A Work Progressing

I have a friend that I have known for 67 years. We been close, and we have drifted. In some of the most important parts of our lives we never spoke. We had families that never met, yet now we still meet periodically and have coffee.

We lived next door to each other from 1st grade through 10th grade. Volatile years, filled with close companionship and banishment. We were radically different, Jack was athletic, I was not. I had official Army gear from my brother, Jack did not. We were both interested in blowing things up.

We had heard a rumor that wooden kitchen matches could be a source of pyrotechnics. Sitting on my garage floor, we made a pile of matchheads as we clipped off the striking heads of two full boxes. The rumor suggested that we fill the space between two bottle caps.

We went scrounging the local mom&pop stores. There were three of them with bottle openers nailed to the outside walls. There were folks that even then collected various beer and soda bottle caps. In a short time we had collected a bag full. Screw caps did not yet exist, they were all the crimped kind, with a thin cork disk lightly glued to the inside to help seal. Out process was to remove the cork.

Taking two bottle caps we carefully scooped into the mountain of matchheads, lightly twisting until the space was completely filled. The rumor did not specify how the caps were secured together. We had tape, lots of types of tape.

We had Scotch tape, we had masking tape, we had electrical tape, and we had plumber’s tape. We didn’t know which was best so we made a half-dozen of each type.

We loaded our pockets with our taped experiments, not considering that any one of them could explode and set fire to our pants. Safety was rarely considered.

We got to the junior high school playground, a vast area of asphalt covering almost a square block. The rumor had it that all you needed to do was throw the bottle caps. When they landed the caps would bend and compress the matchheads. The matchheads would rub one another and combust. The entire collection of matchheads would light in an instant. What happened next was not known, but we would find out.

It turns out that the tape and type of tape was important. Too much tape would cushion the blow and the matchheads would not light. Too little tape would cause the caps to separate and scatter unlit matchheads on the asphalt.

The perfect tape wrap caused a fiery explosion! The paper based masking tape blew apart, and there was a fiery, smoky cloud filled with flaming matchheads, scattering in a circle about ten feet wide. Marvelous!

The cloth or plastic tape did not separate, but the gasses inside the bottle caps had to escape, so the caps went spinning away with a shriek, and lots of smoke.

It was a great success, with the two of us throwing a half dozen at the same time. It looked, and sounded like a WWII battlefield, with smoke, shrapnel, and flames.

That Friday we made dozens of the little bombs, in order to chuck them at the opposing crowds at our weekly football games. I think we threw two, them ran away in terror.

On July 4th we had fireworks, but for us it was little black snakes, and sparklers. The grownups had wisely banned bottle-rockets. Sparklers were approved, we could light them, wave them, stick them in the grass, and toss them lightly in the air. They lasted about a minute.

Back in the garage we hit them with hammers, and broke them off of their metal wires. Soon we had a pile of sparkler chunks, and we ground that into a fine dust. We knew that bottle caps would not set it on fire. We suspected that it would burn a lot faster as ground sparkler dust. We would find a small container and jam a sparkler in as a fuse.

We found several empty CO2 green containers. We drilled out the bottoms and filled the containers with dust and a regular sparkler jammed in opening. We could light the sparkler, stick it in the ground, and wait for the explosion. We never thought about the shrapnel.

The sparkler lit the dust, the dust burned super quick and sent the CO2 cartridge high in the air with a trail of sparkler smoke. It may have gone 500 to 600 feet in the air. It landed on the neighbors roof across the street. We tested several more, until it landed in our own yard.

We thought that if we could place it in a tube, like a bazooka, then we could aim it. And if we could fill a larger CO2 cylinder we could perhaps aim it to the junior high school asphalt yard, a few blocks away. Jack offered to be the bazooka man.

Before we fired the bigger container we thought to test it one more time. We propped it up in a garbage can but it leaned over, and it hard to light the sparkler fuse. So we nailed the tube to a 2×4 placed it acrossed the can. The tube pointed straight up. We lit the fused a stepped a few feet back, feeling that the metal garbage can provided some shrapnel protection. At the last second we additional ducked behind the corner of the backyard shed.

Seconds later there was a huge explosion and lots of smoke. When the smoke cleared we checked out the garbage can. It looked like a giant colander, peppered with hundreds of tiny holes, with larger ones here and there. We looked at the fence right next to our hiding spot an found a twistedbazook piece of metal with sharp spikes firmly embedded in the fence.

