Following on from last week’s.
Fire-making supplies, fishhooks, reflective air blanket. Fire-making supplies. Driftwood. She could build a fire. Only to do that, she would have to move, and she was so very tired. So much easier just to lie down and rest.
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They have left, taking with them the skins they used to cover their shelters, their weapons, the gourds they use to carry water and some foods, and everything else they can carry on their backs. I would be lonely, had they not left me with a dilemma — for they are not all gone. One was left behind.
She is a young female, injured by a leopard several fivedays ago. There has been considerable argument in the group over the last few days, and I think the gist of the disagreement was the fact that they could no longer gather enough food to survive here, but she could not be moved. They have left her with skins to cover her in a small hut surrounded by thorns. Surely they do not expect she can survive on her own! Perhaps they plan to come back for her? But she and her shelter were the only things left! If they had planned to come back, surely they would not have so loaded themselves!
I cannot interfere.
If I do not interfere, she will surely die. Her leg is broken, a compound fracture they have no idea how to treat, and the leg is mangled as well.
I have enough medical knowledge to treat her, though I am far from being a Healer. I could bring her water to ease the thirst I cannot help feeling.
I cannot interfere!
“Frost in low lying areas.” It’s not an uncommon forecast here from mid-August on, though thankfully it’s not in the immediate forecast. But why low-lying areas? Doesn’t it get colder as you go higher? Don’t some mountains have snow on top all year round?
Well, yes – but we’re talking about two different processes. A great deal depends on whether the air is heated or cooled from below, where it is in contact with the ground.
Cold air is denser than warm air at the same pressure. If cold air and warm air are side by side at the same pressure, the cold air will flow under the warm air, just as water flows under oil. This kind of structure, with cold air under warm air, is called an inversion. It is very stable, which means very resistant to vertical mixing. This means that any pollutants put in the air cannot mix very far vertically, so inversions are closely associated with air pollution.
At night (effectively all winter here in Alaska) the ground radiates more energy to space than it gets from the sun, and actually cools the overlying air. This cooler air tends to run downhill if there is any slope to the ground, and pools in the lowest parts of the landscape. If it’s very close to freezing, the lowest areas may wind up with frost.
If the sun is up and heating the ground, however, a different process takes over. The warm ground will heat the air. We now have warm air lying under cooler air, much like oil lying under water. The warm air will rise. At it rises, it moves into lower pressure and expands. The energy for the expansion has to come from the heat stored in the air, so the air cools as it rises.
We know exactly how fast dry air cools as it rises: 10 ° Celsius for each kilometer of rise, or 5.5°F for each 1000 feet. This is called the adiabatic lapse rate. With enough heating at the bottom the air will rise, cooling at the adiabatic rate as it does. So in the daytime the air normally cools with height, and mountaintops are cooler than valley bottoms.
Inversions can also form when warm air rides over colder air. This often happens when high-altitude air is sinking and warming, which is common in anticyclones. Thus anticyclones are known for air pollution.
In most latitudes, solar heating of the air will eventually break the inversions caused by nighttime cooling. Not in Alaska in winter! Here solar heating is very slight during the winter, and it is normal for the air to be coldest near the ground. Often the warmest air is a mile or more up. This means we are very prone to air pollution in the winter – astonishingly so, for such a small population. It also means the hilltops are very popular places to live – they’re normally warmer than the valley bottoms. But at this time of year, the main effect of inversions is those pesky frosts in low-lying areas.
©Sue Ann Bowling
The music of the spheres–
A trite phrase, and one with little meaning
Since universal gravitation replaced crystalline spheres
And first man
And then the sun
And then a point in the center of the galaxy
And then everywhere and nowhere became our center.
We drift, uncentered.
But here
The music of the sun, the moon
The deep rumblings of the moving plates of the earth
The colors of our world–now gold below, blue above–
Make up a different music of the spheres.
Monotonous at first. The heart of earth
Beats slowly by the beating of our hearts.
But change does come, bacteria
Gave way to jellyfish,
And dinosaurs to man.
These notes change slowly, night to day,
Season to season, the cycles of the sun.
Here we are centered once again.
What’s this about? There is a room at the UAF museum in which the rhythms of the earth — seismic tremors, sun, stars, aurorae — are expressed as musical tones and colors on the wall. This poem was inspired by that room.
“Standing armies are expensive beasts to maintain.” Mercedes Lackey, Exile’s Honor. Alberich’s reaction when he first hears of Karse’s hiring the Tedrels.
“Where there are fortunes to be made, men will seek to make them, be the source never so vile.” Mercedes Lackey, Exile’s Valor. Alberich, as he is trying to recruit Keren to aid in his undercover work.
“Losin’ temper makes people do stupid things.” Mercedes Lackey, Take A Thief. Skif, explaining to Alberich why he will not wear his new throwing knives as a matter of routine.
“Abstract thought takes a poor second place to berry pies when you’re only thirteen.” Mercedes Lackey, Arrows of the Queen. Talia is getting her first meal as a helper in the Collegium kitchen.
