Author: Dave

Five hundred posts would suggest I have something to say… This blog was born from a desire to elevate the English language, highlighting eloquent words from days gone by. The stories I share are snippets of life itself, and each comes with a bonus: a dusted-off word I hope you’ll go on to use more often. Read “Deutschland-ish Improvements” to learn about my backyard European wish list. Try “Slush Fun” for the throwback years of the 7-Eleven convenience store. Or drink in "Iced Coffee" to discover the plight of the rural French cafe. On the lighter side, read "Late Night Racquet Sports" for my adventures with our latest moth invasion. As Walt Whitman said, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Here then, my verse. Welcome to Life In A Word.

Cream of the (Dessert) Crop

A week ago last Tuesday, Salt Lake City hosted its first ever drone show of “fireworks”, replacing the traditional explosives residents have come to expect over the downtown park. The drones create colorful shapes and animations in the sky – even giant words – as well as a pretty good impression of the blooms and starbursts of fireworks. But let’s be honest: drones don’t replace fireworks. The same can be said for the frozen treats aiming to be more popular than, say, a simple serving of ice cream.

On the heels of Independence Day, America has another celebration coming up. National Ice Cream Day is the third Sunday of July in our country (and July itself National Ice Cream Month!) The “holiday” was signed into public law in the mid-1980s when Congress apparently had nothing better to do. So how do you and I “celebrate” ice cream? No clue, other than a Google search to figure out where to get a free scoop. And if you think ice cream is a poor excuse for a holiday, consider, the first Saturday in February is Ice Cream for Breakfast Day… which pretty much confirms every day of the year is some sort of “Day”.

A stroll past the freezers of ice cream in any grocery store boasts an impressive variety of spins, including cones, sandwiches, pies, and bites. Ice cream is split by bananas, cherry-topped into sundaes, blended into shakes, cloaked as “gelato”, and even fried into crispy-covered bites. I ask you, who buys all this stuff? Sure, as a kid I had a thing for Eskimo Pies (because my mom bought them) and later on I ate my share of Dove Bars (because my dad loved them). But feet to the fire, I’d rather spend my pennies on the best version of plain ol’ ice cream. I have my favorite brand (and you have yours) and time and again it ends up in my grocery cart instead of any of those other treats.

For a few years there I got caught up in the Cold Stone Creamery concept, where your serving of ice cream is placed on a marble slab and combined with “mix-in’s”. It was (still is) a trendy take on ice cream. But after just a few visits I realized the draw was the mix-in’s more than the ice cream. Safe to say Cold Stone doesn’t use a brand of ice cream anyone would consider “gourmet”. They know what brings people through the doors: marble slabs and mix-in’s. Cold Stone’s rival is even named Marble Slab.

For anyone growing up on the West Coast in the 1970s, the one-on-every-corner ice cream parlor was Baskin-Robbins. Their ever-changing selection of thirty-one flavors guaranteed slow perusing, even if the final choice was vanilla or rocky road nine times out of ten (okay, I’ll grant you peanut-butter-and-chocolate too). Today, Baskin-Robbins is still going strong, but I think most people prefer the flavors of whatever local parlor is closest to their house. And let it be said for the millionth time: Vanilla is and will always be the king of ice cream flavors. Simple, delicious, and versatile.

As for the commercial brands in grocery store freezers, Dreyer’s “Grand Ice Cream” is trying very hard to make its offerings your favorite. They smartly purchased www.icecream.com and dressed up the website as a tribute to ice cream, but let’s be real: they’re just pushing their own products here. My favorite brand is still Haagen-Dazs but get this: Haagen-Dazs is now a subsidiary of Dreyer’s. Whoa. Give it a few more years and Dreyer’s may turn into the Amazon of ice cream.

If you like to spend big on ice cream like I do (Haagen-Dazs is not inexpensive!) you might consider Cellato, a brand from Japan. Cellato makes particularly fragrant gelatos, mixing in white and black truffles from Italy, champagne, and caviar. Their “white night” flavor is topped with an edible gold leaf, two exquisite cheeses, and a sake-like paste. The price of a single serving? $6,380 USD, making it the most expensive ice cream in the world. Might as well make the airplane seat to Japan first-class for a dessert like that.

In closing, a very happy National Ice Cream Day to you! However you choose to celebrate this Sunday, you don’t need Cellato. You don’t need Coldstone Creamery either. For me, the entire ice cream aisle at the grocery store might as well be reduced to the Haagen-Dazs flavors. Those, and the choices at my local ice cream parlor satisfy my craving. In other words, forget about the drones. Traditional fireworks will always be better.