Jack was planning o hold that tube next to his head as he aimed the “bazooka”.

Somehow we survived, later I went hitchhiking around the country, Jack went to college. We both went into the Army. Jack was an MP and I was a technician. Later, I became a graphic designer, and Jack joined the Oakland police force. We both survived.

Now years later, we drink coffee and talk about our dangerous times. Not about our careers, not about our “Wartime” experience. We talk about making homemade gunpowder and sparkler dust rockets.

We also talk about watching our volcano with binoculars, waiting with several buckets of water to put out the fires. It turns out that Mt. Tamalpais is not a volcano.

When Jack retired he took up a hobby of flying ultralights. Not satisfied he bought plans to build his own airplane. It took almost two years. On the day of the first test flight, he took it on to the runway and went to the field gas pump to fill the tank, and then take off. Something happened, a spark occurred. The flames engulfed the plane and everything was consumed, but Jack was safe.

To compensate, Jack brought a Shelby Cobra sports car and refurbished it. It was beautiful. So beautiful, that he bought another in kit form and built from the ground up another Shelby. Now he was has two. Neither one has burned to the ground

Happy birthday, my friend.

I’ve lost a very dear friend and member of my family. I first met Joanne Townsend sometime in late 1962. I’m not sure how long it took for my brother to introduce her to the family.

He had met her on 23rd street, in Richmond, nearly in front of Richmond Union High School. Those were the days when young adults “cruised the main”, in order to see, and be seen, even during the late afternoon.

Joanne was with a girl-friend in her pristine black Ford Fairlane, called “a two door hardtop convertible”, not the one that stored the hard-top in the trunk, but something similar. It was a busy time on 23rd street, lots of stopping and going.

My brother Eddie (I called him Cork), was also on 23rd Street, but for different reasons. He was helping a friend drive a racing motorcycle from somewhere in the South Bay, all the way to San Pablo. He was nearly home, only a few blocks away. It was only a remarkable trip because the motorcycle had no brakes. It was a racing machine. If you wanted to slow down, you just down-shifted. Why have the extra weight of brakes?

So naturally, there was an accident, but Cork didn’t crash into a delivery truck, or a beat-up clunker driven by an underage ditty-bopper. He was behind a beautiful blonde in a black Ford Fairlane. And she suddenly stopped.

Joanne would say later that she briefly saw him in the mirror before impact, and then he disappeared. She thought that perhaps he slid under the car, but then after a second she heard a crunch on the roof, then silence. After some moments passed she saw a person roll off the roof, onto the right fender, then land in the street. Certain that he was dead, she did not immediately open the door. Her friend was crying!

Finally Joanne rolled down her window, and he asked if everyone was all right. They nodded, and they asked if he was all right. He didn’t know it at the time but his wrist was fractured. He was still in the Army, so he would have some explaining to do when he came back from leave, Then he asked for her number, told her he would pay next week, and ran off, leaving her in shock in the middle of the street. I think she would have called him, “Gink!”

He had to make right the dent in her rear bumper. He left so quickly because didn’t want the police or insurance to be involved. I suspect it was issues with the motorcycle’s registration, or the lack of it. It was only for racing, not riding on the street. The Ford was so badly damaged, the bumper and trunk had a big “V” dent, as if hit by a ship.

So that’s how they met, and within weeks of contacting her for the repairs, they were dating. It took Joanne’s father several years to trust Cork entirely. He was a crusty character in any case.

It wasn’t long before they were married, and Cork still had a few months left in the Army. Joanne and I bonded quite a bit, while she waited for Cork to become a civilian. Later, I babysat their baby boy Robert John (Bob) in their rented house on Burbeck Street. Strange house, everything painted the same grey color.

Later on, when Bob was in school, my mom and Joanne started a business, a second hand store on 23rd Street. I went down to help out. Most of the time Joanne and I would play cards, games, and just laugh a lot. Eventually, I graduated from high school and started my independent life. Joanne was always there to support me when I circled back “home”. My parents had moved to Tacoma, WA, but Cork and Joanne maintained a local residence when I had none, and all the while that I was in the military.

We even shared the duplex for a time when I got out.

It’s true that we didn’t see each other as often as I would have liked. My life spun wildly for some time. But we did not drift apart. As I settled with my family, we always had Uncle Cork and Aunt Joanne in our lives, and our children become close to both of them.

