The Dog Days

The Dog Days are upon us. Sirius, the "Dog Star" must be working overtime although I can't see Sirius or the constellation Canis Major from my usual vantage point. The Romans blamed Sirius for the hottest days of summer. Then there is that other dog reference regarding the heat of the day..."mad dogs and Englishmen...."   I don't blame the dogs, they are miserable, too. It has been so hot and humid here in the middle of the continent that things seem to be grinding to a halt. Human activity is curtailed as much as possible during the day. After a while your brain fries or just starts to dry out. I stopped for gas the other day and it took me three tries to get the car turned so the gas pump was on the same side as the gas cap. The old fried brain couldn't figure it out. I'm guessing that the economic statistics for this summer will reflect a lack of commercial activity just due to the heat. It's not likely to get better any time soon. They forecast four of the next five days will be over 100 degrees here. We've already had about twenty 100+ degree days in the last month and almost no rain. We had rain on July 8th and on June 11th...that's it. We have the humidity as well as the heat but no rain.

I stay holed up inside as much as possible during the day but after dark it gets almost tolerable so I venture outside. I'm a sky watcher. Sirius and Canis Major are on the other side of the house and concealed behind some trees so I can't shake my fist in their direction. That's fine because I have plenty to watch. The night sky is busy if you happen to live in a place with little or no light pollution. Planes flying coast to coast pass overhead. There is an old Trivial Pursuit question asking where Richard Nixon was when Gerald Ford was sworn in as President.  He was almost directly over my head fleeing to San Clemente. I try to guess where the planes are going with a rough map stored in my head. Perhaps Dallas to Chicago? Denver to Cincinnati? There are some that come from the west and then turn 90-degrees to the right and head south directly over my head. I live about an hour east of an Air Force base so some of those planes are military flights. On weekends they fly east and then make a big U-turn and head back to their base. I guess those are training flights. We used to see Stealth Bombers but they are pretty rare these days. You could hear them before you saw them so I'm not sure how stealthy they are.

Meteor showers are always interesting. I was born during the Perseid meteor shower, one of the best of the year, so I have a long-standing birthday ritual of going out and watching for meteors on my birthday. I've seen a bunch. They come in colors occasionally. Sometimes come in in pairs, side-by-side. Sometimes they break up and pieces go off in different angles. Sometimes they leave a glowing trail. Experts say they are only the size of a grain of sand. I find that very hard to believe.

Last night I caught sight of an Iridium Flare, which is caused by sunlight reflected off of a satellite. There are a bunch of Iridium communication satellites with large reflective panels that catch the sunlight and cast a beam of light out of the pitch black sky back down to Earth. The flare lasts only a second or two but it is extremely bright -- maybe -8 in magnitude. Sirius, that "Dog Star", is the brightest star in the sky with a magnitude of -1.4 so an Iridium Flare can be several times brighter than Sirius. The full moon is magnitude -6 and the Sun is -13 so a bright flare can fall in between the moon and the Sun in brightness. Iridium Flares look like someone turned on a flashlight and then turned it off again. Actually there is so much stuff orbiting the Earth now that it can be confusing and dangerous.  A Russian satellite collided with an Iridium satellite at 22,000 mph and left a bunch of orbiting debris that is something of a hazard to astronauts.  Some of these things are predictable...you can go to web sites and check out when the International Space Station will fly over your house or track other highly visible objects.

For right now I'm hoping to see some thunderstorm lightening on the horizon heading this way. It could not arrive too soon.

Fiat 500 -- Just a Whim

I got a post card in the mail that invited me to come to Columbia to test drive a Fiat 500. Thats about 35 miles just to test drive a car...but they offered me a $25 Visa debit card as an incentive. Since I was going to Columbia anyway I decided to maybe take them up on it.

I picked up Donna (we were heading to Boonville for lunch and a winery visit) and we decided to try driving the Fiat. This turned out to be more interesting than I thought.

Let me begin by saying that I once owned a Fiat that was a horrible car. There is no end to the horror stories I could tell. When it rained the ash trays filled with water and water came out of the radio speaker.  No kidding. Also, the car wouldn't start if the temperature was under 30 degrees. It developed a habit of refusing to turn off...it kept running even when I had the ignition turned off and the key in my pocket. Maintenance was a chore and the local mechanics had no idea how to fix it. The wiring chart was in Italian. But...it was a fun car to drive.




So, I was skeptical that anything with the Fiat name on it would be worth looking at.

After seeing it I would say that I was cautiously impressed with it. It is the 2nd smallest car on the market in the US. Smart car has one slightly smaller.




It looks kind of retro and that was apparently intentional. You can see some of the old-time Fiat DNA in it's design. This was a two-door hatchback. I didn't take a good look at the back seat. The hatchback opens to a space big enough for maybe two suitcases behind the back seat. Rear seats fold down and make a lot more cargo space but they don't fold flat so it is still sort of a balancing act.