Some content sourced from the CNN Travel article, “Don’t drop it: World’s most expensive ice cream costs $6,400”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Power of the Purse

On a daylong trip to the shopping mall last week, my wife excused herself from my daughter and me and disappeared into a Kate Spade boutique. Forty-five minutes later she emerged with a purse, proudly declaring her new tote to be “discounted on top of the sale price”. As I’ve learned over many years of marriage, buying a new purse is a big deal for women, akin to slipping into the leather seat of a new sedan. After all, her purse is in hand almost as much as her smartphone.

The Kate Spade “Flower Jacquard Stripe Faye Medium Satchel”

If you’re a guy, don’t ever, EVER make the following statement about a purse: It’s just a bag. When I was a young and naive husband, it took me several bags – er, purses – to realize a) a new one will always be on the near horizon, and b) a purse contains the very essence of a woman’s life. There’s a lot in there and a lot going on in there – stuff we guys are better off not knowing about. Kind of like the women’s restroom.

In our defense, we guys can only relate from the perspective of the pedestrian wallet. Our “purse” is a whole lot smaller, stored out of sight versus over the shoulder, and designed to hold a minimum of essentials. In these terms, wallets and purses could be considered polar opposites. Not to suggest bigger is better, mind you.

My wife’s purse has countless zips, snaps, buttons, and hidden compartments, each of which she designates for specific items. She’ll go “here” for a pen, “over here” for some loose change, “out here” for the car keys, and “right here” for lip balm. And I’m not even talking about the main space. When you open the main pocket of a purse, it’s a dark, cavernous void suggesting a passageway to another world. I don’t venture in there very often – usually just to help myself to a little of my wife’s “cash stash”- and then I always get caught. No… no… not red-handed but rather after the fact, because I don’t put things back exactly as I found them. My wife knows precisely how her purse is laid out, so I can never deny her accusation of, “HEY!!! Have you been in here?”

Every now and then my wife goes fishing for a something in her purse and can’t find that something. This process is a joy to behold from the safe distance of the kitchen table. She knows whatever she’s looking for is in there somewhere; it just won’t surface. So she fishes and fishes to no avail. Sometimes she’ll resort to pulling out half of her stuff just to see what’s underneath. Other times her hand goes in so deep, half her arm disappears. With this in mind, I should know better than to go into my wife’s purse. I mean, there could be a wild animal in there!

When my wife moves into a new purse, it’s another process worth my witness. Everything comes out of the old bag (darn it all, Dave… PURSE!) and piles up on the counter. Then almost everything goes back into the new one (in exactly the same places). What’s left behind on the counter could fill the shelves of a curiosity shop. Ancient starlight mints. Expired gift cards. Pens from businesses we’ll never use. Faded receipts. And photos so old, you can’t help but say about the person, “Man, didn’t they look great back then?”

A wallet is a wallet, but a “purse” – in more technical terms – is a shoulder, satchel, sling, quilted, clutch, minaudiere, hobo, wristlet, beach, or even, yes, “wallet”. I’m sure the list goes on from there. As for size, my wife’s satchel preference probably rates an “M” on a purse scale of XS/S/M/L/XL. Too big to hold in the hand but too small to double as a changing room. She’s tried a few times go bigger or smaller but inevitably returns to “just right”. Goldilocks would’ve approved.

My wife’s birthday is this Sunday. If you read last week’s post you know I hinted at a rather expensive gift for her. Instead, I think I’ve found something a little more affordable. A purse, of course (don’t tell!) It’s a yellowish-green Louis Vuitton, in the style of a handbag, with the bold pattern of the designer’s signature initials. Gorgeous. Admittedly, I have two concerns. One, the bag (PURSE!) runs $69,000 USD. Two, it measures 0.03″ wide, or barely visible to the human eye. Yep, we’re talking an XXXXXXXXXXS from a 3D printer here, with it’s size described as “grain of salt” or “eye of needle”. It’s almost worth the cost just to see my wife try to move into it.

Some content sourced from the CNN Style article, “Handbag ‘smaller than a grain of salt’ sells for $63,000”.

Once in a Red Moon

I try to keep my blog topics timely, inspired by the come-hither headlines of my news feed, shouting, Click me! or No, click ME! But it’s not often – once in a blue moon, in fact – where I talk about what happened last week and what happens next week inside of the same topic. The calendar positions us perfectly today to do just that. So let’s talk rubies.

My first introduction to the four “precious gems” was probably when I started going to the movies. Diamonds Are Forever was as much about the title jewels as it was about James Bond. Romancing the Stone – the first movie my wife and I ever saw together – was a swashbuckling pursuit of a giant emerald in South America. The “Heart of the Ocean” pendant from Titanic was the biggest sapphire I’d ever seen (until someone reminded me it was actually a blue diamond). And rubies, of course, became something magical through Dorothy’s red slippers in The Wizard of Oz.

