there were no HTML design tools, so I used Windows Notepad and wrote all the HTML by hand. This was cumbersome, and the downside was making sure I didn't have broken links. It's easy to have broken links when one designs a website with multiple pages by hand. 

Then the day came that I wanted to put an ROI (Return On Investment) calculator on the website. This kind of spreadsheet requires more than HTML. It required another language called Javascript. So I bought a book on Javascript and began studying it. 

Eventually, HTML design tools began to appear. There was Microsoft's Frontpage, which was primitive but useful for simple designs. I ended up with a design tool called NetObjects Fusion, which I used for years through several versions. 

If you want to see what HTML looks like, simply put your browser cursor over this page (or any other web page) and right-click. From the menu that appears, click on "View Source." What you will see is HTML, and that is what the browser reads and then converts into a page of "objects" such as text, pictures, video, hyperlinks, and so on. 

Was it fun? Yes, it was fun. I must be part "nerd" because I enjoy learning how things work and I enjoy putting that knowledge to good use.

This blog, which is on Blogger, has two interfaces available to writers. One is like a simple version of a word processor (like Word) and that is the Composer interface. There is also an HTML interface that allows the blog writer to go into the HTML and tweak various settings that are not available on the Composer interface. My recent "Stardust" blog post required a lot of HTML writing. Other blog posts may be done using only the Composer interface. So the interface is fairly versatile, but not as versatile as if you had your own website with full control of what tools you used.

I know many people who, in my opinion, have important things to say and could be an excellent blogger on this kind of platform. But they don't write a blog. They don't write a book. They don't write and submit articles for publication on any kind of media. It's too bad because they have something to say that could benefit many, but, I suppose, they just don't believe they have anything to offer. But sometimes I tell them, "Look at me! I am proof you can be a writer even if you have nothing to say."

Be an autodidact. Teach yourself something. Then use it to enlighten your corner of your world.

Reminders

I awoke and lay in my bed in darkness for a while. But sleep would not return, so finally I got out of bed. The time was 1:30AM.

Gallo Pinto and Sausage

I had gone to bed just after 8PM—very early for me. But I was tired, estaba cansado. I had risen at 1AM yesterday morning.What does one do at 1AM? I don't know what other people do, but I went to my computer and began my Spanish lessons. At about 6:30AM, Nuria joined me from Costa Rica, and she assisted until 7:30AM. At that time I quit Spanish lessons to make some breakfast. 

I made my own version of the popular Costa Rica breakfast, Gallo Pinto (pronounced "Guy-yo Pinto"). I used brown rice, black beans, diced onion, and Salsa Lizano. I heated and stir-fried the mixture in a frying pan, then poured scrambled eggs into the mix and stirred until the eggs were cooked. I plated the Gallo Pinto and topped it with two link sausages. It was good, and a tasty break from the usual microwave sausage-and-egg biscuit. 

I cleaned up the breakfast dishes and returned to the computer. I worked on Spanish on-and-off all day. I discovered a way to get more points from the lessons and by the end of the day I had doubled the number of points I had collected during the previous eight months. On Duo, I'm in what they call the Diamond League, which is their top league. I began the day in the #3 spot. I finished the day in the #2 spot, closing in on #1. And by 8PM, my brain was definitely tired.

I'm teaching myself the Spanish language, with help from Nuria. Years ago, I taught myself computer programming, which is another kind of language. First I learned machine language, then I learned assembly language, and finally I decided to teach myself how to code programs for Windows computers. I decided to use the Microsoft tool Visual Basic. Despite the name, there is nothing basic about Visual Basic. It's a very powerful tool. If I could start over, I would have chosen to learn C# (pronounced "C sharp") because it's more widely used in the world of business. But both VB and C# compile to the same intermediate code that then runs on the JIT (just-in-time) interpreter. Ain't computers fun!?

I learn best by doing, and so I had to decide what kind of program I would write. I decided to write a Reminder program. I remembered how difficult it was for my mother, in her advancing years, to take her prescription medicines. She was taking seven or eight meds, and some she took every day, some every other day, and certain meds could not be taken at the same time as certain other meds. It was complicated, and she failed at the task and ended up mostly skipping her meds. That probably contributed to her demise (but who can say for sure?)

