"Black Holes Lie at the End of Time"

With the Spotify subscription, there are selections of podcasts and audiobooks available for free.  I have been listening to several books by Professor Brian Cox.  

There is something immensely appealing about this mild mannered Brit who also plays in a rock band.  I recently came across a YouTube video of  Dr. Cox as a guest on Conan.  Brian Cox angered Depok Chopra, by "tweeting some facts", to which Chopra tweeted in reply, "I am going to shove my cosmic consciousness up your ass."

Professor Cox was wearing a suit coat over a t-shirt with an origami unicorn stencil, clearly the unicorn left for Deckard and Rachael at the end of Blade Runner, the greatest science fiction movie of all time.

Brian Cox is also a Professor of Particle Physics, and has written several books.  With all of this, you would think Professor Brian Cox is an immensely cool guy, but his appearance on Conan proved beyond a shadow of doubt that he is a (super-intelligent) nerd.  I am a serious fan of the Professor! Listening to him explain quantum physics in his Oldham accent just kills me, in a very good way. He says the most outrageous things in the incredible English vernacular.

If you ever need to stretch your imagination, think about these facts:

Our sun converts 600,000,000,000 tons of hydrogen into helium EVERY SECOND! (My emphasis.) It has been doing this since before the earth was formed. It has enough hydrogen for another five billion years.

(31,536,000 seconds per year x 5,000,000,000 years = 1.57680000e+17 on my little calculator - which might mean that the math broke its little chip.  There are big number calculators on line, but you get the idea.) 

Our sun is 1.4 million kilometers in diameter.  A passenger jet would have to fly for six months to circumnavigate it.  It is a small star.  The largest known stars are thousand of times larger with diameters in the region of a billion kilometers.

The rigidity of matter is something of an illusion,  Electron clouds surrounding atomic nuclei keep atoms apart but a sugar cubed-\sized lump of neutron star material would weigh at least one hundred million tons.

September 14, 2015, scientific instruments on earth (LIGO and Virgo Collaboration laboratories) detected gravity waves from a black hole collision/merge 1.3 billion years from earth. The black holes were 29 and 36 times the mass of our sun.  They collided and merged in less than 2/10th of a second.  During the collision, the peak power output exceeded that of all the stars in the observable universe by a factor of 50.  ***

These are numbers and time frames that are inconceivable to our mere human minds. Alright, I am speaking for my own mind here.  Unimaginable, but the math is owed to all of our science and physics prior to September 2015.   

Where are we headed as a species in this unimaginable, inconceivable universe?  What is our purpose  (aside from pissing off Depok Chopra)? What the hell is the purpose of black holes?

Black Hole Bonus fact!!

"The idea of objects whose gravity is so intense not even light can escape them is far older. In 1783, an English cleric and amateur scientist named John Michell showed that Newton’s law of gravity suggested such objects could exist. But Michell went further, suggesting that despite being invisible, such objects might reveal themselves if they happened to have a star in orbit about them." 
- BBC Science Focus Magazine

***All facts in italics are either direct quotes or paraphrased from: Black Holes - The Key to Understanding the Universe by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw, Published 2022 by HarperCollins

First photo of a black hole, taken by Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

Kindness

So, there I was at the Farm Store with the subpar customer service, buying ONLY dog food for the resident wolf girls of Spiritcreek.  (One needs weight management and the other has allergies.)  For the two different 25 pound bags of Science Diet, I expected the total cost to be $110 - $120.  When the grumpy young man rang it up, for a whopping total of $200, I was shocked.  I have been buying 38 pound bags for about $82.

"Good God Almighty!  Those dogs are going to have to start earning their keep!"  It just slipped out.

Amazingly, a young man behind me in line immediately said, "M'am, I will pay for it."

What did he say? 

I was taken aback and slightly embarrassed. I told him that was very kind of him but I was just complaining.  

He said, "I heard no complaint."

I was so shocked that I do not think I properly thanked him for his offer.  I did not accept it but was very moved just the same.    

Who does such a thing in these days of people ranting over women buying cupcakes from the bakery for their children's birthday party using SNAP cards?  