I can recall riding around in a little Renault
and several old VW Beetles when in high school and this was sort of reminescent of that...which is the retro idea kicking in. The salesman said they thought young people would be the market for them but they are selling to baby boomers instead.





It was surprisingly roomy inside. Donna and I are not petite people and the saleman was normal size...not a dwarf...and we all climbed in and were comfortable. The seats are like sitting in a chair...you sit up, not on the floor.

Seats are adjustable and the steering wheel is adjustable so it is easy to get comfortable. There isn't a "chicken bar" handle on the passenger side, which would be useful. Headroom was OK. Leg room was OK.



The dash board and steering wheel look like something out of the 1950s but the instruments are up to date. Some of the controls are on the steering wheel. It has "bluetooth" voice recognition technology for some stuff...which I know nothing about.








There is a lot of digital information staring you in the face but the speedometer is the traditional analog needle pointing to your mph speed. The steering wheel is small but it can get in the way of seeing the digital display.

Somewhere in here there is a four cylinder motor. It is front wheel drive. You can't really see the front hood - or much of it - when driving or sitting in the front seat. We drove the automatic 6-speed. We had three people in the car and had the AC blasting at full power and the car took off like a shot. We had no problem on the highway. At slower speeds it seemed like it had to labor a little to go up hill in residential neighborhoods. Steering was super responsive and caught me off guard the first few turns until I got used to it. It "turns on a dime with nine cents change". Apparently it can get up to 38 mpg which is good but not great considering the size and the competition. Fiat bought a big chunk of Chrysler and this seems to be their re-entry into the US market. They were offering 60 months zero interest and the base price was somewhere around $16,000. They want to get some of these on the road. You would need to add some options. The tiny spare tire is an option...a tire patch kit is standard.

While I liked it and it was fun to drive and I was impressed I'm still a skeptic. My prior experience was so bad that I'd want to see some performance info and maintenance data before I got one. Donna drove it and she liked it as well but she drives a Honda and is very happy with her experience and maintenance that she was also reluctant to say she would want one without more of a track record.

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Mr. A. L. Bennett on the Occasion of his First Birthday

I am not around babies much these days so excuse me for being a proud great uncle of Austin. He turned one and there was a family picnic birthday party on his behalf. He is a little charmer.

Shannon and Austin

Let's get the show on the road

Fire!!  Fire!!

How did that get there?

Blue tastes pretty good

Get the hose

There are supposed to be presents.

The evidence



Austin & Eva

Mary & Eva

Walnut Grove Pavillion - Babler

Journey to Peru 2012

I just got back from a week in Peru. I'm not going to post a long travel account....not here anyway. I just have to say that this was one of the most enjoyable trips I've taken. The people of Peru are happy to share their country with visitors and the entire experience was extremely positive. Much of the trip is, of course, focused on the Inca Empire and what they were able to accomplish and their downfall under the invading Spaniards. We were on "the beaten path" to Machu Picchu...it was more like a pilgrimage than a vacation but since there was just two of us we had ample opportunities to observe and reflect on the country, people and whole experience.

 I have to say that the trip was more than a change of scene or a chance to see one of the wonders of the world. It was also a mental trip -- an attempt to see into the consciousness of the Incas. They left no written records and the Spanish tried to destroy as much of the tangible elements of the empire as possible, but there is still a lot of Inca left in Peru. We went with our own "baggage" made up of preconceived notions, experiences and attitudes and found things to be very different. We came home with an expanded view of human consciousness, abilities and existence. 

 Our own idea of human existence was constrained and defined by our own experiences and Peru and the Incas cause us to call these perceptions into question. They looked at problems differently and found solutions that we probably would not have considered. Where we look at the stars we see mythological or animal constellations tied to the stars, they concentrated on the blank spaces -- the voids -- where there were no stars and created their own culture's constellations from the voids. They were a very symbolic people and were tied to images and symbolism. The original city of Cusco was laid out in the shape of a Puma...not that you would know it from the street level but it would have been more apparent only from above or in the mind's eye of the engineers and planners who laid it out. The Incas had a notion that everything had a spirit or a life force, including the mountains, and at Machu Picchu they used the contours of the mountain to shape the city. They didn't destroy the underlying mountain, like we would, but built on top of it or incorporated it into their plan. There is a rock outcrop at Machu Picchu that they could see clearly as the outstretched wings of a condor and they elaborated on that particular site and created a more apparent image and then used it as a specialized funerary site where VIPs were laid to rest after their death. To us it would look like a couple of chunks of bedrock that were in the way but to them the condor was one of their symbols for heaven. 

 I'm still pondering some of this and recommend the trip to people who haven't been there.  It was not just a trip to a different geographic area...we found it to be a journey that expanded our way of thinking in some ways.