Last week, the largest ruby ever mined – 55.22 carats – came to the auction block at Sotheby’s. For a cool $35 million it could’ve been yours. Named the Estrela de Fura – Portuguese for the Mozambique mine where it was discovered – the “Star of Fura” was twice as big in its native form a year ago, then cut down and polished to the glistening red rock you see here.

Rubies aren’t made to be broken but world records are, and this one was shattered. The previous largest ruby, known as The Sunrise, was “only” half as big (25.59 carats). To me, The Sunrise looks about as big as a red M&M. The Estrela de Fura looks like a strawberry. The most expensive strawberry in the world, that is.

If rubies are your thing, keep an eye on Mozambique. Ruby mining is relatively new to this country in the south of Africa, with the first significant discovery of the gems made in 2009. Less than fifteen years later we have the record-setting Estrela de Fura. Surely an even bigger ruby can’t be far behind.

Moving on. This week begins the month of July (and the second half of 2023) which means we have several reasons to see red. America’s Independence Day includes a lot of red, whether the flag or the fireworks. Sunbathers will see the color on their skin more often than they’d care to. Strawberries are ripe and in abundance. The month’s zodiac sign is cancer (the crab) and crabs are often red. And July’s birthstone is, of course, the ruby.

Now’s a good time for some ruby trivia, the fun facts you most likely don’t already know. The first one is my favorite for your next social gathering:

Rubies are actually sapphires by definition (all mined from the same crystalline form of aluminum oxide known as “corundum”). In other words, rubies are simply rarer, red-colored sapphires.
Don’t touch!
Rubies have symbolized power and protection throughout human history, as with decorated warriors in battle (or slippered Dorothy in the Land of Oz).
“The Hope”
You’ve heard of the (blue) Hope Diamond but how about the (red) Hope Ruby? The Hope is 32 carats, cradled in a ring and highlighted with just a few diamonds. Same name, yes, but different gem, color, and setting.
The most desirable (read: costly) rubies have a hint of blue in them, which contributes to the rich deep color known as “pigeon’s blood” red.
A 10-carat ruby is typically more expensive than a comparably sized diamond. Why? Supply (and demand). You just don’t find as many large rubies as you do diamonds.

So there you have it: everything you need to know about rubies just in time for the month we celebrate them. I’d be remiss (translation: “in trouble”) if I didn’t mention my wife’s birthday, which is next week as well. Yes, her birthstone is the ruby, and “darn it all” I had the perfect gift idea if I’d only known about last week’s Estrela de Fura auction sooner. These opportunities come along but once in a red moon. Sorry honey, I need to be a little more on the ball. Guess I’ll hang onto our $35M for next year’s birthday present.

Some content sourced from the CNN.com article, “Largest ruby ever to come to auction sells…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Rolling in the Isles

With the world “opening up” again, my wife and I often talk about places we’d like to visit. Some of them are more accessible now that we live near the East Coast. One in particular is further away. But coincidence or not, the five locales tempting the travel bug in me have one thing in common. Every one of them is an island.

Let’s get my first choice out of the conversation straight away, because it kind of stretches the definition of “destination” and “island”. I want to go see a round of The Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia. If you’re not into golf you won’t understand the fuss, but trust me, when you’ve watched this competition on television every April since you were a kid, the place becomes a shrine of sorts. The Masters never played into our decision to move to South Carolina, but the course is suddenly only forty-five minutes from my new front door. So why is it an “island”? Have you been to Augusta? The Masters is like finding a bright green emerald in a bowl of gravel. Let’s just say it would be complimentary to describe the rest of Augusta as “plain vanilla”.

Now for the real islands. The first two fall on a lot of must-see lists: Hawaii and Ireland. Hawaii is no less appealing even though South Carolina makes it three hours further than from where I used to live. I’ve only seen “The Islands” on my honeymoon and on family trips (decades ago) so I know this time around would be decidedly more adventurous. Not that I want to bungee-jump into a volcano or anything; rather just take a closer look at all Hawaii has to offer.

As for Ireland, it feels a lot closer when you live up against the East Coast. If I had x-ray vision I might see the Blarney Stone from these parts. My wife and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary with our first trip to the Emerald Isle, where we saw a lot of Dublin and only a wee bit of everything else. We tossed a coin into the Trevi Fountain to be sure we’d go back, and… oh wait, right… that’s Rome. Anyway, something we did in Ireland back then – whatever it was – instilled the yearning to go back someday. And we will.

