Dale E. Lehman's Blog: Lehman's Terms, page 9

Celestial Fireworks

They night sky is a fascinating place, particularly if you live under reasonably dark skies.  If you’re blitzed by light pollution, as are those who live in or near major cities, however, it can seem a pretty barren place, devoid of all but the brightest of stars.  In that case you might almost never look up, because what is there to see?

Sometimes, though, nature puts on a show that cuts through even the worst light pollution.  Such a show is in progress right now.  If you go outside just after sunset and look to the west, you’ll see two bright objects very close together and getting closer each day.

The brightest of the pair is Venus, the most brilliant object in Earth’s sky except for the moon and the sun.  No star and no other planet ever shines as brightly as Venus, so it’s instantly recognizable, even if you don’t know anything about astronomy.  Have a look tonight (or on the next clear night) and you’ll see what I mean.

The other object, roughly to the south (left) of Venus is giant Jupiter.  Aside from Venus itself, no planet is brighter than Jupiter, and no star is as bright.  So it, too, is instantly recognizable.  If it’s brighter than anything except Venus, it’s Jupiter.

The image above shows the evening sky at about 9:00 PM in Baltimore, Maryland on June 24, 2015, the day I’m writing this.   If you trace a line from Venus through Jupiter you’ll come to Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation of Leo, the lion.  Regulus is bright as stars go; it’s the 21st brightest star in the sky.  The two brightest stars in the sky right now are Arcturus, an orange star high up in the sky, and Vega, to the east and one of the three bright stars in the well-known “summer triangle.”  Finding them and comparing them to Jupiter and Venus can be interesting.

But here’s the really neat part: as the month wears on, Venus and Jupiter will grow closer and closer together, until on June 30th they are only about one-third of a degree apart.  How big is one-third of a degree?  Well, the full moon is roughly half a degree in diameter, so on the last day of June, Venus and Jupiter will be closer together than the full moon is wide.

In case you’re interested, this phenomenon–the closest approach of two celestial objects in the sky–is called appulse.  Another term sometimes used is conjunction, but technically conjunction occurs when two objects are at the same right ascension, which is essentially longitude projected onto the sky.  Venus and Jupiter will reach conjunction on July 1st, but they will be slightly farther apart than on June 30th.

By the by, “closeness” in this context is only how the objects appear in our sky.  In reality, Venus and Jupiter are nowhere near each other in space.  They just happen to line up along about the same line of sight from Earth.  Venus is 59 million miles away, while Jupiter is 561 million miles away.  The current positions of the inner planets and Jupiter are shown below.

An event of this brilliance doesn’t happen too often, so be sure to get outside and have a look as often as possible between now and the end of the month.  And keep looking after that, as Venus and Jupiter continue their dance, gradually separating again in early July.

 

 

Making Tracks

Kathy and I have been traveling by train with some frequency in recent years.  Kathy’s first long-distance train ride was 13 years ago when our oldest granddaughter was born.  The delivery had been difficult (to put it mildly) and grandma’s presence was required for a few weeks.  Upon her return, she waxed euphoric over the wonders of train travel.

I had ridden commuter trains for awhile, but my first Amtrak ride took place a couple of years later, when we attended the Association for Baha’i Studies conference in Calgary.  We rode the Capitol Limited from Washington, D.C. to Chicago, and from there took the Empire Builder out to Shelby, Montana, where we rented a car for the drive up to Calgary.  (If you’re ever there, we recommend the O’Haire Manor Motel, a nice place and, if things haven’t changed, the only place in Shelby you can have a rental car delivered to you.)  The return trip featured the same two trains.  But this voyage wasn’t so smooth as Kathy’s previous; the train was late getting to Chicago, the Empire Builder broke down on the way back and was horribly late getting back to Chicago, and I learned that although like Kathy I do enjoy riding trains, unlike Kathy I can’t sleep very well in a coach seat.

For awhile, I thought maybe I was train-incompatible, because nearly every time I boarded a train, something happened to delay it, the people around us were strange, or something alarming happened.  On one trip, a woman who had spent three days on trains with her three young children had to get off with the help of paramedics when two of the kids got very sick.  I hope everything turned out okay for her and her family.

