A YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out my window on Main Street, and I want to recognize, first, that the war in Israel was started by a sneak attack by Hamas soldiers upon a peaceful Israeli rock concert, followed by rape, killing and hostage-taking by those Palestinian Hamas soldiers.
Having said that, I believe that the starvation of Palestinian children is tragically the same horror as the Holocaust. It will live in memory forever of what NOT to do, even to your enemy.
I am not smart enough to suggest a resolution to the ongoing conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis.
But blockading the Palestinians from medical and food relief is a sin. Period.
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USELESS INFORMATION? If you hang two pendulum clocks side-by-side and start their pendulums swinging, after about 30 minutes the pendulums will be swinging in perfect time with each other but in opposite directions.
This really important bit of information as discovered by a Dutch physicist named Christiaan Huygens in 1665 as he lay in his sickbed with nothing to do other than study a couple of clocks on the wall.
Let me back up to tell you a little bit about this guy, Huygens. He was a physicist, astronomer, musician and a whole bunch of other things. He was real important; so important that they named something after him.
I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I know for a fact that somebody named something ‘Huygens.’ And HE was the Huygens that ‘they’ named something after, not some other Huygens.
For 350 long years after the day that Perfesser Huygens was sick, other smart guys tried to figger out why and or how those pendulum clocks did what they did.
Finally some REALLY smart people ciphered that it was sound pulses that gradually put the pendulums in opposing sync.
Maybe you have your own idea why the clocks go into syncopation. And maybe you believe that the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection was merely a bunch of peaceful patriotic citizens interested only in seeing the inside of the US Capitol.
FURTHERMORE. If you put two grandfather clocks side-by-side after about 30 minutes will they argue about which has the smartest granddaughter?
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HEAVENS ABOVE. Comet Swift-Tuttle makes a complete circle around the Sun every 133 years. It won’t swing by Earth again until the year 2126.
Sometimes on its pass it gets nervously close to Earth. Some astronomers have called it the single most dangerous object to mankind.
Its next flyby may be a year off, but each July and August the Earth plows through the debris trail left by the comet.
The resulting meteor show — called the Perseid Meteor Shower — is the best and most famous of all of our meteor showers. We’re already nudging through the edge of that debris trail, but best viewing of the Perseids will be on nights in the middle of August.
I’m telling you this now so you can dust off your lawnchairs and get ready. I am pretty sure it will be overcast many of those nights so we’ll all just have to imagine what the Perseids look like above the clouds.
Just imagine seeing one or two Shooting Stars every minute. Doesn’t that make you feel better?
Me neither.
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ANIMAL CRACKERS. Remembering absolutely one of the wildest things I’ve ever witnessed in nature. It happened a couple of years ago whilst on a Sunday afternoon countryside cruise with the Navigator.
We had a close encounter with a huge hawk that had a small bird clinging to its back. Honest.
The big bird flew out a copse of roadside trees and winged parallel to us at passenger side window height for maybe 100 yards. I was driving at hawk speed down a narrow country lane.
The hawk appeared without success to try to shake the little black and white bird off its back by flying close to tree limbs. Moments later, another small bird joined to pester the hawk, and they all flew off out of sight.
Never before had I seen one bird hitch a ride on another one. I always laughed off stories about hummingbirds riding on the backs of geese on their way south. Now, maybe?
I know that mockingbirds annoy crows, but it wasn’t a mockingbird that was hitching this ride.
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MORE THINGS I LEARNED from opening email: Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don’t have film.
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WORD GAMES. I love oxymorons: His new prison tattoo was Pretty Ugly.
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HE SAID: “There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.” Booker T. Washington, educator
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SHE SAID: “This conflict is one thing I’ve been waiting for. I’m well and strong and young — young enough to go to the front. If I can’t be a soldier, I’ll help soldiers.” Clara Barton, Civil War hospital nurse who founded the American Red Cross
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