Joanne had so many gifts, as a great wife, homemaker, mother. We will share stories about her for years. But there is one thing I would like to share now. She was known far and wide, as the “Knowledge”. In London, it is said that you can’t be a taxi-cab driver without the “Knowledge”. In the Bay Area, you can’t make money finding treasures in garage sales or thrift stores without the “Knowledge”.

Venders and garage sale pros were in awe of Joanne’s abilities. Some would even give up if Joanne had beat them to a sale. They knew there would be nothing of value after she had gone through the items. Second hand store employees all knew her by name, and asked her opinion on suspicious items: “Was this a fake or knock-off?”. If it wasn’t a fake, then she would have already had it in her cart, ha!

Joanne would often bring the employees small jewelry gifts, or donuts, and they would save items for her that they thought she would like.

For the last five year’s, Parkinson’s has taken a deep toll on Joanne’s health, despite her courageous patience and perseverance, and it has brought out Cork’s ability to be a caretaker. An entire book can be written on the inventions that he came up with in order to make her life better. He never rested, or waivered

As Cork said, “… she grew weaker, and I grew stronger.”
That was her gift, and she shared it with everyone. I loved her so much as did our entire family.

Well, it’s Christmas Eve’s eve, and we have a refrigerator. And it came it the most unexpected way. Sherry got a call from an unknown number, and wisely ignored it. We were not expecting a call.

The second time they called, she did answer, and our refrigerator spoke, and said it wanted to come home. Actually it was the delivery company. Weirdly, it came out of the blue. We had been trained that they call the day before to see if we will be home, then they tell us the three hour window when we should be there. There is a process. It takes two weeks to just get in line.

But this was different, the voice asked if we were home to get the refrigerator, Sherry said “yes, when can we expect you?” The voice said they were thirty minutes away. Less than an hour to get all that food out of the old refrigerator and into boxes and cold bins. Sheesh!

Frantically we dumped years of frozen food, and possibly years of normally refrigerated food. The mounds grew higher, the kitchen counter space disappeared, we went to the pool table, we went to any available horizontal space. As the last bag of four year old frozen peas was removed, I heard a truck stop in front of the house.

Just two guys with belts came into the kitchen. Four minutes later the old refrigerator was gone. They carried it out!

Ten minutes later the new refrigerator was settled into the little alcove and humming very quietly. The long ordeal was over.

In the process there was a lot of conversation. This team was the elite “fixer” team, sent out to resolve problems. No one ever even suggested there was a fix-it team. They were employees of the big box store, something the last person told me was impossible. They were polite, very professional, and we thanked them.

We have had the refrigerator for three or four days, and the only problem is that some vagrants have moved in and made it difficult to open the door. As soon as the door is opened, they freeze, and look at me with some distain. I wish they would move on.

It was on a whim. Buying a refrigerator on a whim is never a good thing.

We went to a “big box” store to buy tile for our bathroom. We entered and found the signage helpful. From several aisles away we could see that aisle 7 was the place to go to find tile. We went, we saw, we decided. But we could find anyone to help us. We did find someone in an apron, but he was from gardening and didn’t have any knowledge of tile. He called for help. Help never came.

Finally, in a fit of independence, I went for a cart. It would be self service. If I can’t reach it, I could steady my smallish wife, standing in the shopping cart, while she nudges it to the edge of the shelf. Tile and bullnose edging is conquered and in the cart.

No problem finding checkers, they are everywhere!

Our contractor says we didn’t buy enough tile. In a panic, a quick search of the internet for the other “big box” stores nearby. All post that they can order it, but that there is none at hand. I think that perhaps someone has an open box, selling the tile we need one at a time. The internet is silent on this.

We determine to visit the store again, and we find an open box and purchase five individual tiles. Success… until we get to the checkout. The clerk insists that the bill is well over $200 dollars. She believes that each tile has the same inventory number as a box of twenty tiles. It takes a longtime to show the error of her calculation. Maybe the store isn’t even self-serve.

We need to search someplace else for vanities. We try a competing “big box” store. I know where one is, and we drive in intense traffic to get there. I was wrong, it is across town, and probably another 40 minutes of traffic. We end up at the nightmare of the same “big box” store. Drawn like moths to a flame. We calm ourselves, and resolve that we will just look, decide on what we like, then buy somewhere else.

The same helpful signs direct us to bathroom vanities. Then it is only a few more aisles, and we are looking at kitchen cabinets. I don’t know why, we are fine in the kitchen.