Island #4 – Mackinac – sits neatly between the two peninsulas of the state of Michigan. The “Crown Jewel of the Great Lakes” has been on my must-see list ever since I watched Somewhere in Time in college in the 1980s. Yeah the movie’s a little corny, but it’s utterly romantic and it stars Jane Seymour, so cut me some slack. More importantly, Somewhere in Time shows off Mackinac’s Grand Hotel in all of its past/present glory. No, I can’t afford the stay at the Grand (rooms start at $500/night) but I’ll settle for one of the B&B’s on the island and spend my money on other stuff instead. Like a horse-drawn carriage tour with my wife (Mackinac has no cars). Or a round of golf on the only course in the country where the trek between the front nine and the back is, again, by horse-drawn carriage. Or a brick of Mackinac’s famous fudge. Whatever the draw, I’ll endure two connecting flights, a couple hours of driving, and a quick ferry ride, just to experience Mackinac’s throwback delights.

I’ve saved the best for last (well, at least, I think it’s the best). If I ever make it to France, I’m heading straight to Mont-Saint-Michel. “St. Michael’s Mountain”, which I’ve blogged about here, first captured my imagination when professional sandcastle builders (yes, there are such people) built a replica on the beach where I grew up, and again when I studied architecture in college.

The whole island setup is just so remarkable: nothing but a walled village of shops, restaurants, and other structures, connected by cobblestone streets ascending up, up, up to the Romanesque church and abbey at the pinnacle. Only 29 residents at last count. The surrounding tides ebb and flow, so at times Mont-Saint Michel is an island and at other times not so much. And about that abbey on top. The first cornerstone was laid in 1023, making Le Mont 1,000 years old this year. All that time and I’ve never ever seen it? Mon dieu.

If I make it to my five “islands”, I might have to add just one more. Ireland is paying people almost $100k for the “gift” of an island off the western coast of the country. There are twenty such islands. The catch: you have to refurbish whatever structures you find and you have to live there. Shelter yes, but food, water, power, and fellow humans are maybe’s. Yeah, I won’t be rolling with any of those isles. Let’s just start with that golf course down the street from me, shall we?

Some content sourced from the CNN Travel article, “Ireland will pay you $90,000 to move to a beautiful island home”

Boundaries

My wife and I took a “triangle trip” last week to see her family and then our son, flying from Augusta (GA) to Denver to Dallas, before returning to Augusta again. There’s nothing round-trip about an itinerary like that; just three one-way flights in a row. Like any other frolic in the friendly skies however, the journey served up easy fodder for a blog post. Hectic airports? Uncomfortable turbulence? Delayed flights? Yes, yes, and yes. But for today’s post, step up to the podium my fellow passengers, for it is you who have earned my writing wrath.

We’re in familiar territory here. I’ve written about my flying annoyances in Sitting in the Catbird Seat and First Class is now un-American (among others). But those musings focused on airplane seats and airplane sections. Today is about airplane occupants. Some of them are making the national headlines for their ridiculous antics. The others all seem to have ended up on my flights. Allow me to introduce my new “friends”.

On the flight from Augusta to Denver, a family of three filed into the row directly in front of us; wife on the aisle, young child in the middle, husband on the window. As they settled into their seats, the kiddo started rapid-firing questions: Dad, when are we going to take off? Mom, where do I put my jacket? Dad, I can’t get my seat belt on! Do we get snacks? Dad? Hey, DAD!!!

Kids are loud. I remember my first flight too, and the drive-you-crazy curiosity of a six year old. But I certainly didn’t expect the parents to answer in baby talk. Oh Stevie, the biggy wiggy pilot way up in the fwont of the plane decides when we get to fly up, up, up in the sky! Maybe if you’re a weely weely good boy he’ll give you a wittle pair of wings to put on your backpack!

Or how about… Now Stevie, yelling at Mr. Seat Belt isn’t very nice. Look, there’s a wittle buckle and a wittle other end! Let’s make it a game! See if you can snap those bad boys together!

This is why I never leave home without noise-cancelling headphones.

On the flight from Denver to Dallas, we had our choice of “uncomfortable”. First, we trudged to the back of the plane, in front of and back of a large group of men who a) chose to be loud and laughy, and b) chose to speak across the aisle/rows in Spanish (even though the smattering of English made it clear they were fluent in both). At first I thought my nearby amigos were just being a little obnoxious. But the longer they kept it up, the more I thought I probably ought to know what they’re saying just in case…

This is why I never leave home without Google Translate.

