Happy Birthday, Dad

My answering machine holds a collection of messages from past holidays. In my family, this is what we call insurance.

You never know when you'll fall out of favor with one person or another. And, there's no chance of knowing the reason why they are mad at you either.

So when I play the answering machine's messages, I can hear my son wishing me happy Mother's Day, my nephew saying, "Merry Christmas," my friend from college (40 years ago) singing, happy birthday to you, etc., etc.

And then there's my dad's voice loud and clear as if I'm about to dive off the dock into shallow water . . . "Meredith!" He never did say hello on the phone. But there's one message in a softer voice that says, "Meri, this is dad calling." He sounds as if I might not recognize his voice.

This is my collection. Years of good wishes are right at my fingertips. If somebody forgets to call? No problem, I'm covered.

In my dream the other night, my father and I were walking along the beach in Narragansett talking about why I wouldn't want to live so close to the water. The house we were looking at a few dream-moments earlier had little waves breaking right at the white picket fence.

"You're right," I said. "But I like the place. It's near you."

A dream like this on a week night is hard to come by. I'm grateful for it.

So here's my chance to leave a message on the cosmic answering machine: happy birthday, dad. Yup, it's June again. And you would be 89 in earth years. I hope the cake in heaven is as tasty as the one you're eating in this photo . . .

SeaWorld: Great Shamu

Children, moms, dads, grandparents, toddlers are all chanting, "Shamu! Shamu! Shamu!"

This is SeaWorld. And this is amazing. Living in the Nation's Capital, I forget that most towns and cities and amusements parks are not like DC.

Here in Orlando, the crowd roars as this primal ritual gets underway.

A young man in a whale suit is tossed into the air by a huge creature who could just as easily swallow him for lunch.

Where does the desire come from? To perch on the nose of a killer whale . . .

Right now, I'm at my desk typing. My desk could be perched on the back of a great tortoise under a coconut tree or set on a raft pulled by a team of dolphins.

Ah but alas, my feet are on the floor. My desk is still as a rock. But would I have it any other way? When I was small, ferris wheels upset my stomach. That round and round business just wasn't for me.

Actually, I like my quiet desk.

Swimming, with no creatures bigger than a pumpkinseed or a bluegill, was my family's big fun at a lake or on the beach or in a pool. My father and mother helped us paddle around with flippers and lifejackets or just an inner tube until we learned how to swim on our own.

Most lakes in Rhode Island had big rafts. If you could make it out there, you could bask on the warm wood until your lips turned blue before sunset.

We did dive off my dad's hands. He'd flip us up in the air so we could dive over his head. I guess that's about as close as we got to the Shamu experience.

My mother worked as a swimming pool director at Johnson & Wales in Providence.

After school, my friend Cindy and I would walk down to J&W and volunteer to help children paddle around free of their wheelchairs. Kids are kids in the water. Splashing around, making motorboat noises.

If anyone then had asked me if I'd like to learn how to dive off the nose of a killer whale, well, I can't imagine wanting to. Even then. My dad was another story.

At the Movies . . .

I owe a photo credit to someone for the image at right. Thank you. I want to meet everyone in this photo. When was the last time you saw a man in a suit and tie at the movies??

And why does this photo reminds me of my mom? I have no idea. I don't remember seeing any 3-D movies with her.

My most recent experience with 3-D -- "Journey to the Center of the Earth" -- with that George of the Jungle guy, well, it was nowhere near as fun as when we had the paper 3-D "glasses" like the ones you see here.

My movie story goes like this: Mom and I were looking forward to seeing Sophia Loren or maybe Marilyn Monroe in How To Marry a Millionaire. Or at least that's what we thought we bought tickets for. I was in 5th or 6th grade so I was not the one buying.

As it turns out, we watched 3 hours of a "Von Trapp Family" documentary, supposedly the real story behind the "Sound of Music."

But no music, no singing, no Julie Andrews, no children in the meadow. Nada. But mom and I sat through the entire thing sure that the next feature was "Millionaire."

A whole different context to that word these days . . . yikes! Game show or location India. Either one is missing the movie stardust that sprinkles down from the white shoulders of Loren or Monroe.

But did I learned my lesson about the dwindling possibilities of double features? No.

A decade later when I was a freshman at GWU, I rode the bus to Capitol Hill to see a 3-hour Warhol film. Sat there glued to my seat (literally and figuratively). Because I was sure as soon as I got up to pee or buy popcorn all hell would break loose.

This after watching Warhol's actress clip her bangs one bang at a time for 90 minutes! Ah! The idea of "knowing better" is a lost art, at least in my family. I stayed in the theater for almost 4 hours, still sure I would see "Spartacus" the very next second.

Finding the 'Goldilocks Zone' Is No Fairytale

In less than 24 hours, NASA will launch the Kepler science satellite to find planets just like ours in a small patch of universe not so far far away.

Scanning starlight is Kepler’s task as its camera looks for signs of Earth-like planets “like a flea on a headlight,” according to today’s article by CBS News Space Consultant (and resident Trekkie) William Harwood.

With approximately 200 billion stars in our galaxy, this might take a while, right? But no. We’ll have a report in about 3.5 Earth years.

