Six Sentence Sunday

Here’s the 3rd six-sentence excerpt from the third book of the trilogy I’m working on, continued from last week. I’m still looking for beta readers.

She [Coralie] turned her head and saw that one of the gray-brown streaks flowed into an unbelievably large tree trunk.  The other streaks–she was looking up into the canopy of a forest such as she had never known existed.

They’d been on the ship with the others–she remembered that much–and a man whose expression had frightened her had tried to take Michelle.  Then Michelle had been back in her arms and…  She frowned.  What had happened after that?

Yes, what had happened?

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The Transit of Venus

The reflector I used to see Venus was the large tube at the far right. The tan circle with the orange tube just to its left is the one that produced the shadow image shown below.

Tuesday was the last opportunity I’ll ever have to see the transit of Venus with my own eyes, and Alaska is one of the places where it was (theoretically) visible from beginning to end. Local astronomers with properly shielded telescopes were set up by the Noel Wein Library in Fairbanks, so since the sun was actually shining around 2, I took off to see the fun.

I said theoretically because while the sun was up for the duration of the transit, and the transit was visible (unlike a solar eclipse) from anywhere that the sun was visible, it’s been cloudy most afternoons. I set out with more hope than expectation, as towering clouds were visible in all directions. (It had hailed the day before.)

Sunlight came and went.

I’m not going to repeat in detail the reason why transits of Venus are rare—the Wikipedia article I’ve linked to does a good job of that. Basically, the orbit of Venus is inclined to the orbit of Earth by 3.4°, which means that Venus appears actually to cross the sun only when both planets are very near the line of nodes, the line defined by the crossing of the two orbits, at the time Venus comes closest to Earth. Last Tuesday was the last time this century that this will occur.

Shadow image of the sum. Venus is the small dot at the lower right. (Click on any photo to enlarge.)

By the time I made it to the library, the lawn sprinkled with telescopes was sunlit – most of the time. Clouds were scudding back and forth over the sun, and a thunderhead was towering to the east and headed our way. (Yes, thunderstorms often move from east to west up here.) I got a look at the sun through a properly filtered reflector during a break in the clouds, and later managed a photograph of a setup where a small telescope was focused on a mirror that produced an image on a white card. Literally minutes later the sun was covered with dark clouds.

This was taken minutes after the shadow image. Note there are no shadows–the viewing was over for the moment.

I’m glad I had a chance to see this. I’m not a big observer of astronomical events, but I got to watch the total solar eclipse in 1963, any number of lunar eclipses, the partial eclipse last month (via a pinhole camera) and now the Venus transit of 2012. Wish I could find my solar eclipse photo – it was spectacular.

Jarn’s Journal Year 3 Day 22

This is ridiculous.

I am not a young buck trying to impress the does, though no doubt there will be some at this gather. I am certainly not trying to convince anyone that I am a god – the People (as they call themselves) seem altogether too inclined to believe that anyway. So why am I worrying about clothes?

Worrying about footwear would make sense. My feet have still not hardened to the point I can walk any distance without covering them, though I can now walk for an hour or so in the tanned skin bags I have fashioned. The rest of my wardrobe ….

Well, my ship clothing is past repair. I have the linen tunic and a leather vest that Songbird made me, but they are getting badly worn. My tanning skills are not up to Songbird’s, and nowhere even close to her mother’s, but I’ve managed to tan — sort of – some gazelle skins for breechcloths. But compared to the men of the people, who were preparing for the gather when I visited them early today ….

I wish I could just go naked, the way I do around the shelter. But the people honestly believe that the difference between the People (they think of the word that way) and animals is that the People adorn themselves. Pigments ground from rock and plants, scarification, feathers, beads, shells, finely crafted tunics and breechcloths and even whole hides tanned with the head on. They would be shocked by my nudity. Beside, I would prefer to be as inconspicuous as possible, though my veined eyes and relatively straight hair would mark me out.

At least I think I have found the site, near a lake. Storm Cloud’s group is no more than a day’s travel away, which is no doubt why they have stopped for a day or two of preparation.

I hope they do not take my rather scruffy clothing as an insult.

A Love Affair with Begonias

This spring’s boxes, just planted.

One of my favorite summer flowers is the non-stop begonia. They like my part of Alaska, for one thing. I’m not sure whether it’s the cool temperatures, the long periods of light, the relatively mild sun (never much more that 45° above the horizon) or the low humidity, but they thrive here.