Also on Denver to Dallas, a small child several rows forward spent the whole flight wailing I want Mommy! I want Mommy! I want Mommy! We were too far behind to see or hear what her traveling companion was doing (if anything) to make her feel better, but eventually some kind of alarm went off in my head. What if this child was being abducted? After all we were heading to Dallas, which could be considered a gateway to the world for that sort of thing. I alerted the flight attendant, who assured me everything was okay. And it was. Turns out the child belonged to one very overwhelmed father, solo-parenting (or not) a total of three kids.

This is why I never leave home without my wife.

I haven’t even mentioned the usual annoyance. Since my wife prefers the window seat I graciously accept the middle. So why is it my neighbor in the aisle seat always takes the armrest? Doesn’t he or she realize I’m squeezed between two bodies? Over the last two decades the average airline seat width has shrunk from 18.5″ to 17″. If the passenger on either side of the middle takes the armrests that means I’m reduced to 15″, while each of them gets 18″.

This is why I never leave home without my elbows.

If you ever fly with me, I’m the guy with his head down reading his Kindle. I’ll be polite and, for the most part, leave you alone. But don’t be fooled. I’ll only have one eye on my e-reader. The other – and both ears – will be tuned into whatever you’re up to in your seat. Please respect your boundaries.

The Cheese Stands Alone

Back in his days of stand-up comedy, Bill Cosby did a great routine on golf. He talked about the frustration of watching the game on TV, trying to locate a little white dot as it flies through a screen of blue sky. I can still hear his puzzled description of playing the game, where he’d say, “You had the ball right there in your hand, but then you went and hit it away! Now you have to go get it!” It’s the sort of “play on play” I thought of when I heard about cheese rolling.

Humans thrive on competitions and we’ve come up with some weird ones over the years. Wife-carrying. Fruitcake tosses. Pole vault. Or just about anything from the Scottish Highland Games (caber toss, anyone?) But the Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake may be the weirdest one of them all. Seriously, who willingly signs up to sprint down a seriously steep hill, in hot pursuit of a rolling, bouncing wheel of cheese, where the grand prize is… the cheese itself?

Here’s a video of one of this year’s races at Cooper’s Hill (near Gloucester in England). I dare your jaw not to drop as you watch these contestants spill into view at the top of the hill. Notice the leaders have already left their feet and are literally falling down the mountain. It reminds me of the ad where the tire goes over the cliff, starts rolling down a steep incline, and then bounces high off the rocks and terrain as it gathers speed before disappearing below.

🧀 Canadian 🇨🇦 Delaney Irving won’t remember much of winning the Woman’s race at #cheeserolling.

After being knocked out on her way down, she was unconscious for a period of time but told us it was all worth it.

⚠️ WARNING: Contains graphic images pic.twitter.com/yxwk0YaGUE
— Greatest Hits Radio Gloucester (@GHRGloucester) May 29, 2023

The cheese really does stand alone at Cooper’s Hill because it’s never actually caught. A rolling wheel of Double Gloucester is simply too fast. Instead, the winner is the runner (“faller?”) who makes it to the bottom first. Just about every participant sustains injuries. In last week’s running, with the usual nod to the hospital emergency room, the winner of one of the women’s races knocked herself unconscious just as she crossed the finish line. Revived in a nearby recovery tent, only then did she realize she’d won.

Organizers expect “damage to participants” at Cooper’s Hill. A first-aid service is at the ready, as are several ambulances. A local rugby club volunteers to be “catchers”, positioned on the hill to rescue anyone who finds themself out of control. In a quote from the Sydney Morning Herald (yes, this event gets global attention), a participant described the race as “twenty young men chasing a cheese off a cliff and tumbling 200 yards to the bottom, where they are scraped up by paramedics and packed off to hospital.” Sounds like a blast, doesn’t it?

Here’s my favorite quote about cheese-rolling. Matt Crolla, who won one of this year’s men’s races, was asked how he trains for the event. He admitted, “I don’t think you can train for it, can you? It’s just being an idiot”. That about sums it up in my book.

I tried to think of similar sports to cheese-rolling and drew a total blank. Golf, shot put, and javelin all start by sending an object on its way (like a rolling cheese) but in none of them do you race after it. Then I thought about hoop rolling. Remember that game? No, you don’t – you’re too young! Nobody rolls hoops anymore! But there was a time when kids did just that, using a short stick to propel a wooden hoop along the sidewalk, trying to keep it upright as long as possible. Sounds about as boring as cheese-rolling is dangerous.

In the timeless nursery rhyme The Farmer in the Dell, one of early lyrics includes “the child takes a nurse”. Several lines after that, “the cheese stands alone”. Maybe the song was a nod to cheese-rolling. After all, most participants are going to need a nurse whether or not they win this crazy race. Maybe even a wake.