I have been praying for that young man, asking for blessings of good fortune, good health and much happiness for him.  Each time I think of it, I automatically call for blessings for him.

As for the wolf girls, those creatures of splendid canine senses, they who bark at the wind blowing, earthworms tunneling in the soil, silent and invisible extraterrestrials surveying the domicile at night, ghosts and whang doodles haunting the timber, and that most horrible monster threat of all time:  hoofbeats of the resident horses far out in the pasture!  The very same animals - German Shepherds of quality breeding - that never made a sound when a truck full of men got all the way to the front of my house, exited the truck, and circled the house.  That is how I came to be standing naked in my bedroom when I saw a man walk past the window in broad daylight.  Not a peep from those $200 dog food burners!!! 

Has Science Diet added unicorn meat to their recipes?  Pixie tears? Hobbit leaf?  

Regardless, next time I buy dog food, it is going to have to be something much less expensive. Counting on the kindness of strangers probably will not be an effective budgeting practice.

 See where one particular wolf girl is stationed? 

 At all times, she finds the exact location where I need to be!  

When Life was Still Good in the USA - December of 2024

Ere the sun rose on this day, I bailed out of bed early to drive to Radina's Bakehouse in Manhattan.  It is a local coffee shop and bakery.  You drive up, order, then all manner of goodies are handed through your automobile window. It is like Christmas, almost. 

The only thing that cannot be handed through your window is a loaf of bread.  I do not know the reasoning behind this rule.  You could get bread through the car window during the pandemic.  A bureaucrat somewhere in Riley County must have discovered Radina handing out too much convenience and simple happiness far too early in the morning.  

"If you want warm bread first thing in the morning, you lazy bastards, you WILL get out of your cars, go inside to buy the bread the way miserable people have always had to buy bread!"  

I mean, maaaaaaybe the bureaucrat said that?

Luckily for me, on this morning, I did not want an entire loaf of bread.  I just wanted a little adventure.  I wanted piping hot coffee and a croissant, or some other delectable bakery item.  Then, I parked my car to enjoy everything at once.  

The photo was taken in the parking lot of the MoA+L, which is The Museum of Art Plus Light.  I have not yet visited this place, but I certainly intend to do so!

I was so happy that morning.  I felt great and the weather was fine.  I was enjoying the break in routine, and definitely appreciating fresh baked goods with coffee.  There was no traffic, and the city was just not quite awake, so it was very peaceful.  The smell of coffee was in the still air when I turned the corner.  I wondered if the working gals were aware of the good jobs they had, even though they came in before daybreak.  (I thought if I had ever had a job like that, I would look back on it fondly.)

I marveled at our clean, orderly, sleeping Kansas university town.  We live good lives in Kansas, for the most part.  Women can go to work in the dark safely, for the most part. It is an amazing thing when a small town like Manhattan, Kansas has a bakehouse!  

I sipped my coffee that morning - the heater on and the windows down.  I loved the Christmas lights, which were far more colorful than they look in the photo.  It was a bit of colorful magic in the dark and I thanked God for my life in Kansas, for Christmas and my children, and my little house on the prairie.  I was thankful for the clean streets, that none of our buildings have been bombed or riddled with weapons of war.  Most of us have jobs to do, and we do them well.  From the little gal taking my order with sleep still in her eyes, to the people who wrapped these trees in miles of Christmas lights.  

It was a wonderful sunrise.

  

Sunrise, December 30. 2024  Manhattan, Kansas

Delightful

TikTok is a huge diversion, and depending on your interests, you can spend hours being served video after video of your favorite things.  My TikToks are mostly cute animals, kids across the world doing the latest dance craze, a young Scot, the most dramatic poet I have ever encountered.  I hope he is copyrighting all of his work and planning to publish a book!  (I do believe that the Scots are indeed Warrior Poets.)