One of this year’s, just transplanted. The trumpet behind it is a monkey flower.

Then there are the colors. They come in every shade of red, white, pink, orange, yellow, apricot, salmon, blush — everything but blue. The colors are clear and brilliant, and glow against the dark green foliage.

Yellow begonia, just transplanted.

I normally pair them with the blue and white bicolor lobelia, “Regatta Blue Splash.” The combination is ideal on the north side of the house, where both plants are happy.

This one, from a previous year, does a better job of showing the lobelia.

I’ve been tempted to start them from seed. But the seeds are dust-fine, which means the seedlings are tiny and it takes months to grow them to flowering size. Since they’re widely available as plants, and my plant room in spring is invariably infested with bugs, why bother?

Last year’s boxes along the north side of the house.

And I absolutely cannot resist photographing them.

I even use begonias in tubs to hold down the tarp covering my potting soil.

Quotes from Andre Norton

The first six of these quotes, all tweeted last week from @sueannbowling, are from Year of the Unicorn, by Andre Norton. This is a first person book, with Gillan as the narrator.

“Can anyone accept what they do not know?” Gillan is fighting with her own doubts and fears.

“Can any one truly say what a man is, or may come to be?” Gillan is trying to stand up against the pack, but at this point she does not believe her own words.

“Fear could become so familiar that it no longer was a goad.” This is what Gillan has said earlier, but now that the pack is trying to separate her spirit from her body, she is not so sure.

“Fear can kill.” Gillan, hiding from That which Runs The Ridges.

“Was I only real to myself?” Gillan, realizing that she has no shadow.

“To see ever the cloud and not the sun is to woefully and willingly blind oneself.” Gillan, as she prepares to take on herself the challenge to the pack.

“You’d be cheating them by taking more than your share of the work.” Sue Ann Bowling, Tourist Trap. Penny to Roi, when he offers to use his esper abilities to help with camp chores.

Dinosaurs: Perfect Predators (DVD Review)

This is another Discovery channel DVD with a range of production dates. Although the DVD is dated 2011, the three programs contained are from 1997 through 2009.

The first, Dinosaurs: Perfect Predators, came out originally in 2009, so it is not too dated. However, it is totally unclear from the DVD that the three predators featured did not all live at the same time. T-Rex lived at the end of the Cretaceous, around 67 to 65.5 million years ago. Quetzalcoatius arrived a little earlier, though both were caught by the K-T extinction event 65.5 million years ago. Deinochychus, however, lived from 115-108 million ears ago in the early Cretaceous.

It is also worth pointing out that though Deinochychus (terrible claw) was 3 meters long, its back was less than a meter high, its weight was about that of a man, and it quite possibly had feathers. That does not mean it was other than a terrifying predator, especially in a pack.

The second program, Monsters Resurrected: The Great American Predator, deals heavily with trace fossils: a dinosaur trackway in Texas which has been interpreted as a two-legged predatory dinosaur, an Acocanthosaurus, taking down a large sauropod, a Paluxysaurus. Again, these are early Cretaceous dinosaurs, and would not have been alive at the same time as T-Rex. This program also dates to 2009. Both of the 2009 programs are a mix of paleontology and computer animation, but the science strikes me as superficial. (The footprint casting is of some interest.)

The third program, Beyond T-Rex, is quite old by dinosaur program standards and is focused mainly on paleontology. The “theme,” whether or not the discoveries of two large predators in the southern hemisphere “dethrone” T-Rex, struck me as rather silly. Yet in spite of its age (1997) this is probably the best of the three programs as far as paleontology is concerned.

The two dinosaurs discussed are Carcharodontosaurus (sharp-toothed lizard, apparently native to Africa)) and Giganonosaurus (giant southern lizard, Patagonia.) The two are very similar, and are much more closely related to Allosaurus and each other than they are to Tyrannosaurus. In fact, they are so similar that their distribution has been used to argue that there was still a land bridge between South America and Africa in the early Cretaceous, when these giants were alive. No mention is made of feathers, which is hardly surprising given the date of the programs, well before the feathered dinosaurs of Mongolia were discovered.

