Dashing Through The Snow...

... on a no-horse pair of skis, a few days after Christmas.

The sun is trying to poke through the haze.
It hasn't been cold enough to freeze the flow.

It's not quite freezing and the wind is not quite whipping.  A good day for a trek through the woods.  But since the snow has just a tad of melt on top, it's very slick, so it's also a good day for a healthy amount of caution when headed downhill through the trees.

Enough snow to ski upon, but not enough to bury the rocks and logs.
Also worth consideration are roots and buried limbs
positioned perfectly for arching over fast-moving ski tips and grabbing ankles.
None found this trip, thankfully.

Water gurgles below thin ice.

The large paw prints show that others have also used the trail.
Maybe not all the bears are sleeping.

It's always nice to stop and appreciate the microforest
under the spreading hemlock tree.

The woodpeckers and milli-mushrooms are fond of this tall stump,
sill upright though long past life.

A major mass of milli-mushrooms.

There are many wind-assisted deadfalls in the woods.
The route must be adjusted when a big one has fallen across the trail.

It looks like there has also been a deadfall on the deck.
Ice chunks coming off the roof may have caused this,
but the sleigh marks and hoof prints found
indicate a poor landing caused by overloading.

The metal roots failed to hold this stump upright.
I should probably get right to fixing it.

But I think it's better to plan the fix
next to the nice warm fireplace,
thus preventing rash mistakes.

The 12 Rules of Christmas Carols

Admit it.  You wish you’d just finished writing the definitive current-day Christmas Carol.  Something timely and special that everyone will eventually detest after hearing it for the 100th time over the years.

The most recent entry appears to be Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” currently #1 on the Billboard Top 100 Christmas Songs, followed by Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree,” and Burl Ives, “Holly Jolly Christmas.”  How do they come up with this stuff? Did you vote? I must have misplaced my ballot.

Regardless, writing a catchy American Christmas Tune seems to defeat the usual melodic mortality that accompanies pop songs.  Wouldn’t you agree, Brenda and Burl?

So in support of your quest, here are a few suggestions.  Take them to heart, and your success is assured.

1) Simple, simple words.  Jingle all the way. At most, use 3rd grade vernacular to wish us a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

2) Catchy melody that anyone can hum.  Your task is to create an earworm that will last at least until the New Year.  Bonus points if your victims cannot remove it until Easter.

3) Nonsense words.  Fa la la la lah, la la la lah!  Both rhythmically distinctive and easy to remember. Or extend a syllable. Glorrrrrr-or-or-or-or-oooo-or-or-or-or-oooo-or-or-or-or-oor-ee-yah!

Did Van Morrison write this?

4) Use bells.  Belltones always set the stage for our image of Christmas.  Use silver bells if you can afford them.

5) Make up words for specific rhyming needs, but don’t get carried away.  Things like “mistletoeing” work, but don’t overdo it.

Do you feel the chill?

6) Use Images of snow and cold, even though your song will be sung in Memphis and Poway, a town in the hills above San Diego.  Accurate meteorology is discouraged. But don’t worry, southern dwellers. The song’s images only project the Christmas aura, not a harbinger of global cooling.  But you need to know that it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

6) Create or invoke characters to augment your story and help your rhymes.  Parson Brown, Frosty, Rudolph, Harking Harold the singer, drummer boys...any sympathetic soul who helps tell the story.

Hark.

6) Repeat words, and don’t use too many.  No one knows the second verse to “We Three Kings of Orient Are”.  Is there one? Yes, and the words are not “Tried to smoke a rubber cigar...” 

7) Gay is OK.  Everyone wants to be gay in Christmas Carols.  In fact, there is a glaring need for a few really Gay Christmas Carols, double entendre or not.  And hey, yesterday and today, “gay” rhymes with sleigh, Christmas buffet, Blue Jay, Cabernet, and Papier-mache, eh?  But you need to avoid slay, D-Day, ashtray, doomsday, radioactive decay, m’aider, and especially Green Bay, or you’ll alienate everyone in Detroit, Chicago, and the Twin Cities.

7) A few words of non-English language can help, or you can use a foreign sounding name.  (Coincidentally, Felix Navidad was a teammate of mine long ago. He was a solid midfielder.)

7) Encourage good behavior.  You can even invoke creepy surveillance in a good cause.  Sorry Mr. Zuckerberg, you can’t take credit for this concept. Santa was into big data long before you even thought about spying on us.