This past weekend, we took another trip to Chicago via the Capitol Limited, this time to visit my parents.  On the return trip, we spent the extra money for a sleeper, which made the trip even more enjoyable because it was quiet and I was able to actually sleep.  We met several nice people in the dining car along the way, including a couple traveling east to help their son’s family move to a new home and a teacher who had some very definite opinions on the test-driven paradigm of present-day education.  (Hint: He seriously didn’t like it.)

One interesting thing about train travel is that many of one’s fellow-passengers are veteran rail riders.  Amtrak ridership has increased significantly since 2001 and the increased hassle of traveling by air, but convenience and the relatively lower cost aren’t the only reasons people go by train.  Many truly love this form of transport, and it’s not hard to see why.  You don’t have to drive, you can get up and move around, you can see the country, and (if you’re a people person) you can meet lots of interesting characters.

There are downsides, to be sure, but that’s true of any form of travel.  For us, the pluses outweigh the minuses.

So long as I don’t put a hex on the train, anyway . . .

Header image courtesy of tiverylucky at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

The Bonsai are Up!

During the winter, bonsai typically have to be stored to protect them from from the wind and from temperature fluctuations.  The cold isn’t so much the problem: trees that live in cold climates are designed to survive the cold.  The wind, though, can desiccate (dry out) a tree’s tissues, and temperature fluctuations can cause repeated freezing and thawing that can damage pots.

There are several strategies for dealing with these issues.  Deciduous trees can be stored in an unheated room or garage.  Once they’ve lost their leaves for the winter, they don’t need sunlight.  Due to lack of space, however, I have typically placed the trees under their benches and surrounded them with sheets of plastic to keep the wind at bay.  More recently, I’ve removed the shelving and simply placed the trees together, and used tall metal stakes to support the windbreak.

I generally put the trees into storage this way over the Thanksgiving weekend, as in my area that’s when temperatures are starting to get low enough that the trees will need some protection.  I put them back up on the benches in the early weeks of spring, depending upon how warm it’s getting.  This year I left them down a bit longer than usual, because the weather has been unusual.  As of today, however, they are back up.

I haven’t started repotting yet, although by all rights I probably should have done so a few weeks ago.  Unfortunately, I haven’t had time.  With luck I can get to that shortly.

Goodbye, Daniel

Last week, our cat Daniel passed away.

Abandoned in a local Petsmart, he came to live with us about two years ago. He could get nasty when he was scared or mad and mauled a couple of family members, but mellowed a bit after a couple of injuries, one involving another cat and one in which his tail was accidentally shut in a door. A year ago he was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). He nearly died, but the amazing doctors and techs at Eastern Animal Hospital restored him to a reasonable semblance of health. In his last year, he wasn’t as energetic as he’d previously been, but he still liked to zip outside to chase mice and birds whenever the door opened. Shortly before 2:00 AM on March 18, 2015, his heart gave out. He was about three years old.

Kathy and I have had cats and dogs for most of our married life, and are no strangers to such loss.  Some of our animals have died young, like Daniel, and some have had very full lives.  Punkin, a female tortoiseshell who Kathy referred to as her “attitudinous kitty”, lived to be 20 years old.  Lily, our Great Dane/mastiff, is now 13 years old, which puts her squarely in “older than dirt” range for a dog of that size.  I doubt I could provide a complete catalog of the cats who have passed through our lives; at one point we accidentally ended up with an embarrassingly large number of them.   But in all cases, we have had to contend with the basic fact that our canine and feline pals don’t live as long as we do, so to have a dog or cat is most generally to lose them.

For me, though, there is great consolation in knowing that on the whole we do our best to give them a good home.  Many of our animals have been cast-offs, creatures other people didn’t want or for some reason could no longer keep.  Even though Daniel’s life was short (some might say tragically so), while he was with us he was cared for, had a “brother” (our other cat Logan) to play with, and regularly escaped through the front door to chase local wildlife.

What more could a cat ask for?

 

Next Book Signing

I’m doing a repeat book signing at Greetings & Readings in the Hunt Valley Towne Centre on April 11, 2015 from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM.  I’ll be signing copies of The Fibonacci Murders and just might have some news about the sequel, True Death, which I’m currently writing.  If you’re in the area, please stop by and say hello.

By the by, if you can’t make it, you can pre-order The Fibonacci Murders from the store at the above link and I’ll sign it for you while I’m there.