The history of Carcharodontosaurus is intriguing. The first specimens were found by German paleontologists before WWII, but were lost to allied bombing. More fossils were discovered in Morocco in 1995, and this material is the subject of the program. The casting of the skull is of considerable interest, as is the part of the DVD dealing with the rediscovery.

The discovery of Giganonosaurus in Patgonia is covered as well. Here a better idea of the live animal can be obtained from the BBC DVD, Chased by Dinosaurs, as one of the episodes involves a pack hut of Argentinosaurus by Giganonosaurus.

As a discussion of dinosaurs as predators the DVD is rather incomplete, especially the first two episodes. It may be worth getting if you want a complete collection of dinosaur videos.

North Pole Weather 6/4/12

The sun rose this morning at 3:22, and it will set tomorrow morning at 12:19 for 20 hours 57 minutes of daylight. The rest is twilight, but a fairly bright twilight with sunset/rise colors never fading (if the clouds break up a little.) Noon solar altitude is now 47.7°, and the day length is still increasing by about 6 minutes a day.

3/4 of the vegetable garden as of May 1. The “empty” holes are seeded.

Weather has been showery but relatively warm; enough rain to make long trike rides problematic; not enough total rain to help much with the plants. Of course every time I water, it does rain!

The vegetable garden is ahead of where it’s ever been before by the end of May. All raised beds are planted, and all but one row of the holes along the edge. I think I’ll use the remaining holes for a second seeding of lettuce. (I’ve had good luck seeding beets in the holes, and most of the “empty” holes in the photos are in fact seeded.) I transplanted the lettuce plants into the holes along the outside of the squash bed, planning to harvest them before the squash leaves shade them out.

Dwarf columbines, June 1. They not only are hardy and bloom early, they self-seed with abandon.

The dwarf columbine, strawberries and white violets are in full bloom, as is the spirea. So is the white iris nearest the house, and I spotted the first wild rose last night. I planted most of the flower boxes, tubs and hanging baskets last weekend.

#WriteMotivation final check in:

1. Get the garden going. Given the earlier springs up here lately, I’ll try to get the beans started indoors by April 25 and the squash by April 30; plant outdoors before Memorial Day. Get seeds in before Memorial Day if possible. This will involve getting the hoops to support plastic covers up on all three raised beds.

I didn’t quite get it all in before Memorial Day, but I did get the raised beds dug and the vegetable transplants in Memorial Day weekend. Just about everything else is now taken care of — far earlier than usual.

Spirea, photographed from my emergency exit 6/3/12.

2. Keep up daily blogging using my existing schedule: Alaska weather Monday, review Tuesday, quotation context Wednesday, wild card Thursday, Jarn’s Journal (back history on my sf novels) Friday, Science/technology/health Saturday, and Six Sentence Sunday Sunday.

Done.

3. Keep up Context? Tweets daily @sueannbowling

Done.

4. Put at least two interesting science links a day on Homecoming’s page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Homecoming/109303925759274

11:15 last night. The colors intensified later, though the sun had still not set at midnight.

Done.

5. Get outdoors for at least a couple of hours a day when the weather cooperates, either gardening or tricycle riding.

Done.

6. Read over entire trilogy for flow; put bits on Six Sentence Sunday; find a beta reader or two if possible.

I’d still like a second beta reader, but otherwise done.

5:20 pm, 6/4/12

P.S. it hailed about 5 this afternoon. Most unusual for Alaska–we just don’t have the kind of storms here that I grew up with in Kansas.

Six Sentence Sunday

Hi, Sixers. This is a continuation of last week’s snippet from the third book of my trilogy in progress, working title War’s End. Coralie, her baby in her arms, has just ended her uncontrolled tumble though somewhere.

The trilogy is in what I’d call polished draft format. I need beta readers desperately, so e-mail me or leave a comment if you’d be interested in reading the whole trilogy. The individual books end on cliff-hangers (that sort of trilogy) so ideally they should be read together–but I should warn you the whole trilogy runs to about 400,000 words.

Somehow she managed to wiggle onto her back, where she could check Michelle [the baby].

The baby was wailing indignantly but so far as Coralie could tell, unhurt.  Was that overwhelming sense of hunger Coralie felt Michelle’s?  She offered her breast, and Michelle latched on greedily, her outrage forgotten in the pleasure of suckling.

Coralie’s vision was clearing now, and she looked up.  What she saw made no sense at first–a broken radial pattern of grays and browns of various shades, against a silver-spangled background of more shades of green than she had ever seen before.