8) Be inclusive.  Make the carol accessible to all.  And expect your listeners to understand your words with the best possible interpretation.  "White Christmas" is not a racist anthem.

8) Invoke memories.  They don’t need to be real.  Very few have roasted chestnuts on an open fire, particularly since the American Chestnut blight beset the trees over 100 years ago.  Yes, you can get Chinese Chestnuts, but it’s just not the same.

Not all that fat in this rendition.

9) Disregard the laws of physics.  No matter how small the reindeer may be, they’re still heavier than air.  No adult male can get down a chimney flue, and especially not a fat one. Covering the globe in one night is impossible.  We don’t care.

9) Allusions to desire are permitted.  Even infidelity. Acquiring two front teeth is a noble goal, even while watching your mother’s dalliance with a brightly costumed stranger.

9) We already have one “cumulative verse” carol.  We don’t need another. So forget writing about the 15 days of package delivery, or counting down the advent calendar.

9) Be sure to be insanely, irrationally happy.  Invoke a Christmas that is peaceful, unhurried, harmonious, and without stress. In other words, nothing like actual experience.  Sorry, Kinks and John Lennon, though we love your music, your Christmas efforts are just too dark.  Don’t rob us of our illusions. But there are exceptions. If the dark stuff is for comedic effect, then it’s OK to run Grandma over.

Puppies and angels.
Can it get any better?

10) Go heavy on the schmaltz.  And since this yiddish word perfectly captures this facet of Christmas Carols, why not a Jewish Carol?  Jesus was a Jew, right? Don’t let the Gentiles have all the fun!

11) Don’t discount religious carols, even though some of the above rules may not apply.  After all, as I’m sure you’ve heard, Jesus is actually the reason for the season. Franz Xaver Gruber wrote “Stille Nacht” over 200 years ago!  Not a bad lifetime for a tune.  

12) “What Child Is This?” appeared in 1865, when William Chatterton Dix adapted “Greensleeves” to Christmas, pointing out another excellent technique.  Don’t be afraid to use existing melodies, particularly if their copyright protection has expired.

There you have it.  I know I speak for everyone in saying that we can’t wait to hear your creation.  And as soon as it gets figured out, we’ll discuss how to publicize your splendid creation.  Could you please forward Mariah Carey’s email address?

And God rest ye, Merry Gentlereaders.

The North Shore

Mary's brother Mike just had his hip replaced.

We're in Silver Bay, Minnesota, to give him a hand for the first few days of his recovery.  This includes doing things he'd have trouble doing for himself.  Since Mike is an avid outdoorsman, it is very important that we hike with his dog, Chloe.

We decided to take one of Mike's favored hikes along the lakeshore in Split Rock Lighthouse State Park.  To help him feel better, of course.

Mary and Chloe begin the hike on the shore of Lake Superior.
Glorious rays of sunshine poke through the clouds behind the island.
Wave action has removed the snow.

It was a cool and calm day.

The icicles a little higher off the beach
indicated that calm is not always the case.

We left the beach and bare ground.

Mary chose her jacket to match the color
of the fruit of the Mountain Ash (or some similar tree).
She is even stylish when hiking.

The sun broke through and illuminated the lighthouse
as we arrived at one of the favored photo spots.

The ice on Corundum Point reflected the bright sun,
providing a photographic conundrum.

Mary and Chloe assess how the lake goes on forever.

Leaving the snowshoe-packed portion of the Day Hill Trail,
we encountered the stairs leading all the way back down to water level.

Mary demonstrates the proper dance technique for descending.

Many more steps to go.

Berries, beach, and rugged coastline.
The clear blue water, unsullied by human activity,
allows one to see deep into the lake.

More ice formed on a day not so calm.

Even though the deer favored the trail,
their tracks helped little when breaking trail.

And sometimes the deer were no help at all
in breaking through the almost knee-deep snow.
Snowshoes would have been a good idea.

But when you have a strong person to break trail for you
snowshoes are not so necessary.

After the fun became a slog,
we returned to the packed trail and the famous view...

...which we will remember until next time.

It's About Time

The concept of time travel has intrigued me since I was 10 years old. I first saw “The Time Machine” movie on a Black and White TV, since Dad refused to get a color set until the color drift and registration problems were solved.  And when he finally did cave, we soon realized he should have waited longer. But the concept of a time machine colored my thinking, regardless of the visuals.

And now it has become time to think the concept through.