Another aisle and we are surrounded by appliances, in particular, refrigerators. Our refrigerator works but several of the drawers have issues, we could see what a replacement might offer, then buy somewhere else. We have always bought our appliances from another local appliance store.

We found a reasonable refrigerator for $1500. There was an appliance salesperson right there. He was charming, he shared his personal story. He was a veteran. For all these reasons and more, we bought the refrigerator. That was Nov. 12th. It is now Dec. 11th, and we still have not seen our refrigerator.

According the the paperwork we were given, the refrigerator was to be shipped to our home on Nov. 24th. Twelve days seemed like a long time, very close to Thanksgiving, and slightly inconvenient, but it is what it is. According to the policy, they will call on the day to arrange to deliver the new, and pickup the old. It will be nice to have a brand new refrigerator for the Thanksgiving leftovers.

Nov. 24th comes and goes, no refrigerator. We call the phone number for troubleshooting. The person contacts the delivery people, they say that they called, but no one answers. They did send us e-mail a few days before they were supposed to come, but no email that they couldn’t find us. Then the truck driver says that they came to the door, and no one answered. Okay, now that was a lie. We were home waiting all day. We were told by email that they were coming.

I explained this to the person, and I might have used an unfriendly tone. I did not swear, but I did take umbrage to the statement that I wasn’t home. I think I told them that I had ordered a $3.50 vacuum cleaner belt from Amazon, they delivered two days later and took a photo proving that they were there. The person on the phone said they had a photo, but it was dark and they couldn’t tell if it was a house or just a bunch of trees. They didn’t share the photo with me.

I suggested that perhaps they should refund my purchase price. They said they can’t do that, I would have to come into the store where there was a register. I said that they must certainly have a way to handle this, and asked for a supervisor. She said she was the supervisor. I asked for the supervisor’s supervisor. She said it doesn’t matter, policy is policy and I would have to come in to a store to get my refund. I said if the vice-president of your “big box” store needed a refund I bet he wouldn’t have to come in, she assured me that he would. I threatened to cancel my credit purchase if they couldn’t delivery the refrigerator by Saturday. She asked if I would like a Saturday delivery? Yes, I would like the refrigerator that I bought. She then hung up.

Apparently she wrote a long electronic note that used some unfortunate language, not necessarily towards me, but towards the whole mix-up. I know this because I had to call again when the Saturday delivery failed to show up, II and I had to call the hotline once more.

The next agent I talked to was Justin. Justin was amazed about what the notes related. It took a few minutes to read them all. Justin mentioned that there was a $430 refund coming my way, and that he could arrange to have the refrigerator delivered on Dec. 10th. I thanked him for his diligence, and asked to speak to his supervisor. I was passed to Jason and I told him how wonderful Justin was, and how he tried to resolve my problems.

I was surprised about the $430 refund so I asked if that was a discount for Black Friday. Jason told me that Justin had set that up because I was inconvenienced. That was another surprise, Justin took no credit for that. Suddenly I was rooting for the “big box” store to succeed. All I had to do was to wait for Friday, Dec. 10.

On late Thursday I had not heard anything about specific times. I had another e-mail affirming the Dec. 10th delivery but not the time. I called the hotline once more. An agent took my call, read the notes, then called the warehouse. She said the refrigerator was lost, not only that, but in her experience, a refrigerator lost for this long was most likely scratched or dented by the time it was found. So she offered a total refund, and I need not come in to the store.

An earring can slip into a crack, or drop into a random box. A hair dryer can get reshelved in a strange place. But a six foot tall, three foot wide refrigerator can’t sprout legs and run away. I wanted my refrigerator.

I found out the I didn’t use my credit card, I had used my debt card. They took my money immediately, but I didn’t get my refrigerator. They had kidnapped it, they. We’re holding it hostage somewhere. At two different times it was on the truck, then it went back to the warehouse, shoved into some dark corner. A warehouse supervisor physically walked in a “dock search” looking for my wandering refrigerator. She was supposed to call me when she found it. She never called.

Another agent by the name of “Princess”, gave me another $150 refund. It will come to me by mail, 4 weeks from now. I still haven’t seen the first refund.

Princess tells me that the “notes” have been edited, or modified, but it still reads like a novel. I just want my refrigerator.

I have a vision of a 25 cubic ft. appliance, hitch-hiking east on Interstate 80, looking for America. I hope it turns around and finds my kitchen by Christmas.