“There’s nothing like being worse at something than a thirteen-year-old girl to really deflate your opinions of yourself.” Mercedes Lackey, Arrow’s Flight. Talia’s comment about having Elspeth share her lessons with Alberich, the armsmaster. Talia is eighteen by this time.
“When a man does not claim a reward visibly, I look for a reward hidden.” Mercedes Lackey, Arrow’s Fall. Alberich’s comment on Lord Orthallen.
“When he starts wanting to eat everything in sight, he’s all right.” Sue Ann Bowling, Tourist Trap. Roi has gone into esper shock (low blood sugar from overusing his esper talents) but is starting to come around after having honey smeared in his mouth.
This isn’t really a book review, or if it is it is a very biased one — I wrote the book. Maybe it would be more accurate to call it a much longer version of the synopsis on the back of Tourist Trap. A synopsis has to be very limited in length; this gives me room to introduce the characters and the conflicts.
Tourist Trap: the second novel about the Confederation that grew from Jarn. The white lead dog is Snowflake.
Tourist Trap is the second novel I’ve written about the Jarnian Confederation. This is a loose confederation of human-occupied planets, with a remnant population of R’il’nians, who hybridized with proto-humans to produce modern humans around 125,000 years ago. Some of the hybrid descendants followed their R’il’nian progenitor back to space; others remained on Earth and became our own ancestors. Most of the pure R’il’nians are extinct, but the remnant and their descendants from recent cross-breeding have the responsibility of protecting the human-occupied planets from other intelligent races and (more often) of preventing them from warring with each other.
In Homecoming (set around the time of George Washington’s birth) the last R’il’nian surviving in the Confederation, Lai, discovers that the human lover who left him years ago fled because she was pregnant with his child, in defiance of the Genetics Board. The child, raised a slave, is rescued at thirteen and given the name Roi — but he is found because he is struck down by a paralyzing disease. Homecoming deals with Lai’s discovery of a woman of his own species, Marna, on a distant world and their acceptance, Healing and education of Roi – himself an untrained Healer — who must finally accept that he, as having the most R’il’nian characteristics of Lai’s children, will replace his sociopathic half-brother, Zhaim, as Lai’s heir.
Tourist Trap starts a year and a half after the end of Homecoming. Roi, now eighteen, has been given a trip on Falaron, a planet terraformed from ice age Earth, as a graduation present. His three closest friends from slavery have been given to him as slaves, though as far as Roi is concerned the slavery is simply a legal fiction that allows him to act as their protector while they gain the education they will need to survive on their own.
The markings on this horse are a good match for Amber's horse, Splash.
Roi is well aware that his father and the other adults around him consider that he is lacking in independence because of his slave upbringing, and partly because of that is determined to handle the journey on Falaron without aid. Underneath, however, he is both afraid of Zhaim and fearful of becoming like his older brother.
Flame, slave-born and the one who has known Roi the longest, has every intention of staying with him and doesn’t much care whether she is his slave or free.
Amber, kidnapped into slavery as a child, also loves Roi. But she is very aware that she will grow old and Roi will not, so she has decided to stay with Timi. She trusts Roi to release her when she has the education she recognizes she needs.
Tim, also kidnapped into slavery, wants his freedom now, and has begun to resent the fact that Roi owns him. In partial response to this, he is pursuing a friendship with Zhaim.
This foal is obviously much younger than Roi's horse, Raindrop, but the color and markings are right. Photo courtesy of Gail Lord.
The Falaron guide, Penny, makes the fifth of the group. Dog sledding, hang gliding, a trip across a landscape much like Pleistocene North America by horseback, sailing across a large lake, river rafting and rock climbing are all part of the fun.
Penny starts out treating Roi and his friends as clients. But she finds herself caring more for all of them –especially Roi – than she really intended.
But Zhaim is using Timi, and intends that none of the five will survive their trip. He is not stupid, and realizes that either Lai or Marna would protect Roi if they had any idea of what he was up to. So he plots to get them far away from Falaron – Marna to combat a plague he engineers, and Lai to stop a holy war he has goaded on. Even before the two R’il’nians leave he uses Timi and the weather against the travelers.
The geophysics and weather patterns of Faleron were carefully thought out, as was the seasonality. Yes, I modeled it on the rain-shadow effect of the Rocky Mountains, but the weather patterns and climate are reasonable for mid-latitudes on an Earthlike planet.
I had fun writing this. I’ve had considerable experience with dogs and horses, and they, as much as the people, are individuals. Amber and Timi’s lead dog, Snowflake, is an older dog, arthritic, and a bit of a telepath – so was the first dog I owned. Snowflake might well be the leader on the cover of Tourist Trap. And the five horses they ride are individuals too. Roi’s Raindrop is a spirited animal that responds well to Roi but is far too much horse for Timi, who does fine with the rather lazy Dusty.
It’s science fiction, but the surroundings are primitive and the focus is on the people: R’il’nians, crossbreds and Humans alike. Try it. You might be surprised to like it, especially if you think you don’t care for science fiction.
