You’re a Star…and Then Some

Don’t get the big head, we all are. Regardless of the origin of the Universe, whether it was swept into existence by the glorious hand of an omnipotent deity or blasted from a pin tip into instant perpetuity…or both…the path to us is amazing.

Carl Sagan observed, “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”  His point was that everything comes from a complex and lengthy line of circumstance…or that home cooking is no big deal.  Regardless, no matter how simple or basic the object, its truest origin is extensive.

Ironically, the ingredients to that extensively contrived pie, and everything else we see around us, is made of just three things: protons, neutron and electrons.  Those three minuscule particles can be split into yet smaller particles but we’ll stop with them.

Flashing back to grade school science you’ll remember, elements are made of atoms; the atom being the smallest piece of an element.  Atoms are made of three ingredients, protons, neutrons and electrons.  The same way you can combine sugar, butter and flour to make dozens of desserts, you can combine protons, neutrons and electrons to make over a hundred different kinds of atoms (elements).  Like a cosmic Lego set our incredibly diverse world is made almost entirely from just three simple ingredients.

Protons, neutrons and electrons formed shortly after the Big Bang and then combined into the smallest elements; hydrogen, a bit of helium and maybe a touch of lithium.  Eventually stars formed, exploded, more stars formed from the leftovers, they exploded and more formed and all the while, bigger and bigger atoms were built.

Smaller stars convert hydrogen into more helium. Medium sized stars like our Sun convert helium to carbon, oxygen and other mid-sized atoms.  And bigger stars produce bigger elements like silicon and titanium all the way up to iron (an atom of which weighs about fifty-five times more than hydrogen).

But to get to the largest three-quarters of the elements it took a little more drama.  Enormous explosions of massive stars created ridiculous amounts of energy fusing protons, neutrons and electrons into colossal (relatively speaking) atoms.  An average star exploding is to this type of supernova what a hiccup is to childbirth.

Now let’s look at us.  About a tenth of our body is composed of elements that were around just after the Big Bang: hydrogen, helium and lithium.  The bulk of the rest is the product of average stars: oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, etc.  And the last little but essential bit is heavier elements coming from those massive supernovas.  And so it is with an apple pie, a dash of Big Bang residue, a few cups of star dust and a pinch of supernova remnant and you’ve got a homemade dessert.

So the next time you’re feeling a little down on yourself, maybe you said something off color at supper, perhaps you passed wind in church, keep this in mind: it’s taken billions of years and megatons of energy just to make you.  You’re a star…and then some.

The Hard Road Gets Easier

I got a little good luck and a little bad luck when I decided to do the season’s first mowing.  The good luck was the lawn mower starting right up, an almost unheard of event, at least without extensive tinkering.  The bad luck was a flat tire; a common phenomenon fixed temporarily but repeatedly over the mowing season with an air compressor.

This flat tire wasn’t typical, it required dismounting the tire (hammer, screwdriver, hydraulic jack, pickup bumper, jaws-of-life, nuclear bomb), a tube (15 bucks) and remounting (not done yet…and the weeds are tall).  I’m confident once softball, basketball, senior activities and the other important events that spice my life ebb I’ll get the riding mower in operating condition, which I’m quite certain, it shall remain in (more or less) until late fall.

The reason I’m confident the tedious fix will turn into smooth sailing is a basic constituent of chemical reactions called ‘activation energy’.  The idea is: it takes more energy to start a process (activate it) than to sustain it; like throwing a match into a can of gas. 

Think of a bolder sitting behind a small hump, on top of a hill.  You’ve really got to put a shoulder into getting the rock over that hump, but once it is, away it goes.  That, my friends, is life…unless the boulder rolls up the next hill, reverses, rolls down and then back up the first hill and lands on your foot.  That, too, is life.

Consider teens.  They have energy.  Even when indolently lying around they’re just a bad decision away from action.  But try getting them out of bed; it’s like lighting asbestos with flint.

Riding a bike demonstrates this principle.  Scraped knees, bruised egos and an exhausted dad running alongside lead to thoughtless balance, effortless speed and unbridled freedom.  Even on a micro scale, getting your rump off the couch and onto that ridiculously undersized triangular wedgie applicator takes a tremendous amount of mental power.  But once you’re out on the open road the freedom of childhood comes rushing back…until the seat wedgie pain elevates to excruciating levels, fading to merciful numbness and finally, the panicked realization that numbness in that particular area, other than during childbirth, is a bad thing.

Computer programs bear witness to ‘activation energy’   A program that edits pictures, turns voice into text or allows the creation of banjo tablature is like a shiny new toy under the Christmas tree…that hasn’t been assembled.  The things I could do with the program…if only I knew how to use it.  It’s not until many frustrating hours after I open the program that I can easily zip around, accomplishing what I’d wistfully envisioned…and only later still that I recognize I almost never need to do what that program accomplishes.

I suppose I could consider the acre plus to be mowed, the start-up smoke cloud rolling out of the muffler, the dog chewed seat and the homemade tire-tread blade protector and go buy a new zero-turn mower, but Ole Freebie does the job without a monthly payment.  And while fixing the tire is a bit of a pain, the hard road gets easier.

It Might Be Best to Know a Little Less

I’ve always had a minor interest in the Hindenburg disaster.  The startling footage captured my attention as a child, the dichotomy of a light news story turned colossal disaster is riveting and since I was a chubby kid with the last name Herndon, I got the occasional moniker of Herndonburg.