------------------------------Especially for Ed and Evan and Luke and Roland.-------------------------------------------

We’ve got phones smarter than we are, cars that almost drive themselves, and satellites that tell us exactly where we missed the last turn.

But where are the time machines?

The concept has been around since at least 1895 when H. G. Wells published “The Time Machine.”  Previously, the notion of time travel existed, but it was the province of mythology and magic.

Is this Greek Laptop Statue proof of time travel?

Mr. Wells’ story popularized the idea that travelling through time could be achieved by a technological approach significantly more impactful than changing the clocks to accommodate Daylight Savings Time.  Thus time travel would even be available to those living in Phoenix.

Without going into all the brilliance of your design, let’s assume you’ve figured out a way to unlock the inexorable march of time.  You’ve flipped the switch and can move through time without all the relative messiness of moving heavy stuff at nearly light speed, or reading clocks measuring time from afar.  Congratulations!

But wait a second.  Let’s consider a few potential issues.

At the very least, your time machine has to have someplace to go. Is there really more than the present?  Is the nature of time a single shining moment that moves at a steady pace with nothing before and nothing after?  It seems easier to grasp that there could be a past that still exists, having played a part in creating the present and your machine, but is it really only a memory?  Is the previous moment still in existence as the present passes beyond it?

The eminent temporal scientist, Steven King, proposed that the past does not exist after we leave it.  First the food loses its taste, and then monsters appear and eat everything. Then the past no longer exists.  This is fully documented in the peer-reviewed and groundbreaking made-for-TV documentary, “The Langoliers.” Please disregard thoughts regarding when the monsters have time to defecate, and where that defecation goes.

Hungry Langoliers.

And what about the future?  If your machine is set to go forward, does it really have anywhere to go?  Does the present create the future on the fly, or does it already exist? (And if the future already exists, what does that mean for free will?  Perhaps we’ll ponder that later, should we decide to do so.) If you leave the present and the future has not yet been formed, you go forward into nothingness, if you go at all.  And even if you go into nothing, will you have a reference from which to return? Will you become nothing? Perhaps only teenagers can go forward, since every one of them has had to assure their parents that they will not become nothing.

But let’s ignore that issue of the existence of the past and future.  Let’s assume there is more than the present. Your machine has somewhere to go.  A landing zone. A foundational past and a glorious future.

But wait a minute.  Even if the past exists, for you to go there, it must be mutable and malleable.  Changing it must be possible, and does not break it somehow. If changing the past is not possible, then backward-moving time machines are just nonsense.  If you head back, it will be like crashing into an invisible mountain. If you can’t change that which has already happened, you’re out of luck for backward travel, even if you are just observing.  Ask Schrodinger, et al.

Not a principle for cat lovers.

What about forward?  Same deal. Ibid. It must be possible to change it.  But since all but the most fatalistic among us believe this is true, forward travel seems less daunting.

One of the more fatalistic among us,
Friedrich Nietzche must have formed his views
when his mustache encountered wind.
(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Friedrich-Nietzsche)

But let’s also ignore all these potential minor hiccups.  The past and future exist, and they are changeable.

When going forward, set the chronometer, press the button, and you’ll go missing in the present.  Poof! Then you’ll appear sometime later. Even if your machine only has forward gears, this would be really useful in a magic show, and helpful for some other purposes as well.  One might send forward a breeding population of flora or fauna that is in danger of extinction with the hopes that some preservationist or a less destructive environment would receive them, but you can’t tell because you don’t know that future without making the trip back.

Military use might be desirable.  When your force is about to be wiped out, going missing in the present is a really nice option.  Or sending a bomb forward to the space you vacate in the present, and also enticing your foes to occupy that space at the proper moment.  Create a whole new meaning for the term “time bomb.”

That disease that is killing you might be curable in the future, so spend your health care dollars on a time machine.  Not sure your provider will cover the expense. And whoever sells you the machine will want the money up front.

Those of us stuck in the present could know about this forward movement.  When you disappear, providing we are watching, we’d know about it. “He did it!” Of course we couldn’t be sure that it was really time travel until we see you pop back in, even if we happen to be in the right place at the right time.  You could have just become invisible, which is a much less impressive feat. We observers would feel cheated.  

Provided you made the proper arrangements, we could check recorded history to see that you disappeared at some time in the past, and now you’re back.  That is, of course, if you can convince us of who you really are, and that you’re not one of our many kooks. Come to think of it, we seem to have more and more kooks, so maybe time travel is the reason.  And don’t say you’ll take your DNA record. Clones are everywhere in the future.