Where is she? She’s supposed to be on a spaceship!

P.S. Other sixers: I don’t know what’s happening, but a lot of my comments on others’ posts aren’t showing up and are giving no moderation notice. At least one went to a spam folder, so check yours.

For more snippets from well over a hundred great authors, check out Six Sentence Sunday.

IRT Plastic: Using the Sun

IRT plastic in use. Note the puddled rainwater.

Some plants, like peas and lettuce, are happy enough with cool air and cold feet, but others insist that their roots be kept warm. This creates problems in areas such as interior Alaska where the ground is frozen so deeply that it may be well into fall before the soil is warm enough to satisfy corn, tomatoes, beans or squash outdoors.

It is possible, of course, to attack the problem with brute force. Build a greenhouse, or use heating cables in the soil. Mounding the soil also helps. So do raised beds. But all of these together are barely enough in the Fairbanks area.

Clear plastic allows the soil to retain the heat supplied by the sun. My own experience is that it also provides a perfect environment for weeds to grow under the plastic. Maybe they cook in warmer climates, but here in Fairbanks clear plastic can be pushed right up by rampant (and very healthy-looking) pigweed and lambs’ quarters.

Black plastic or landscape fabric? They stop weeds, and you’d think they would absorb sunlight and warm the soil. Nope. They’re not in good thermal contact with the soil, and while the black covers themselves may warm, they do not transfer that heat to the soil. Black covers have the net effect of shading the soil, lowering its temperature.

Luckily, it is possible to combine the two.

Ever seen a rainbow? Or the breaking of white light into colors by a glass prism? Then you are aware that sunlight is actually a mixture of light of different colors. What you may not know is that our eyes are sensitive to only part of those colors, and that growing plants need mostly the same colors that we can see. But only about half of the energy of sunlight is in these colors. A little bit is in the ultraviolet, the part of the solar spectrum that tans and sunburns our skin. That’s only a small fraction, and most of that is stopped by the ozone in the atmosphere. A much larger part of the invisible energy is in the near infrared.

Most of this near infrared energy passes pretty freely though most substances (such as air) that we consider clear. It is a large part of what makes sunlight feel warm. But plants cannot use it to photosynthesize, so if they get only near infrared light they cannot grow. No weeds!

IRT stand for infrared transparent, and IRT plastic allows the near infrared radiation through to warm the soil, but blocks the visible radiation that would allow weeds to grow. I’ve been using IRT ground covers to grow squash and beans for years, even though I grow them in raised beds.

It does have one problem: it’s waterproof. At one time, I could find it with microscopic holes that let rainwater drain through to the soil underneath, but all I can find now allows rainwater to puddle on the surface and the soil to dry out underneath. Until this year, I had to carefully shape the soil so that the plants (and the holes for them in the plastic) were in low spots. This year I’m trying something new. What? I’ll tell you when I know whether it works, but if you look, it’s visible in the photo.

Jarn’s Journal Year 3, Day 1

Year 3, Day 1

Whatever else this planet may be, it is beautiful.

I teleported to one of the coasts I have found, far to the south, and sat for hours watching the waves roll in. Somewhere storms are raging, pushing the water into green hills, but here there is only a fresh breeze, droplets of spray wetting my hair, and the smell of salt and seaweed. Strange smells, when I arrived, but grown familiar now.

Shall I join the band I know at the gather? I open my hand to look again at the empty shell, miraculously unbroken, given to me by the waves. One of its like is the centerpiece of the necklace Storm Cloud loaned to Songbird. How long was the chain that brought that shell so far inland?

I would like to give this to Songbird, a small return for the help she gave me. Still gives me, as the incident with Lion’s camp proves. But how would that be regarded, in her culture? There was a sense of awe about Storm Cloud’s necklace. Was it because such shells are rare and precious? Because only the shamans wear them? What expectations would be raised by such a gift, to me a very slight thing indeed, but to them (in spite of all my denials) a literal gift from a god? So much I do not know!

I think I must go to the gather, if only to learn more about these people.

Jarn’s Journal is a fictional journal, recorded by a fictional human-like alien who was stranded in Africa during the interglacial roughly 125,000 years ago. His journal to date can be found on my author website. It constitutes the remote back story of the universe of my science fiction novels, Homecoming and Tourist Trap.