That horrific catastrophe happened over three-quarters of a century ago, but recently new video has surfaced.  It’s from a different angle, more a side shot, and shows the pilots having trouble balancing the enormous hydrogen tube.  Once digitized, it’s expected to settle once and for all…or for most…what caused the zeppelin to burst into flames.

The fire was due in part to the Germans’ choice of highly flammable hydrogen gas instead of helium gas which isn’t flammable…but makes you sound like a cartoon character.  The Germans chose hydrogen because the United States refused to sell them helium…and because they were bad decision makers. 

Back then you were responsible for your own decisions so it was the Germans’ fault.  Today I suspect there would be a Congressional investigation and plenty of finger pointing to distract us from an overwhelming National Debt and Congressional decisions that would make Charles Ponzi proud.

Back to my main point, Hindenburg film footage.  What was unusual then, filming an event, is more than commonplace now.  Not only are major and minor historic events recorded for posterity, so are family holidays, casual get-togethers, minor milestones and random acts of stupidity. A television show, America’s Funniest Videos, has nearly made it to a silver anniversary harvesting the more humorous moments of our recorded lives.  It’s hard to believe as recently as 1989 there was no monetary value placed on testicular torsion.

Were the Hindenburg disaster to happen today there’d be a dozen professional film crews along with a hundred or more personal cell phone clips of the event.  Many of which would find their way to the public’s eyes before the first emergency crews arrived.

The busy-body in me likes that kind of access, but the more sensible parts of my persona worries it’s too much information about too many things.  Brains are limited (some more than others) and the start-to-finish coverage we’ve come to expect steals time we ought to using for important things like family time, reading for pleasure and napping.

Consider current meteorological practice.  When a major weather event is expected we’re warned of impending disaster for days.  Grocery shelves are battered, bread and milk scarce, and lines backed up at gas stations.  All because there was a pretty decent chance of a snow storm, thunderstorm, wildfire or combination of the three…that will be over in a few hours.

Even if the worst does happen it’s over relatively quickly, some people suffering but most unaffected.   Then we’re left to devise clever ways to eat bread and milk because cereal and toast get old after a week.

Our brains were developed to do a great job handling a few topics at a time, most of which we could actually influence.  The coming of news media allowed us to look out a window at the world and learn about our fellow man and his significant events, both good and bad; originally for just thirty minutes a day.  There are days now where news coverage of an event runs from morning to night.  Great for the curious mind, terrible for the balanced life, we seem to have gone overboard on knowing and slacked off terribly on doing.  It might be best to know a little less.

It never ends!

My main chore around the house is laundry.  The wife gave me a choice, laundry or supper; I chose laundry.  Well, initially I proposed the wife do both, but that was rejected so I chose laundry.

Supper would be an hour or so every day and laundry was more a once or twice a week endeavor…a multi-hour, once or twice a week endeavor, but fewer times a week seemed better than every day.  All in all, I thought I’d gotten the best of the deal…but now I’m not so sure.

Initially, I did five loads a week; whites, lights, reds (oranges mostly, from our alma mater) and two loads of darks.  That worked out for several years, but something’s happened recently.  I can’t be sure, but it seems the kids are changing clothes hourly throughout the day.  Whites and lights have stayed one load, larger perhaps but still just one load.  But reds and darks have both added at least a load a week.  That’s a 40% increase in labor.

Supper has remained a steady 5 people.  Sure, the boys eat more calories now that their older, but not at supper.  Between tumblers of milk and after school bowls of cereal we’d be money ahead buying a dairy cow.  I’m afraid I know who’d get milking duties so we’ll keep visiting the dairy case.

Another hurdle in the laundry chore is clothes sizes.  What fits for a wash or two, shrinks over a dozen dryer rides.  I’ve thrown out these wild ideas about buying a size larger but have been chastised for my impracticality.  Instead, I put shirts and pants on hangers and let them dry in the garage.  A clothes line is another option, but I don’t think it would speed things up.  Lately, with the extra loads, I’ve been setting the dryer on low and tumbling everything.  So far it’s worked, but everyone thinks they’re getting taller…even the wife.

We have ‘involved’ kids, which means ball games, practices and various other activities on evenings and weekends.  That doesn’t affect quantity of laundry much (maybe a few extra items each week) but it makes cooking easier.  If there’s no time to make supper we grab a pizza or run through the drive through and everybody eats.  But when these activities preempt laundry, nobody has clothes.

Somebody needs to master throw away garments.  They could use industrial toilet paper as a fabric.  It wouldn’t be that comfortable but that stuff never tears…at least not like it’s supposed to.  For winter wear there’s the paper they make Bounty towels from, it already looks a little like a sweater.  I’d be happy with paper grocery sacks with holes cut for the head and arms.  Grab some Magic-Markers and the kids could customize their outfits for the day.  A lunch sack helmet and cardboard sword and you can make a heck of a knight outfit.

When I’ve mentioned my concern over recent laundry developments (the wife refers to this as ‘whining’), I’ve been offered the opportunity to switch chores.  After getting burned on this deal I’m reluctant to change…I’m not sure what chicanery she might have up her sleeve.  I guess I don’t know for sure that laundry is the bad end of the bargain, but I do know this: it never ends!