What about only backward?  Clearly useful. Maybe Warren Buffett is a time traveller.  Take a copy of the Wall Street Journal back in time and take all the risk out of your investments.  Might also be good to take an identity you can assume.

I needed it yesterday. (https://www.wsj.com/)

Or maybe you just want to suggest that Mr. Lincoln might want to stay home and read rather than going to the theater, or warn Julius Caesar that he might want to avoid the forum on the Ides of March.  How’s your Latin?

If you can't manage travelling in time,
The Dover Thrift Edition is surprisingly affordable.

So let’s say you go back.  Not too far. You don’t want to be foolish enough to be born yesterday.  Just go back 1 day with the winning lottery number. Write the number on your hand, just in case you are easily confused.  Head to the corner store, buy the winning ticket and wait. A new present is marching forward. With two of you. One is still readying the machine, and the other is waiting at the local bar until he can collect the money.  

Can that work? As soon as you arrive one day earlier, the past-present, the one that now contains with 2 of you, has been altered.  The present you left has also been changed because the previous present, now altered, creates the present you left. So the present also has to be malleable.  

The two yous only exist for one day.  You can even go help yourself put the finishing touches on the machine, begetting a new definition for self-help.  Maybe you even provide the secret sauce that makes the machine work.

But there is a logical conundrum.  Future You may know the secret, but Present You can’t just get it from Future You because he has not invented it yet, and Future You wouldn’t know the secret unless Present You invented it.  So Future You can’t exist without the discovery of the secret by Present You. So just be satisfied with your lottery winnings. Or grab something valuable and come back. Yes, that’s the Holy Grail on the mantle.

Not the movie prop, this image is from Time Machine Restoration on Facebook.
And you thought I had too much time on my hands.

All sounds great, but there are a few other issues.  

What about the matter that occupies the destination?  Something has to be done with that. If you don’t want to become gas-impregnated, you’ll need to move the air out of the way, providing you’ve picked a landing zone occupied only by air.  So maybe you will need to start materializing at a single point and get reconstructed from there, pushing the resident atoms out of the way. But that takes time, so your machine needs to make a record of you and itself and reconstruct all gradually.  Sounds complicated.  

Or perhaps it makes more sense to appear in the near-vacuum of space and then settle back to earth (which is an issue you’ll have to deal with in any case, so read on).  If our astronomers and physicists are not pushing fake news, we’re constantly moving. The earth rotates, and also revolves around the sun. Even when you take a time trip of only one day, you’re going to have to match position and velocity with your destination unless you want to materialize where the earth was yesterday. 

So your time machine needs to move.  It’s a Star Trek transporter with a time component.  But move relative to where? The center of the earth?  Center of the sun? Center of the galaxy? Maybe the machine needs to move relative to the center of the universe, wherever that is.  If that’s the case, many people we all know would have no problem. Perhaps only a select group can be time travellers.

Always be sure to check your destination on Trip Advisor
before you travel.

And do you travel through time, or do you just leave it altogether and pop back in at the prescribed moment?  Travelling through, you’d be like a statue during the travel time. Still there, like a stopped train in a tunnel of time.  So if you went back that single day, you’d see a statue-like you-in-your-machine for that day. But at least you’d have proof that your machine worked.

Better to pop out and then back in.  Leave time completely. For forward travel, it would be like taking a flight from Chicago, circling, and then landing and disembarking at the same gate back in Chicago.  Without the intervening time, of course. Kind of like sleeping on the plane.

Also better to leave time completely so that aging is not an issue.  You don’t want to go forward 100 years and find yourself dead since you aged during the transition.  But then again, if the reverse was true, and you lost years by travelling backward, you could live a long, long time.  Particularly with multiple trips. But only in the same epoch. It might get boring, knowing what was going to happen, even with eternal youth.  But maybe you could shape that epoch, in a "Groundhog Day" sort of way.

Sigh.

There are a few issues to iron out before we can enjoy our time machines.  But it’s only a matter of time until some future character comes back and lets me know how they were solved.

Would be great to see them again.

“What famous date do I send us to today, Mr. Peabody?”

“Sherman, set the WABAC Machine for November 20, 2019.  And bring three books.”

With a timely apology to H.G. Wells, a brief one to Steven Hawking, and dimly flickering apologies to Hollywood.