A few years ago I decided that I didn’t know enough about color. I knew the color wheel. I knew the different levels of complimentary, colors and I even had a good idea of color frequencies. Basically I knew the graphic design elements of color, the Pantone system for printers. I hadn’t developed a painterly palette.

So I thought, what better way to learn than to colorize some old black and white photos, not in a Ted Turner movie fashion, but in a more artistic impression. I started with my own archive of black and whites. The trouble was that the people were generally way too small, and by the time I enlarged the image I was getting too low of a resolution.

So I began to look to the internet for high quality black and whites. I found the great collections of early movie stars. For about a year, on and off, I played around with some classic “stars”. I learned a lot, most of them were familiar, some were very familiar. A few I only knew by name. One of them was Sarah Bernhardt. I really did know the name, but that was it. The image that I choose to colorize was this one…

The odd thing was that it reminded me of one of my favorite portraits that had just worked on as a tribute to Edouard Manet of Berthe Morisot…

Okay, this was odd. The Manet was painted in 1872. Certainly Sarah wasn’t from 1872? Or was she? Then I realized I didn’t know much about her, apart from her name. Was she French, and not English? Was she from Paris, and not NYC?

I must admit I was not particularly interested in the image, or the person behind the image. I finished it and went on to colorize Audrey Hepburn, and I promptly forgot about my questions on Sarah.

A few years later, a good friend sent me a wonderful email, as is her habit. And she included her signature “last sentence” in the paragraph, about something entirely different, knowing that it would interest me. June wrote, “After nearly fifty years, I’m finally considering to finish that play I wrote on Sarah Bernhardt.” WTF?

I hadn’t the slightest idea that she had started to write a play on Sarah. Naturally I knew Sarah, I had made an image of her with the Hollywood crowd. I looked at my source. Sarah Bernhardt had a star on the Boulevard of Stars, she made movies, she has the earliest birthdate of anyone on the Boulevard. She was born in 1844 and died in 1923. What the hell? 1844? And she was French! And mostly a stage actress, although she made some of the first movies. And she didn’t sing, she spoke, she was the “Golden Voice”.

Okay, time to learn some more about Sarah.

The best thing occurred, I got a copy of the original script written years ago, by June. She had made this after years of researching Sarah. She was going to update it with current information, but it was a wonderful summary of what was generally known.

At the end of Act I I knew hundreds of things, at the end of Act II, I was completely sold out on Sarah, and yearned to know more. June had once again deployed the “famous last line in the paragraph.”

So, for the last few months I have made several dozen images from sketches of artists, faded photos on cabinet cards, and a few great photographs from excellent photographers. It is safe to say that there are at least a dozen different looks of Sarah, as she had her image captured at least once a month for about sixty years. Yes, she did age, but it wasn’t just age, and it wasn’t the costumes or make-up. She just projected different images!

I recall reading about her performance in “Joan of Arc”, when she was 65. She had a line in the script where she had to state to her interrogators her characters age. The line she said was, “I’m nineteen!” At 65 she was was playing a 19 year old! Successfully!

It was not lost on the audience, because they consistently broke out in applause after she said her line.

I am by no means an expert on her life. There is so much that can’t be known. In some cases there is a void… in most cases there are multiple conflicting stories. My favorite is that she is actually French Canadian, and she moved to Iowa as a child, then to Paris, to enter the theatre. What was the source of this? As near as I can tell it is based on three things. 1) America is the greatest, so she must be American. 2) She had nine different tours of America in her lifetime. 3) And someone wrote once that she spoke French with an American accent. Hahaha!

It’s safe to say that she was French, and always performed in French wherever she traveled.

The following images are some of the favorites that I’ve done…

I am so excited for the play to be finished.

According to one Wikipedia article, “the Concord Spirit Poles were a controversial public art project installed in the Bay Area city of Concord, California in 1989, at the direction of artist Gary Rieveschl, at a cost of approximately $100,000. They stretched along the median near downtown on Concord Ave. Rieveschl has said that the poles signify “our increasing interdependence in an electronic age of digitized information.” The 91 pointed aluminum rods ranged from 8 to 50 feet in height and weighed as much as 100 pounds each, prompting residents of the suburban bedroom community to object to their harsh appearance. The city used the poles to hang banners and flags in an unsuccessful attempt to soften the sculpture’s look. The Spirit Poles ultimately became unstable and cracked, with one toppling during a windstorm. The Concord City Council voted in 1999 to remove the Spirit Poles.

At least that is part of the story.