Some content sourced from the CBS News article, “Women wins chaotic UK cheese race…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Seaweed Sarge

With the U.S. Memorial Day holiday in the rear view mirror, the 2023 summer season is officially upon us. According to surveys from American Express Travel, sun-and-fun seekers prefer New York City, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles this year. Las Vegas raises an eyebrow (after all, summer in Sin City is broiler-setting hot) but notice something else: Florida didn’t make the top three. Maybe – no, probably – it’s because Seaweed Sarge is already wreaking havoc on the Sunshine State’s beaches.

If you don’t know Seaweed Sarge, it’s because 1) you deliberately avoid the news these days – an increasingly popular trend – or 2) like me, you need a more creative label for sargassum, because it’s a weird name for the seaweed intent on taking over the world. Sarge is a little intimidating, if only for his size. Picture him as a belt of algae 5,000 miles long (I can’t picture anything 5,000 miles long, can you?) Now consider: Sarge will double in size by July, the peak of his “bloom season”.

Sargassum is a particularly annoying form of seaweed. It’s rootless, which means it can reproduce while simply floating around on the ocean’s surface. Its rapid growth is bolstered by nutrients leached into rivers and oceans from land-based agriculture. Once it makes shore sargassum rots immediately, releasing irritating hydrogen sulfide and the stench of rotten eggs. And trying to remove countless tons of seaweed begs the question: where the heck do you put it all?

Florida’s gonna have to figure out the answer to that last question, and fast. Sarge is already littering beaches from Ft. Lauderdale to Key West and we’re just getting started. Come July and August it’ll be virtually impossible to walk along the shoreline.

My own visits to the beach have been blissfully Sarge-free. Most of my sun-and-fun takes place in San Diego, far from Sarge’s primary Atlantic Ocean residence. The only real nuisances on San Diego beaches are the occasional jellyfish or stingray, and a once-in-a-blue-moon shark sighting (which stirs up more anxiety than actual sightings). Admittedly, Sarge washes ashore in San Diego as well, but mostly just here and there as a remnant of off-shore harvesting. Seaweed does have its upsides, in foods, medicines, and fertilizers.

Ironically, I have fond memories of Sarge as a kid. He’s built with giant flappy leaves reminiscent of a mermaid’s fishtail. He’s got countless air sacs to keep him afloat, which make a popping sound as satisfying as squeezing bubble wrap. If I’d thought to take pictures back in the day, I could show you Sarge as an adornment to many a childhood sand castle.

An army of beach tractors could work all summer in South Florida and barely make a dent in Sarge. The seasonal maintenance of the single half-mile beach in Key West alone is in the millions of dollars. But a better solution may be in play. A prototype robot has been designed to do battle at sea. “AlgaRay” cruises slowly through the water, hooking tons of Sarge’s strands in a single pass. Once at capacity, AlgaRay drags Sarge underwater to a depth where all of those air sacs explode. No longer buoyant, Sarge sinks to the ocean floor; a “watery grave” if you will. AlgaRay has been likened to a weed-eating Pac-Man or a vacuuming Roomba. Either image works for me.

Let’s have one more look at those tourist surveys. One in ten say they’d cancel or reschedule a trip to Florida if they knew Sarge was coming ashore. Maybe that explains why landlocked Las Vegas ranked #2 on this summer’s most popular U.S. destinations. Not that Vegas doesn’t have its own threats. Three years ago a swarm of locusts descended on the Strip, blotting out casino windows and streetlights. An annual migration of tarantulas passes by in the surrounding desert. So take your pick: hordes of flying/crawling bugs or a giant mass of inanimate algae. Maybe Sarge isn’t so bad after all.

Some content sourced from the NPR.org article, “Giant blobs of seaweed are hitting Florida…”

Lifeless Buds

I have a Venus flytrap named Frankie. He lives alone in a plastic cup on the patio table, happy in the humid air as he nabs the occasional bug. My wife’s nearby garden is boasting fruit, vegetables, and colorful blooms but I’m content to just watch my little tabletop carnivore do his thing. I’ll get to why I named my bud “Frankie” in a minute but let me just say this: At least he’s a live little bud. That’s more than a lot of people can say about their more imaginary friends.

Here’s a morsel of self-discovery for you, extracted from my several years of blog posts. I have a habit of referring to inanimate objects with terms of endearment. My most recent example: two weeks ago when I discovered the SpaceX satellites launching into outer space. I referred to those technological marvels as “little guys who talk to one another”, and, “when their time is done they’ll return home for a proper burial”. Whether this is just cheap entertainment or an effort to elicit empathy from you readers, I regularly inject life into the lifeless (or in this case, a soul into the metal and mechanical).

