toomanyzucchini

Geeking on the Shuttle

There's no substitute for cheap air and hotel to Orlando, where a quick ride east past the cooling towers and hummock-stranded cattle drops you at the Kennedy Space Center. We went there this winter. The whole trip was a big success - Sea World, beach trip, the flights were on time - but I really got off on the rockets. You're standing there on the fourth floor of a steel observation tower, the wind is whistling through the grates. In the distance, just out of range for a shoulder-fired weapon, various structures stand on the shore, spaced miles apart. The architecture is dense and one-sided, like the other side suddenly took off.

When you watch the shuttle launch on television, you can see the engines tighten just before lift-off, like ground control punched up the "go for hernia check" command. It's then, when the plume of smoke shoots out like a movie special effect, that you understand why they keep the dignitaries three and a half miles away. It's the same sky there shooting these talented people into. I checked, both times, at home and in Florida. It's just an empty sky with no apparent destination. It's all time and trajectory, which really takes away from the whole point - the faith and stones it takes to climb aboard the monstrous rocket!

addendum: I've been continuing my reading of the Bible and it is thus far mute on the subject of space travel. I'm currently reading Acts, which is telling me about what the Apostles did after Jesus' ascension to Heaven. I'm not 100% with the book yet, but I have a little theory working about why so many disagreements have arisen about it. More on that later...   

Bible Safari

I'm going to approach this in the most ecumenical way possible, but I need to be blunt - I've been reading the Holy Bible.

Just some first blush here...

Been delving into the New Testament for the most part. I'm OK with the Old Testament God - comic wrath, stickler for detail...a very demanding sort, but predictable. Where I struggle is judging the credibility of Jesus. And from what I've read of the Bible so far, there's really no wiggle room there.

Say this for the Bible - it testifies. When the uninitiated picks up a Bible, it's 12 guys and 2,000 years against you and maybe your cat, lying in bed, with the t.v. muted. This is one defiant book. It tells you what happened and it is utterly stark in its portrayal. Where are the footnotes, written for modern sensibilities, that offer alternative ways of considering these miracles?

I'm afraid the Bible will leave me nowhere to turn, sort of like the media consuming the market, instead of the other way around. I need to give it more time, however, as I've really only read the gospels part of it. I did read the first page, however, that famous part. And I did flip through other parts that seemed impenetrable.

Catching Up

According to these pictures, I've been living a relatively full life since this fall. Truth is, I can't remember much since the Red Sox won the World Series...

August Vacation, Now a Distant Memory

paisley daisy fish jump at the end of my paddle. light breeze ripples the lake, tuning the white pines that shade an orange bucket half full of sand. distant day loon calls carry from shady cove where weeds part for bass. wet spot spreading on the notebook cover. now a seaplane, wings tipping a greeting, hanging low, barely pushing the air between flight and fall, drops over treeline at the end of our lake. crackers and juice in wide, slingbacked chairs, a book open on the arm, while little one snuggles up close in the sun. midday blows gradually to a perfect sailing pitch, lifejackets still wet from the day before. waterbugs gather (in child script), organic, a collective mind dissolving like a cloud feeding its middle from the edges.

Some catastrophe with a muffin

Excerpt from a Virginia Woolf essay written in 1931 for Good Housekeeping, lost, now found and published by The Guardian.

Thus Mrs Crowe's drawing-room had little in common with the celebrated salons of the memoir writers. Clever people often came there - judges, doctors, members of parliament, writers, musicians, people who travelled, people who played polo, actors and complete nonentities, but if anyone said a brilliant thing it was felt to be rather a breach of etiquette - an accident that one ignored, like a fit of sneezing, or some catastrophe with a muffin.

Love at 800 Horsepower

Go ahead and laugh if you must, but me and my 100,000 buddies can't hear you. We're too busy swilling beer and watching the pretty cars go round and round and round and...

Good Dog and the Death of Three Trees

It was a mismatch from the start. The woodchuck had made it halfway across the driveway, about 30 feet from the treeline, when Fletch swooped in on wings of death. Four violent shakes, a last glimpse of the sky, then cartwheeling down, paws up, in the driveway.

The children peered from the kitchen as we shoveled the carcass off the ground and dropped it - with little fanfare - into a white plastic bag. It was as heavy as a bowling ball.

I tried to dig a hole in the woods at a spot I thought he'd like. Three maples grew toward each other, cupping a small hollow at the base where their compost mingled. The tree roots defied me, however, turning my shovel aside not six inches down. I was wearing sandals, a canary yellow golf shirt and Brooks Brothers khakis.

Three hemlocks grew together in the woods across the street. I lugged the chuck there and placed him between them to rot. Fletch won't disturb the body. We have an underground fence surrounding our property and the border patrol punishes unauthorized crossings with cruel voltage. He waited at the fence line for my return, strutting and breathing deeply the first atoms of decay as they fell from my khaki pants.

The Zucchini Obeys

The zucchini exhales. Spores fume at the setting moon in lobes of equal mass. Seed sifts down.

The zucchini endures. Sun with rain as apportioned, hoarding energy in the color green.

The zucchini betrays. Full flower falls, withers with weeds.

The zucchini obeys. No introspection. Only regeneration.

The New Religion

Terrorism fueled by militant Islamic fundamentalism is met in my corner of the world by a detached coolness that doesn't seem altogether fitting. The fanaticism of our supposed enemies, however misguided, has me plumbing my deep water for a similar current. In the face of such absolute devotion I feel ill-equipped to fire back with my own silver bullets. My religion - benevolent, occasional - offers no response, aside from the questionable value of prayers offered for the souls of the killers. I am, in essence, naked. An easy target.

In search of a spiritual coat of armor, I've been wading through a book by a precocious Harvard grad named Jed Purdy. "Being America: Liberty, Commerce and Violence in an American World" is alternately panned and praised by Mr. Purdy's fellow social critics for its overreaching, often condescending examination of American power and prestige in a world that is at once drawn to and repelled by us. Amid the flotsam I've latched on to a recurring theme that has kept me afloat in the book and elsewhere: Americans have a near-religious belief in the inherent value of personal freedom that makes us dogged universalists. As such, we can't understand why everyone doesn't choose the good life we've been so graciously handed. Although American interests are suspect in many corners of the world, it's Purdy's belief that the ideals on which our nation was founded likely offer the last, best hope for a future in which freedom is a value recognized around the world. This, more than the cross and Bible, is my comfort. It's also the faith that puts me on level ground (if not a tad higher) with the facists who have hijacked their religion.

So it was with reverence and awe that I stood before the original Declaration of Independence last week in the National Archives. My nose pressed to the glass, I could barely make out the famously loopy script that set the world on a new path. My trip to D.C., ostensibly to chaperone five high school juniors who won an essay contest sponsored by my company, took on the significance of a pilgrimmage. Our national identity, muted expressions of which abound in everyday life, is writ large in Washington in marble and granite. For the faithful, there is weighty affirmation of our shared ideals at every corner. If you can suffer the throngs of your fellow countrymen, you can find strength in the place. I brought it back with me, in case I ever need it.

New Computer, Like the Momba, Is Fast and Black

The old machine has been retired to the basement. The dusky usurper arrived this week via UPS, spelling the end of an era for the old Dimension 800. I've entered a new Dimesnion now and I like it here. Better still, it's allowed me to unload a glut of photos that have been accumulating since spring sun first hit the ice. Enjoy...