Ordinances had been adopted that required 1 to 2 percent of new building projects to have a budget for public art. Building office complexes had art, traffic circles had art, even paving streets had artistic manhole covers. concords medians had Spirit Poles.

This wasn’t a direct gift to artists, there was a selection process, there was a proposal, there were conceptual drawings, there was a presentation, and there was a budget. The committee apparently had no difficulty with the selection, no one remembers the other presentations, and soon enough the installation took place. There was something called “the Heritage Park Project” that was budgeted for $400,000, and the Spirit Poles were just a part of that. Perhaps that’s why it had an easy pass through committee. Installation for the poles went forward in 1989. That’s when opinions came pouring in.

In either case, for the general public they missed the artist’s intention, and called for their removal. It was public art, paid for by the public, and they felt they had the right of an opinion.

Unfortunately the contract was negotiated by a representative for the public, and the contract had a clause against the removal except for safety reasons.

The public was outraged, as more and more people offered their opinions. As for the falling spirit pole, I have not found proof that any pole fell during a wind storm.

Finally, a enterprising city inspector looked at the base of a few of the “pointed aluminum” poles, and found some suggestion of aluminum “corrosion”. With the remote possibility of one or more poles falling onto the roadway, all the poles were removed and placed into storage, until a plan to fix the problem appeared. No plan appeared, it was never assigned, the contract didn’t allow the city to recycle them. They remained in storage for years. In 2001, the artist was paid $75,000 and he released any claim for the art. They were cut up and recycled. Perhaps you have had a beer, or soda, from the recycled aluminum poles.

The end result was so concerning that Concord repealed the two ordinances for public art, instead of fixing the process of selection.

So how did the “cancel culture” begin? The internet was too new to be involved, so it was the traditional media: letters to the editor, talk radio, media outlets. They took up the banner and found that the public wanted more of the story. The National Enquirer called them “the ugliest publicly funded sculpture in America.” What gave the National Enquirer the skill to critique public art? No one asked. Everybody can have an opinion, and anyone can shape further public opinion.

Gary Rieveschl was a respected visual artist specializing in “landform” installations. Working with earthmounds and flowers, he has art installed throughout the Midwest and Europe. He actually had a small book published on his installations from 1973-1987. It’s curious that I haven’t found anything that he has done since the Spirit Poles. He is now 79, and living in Indiana.

I did find an article from Cincinnati, that mentions another work of his, “Autooasis”, that was a 1973 Chevy with doors, trunk, and hood open, filled with growing vegetation. It was a vehicle as a potted plant. Eventually it was evicted from its space and crunched as scrap metal.

They most common photo of his art was one from Germany of a bank of earth, and a weaving “snake” of daffodils. Perhaps it’s gone as well.

Interesting fact, Gary’s father, George Rieveschl, invented Benadryl, and this helped Gary by having the financial support to send him to Harvard and MIT. Maybe he wasn’t cancelled, maybe he inherited.

Further thoughts on time.

Are thoughts granular? If so, then what is the space called between thoughts? Also, if thoughts are granular, do they have hard edges, or soft, squishy edges that are sticky? Are thoughts in three dimensional clumps? Are they linear? Or they only appear linear from the thinker’s perspective? Is there any other perspective possible?

If thoughts are electrical firing of synapses, do they flow, like electricity? Electrons being “excited”, bouncing around, exciting their neighbors, not actually moving like water molecules flow, but the “excitement moves from one regional synapse to another. Cascading like billiard balls on a table.

Watching television, I see movement. An actor walks across the screen. Being interested, I get closer. It’s harder to see the actor because I’m beginning to see the dots of the actor. The actor is made of thousands and thousands of dots in a rosette of red, green, and blue, against a dark background. The actor continues to move, and I get closer.

The dots don’t move, they just change color. There is no movement. The actor moves because the dots change color. Our eyes follow the changing color and interprets this as movement. Is it movement because I see it as movement? The actor on television is an image. It is only two dimensional, but when the actor turns it appears three dimensional. If the image was a photograph, the actor would get distorted as he turned, eventual he would disappear as a two dimensional figure on edge. The actor doesn’t turn, the dots simply change color. The turn is not real, it simulates a turn. There is no movement.

Images are not the actual object. Even the projected image on the back of our retina is not the object. Objects exist, but we only see shadows of the object, full color shadows… an image, not the real thing. Things do not have resolution, they have edges. Images are dependent upon resolution, edges depend on resolution.