This guy was nibbling the lawn in my front yard. Interesting color for a wild rabbit.
The sun rose at 5:37 this morning and will set at 10:11 this evening, for 16 hours 34 minutes of potential sunlight. We are still losing almost 7 minutes a day, but the rate of decrease has slowed slightly. The sun is now less than 40° above the horizon at noon, but this is balanced by its being more than 11° below the horizon at its lowest, at 1:55 this morning. We’ll have nautical twilight back before the end of the week, but I doubt we’ll see many stars through the clouds.
Not a great picture (I still havn't learned to time action shots on a digital camera) but you can tell the sun was shining for a moment.
Fair Midway from the top of the Ferris wheel.
Potential sunlight has been very much what we’ve had the week of the fair. Mostly cloudy (typical Fair weather) which means mostly overcast with brief spells of sun and rain, sometimes at the same time. The sun was shining enough to get a few pictures of the horse show Saturday, but by the time I walked over for my annual Ferris wheel ride and got to the top of the wheel, spits of rain were starting to make themselves felt. Luckily I was in the big metal display building by the time the downpour started, so I heard rather than felt it.
Potato plants. Somewhere under all that greenery is a rather small bag in which the potatoes are planted.
The garden is getting out of hand, not least because I can’t get at it without getting my feet soaking wet, which is not a good idea when I have a cold. No sign of red on the tomatoes yet, though lots of green ones. But I’m giving away zucchini, the beets are coming faster than I can eat them, the beans badly need picking, and the potatoes I planted in a bag are overrunning their corner of the old dog run. No frost likely this week, but we only have a few more weeks of gardening left.
Following right after last week’s.
Her hand slid back down toward the gravel, brushing the heavy climbing belt on the way, her fingers catching on one of the pouches fastened there. Penny’s face came into memory. “You’re going to be short of belt loops, carrying all the anchors,” Penny had said, “so let Timi carry your tracer. But keep the stuff in the emergency pouch with you. It doesn’t weigh that much.”
Emergency pouch.
Tourist Trap is now available from Barnes and Noble or Amazon. If you want to read the scene to date, I’m adding each six sentences to my author website as they are posted here.
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They are nomadic, moving from part to part of their range as the animals they hunt move. I’m fairly sure they are related to the great apes, though they are far more intelligent and communicate with sounds. Not R’il’nian, of course, but I have learned a few words of their speech by listening, and I think it is advanced enough to transmit surprisingly sophisticated concepts. Certainly they teach their young to make weapons and other tools, and it is true teaching, not merely allowing the young to watch.
I have stayed hidden, of course, and nudged them away mentally when they came too close, but they have found my tracks at times, and been very puzzled by them. Especially if Patches is with me. I think they are preparing to leave, following the herds. I find myself wondering if I could learn their language ….
NO! I cannot interfere with their evolution, however much I long to speak with them.
But I will be very lonely, when they have gone.
I’m not a great fan of alternative medicine, and as a general rule I classify treatments sold at the Fair with snake oil. At the same time, I’m not really enthusiastic about the pill-for-everything approach of some doctors – and acupuncture did seem to work for my dog, once, when the more conventional vet said she’d be paralyzed for life. Besides, my back hurt, after walking all over the Fair. It usually does, when I’m standing or walking for any length of time (like over 5 minutes.)
So when I saw an outfit that comes every year with chairs urging passers-by to sit down and have a demonstration of their pain relief, I thought, “Why not? It probably won’t do anything, but just sitting will help.”
Well, it did help. I put it down to sitting and resting my back (though the electrical stimulation did feel good) and fully expected my back to be hurting again by the time I’d walked back to my car.
It didn’t.
In fact, it didn’t really start bothering me until I’d been walking around the fair for an hour the next day. So I went back for another demonstration. By the third day I’d decided to phone my doctor about this, and actually dropped off the company’s brochure at her office.
She confirmed that TENS therapy was a viable method for pain relief, but that Medicare probably wouldn’t cover it. (Many other insurance plans do.) The Fair price sounded reasonable to her, and I wound up buying a unit.
The unit works by applying a small electrical stimulus through pads you stick on your body. The pads must be in pairs so that the small current can flow between them — not much currant, as the thing operates on 3 AA batteries. For my back, 4 pads are used – 2 on either side of my back, above and below the waist, with the current between the right and the left side. The result is a forced muscle vibration, leading to increased blood flow. It feels very much like massage – not like an electric shock at all.
I’ve used it a couple of times at home, now. The pads (which are reusable many times) are incredibly sticky when new, and so far I’ve used it mainly on the backs of my thighs, which tend to cramp badly at night. Warning: don’t try to change the position of the pads without turning the unit off! Hands do feel the electrical stimulation as a shock!
How does it work? There seem to be several theories, none of them thoroughly proven. But it does seem to help.
All in all I think this will be far better for me than pain-killers, which I’m leery of anyway. I’ll let you know what I think after a couple of months of use.
The unit is produced by Home Care Technology Co. and the people at the fair have a website.
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