I also get an occasional video of someone walking along a beach somewhere in the world, collecting rocks or shells or sea glass.  That is how I stumbled across a woman in Scotland who finds bits of sea glass at the shore, including bits of broken dishes that, I guess, are antique pottery.  (They are not porcelain or china, so pottery that does not dissolve in the sea?) Each time I watched one of her videos, I coveted pieces of sea glass for myself.  

I was not the only person casting an envious eye toward her sea treasures.  Many of her fans request a piece or two of sea glass.  She offered an exchange with only 5 people from anywhere in the world - bits of sea glass, etched by sand and salt, in exchange for whatever treasures you would like to exchange with her.  This was too exciting!  I immediately sent her a message, explaining that even if I was not chosen from among her fans, I still wanted to send her Permian Sea fossils from my Kansas prairie creek.  I do not know why I thought she would want the oldest, most prolific and common fossils on the planet, which are all gray and NOT beautiful like sea glass.  No comparison.  Nevertheless, I offered up my local treasures. With embarrassing enthusiasm, I might add.

Now, I am not normally a lucky person.  According to a very sweet lady in Scotland, it just so happened that my name was one of the five names already randomly chosen.  Is that amazing or what?  The little box of treasures arrived all the way from Ayr, Scotland in less than a week.  Can you believe it?  I have a handful of bits of sea glass, frosted and ground smooth from being rolled by the waves on the Scottish shores for decades, possibly centuries.  She also included a hag rock, a lucky stone, and two pieces of blue and white pottery.  Perhaps some of my Scots ancestors ate from plates with the same pattern?  

Nothing has delighted me more than this delivery from Scotland.

I sent her a small bag of Permian Sea fossils found in the clean sand in my creek, a copy of two of my blog posts about the Permian Sea and the fossils, photos of my horses and hounds and my kids with their dogs.  I sent one of my hand-painted cards.  She did not ask for these things but anyone who loves to spend time collecting sea glass is a kindred spirit.  I am sure of it. 

This delightful person is known as Seasalt Witch Scotland.  

Her ETSY shop   Seasalt Witch Scotland

Bob Dylan, Maryland, and The Home Stretch

Bob Dylan
You know those quizzes people pass around on the social media sites, asking how many things from a list that you have done?  I love those.  I always want to check them all off, but I have not been to Europe nor have I gone sky diving.  

Some of the quizzes are about mostly minor delinquency - like skinny dipping? Hitch-hiking?  Ever been arrested?  (I can check all of those off the list.) 

Some quizzes are lists of random things, like, have you ever been to Mexico, been on tv, or broken a bone?  I normally get most of those checked off but I have not been anywhere in Europe or Asia, or even Canada.  I have not been to New York but I have been to Philadelphia and Los Angeles.  I have not broken a bone.  I have not been snow skiing but I was a scuba diver. I had never been on television until March, 2025.  

March 30, 2025, Topeka Performing Arts Center, Bob Dylan and his band took the stage at 8 pm.  This time the whole family was there.  Me. Daughter. Son.  My third time. Daughter's second time.  Son's first time.  I can now depart this realm in peace knowing that both of my children have been in the living presence of the Old Poet.  I was breathing the same air as that irascible old man yet one more time. 

I had warned my kids that unless you genuinely know his songs, you aren't likely to recognize any of them!  I do not care about that.  The music itself was excellent, as always.  I do not think Bob Dylan can sing any of his songs the same ever again once they have been recorded.  I have tried to reproduce copies of my own water color or acrylic paintings.  It simply cannot be done.  You are not stepping into the same creative river the second time around. Besides, it is Bob Dylan we are talking about here. They are his songs and he can sing them anyway he feels like singing them!  And if his singing voice is so awful now, (never that great to begin with), who the hell cares?  The millions of fans around the world have spent long hours in his company, getting through life quite well with his subtle humor, his fierce outrage, and his joy.  He simply is not an apologetic person, even when he sings the blues. 