Finding the edges of things determines the shape. Recognizing shapes is rewarded in the Cave of Socrates. Mere shadows, but real rewards.

This is what happens when the mind wanders.

“This glass is empty”, yet filled with air. Unless it is in space, when it is filled with… space?

The edge of a cloud exists at a distance, but slowly disappears the closer you get. In fact, there is no edge, only the appearance of one.

The distance around the island of England is infinite, unless you take the short cuts, and avoid the fractals.

So… I finished all three sections of Rovelli’s “The Order of Time.” I know less now then when I started. I’m not sure that I understand “when”. I’m certain that I don’t understand “now”.

Strangely enough, I had three separate thoughts while finishing the reading, each one more disconnected. The first thought was directly related to a phrase in the text, “glass half-full”. The then thought was tangentially connected to a statement of clouds, the third thought was a distant memory of “infinite” fractals of a natural seashore. I don’t know why it came up.

I’m not sure I enjoyed the book. If I reread it, will I know even less. If I keep rereading it, will I eventually disappear?

I have previously written about time, well… I wrote about my reaction to a summary of the current ideas of time, set out by physicists. To their credit I agreed with a number of their statements. How can I disagree you might ask? What degrees do I currently hold in physics?

My disagreements are based upon the fact that I am human, and I don’t let my lack of knowledge hinder my opinions. Basically, my disagreements were based in the absolute statements made. We can’t measure yet… not that we can’t measure. No evidence yet… not that the lack of evidence is absolute. It’s a clever way to disagree without understanding the salient points.

I have a good friend that suggested a book by Carlos Rovelli, “The Order of Time”. According to the reviews, this book gives a very good summary of the current views concerning time. The author suggests that his book is in thirds. The first third is a very simple explaination, the middle third gives a little more detail, and the last third is a wild ride through the cosmos.

I may have made that up because I forgot the details of the last third, but you get the idea. I am barely through the first third. So far I’m wondering where the simple is… I know that it is there, because the illustrations include characters from the Smurfs. I can see the smiles from the copyright lawyers. A book about time written by a leading physicist wants to use Smurfs to illustrate his points.

I’m a little stuck on the first point. Time is slower at my feet, and faster at my head, compared to a reference at my navel. Hmmm. Second point, time is slower if I live on a beach versus living on a mountaintop. Time is slower if you don’t move, time is faster if you run around. Time requires heat. Heat only goes towards cold, never cold to heat. Time only goes forward. I think I listed a few more points in this simple chapter, each with Smurf explainations.

Oh yeah, time is slower if you move the watch faster, like on an airplane, so speed can make time slower and faster… depending.

I can’t wait until I get through the middle part of the book.

Maybe he liked blueberries, or more likely, he had poor dental hygiene and his front teeth had died at the roots. In any case, history now knows Harald Gormsson, king of Norway in 895, as “Bluetooth”. This becomes important to us because the inventors of the technology to connect devices to computers, named their product “Bluetooth”, and even used the Nordic runes to create their logo. They could have given a nod to Hedy Lamar for her contribution, but an early medieval Norse king was chosen.

Millions of devices use “Bluetooth”, from speakers to microphones, earbuds, printers, and headsets. It’s the most popular wireless conn ection. With clever renaming, a new device was named “Blueteeth”, referring to a pair of glasses that acted as a “heads up display”.

Several attempts had been made by different tech companies to create monitor glasses, but this one had great promise. Heavily mirrored from the outside, it was almost impossible to tell if they were projecting an image or just acting as sunglasses. The technology was so small that the frames easily concealed all electronics, using common hearing aid batteries. The glasses were designed to blend in as just another pair of sunglasses.

The user had a finger ring as a controller, to scroll through and select menus that were on screen. There were several choices of transparency from complete opacity to a faint display. The practical theory is that using close focus you saw the information on the glasses, and the distant focus saw straight through information to the outside world. When the opacity increased it was like putting on blinders with two tiny monitors in front of each eye.

No one studied how this might affect normal vision. Produce a thousand units, test them, and then see how it goes,- that was the manufacturer’s concept.

Most people used a smart phone for the computing source, but that was somewhat limited; a powerful laptop or tablet was a better connection. The best connection was an even more powerful desktop unit. Of course the ability to be mobile was a huge attraction, so text based information was optimal for use and battery life. Apps on the phone made this an easy choice. Full blown color animation and movies were still best by using desktop or gaming units.