I didn’t have to scroll back very far to find other examples. My post a week before the satellites, Hail, Caesium, endeared of all things, a lost capsule of nuclear waste. First, I nicknamed the capsule “Little Caesar”. Then I re-nicknamed it “LC” and noted how detection equipment ultimately “…led the search team right to our little friend”. Were you more relieved to know the waste had been contained or that our little lost friend had finally been found?

Conifer Confetti, a post from last fall, lamented the hours I sacrifice to contain the untold number of pine cones on our property. I referred to the cones as “females” (because biologically, they really are) and in one frustrated burst of endearment, said “It’s like having the world’s biggest sorority row above my backyard, and every house is about to disgorge its girls for a giant party on the ground”. So which is it Dave, a whole lot of “yard waste” or thousands of “little ladies”?

The “poor” leftover pieces from the LEGO Grand Piano

Finally, my series of posts on building the LEGO Grand Piano and LEGO Fallingwater were rife with terms of endearment. All those plastic pieces were like little families bagged up in a single box; couples waiting to be married. At times I thought I lost “one of the little guys”, and I felt sorry for the leftovers who’d never realize their destiny of being a part of the completed model.

This topic was inspired by an article in The Atlantic about the spacecraft Cassini. Six years ago, Cassini completed a 13-year data-gathering cruise around Saturn and its moons. Utterly alone and running out of fuel, Cassini turned towards the planet, eventually burning up in the atmosphere. As NASA described the final moments, Cassini “fought to keep its antenna pointed at Earth as it transmitted its farewell”. An entire room of scientists at Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory fell into tears. Cassini is the perfect example of – big word here – anthropomorphism. In simpler terms, the more “alive” a machine appears to be, the more empathetic the response from humans. Some robots are deliberately anthropomorphic, a subtopic we just don’t have enough words for today.

As I watch Frankie ingest another insect, it’s time to reveal the genesis of his name. Maybe you don’t remember Frankie Avalon in his prime but you do remember the 1970s movie Grease. Avalon showed up in a memorable scene, descending a staircase dressed in white while singing “Beauty School Dropout” to Didi Conn’s “Frenchy”. Guess what? Avalon had an even bigger hit: Venus. That song is a plea to the goddess of love to bring him romance; someone pretty and very much alive. Okay, so my Frankie isn’t pretty, but at least he’s alive. That’s more than I can say about all those other little buds who keep showing up in my blog posts.

Some content sourced from The Atlantic article, “How to Mourn a Space Robot”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

State Flyovers

The heavy-duty bracket I purchased to display our American flag sits patiently on the garage shelf. The flagpole and flag stay wrapped in the plastic they came in. I hesitate with this little DIY project because I’m mounting the bracket onto a rounded wood column on the front porch. If the column isn’t solid throughout, it may not support the Stars and Stripes. Or the Palmetto State flag, for that matter.

If you’re not familiar with the South Carolina state flag, you are now. Not very exciting, eh? A white palmetto tree in the middle and a white crescent to the upper left, on a rectangle of deep blue. Okay, but what about why the flag has this look? That’s a little more interesting. All of it is a nod to the Revolutionary War. The crescent could be found on an American soldier’s cap, palmetto logs were used to build the forts they fought from, and the deep blue was the color of their uniforms. My assumption was simply, “Oh, our state has a lot of palm trees and a lot of clear moonlit nights.”

The same could be said for the state of our former residence. Colorado’s flag is likewise simple, with a big red “C” for Colorado surrounding what I assumed was a yellow nod to the state’s bountiful days of sunshine (300+/year). Nope, I only got the sunshine part right. The “C” represents “columbine” (state flower) and “centennial” (Colorado became a state in the hundredth year of America’s independence). The red represents the state’s distinctive sandstone soil, the white its ever-present snow, and the blue its endless skies (which really are an amazing blue). More than meets the eye with this “state flyover”, am I right?

Not content with just SC and CO, I decided to give a few other state flags a whirl… literally. I flicked my mouse wheel the way someone might spin the bottle, for an unsuspecting ~~kiss~~ choice from the list. Up came ME. There’s a lot going on with Maine’s state flag, including a couple of proud characters and a moose that looks rather cartoonish. “Dirigo”, from a long-ago-but-now-defunct language of the region, means simply, “I lead”.

Here’s a further sampling of U.S. state flag trivia:

Arkansas was the first of the fifty states to produce diamonds.
Hawaii was once under British control, so their flag includes a small version of the “Union Jack”.
Montana’s motto is “gold and silver”.
Ohio’s flag is not rectangular and includes a “swallowtail” notch (which can’t be said for any of the others).
Oregon’s flag has a different design on each side.
Utah’s flag changes in 2024, to better represent the makeup of the state’s residents.