So I began studying Visual Basic and writing a program called RxReminder. The program took a number of years to complete, but every day I learned more and the program became more powerful. Eventually I had a program (by now it was called Reminder XR) that could be setup on a home computer and it would issue alerts in the form of a popup window and a loud alarm sound (which could also be a voice recording, "Mom ... it's time to take your (whatever)"—you get the idea. I think it was around 2016 that I quit developing it. I didn't know that I would end up using it myself. It's the most useful computer tool I've written. It is on my PC and it alerts me to medications, doctor appointments, when to take out the trash, when to take out the recyclables, and anything else that I want it to remind me of. It will issue reminders at multiple times and dates, so important appointments don't suddenly pop up and surprise me.

Teaching myself computer programming also came in handy at a job I had, back in that far away time known as "the day." I had a job designing computers. These were industrial computers, not consumer computers. They ran industrial mobile robots. Sometimes I had to design the computer, both the schematic and the printed circuit board, and then write the operating system that ran the board. So the result was my baby, end-to-end. That was fun!

What is education but the process of learning. You can pay someone to teach you, or you can teach yourself. There is so much on the Internet now that you can learn a lot without a formal education (though I had that, too, but it didn't help me learn to program computers).

What, you may be asking, happened to the Reminder program? I use it every day, and it's a big help. I gave copies to a few friends. One of my readers, whose comments have the initials "LL," uses it every day. She refers to it as "Scheduler," because that is what the program does for her. 

The Reminder setup (installer) program still lives on the Internet, and is stored on a Google server. I thought about putting a link to it here, but I think that would just cause confusion, and in the years since I developed it, plenty of similar programs must have been developed (though I haven't looked for any). So I'll use my Reminder program, and Linda will use it, and maybe even Nuria in Costa Rica will use it. At least, I think she uses it, but I may be wrong about that. I'm wrong about a lot of things.

Now it's 3:10AM. It's time to get back to my Spanish lessons. But first, I'm going to make some Gallo Pinto for an early morning snack.

Stardust

"Sometimes in those wee, small hours after midnight: the dark, quiet time when solitude is almost tangible, I philosophize. And thus I came to write what follows." — VirtualWayne

Our Universe is made of three ingredients: Hydrogen. Helium. The dust of exploded stars. Our earth is a ball of such dust. The substance of our bodies was formed, eons ago, in the heart of a star. Pause for a moment and think about what that means. Literally, we are made of stardust. We are remnants of ancient stars.

 

 In a nearby galaxy some 13 million light years from Earth, clusters of new stars are being formed from interstellar gas and dust. Hundreds of massive blue stars, each of them 10,000 times brighter than our Sun, are forming in the center of this galaxy.

 
How many stars are there?

Our Sun is one star among two hundred billion that form a spiral galaxy: an enormous pinwheel of stars we call the “Milky Way." If we could see our own galaxy it might appear similar to this beautiful spiral galaxy.


The light from this dusty spiral galaxy has traveled for 60 million years to reach Earth. Like most spiral galaxies, the central region contains mostly older, yellow and red stars. The spiral arms, where star formation is ongoing, contain young, blue stars. The galaxy is too far away to discern individual stars. Bright points of light are clusters of hundreds of thousands of stars.

Galaxies do not travel through space alone. Our Milky Way galaxy is one member of a cluster of galaxies we call the Local Group.

And as galaxies form clusters, clusters form larger structures called superclusters. Our Local Group of galaxies is part of the Local Supercluster, also called the Virgo Supercluster.

Billions of galaxies exist within range of earthbound telescopes. The number of stars in the observable Universe is 100 trillion trillion. That is more than one star for every grain of sand on all the beaches on planet Earth.

“Vast” is inadequate to describe the Universe. It is vast beyond imagination, vast beyond our ability to conceive of such vastness.

 
This is galaxy cluster Abell 2218. This distant cluster of galaxies represents a very small section of sky. Massive intervening galaxies act as a gravitational lens, magnifying and distorting distant light and enabling astronomers to see even farther into the Universe.

In this inconceivable immenseness, in these billions of galaxies and trillions of stars we can see, and perhaps more, in all of this, there is only one of you.

No other being has your combination of talents, experiences, your way of seeing our world.

No other creature has walked the path you have walked, no other eyes have seen all the things yours have seen, no other mind has known all the things yours has known. And though a billion years pass, the Universe will not see another exactly like you.

You are stardust, the remnant of ancient stars, and you are unique in the Universe.

There is something sacred in that.

 
The star cluster M80 is a globular cluster inside our own galaxy. Located 28,000 light years from Earth, it contains hundreds of thousands of stars and is one of over 150 known globular clusters in our galaxy. All the stars in this cluster have the same age, about 15 billion years. Especially obvious are the red giants, which are stars similar to our Sun that are nearing the end of their lives.

As you travel your path, keep in mind that your fellow travelers are as unique as you.