In that time, our tax dollars at work will let us know how many planets are in the “Goldilocks Zone.” That means not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Okay, no one expects to find three bears or any porridge. There’s a limit to how far NASA can stretch a fairytale.

Where We’re Looking
The real estate we earthlings are looking at is a desirable location near "the left wing of Cygnus the Swan, midway between the stars Deneb and Vega."

I know exactly where that is . . . It’s a commuter’s dream -- between 600 and 3,000 light years away. Let’s see, at warp speed, I think that’s less than an hour and much less traffic than my current commute around the Beltway.

To quote from the article:

"The habitable zone is where we think water will be," said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center.

"If you can find liquid water on the surface, we think we may very well find life there. So that zone is not too close to the star, because it's too hot and the water boils. Not too far away where the water's condensed and ice-covered, a planet covered with glaciers. It's the goldilocks zone, not too hot, not too cold, just right for life."

Johannes Kepler was a 17th century astronomer. He figured out the laws of planetary motion. NASA's 21st century Kepler “weighs 2,320 pounds and measures 15.3 feet from top to bottom.”

We’ll see what this new Kepler figures out . . . the amazing thing is that results come back in 2012. The end of the Mayan calendar . . . a little spooky, but we can handle it.

Searching for Signs of Intelligent Life

Wonder what it takes to pilot a spaceship / telescope to search for a planet just like ours not too, too many light years away?

Well, not exactly like ours. This one would be "inhabitable" and I assume have lots of good water. That's something in short supply on our Mother Earth . . . water.

Reading statistics on agricultural water needs the other day, I was truly stunned. Every acre of farmed land requires millions of gallons of water to produce one string bean and seven artichokes.

I guess -- if I wasn't a raging optimist -- I'd figure we're done for. The end will be a scene from a horror film with millions of us crowding the shoreline drinking sea water and Dr. Pepper until our bodies explode.

And then just in the nick of time, the telescope beams back lovely photos of cascading waterfalls and sunflowers and green trees . . . but here's the rub -- it will take us 65 years to get there. So the plan is what? A ship of kindergartners beam up and travel at warp speed arriving just in time to populate this new planet?

Enough. Read the story in the New York Times today in the science section and let me know the real plan. It's the Kepler spacecraft and it's looking for "worlds like our own."

Peace, Meredith

Rockin' Robins

A rack of robins perched in the neighbor's yard this morning. Maybe a dozen of them in the woody branches of the crape myrtle at the end of the street.

These robins were coming home fluffy and strong from their winter in Texas or Florida. I guess they don't follow the Monarchs to Mexico any more.

You could tell the robins from Texas. They were wearing little red cowboy boots and lassoing the starlings and tieing them to the fenceposts.

Well, from my rearview mirror as I backed up, those Texas robins acted like they owned the place. The Florida robins were pretending to be asleep.

I don't drive backwards on purpose, you know, I live in a cul-de-sac -- the French term for "bottom of the bag." Sometimes it feels like that around here, like we're at land's end -- no not in Cabo Land's End, in an industrial parking lot.

The PODS are here.

You know what PODS are -- white metal "rooms" half in the road, half in the sidewalk -- places where my neighbors store all the stuff that's supposed to be in their house. Yes, it's temporary --maybe a month or 6 months or a year.

The plan is each house is getting some work done -- painting or cleaning or revarnishing the floors. And the best way to do that work is have all the stuff out in a POD, leaving the actual house empty.

There is a thin promise that the POD stuff will get carried back in, and the POD returned to PODville.

Problem is the street is now a village of PODS. All but two families have one. They're the width of a car parking spot on one side; on the other side, they block everything else.

In the 1930s nobody had a POD. Everybody had sheds, and when things got bad they moved into the shed and their rich aunt moved into the main house and made them cinnamon toast on Sundays. Isn't that how it was?

Midwinter Night's Wind

In the middle of the night the wind came up and whistled through the spaces between the window and the wall next to my bed.

You've heard this sound before. A storybook banshee racing down from the tower of a dark castle towards your breezeway. She's wailing at the back door, knocking over your trash can with a force that wakes you with a start.

The clock says 4:15 am. Walt the cat stays close.

The icy keening continues as you search for your fuzzy pink robe and make your way to the window. Walt is looking too.

Nothing is there.

I switch on the lights to break the spell, but the glare is blinding. I light a candle instead. The flame shudders left and right, then disappears in waxy smoke until I light it again in a sheltered corner of the kitchen near a small window that gives me full view of the backyard as the wind jostles the floodlight near the shed.

Again, nothing but branches strewn across the frozen ground.

I'm going back to bed. Pulling the covers up, I make room for the cat and smooth the top of the blankets.

The best thing you can do is try to sleep. With my head covered in blankets, the wailing finally stops.

In the morning, the weatherman talks about the rising West Wind and the need to tie everything down that could possibly blow away in the 50-mile-per-hour gusts predicted for that afternoon.

Keats wrote "Ode to the West Wind" in the daytime, I think, but not an afternoon like this one I'm standing in, holding my hat, zipping closed my windbreaker, and refusing to raise my eyes as I walk along watching my steps one after another on the pavement.