If you live in an American state, you should play this game yourself. Scroll to the image of your flag in the article: The state flag for all 50 states… but before you read the written description, make your best guess on the colors and symbols. It’s fair to say most Americans don’t really know our state flags.

South Carolinians love to fly flags. You’ll see the colors of colleges and universities from all over down here (including the red/black of those nearby football champion Georgia Bulldogs). You’ll see a lot of those “garden flags” designed to represent the year’s seasons and holidays. But mostly you see the Stars and Stripes, and the Palmetto and Crescent. South Carolina’s forever nod to the Revolutionary War means I’ll never look at our flag the same way again. Now I just have to get the bracket where it belongs so I can hoist the banner same as every other resident.

Some content sourced from the USA Today article, “The state flag for all 50 states…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Celestial Strings of Pearls

When I take the dog for a walk after dark, I never know what to expect in the night sky above me. We live in an area devoid of city lights so the celestial show is clear and sometimes dramatic. Ursa Major (aka Big Dipper) often makes an appearance. Venus is the brightest ~~star~~ planet low in the western sky at twilight. And the full moon, seemingly biggest as it rises just above the pine trees, can be breathtaking. But none of this prepared me for the bold processional streaking across the heavens last Thursday night.

It could’ve been Santa Claus and his reindeer for all I knew. Sitting around a backyard fire pit with friends, having drinks and swapping stories, one of the women suddenly shrieked, “LOOK!!!” and pointed skyward. At first it didn’t register what we were seeing (nor at second, nor at third). I can only describe it as a tiny string of bright pearls, two or three dozen in the strand, perfectly spaced and moving silently across the sky. Neither pulling nor pushing, they simply proceeded in a line as if drawn to some unknown destination. It almost looked like the one-after-another cars of a roller coaster, heading up that first steep incline.

Our group was at a loss to explain this extraterrestrial. We thought it might be the neatly arranged contrails of a stealth fighter. Or some faraway electronic billboard advertising in Morse code (only with dots, no dashes). Turns out we weren’t even close. Our little alien spacecraft parade was the latest launch of Starlink satellites from SpaceX.

You’ve probably heard of SpaceX, even if you don’t know much about what they do. Founded in 2002, SpaceX is one of Elon Musk’s ambitious companies, with the “modest” long-term goal of colonizing Mars. While they design and launch the spacecraft to make that happen, SpaceX is providing Starlink Internet service to under-served areas of the globe by building a “constellation” of satellites around the planet. 42,000 of them.

This is technology way beyond my understanding, but here’s the basic setup. A transmitter somewhere on earth sends the Internet up to one of those satellites and the satellite then rebounds the signal back to you. If the satellite loses your direct line of sight, it can hand off the signal to one of its buddies and your Internet service continues uninterrupted. SpaceX earned the license for a ten-year window – starting in 2019 – to complete its Starlink constellation. At last count they’ve already got 4,000 of these little guys in orbit.

Credit Musk for identifying a market in need. Mars may not be on my bucket list but faster Internet service certainly is. Two years ago 10,000 Earthlings signed up for Starlink subscriptions (at $599 USD for the hardware and $120/month for the service). Today? Fully 1.5 million customers are bouncing data back and forth with all those satellites. My rural location here in South Carolina (and the s-l-o-w speed of my current Internet provider) make me a prime Starlink candidate. Later this year, I’ll also be able to switch over my cell phone service. Yep, Elon Musk is literally taking over the planet. Come to think of it, maybe the entire solar system.

A “string of pearls” before the satellites go their separate ways

Whether or not I subscribe to Starlink, I find the satellite technology fascinating. We have a lot of “space junk” circling Earth but this constellation of man-made stars seems more elegant. They’re launched in strings of up to 60, separating once they’re high enough. Each satellite’s thruster is powered by krypton and argon. They talk to one another to avoid collisions. They’re currently undergoing “dimming” to appease astronomers by taking a back seat to the real stars in space. Finally, these satellites can “de-orbit”. In other words, when they’re time is done (even satellites don’t live forever), they return home for a proper burial, which means burning up entirely as they attempt reentry through Earth’s atmosphere.

Several websites track the continuing launches of Starlink satellite strings (like this one). You can find out exactly when they’ll be passing overhead in your neighborhood, destined for their rightful place in the budding constellation. If you see them stream by, remember, it’s not Santa and his reindeer (wrong month). It’s a string of pearls designed to provide you with faster Internet service.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.