Even as you walk your path alone, I walk my path alone. You cannot visit my world. Nor can I visit yours.

At times there is a gulf between us. It is because we forget we are all unique.

Our mission, while we are in the Universe, is to bridge that gulf.

For like the spokes of a wheel, though we begin our journeys at different places, our paths one day will meet.


Sixty five hundred light years from Earth in the constellation Aquila, a planetary nebula — a cloud of gas ejected thousands of years ago from the star at its center — fluoresces under intense ultraviolet radiation from the star. One day our sun will do this, but that day is 6 billion years away. Planetary nebula are so called because of their round shape. They have nothing to do with planets.

Your body is stardust, dust that was lifeless and silent for a billion years, until one day you came and gave that dust structure and movement.

You are not your body. You live in your body. Your body exists because you exist.

You are something else. Some call it lifeforce. Some call it spirit. Whatever you call it, it is energy, and energy cannot be destroyed. Energy can only be transformed.


Fifty five million light years from Earth, toward the constellation Ursa Major, floats this spiral galaxy that we see “edge-on”. Dark clouds of interstellar dust obscure the background stars. Only about half the galaxy is contained in this photo. The very bright star does not belong to the galaxy; it is in our own Milky Way and happens to lie in the line of sight.

You are a visitor in the Universe. This Universe is not your home. One day your body will die but you will not die.

You are here for a reason. You have a purpose. Your life is not frivolous. Life is a gift; you have lessons to learn, and you have been given a life so that you may learn those lessons. But you are allowed, even encouraged, to have fun while you are here.

It’s like being in school:
Take your lessons seriously, but don’t forget to play!


The nebula N81 in the Small Magellanic Cloud is a stellar nursery. Young, hot stars within the nebula emit ultraviolet radiation, causing the nebula to glow through fluorescence. The brightest stars are about 300,000 times as bright as our Sun.

Before the Universe was born, nothing existed. The Universe wasn’t just empty space: Space itself did not exist. Neither Space nor Time existed until the “Big Bang” created the Universe.


Colliding galaxies: the blue-white stars are new stars formed by the shock wave of the collision in interstellar gas and dust. When galaxies collide, the individual stars almost never collide, as their size is tiny compared to the distances between them. However, galaxies contain and are surrounded by atomic and molecular gases and dust. When these interstellar clouds collide, the resultant high ram pressures produce matter densities sufficient to cause star formation through gravitational collapse.

Look again at our Universe.

It’s full of mystery: thermonuclear fire and black holes; dark clouds; stellar nurseries; fantastic structures thousands of light years in length and composed of stars and nebulae.


Planetary nebula Mz3: fiery lobes protrude from a dying Sun-like star. It is not known how a spherical star produces such non-spherical symmetries in the gas it ejects. One possibility is gravitational influence of an unseen companion star. Another possibility postulates magnetic field lines that are twisted by the star’s rapid spin.

The birth of the Universe is called the Big Bang. When it was born, the Universe was smaller than an atom. It expanded explosively in every direction, and it is still expanding today.


The Keyhole Nebula, a structure within the Carina Nebula, is about 8000 light years from Earth. Hot, fluorescing gas and clouds of cold dust are sculpted by radiation and stellar winds from a massive star just outside the photo toward the upper left.

The Big Bang created not only all matter in the Universe, it created all space, too. The Big Bang was a vast, expanding, frothing mixture of space and subatomic particles and energy. That mixture cooled and “solidified” into what we call the Universe.


This planetary nebula is a cloud of gas and dust surrounding a dying star. The dying star is not the bright star in the center, but its faint companion. This nebula is about half a light year in diameter and is about 2000 light years from Earth. Blue regions contain the hottest gas and red regions contain the coolest. The filaments of dust stretched across the nebula are rich in elements like carbon.

Some believe that a group of souls called Starborn existed before our planet existed and were the first souls to incarnate as human beings.

If that is true, those souls must feel what I feel when I look to the night sky — a longing to visit that frothing sea and to cruise the endless star-filled void as if it were my true home.

What marvels must lie hidden in that endless vastness: things more wonderful and more terrible than any that ever visited human imagination, worlds too incredible to be dreamt of, giant red suns and small blue-white suns that litter the void like an explosion of diamonds on an infinite dark sea.


Long ago, a star exploded in a nearby galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. Though the explosion occured 169,000 years ago, light from the supernova first reached Earth in the year 1987. The stellar explosion was named Supernova 1987A. During the first few seconds of the detonation, the star released more energy than all the stars in the visible universe combined. The remnant of the star has created an unusual set of rings which are seen against a backdrop of stars, gas, and dust.