Wallace was one of only six beta testers for the device. He was given a Series 2 device, by a separate company that hired screened users, and had applicants sign a non-disclosure agreements, and also have a security background check. Wallace was someone to be trusted, and would use the device in normal, and unusual approved tests. Wallace never asked what happened to Series One, it could have caused brain cancer but, he didn’t ask. Wallace accepted the technology, and immediately focused on the mobile text based apps, and then took the glasses on a tour through the city.

The GPS apps made navigating a breeze. It did take a few trips around the parking lot to get used to the switching focus, but after a few minutes it was very natural, and Wallace thought that even the state police would approve, so long as only the GPS was used. Connecting to social media while driving was probably not a good idea. Wallace made a few connections but didn’t tell anyone how he was connecting. Typing using the finger ring was tedious, but he was getting faster, better than his one finger hunt and peck, and the built in AI helped with auto-correct.

After a while, Wallace parked his car and went for a walk. He stopped at a sidewalk vendor and bought a latte, then strolled along the waterfront. He was scrolling through the menu choices when he approached some steps. He switched hands to grab the handrail, and the latte splashed a little though the hole in the lid. Wallace didn’t notice that the latte splash had hit his finger ring. The display blinked a few times then settled. The menu options seemed longer, then it blinked some more. Wallace walked on, but the finger ring no longer seemed to change the menus, and suddenly there were different text messages being displayed.

Wallace read with interest, then the message disappeared before he could finish reading. At first he thought some friend was texting him, but he was getting both sides of the conversation.

He was eavesdropping! The conversation disappeared as he walked away from one of the sources. Wallace looked around at the other people nearby. Someone appeared to be texting a little further ahead. It should have been impossible because he hadn’t “paired” with any device. Somehow his glasses were allowing his phone to connect to nearby Bluetooth transmissions.

In another minute or so Wallace was near enough and the text came through, he could actually scroll up to see the messages he had missed. The messages were directions to a local coffee shop that he could see directly ahead. Before he had gone too far the messages disappeared as a man crossed his path with an angry expression, and a finger jabbing at his phone.

The message came through to Wallace immediately. The man was angry with Alice and demanded that she stop seeing Stephen. Alice did not respond. Wallace could see that there was much more jabbing at the phone, and the indicator was telling him that the man, his name was Sam, was typing. It was a long paragraph, Wallace had kept walking and was soon out of range.

Was it the latte that caused this to happen? Or, did the device have a setting to piggyback on Bluetooth pairing? Wallace decided to sit on a bench and scroll through the various menus. The finger ring didn’t appear to be permanently damaged by the splash of latte. The messages had disappeared. Maybe this was just a one-time glitch, something worth a paragraph in his report to the company? He accessed the notepad through the glasses, and wrote a brief summary of his encounters, planning to expand it later.

“There was a brief flicker, and it appears that the device can pickup nearby Bluetooth based messages. It’s probably something that should be checked as a simple security update. It isn’t steady, and has disappeared, but should be checked out.” Wallace had dozens of security updates on his phone system.

Wallace thought about the potential problems of this type of security leak. Eavesdropping might be an interesting past-time for jealous partners, but the hard-core gamers that wanted this device, wouldn’t be interested in that feature. He thought the commuters would be the biggest market, checking stock prices, catching the latest news, maybe even watching music videos. It was the same activities that occur now, just with a better monitoring device. We get security notices all the time, no big deal. What reason would cause it to be intentional?

Wallace thought he would take a short train ride to the civic center, and headed to the station. While adjusting the finger ring there seemed to be a spot where the screen flickered once again. And the messages came back! Different messages kept appearing, and quickly disappearing, as more powerful signals shoved their way through. Wallace could not read them completely. There were dozens of people on the platform with their phones out, and busy jabbing fingers. Wallace caught one message, “Authorized to clean it up…” then it disappeared, replaced by a recipe for tuna salad. Then someone wanted to meet for a hotdog and beer at 5:00 pm. Finally,a cryptic message “…make it look like an accident.”

Wallace noticed the train coming, and the sign blinking for the civic center destination. He moved to the marked area where the train doors were to open. He barely felt the hand between his shoulder blades, as the train approached. Then he was flying towards the tracks.

The station was closed, it was arranged for buses to take passengers to the next station. Emergency services were still working on the tracks to clear the remains. One of the EMTs spotted the broken sunglasses, and said, “This might explain everything. I’m surprised that he could see anything with these on, they’re so dark!”