Store information:

Greetings & Readings

Hunt Valley Towne Centre

118-AA Shawan Rd

Hunt Valley, MD  21030

410-771-3022

 

Celestial Gems

If you happen to have clear skies in the early evening, look westward and you’ll see Venus blazing in the dusk, with a reddish dot a bit below and to the north (right).  That dot is Mars.  The two planets make a beautiful pair.  Over the coming evenings, they will be pulling away from each other, their separation increasing noticeably every day.

Although you won’t be able to see it with just your eyes, Uranus is also there, higher in the sky.  Venus is approaching it , and on the evening of March 4th they will be extremely close together.  If you happen to have binoculars or a small telescope, it would be worth a look that night, if the weather cooperates.

Writing Out of a Corner

For awhile, I was making good progress on True Death, the sequel to The Fibonacci Murders.  A number of interesting characters had turned up, and the story was moving forward rather well.  Then it happened.

I wrote myself into a corner.

The work stalled while I tried to figure out how I was going to extricate myself and my characters from an untenable position.  The problem, put in such a way as to avoid giving away the story, was that a couple of characters who represented vital links in the chain needed to resolve the main plot couldn’t reasonably play a role in the resolution.

The problem is bound up with my method of writing.  I like to describe that method in archery terms.  Archers have at their disposal several methods of aiming.  One involves visual alignment, another involves the use of devices known as bow sights.  One is referred to as the instinct method: the archer basically has a “feel” for how the bow must be held in order to hit the center of the target.  That was my method.  I was (once upon a time) fairly good at it.

I approach writing in much the same way.  I don’t typically plan out a story in great detail.  I have a general idea of where I’m going and how to get there, but the characters often surprise me.  Normally, it works out well.  This time, it rather didn’t.

I’d like to report that I’m finally out of the corner.  Over the past couple of days, things started moving again and it looked for a time like I was on my way again.  But today, reviewing what I’d written, I decided I just didn’t like it.  That path out of the corner hadn’t worked.

So I guess tomorrow I get to start over.  Somewhere, there is a way out.  I just have to find it.

 

Where's Fibonacci?

After trying unsuccessfully to make it obvious to interested GoodReads readers that The Fibonacci Murders is available from Serpent Cliff (the publisher), it turns out I can probably only do so in roundabout ways, such as through a blog post. Like this one. So there it is. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Thanks!

Fibonacci Reviewed

The Fibonacci Murders just received a great review from The Midwest Book Review:

It is always a pleasure for the mystery/suspense enthusiast to include a new author in the genre who has a total mastery of the storytelling arts including character development and superbly plotted story lines with all manner of twists, turns, and surprises. Such is the case with Dale E. Lehman and his novel “The Fibonacci Murders”. A genuine ‘page turner’ from beginning to end, “The Fibonacci Murders” is very highly recommended for personal reading lists and community library collections.

You can read it in its full context on The Midwest Book Review‘s website. You’ll have to scroll down a bit to find it. Thank you, MBR!

Chicago!

Although I’m originally from Sylvania, Ohio and currently live in the vicinity of Baltimore, I spent about half of my life in the Chicago suburbs.  Chicagoland is therefore one of the places I think of as home.   It’s always good to go back for a visit, however brief.

We spent this week visiting my parents and sisters, stopping at a few special places along the way.  We spent much of one day at the Field Museum of Natural History, where I saw my first 3D movie (believe it or not), shrank down to bug size to explore the world beneath our feet, and learned some things about Haitian Vodou.

We consumed some of our favorite Chicago foods, including Italian beef and Chicago-style hot dogs at Portillo’s and some really good pizza at Gigio’s in Evanston.  (Kathy and I used to order from Gigio’s when we were students at Northwestern University.  It’s still just as good!)

On the way out of town, we paid a visit to the Baha’i House of Worship in Wilmette.  The only Baha’i House of Worhip so far in North America, it’s also the oldest extant Baha’i House of Worship in the world, the symbolic cornerstone of which was laid in 1912 by ‘Abdu’l-Baha (the son of Baha’u’llah, the Founder of the Baha’i Faith).

Some of you might question visiting Chicago in January.  Yeah, it can be cold and snowy there, but we’re used to it, and even take some pleasure in experiencing real winter again.  In any event, we’re on our way back to Baltimore now, where it’s less cold and snowy . . . but more rainy.  Everything’s a trade-off.