So, while we were standing in the security check line, there was a very young local tv reporter interviewing old people, looking for the oldest fans who had seen Dylan more than once.  It was only slightly patronizing but I forgave her.  In the first place, she had no idea who Bob Dylan truly is, what he has brought into the world, or why it is important.  It was probably funny to all those youngsters at the tv station that a bunch of old boomers would turn out for an 83 year old man no one can clearly understand on stage any longer.  All she had to do was look around at the generations in attendance.  Real art, genuine creativity, speaks to any and all who lend an ear, regardless of age. 

So, yes, I had my fifteen seconds of local fame on television that night.  At least two people that I know personally recognized me on their tvs.  The trouble came when I saw myself.  My glasses were seriously askew on my face.  I looked senile, as if my kids had dragged old Mom out of the Home and treated her to some old guy - Bill Dylan, was it?  Oh, lord.  

Those youngsters at the television station need to do better at fact checking.  They called Bob Dylan a Pulitzer winning entertainer.  No, my dears.  He is a Nobel Prize in Literature recipient. 

A lot was accomplished on March 30, 2025.  My whole family has seen Dylan perform live now.  I have seen my personal muse for the third and likely last time in this life.  I can check off another item on the Facebook quizzes.  I have been on television. 

Maryland
I was filling the gas tank at the truck stop and noticed a Maryland license plate on the truck next to me.  A young, stern faced man set about filling up.  I asked him how things were up in Maryland.  He was only a bit taken aback, but politely said things were fine.  Not willing to leave the guy in peace, I asked, if he did not mind me asking, what was he doing in Kansas? 

That opened the flood gates.  He was on a long trip across the USA going to as many National Parks as they could manage.  He had spent two nights in Yellowstone, visited the Black Hills.  They went to Custer State Park and they were on their way to Kansas City for Barbecue!  I was delighted he was willing to share those couple of minutes of his summer adventure. 

I always want to talk to people with out of state plates.  Sometimes I do, but mostly I do not.  I think I will make it a point to ask more.

The Home Stretch
I thought getting old was going to be awful.  It is not awful, at least not yet.  There are many things to enjoy.  I am set free of a host of insecurities and doubts, and far removed from the most embarrassing times.  Most of my heartache is far in the past, though I am reluctant to speak such a thing for fear of calling down the cruel realities life offers daily to every single living thing.  We can only live one moment at a time so we have no choice, really.  It is, always, take the next step.  

I found out that you can go to bed old but wake up elderly.  I am still getting around alright.  I can still mow and keep my own house.  I can safely drive.  I am tending my own affairs though I realize my memory can be slipping a bit.  When I was young, if I had ever spoken to you once, I recognized you again, even decades later.  Now, I am not sure if I am talking to the same nurse I saw last time I was in the doctor's office!  I have high anxiety when I am introduced to new people because not only will I not remember their name, I likely will not recognize their face the next time I see them - even if it is later in the same event. 

I cannot remember if I have done some things.  The pest control service man had been coming to my house for 15 years, then suddenly I had a new technician.  He retired without saying anything!  At least I do not remember he said anything about retiring.  I wanted to send a card, thanking and congratulating him.  The trouble is, I think I did send him a retirement card.  Should I send him another card and explain?  Or just send it and hope he has already forgotten I sent one earlier?  If I did send one already, that is.  See what I mean?

I am in the home stretch.  Such things are to be expected. I sometimes cannot remember if I fed both dogs, or if I fed them at all.  (I think they often get fed twice.)  I worry that I might not be able to see well enough to renew my license, though my vision still corrects to 20/20 with glasses.  I worry that I might do something stupid like leave the car running, or a burner on the stove.  

Getting old is not terrible, yet.  If I live long enough, it will be terrible. I simply cannot imagine living in an old folks home.  How goddamned awful that would be!  I am in no hurry to check out, but I also do not want to overstay my welcome on this old earth.  

I know I am coming down the homestretch, or as Bob puts it:  "The fourth part of the day is already gone."

Whoever or whatever created this world with all her creatures has a reason for the horrific reality of suffering and death.  I hope it is a damn good reason.

Fuck All Y'all

As you may recall, I continued to do business with a conveniently located farm store in town despite the fact that the employees were universally the rudest, most nonmotivated people I ever had to deal with.  (If it was my attitude, I would expect to encounter rude people everywhere, which is not the case, though I certainly have resting bitch face.) 