We are a part of all this — as much a part of Creation as the stars in the sky.

We are Spirit. We are Stardust. We are Unique. This awesome Creation is our classroom, and Reality itself is the page upon which we write our lessons. What wonderful gifts we have been given!

The first gift we received was life itself. If you and I, little by little, try to understand one another — perhaps it may be said that we were worthy of that gift.


Hodge 301 is near the edge of the most active starburst region in the local universe. A cluster of brilliant, massive stars, it is in the lower right corner of this image. Hodge 301 is in the Tarantula Nebula, which is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Many of the stars in Hodge 301 have exploded as supernovae. Their ejecta, traveling at 200 miles per second, have compressed the gas and dust in this nebula into sheets and filaments.

Images: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA)
Text: VirtualWayne

Idiocracy

When I was a child, and a teenager, and even when I was a young man, I respected the people who held high offices like U.S. Congressmen and Senators and the American presidents. They seemed statesmanlike, for the most part. They debated issues of national importance: Civil Rights, Racial Integration, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Space Race, the War on Poverty, the Feminist movement. 

But in the recent past—and I'm not saying that it began with Donald Trump's election, but it seems connected somehow, so maybe Trump merely exploited it—the Republican Party seems to me to have gone off the rails. Many Republicans have become anti-science, some of them are promoting fascism (without using the word, of course), some are praising the rabble that attempted an insurrection at the nation's Capitol, some have adopted anti-democratic views, and many if not most have become "professional politicians" who crave the power and the perks and the big outside money that comes with holding a high office. It's a sad state of affairs.

I'm not saying Democrats are angels. Both parties have their problems. But Republicans are the most blatant about their anti-democratic positions. I feel a little bit like the boy in the story "The Emperor's New Clothes." But in my version of the story, many can see what is happening, but too many others agree that his new clothes are wonderful. I think we live in a dangerous time for democracy and our democratic institutions.

Time will tell how America gets through these troubles. People have to open their eyes; they have to learn about what is happening in places of power. They can't believe everything they hear and read, nor push it aside as "fake news." People have to be smart now. There was a time when we used to be smart. Maybe those days are behind us. It is possible that America's electorate is no longer capable of being rational, judicious, and well-informed. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in the 2006 film Idiocracy. 

And maybe I am. Maybe we all are.

Vaccine

I just watched a video report about another television preacher who has died of Covid-19. He was shown talking to his congregation, telling them not to fear Covid. 

"Covid is out there," he said, "but so is God." The implication was that God will protect him and his congregation. Don't worry about Covid. Just trust in God. But not long afterward, he—the preacher—fell ill and died of Covid.

Yes, God is out there. But God is not going to come down to Earth in a swirl of clouds and rainbows and tap you on your head to protect you. He doesn't have to do that. He has already sent us the protection we need. It's called a Covid vaccine. 

Where do you think vaccines come from? They come from God's mind through human minds as life-saving gifts to all of us.

The Covid vaccine is God's gift to you and I. Don't throw his gift away! Get the shot and thank God for it.

Maybe this short anecdote will help you remember to get your shot:

There's a flood, boat comes by, "Get in, we'll save you." Man says, "God will save me." Water at second floor, boat comes by, "Get in, we'll save you." Man says, "God will save me." Water level at rooftop, boat comes by, "Get in, we'll save you." Man says, "God will save me." Man drowns, asks God, "Why didn't you save me?" God says "I sent three boats, what else do you want?"

We have Pfizer, we have Moderna, we have Johnson and Johnson. When the unvaxxed person dies of Covid and, standing before his Maker, asks "Why didn't you save me?", I think God will answer, "I sent three vaccines. What else do you want?"

Blues Finale

Before I leave the subject of poems, I want to offer a very different kind of poem than the poem in my previous post.

Everyone has had a love that did not work out. It can hurt. When I feel that kind of pain, the only way I can relieve it is to write about it. This poem is the final part of a four part poem.  I don't think it needs explaining.

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Blues Finale
a poem by VirtualWayne

Warm rains have come and gone,

Melting the winter snow,

Cleansing the earth's gentle heart.

Sun shines brightly on my face,

Gently cheering me,

Softly warming me.

Morning beckons me, night is gone.

Memories linger bittersweet,

Longings now hidden.

Questions haunt me,

Ghosts of the night,

Chased by the sun.

I would live that night again,

Dream the dream,

Feel the wonder.

Though my heart is wounded,

The sun shines now,

I live, still.

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