TheBanyanTree: Strawberry Moon

[Dale M. Parish]

Harlan Ellison, a different kind of author, once wrote a science  
fiction work called _I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream_-- a kind of a  
horrow piece.  Right now, I feel I must write, but I have nothing to  
say.  Somewhat parallel.

Last week on vacation, when I found out that the car charger I bought  
so I would be able to charge and use the laptop did not work, I  
experienced a hundred things about which I was going to write when I  
got home.  Now, none of them come to surface, yet they're all down  
there pushing up.  It's an irritating feeling.  Does that mean one has  
a frigid muse?

It was the first time I've ever been in the northwest-- landed in  
Portland OR and passed through Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and  
Utah before flying back to Houston.  Beautiful country.  Colorado is  
the furtherest I'd ever been in that direction before, 20 years ago  
with the kids.  This time, we were studying Plate Tectonics--  
"Tectonic Fury" is the title that the JASON Project gave to next  
year's curiculum.  Cindy is one of the "train-the-trainer" teachers--  
she was selected a couple of years ago by National Geographic to be  
one of three teacher "argonauts" as they are called, and was given a  
three student team and assigned a mission-- energy conservation in  
space.  National Geographic  sent them to Johnson Space Center to work  
with NASA's Space Architect.  Isn't that a cool title?  I'll bet not  
many people on this planet can claim that title.

But I digress.  I think "Tectonic Fury" is in one sense, an oxymoron--  
moving 5-15 cm a year isn't a furious pace for a plate, even when  
you're big as half a planet.  But the fury we saw in the evidence at  
Mount Saint Helens would, I guess, justify the moniker.  And  
Yellowstone-- every 600,000 years or so, that whole cauldera blows.   
BIG TIME.  Looking at the scale of the magma displacement and ash  
estimates for a number of erruptions, Mount Saint Helens was at the  
bottom of the scale-- Krakatoa was only second, and several of the  
Yellowstone cauldera erruptions dwarfed over all of them.  Which  
doesn't make one comfortable when you learn that the average has been  
600,000 years, and it's been 650,000 since the last one, indicating  
that Yellowstone is getting overdue to take out the middle of the  
country.  Which might be a good thing for global warming--- if that  
amount of ash is ejected into the upper atmosphere, it should have a  
significant cooling effect, but probably not soon enough to keep the  
remaining glaciers from melting and inundating the coastal plains  
around the oceans.  Where probably 40-50% of the planet's population  
lives.

A Kiowa friend wanted me to be sure to visit the Dragon's Mouth Geyser  
while in Yellowstone, where they say that the Great Spirit gave the  
earth to the Kiowa.  It's ironic to me-- I have in my head an Indian  
squaw and and Indian man-- need I call him a 'brave'? -- pre-1491-- 
with whom I have frequent conversations, trying to explain our  
technology to them.  I know I lack the vocabulary to try to explain a  
microwave oven to a woman from the stone age-- it's just 'magic.'  But  
I've tried in my mind explaining to her some simple things--  
magnifying glasses, strike-anywhere matches, running water systems,  
eye glasses, airplane flight, and know that I'd strike out.  Explain  
to the male things like firearms, electric flashlights, canned food, a  
compass.  Larry McMurtry first opened to me some of those concepts in  
his books, in which he portrayed realistic sounding misconceptions by  
the Indians of simple things.  One that sticks in my mind was a pair  
of eye-glasses given to an old Indian chief, who marveled at the white  
man's machine that made old eyes younger.  How would such a person  
separate or interpret cause and effect?  Not much chance to find out  
any more.

More often, I try to explain things to Thomas Jefferson.  I think I  
could put across most of the underlying science, but with what  
vocabulary?  How impatient would he become at my grasping for words  
with which he would be familiar?

Quen sabe?

Hugs,
Dale

--
Dale M. Parish
628 Parish Rd
Orange TX 77632