A corporate buyout of the farm store brought in a small army of motivated, attentive, courteous employees that absolutely delighted me.  It was pleasant to do business there and that lasted quite awhile.  Alas, all good things come to an end.  I was recently disappointed to find that the employees are back to the natural state of rudeness and minimal customer service.  It is comforting to have things back to normal. However, the new rude employees are even worse than the old rude employees.  I am seriously considering never spending any money there again. The old employees simply vexed me with their sullen and rude minimal customer service.  The new employees have no problem speaking to me as if I am four years old, or stupid, or both.  Fuck the farm store.  Fuck the farm store very much.

Here is another example of great customer service:  I bought a new car in September, 2024.  The guy doing to the final paperwork enrolled me in over $7000 worth of warranties that I specifically said no to, repeatedly.  While most of the money had been refunded, they owed me over $800 for a tire warranty that I never agreed to.  On Tuesday of this week, I finally received the refund.  It took almost 9 months for them to cut a check.  Nine months, about two dozen phone calls, (almost all of them unreturned) and four trips in person.  Also, fuck the car dealership.  Fuck the car dealership very much.

I am not sure what is going on.  I am properly an old woman now so perhaps the disrespect simply comes as part of the aging process.  There is a lot of worry thanks to the despicable things taking place in our country right now.  Every day the headlines are more worrisome than the day before. Maybe everyone is under such stress that it is just the best they can do.  Insulting and embarrassing an old woman is apparently acceptable to the farm store employees.  Adding over $7000 to a car's purchase price despite clear and repeated refusal is actually dishonest, something you would expect from a cut-rate used car joint, not a premier car dealership. 

Some days I genuinely feel like fuck all y'all, fuck all y'all very much.

Careening Planet, Mothership, Portal or Cloud? It's A Cloud. It's Always a Cloud.

On the morning of February 21, 2025 at approximately 7:08 am, on location in Wabaunsee County, Kansas, I witnessed a phantom planet drawn close to the earth.  Or, a mothership in the east.  Or, an enormous portal that dwarfed the sun.  Or, I was dreaming. 

I found my glasses and got out of bed to look through the window, the upper pane that has no screen.  What was I seeing?

It was nearly sunrise,  but partially hidden by the timber behind my house was an enormous orb. It  appeared to be a near planet, the way they are depicted in science fiction movies. It was electrifying! Had Mars been knocked out of orbit into a collision with the earth?  Probably not. (Would we not have felt a disturbance in the force?)

Were the extraterrestrials at long last returning to earth, the gigantic spherical mothership parked between me and the sun?  No.  Millions of people would have already seen it.  Someone would surely have called me by now. (That would be news worth more than a mere text, right?)

Still awash in the brain waves of the dream state, maybe I was capable of seeing a portal of space/time, or a spiritual gateway - in my pasture. Maybe.  (My dogs were behaving as if I was pretty darned wide awake.)

I went to the other east windows to try to get a better view.  The orb did not shift or change from a different angle so it was, in fact, very large or very far away.  I decided to just observe it.  I thought maybe I should try to photograph it.  If it was real, it would show up in a photo.

So, I photographed it, knowing the true size, the strangeness, or the wonder of it, whatever it was, would not translate.  It was underwhelming in the photo.  I waited until the sun was up then photographed it again to get a comparison in size.

Ultimately, I thought it had to be a cloud.  (A perfectly round, featureless, unchanging cloud that I have never witnessed in all the decades of cloud watching I have logged?) Occam's razor instructs us to prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions. For a few glorious moments, I thought the world had shifted.  

  

Here is the photo of the strange anomaly.  I tweaked every aspect I could to try to better see it. In this extreme zoom it is pixilated but it was smooth and perfectly round to the eye.  

Here is the sun rising behind it, for comparison.  Using my circle templates, I measured the "mothership" as 1-7/8" on the screen while the diameter of the sun measures 11/32" - roughly twelve times the size of the sun.