October Thoughts

A classic for a colorful month...

October
by Robert Frost
O HUSHED October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

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Ref:

    Frost, Robert.  A Boy's Will.  New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1915.

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[General] ( October 21, 2008 09:59 AM ) Permalink Comments [1]

Global Warming: Recent Reads

Here are a couple of recent items I recommend for those of you who have a scientific interest in global warming (the Earth's climate system's response to increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere):

1) If you think the whole global warming story is a sham invented by snake-oil-selling charlatans who are only pushing the story for their own ideological, political, or economic interests, then I urge you to pick up a copy of "Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal about the Current Threat -- and How to Counter It" by Wallace Broecker and Robert Kunzig.  Dr. Broecker is a well-respected climate scientist with a long history examining the effects of changes in the Earth's orbital characteristics, ocean circulation, and greenhouse gases on our ocean-atmosphere system.  He has been affiliated with the world-renowned Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of Columbia University, for nearly half a century.

In this book, Dr. Broecker, and science writer Robert Kunzig, give an interesting account of the science behind our current understanding of the Earth's climate system.  It is well-balanced and authoritative, and an easy read for scientists and non-scientists alike.  The authors then go beyond examining the effects of a doubling or tripling atmospheric CO₂ and propose some ideas for slowing or stopping the increase of anthropogenically-produced atmospheric CO₂.  They constrain their proposals by the physical scale of the problem, providing scientific rigor to their analysis -- an aspect often lacking in pop-science books about the greenhouse effect.

This book is well worth the read -- and is available both for purchase (online or at bookstores) and at libraries.

2) If you think that climate scientists have this whole global warming thing all figured out such that we now know exactly when and where the atmosphere and oceans will warm and by how much, and exactly what effects these changes will have on day-to-day weather, then you might want to skim through an article in this month's edition of the "Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society."  The article is entitled "The Consequences of Not Knowing Low- and High-Latitude Climate Sensitivity" and is by Dr. David Rind from The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).  As with the Lamont-Doherty lab mentioned above the scientists at GISS have been studying the Earth's climate system for a long time, in this case more than 50 years.  GISS has a world-renowned reputation as one of the leading centers for climate research.

Dr. Rind's paper is written by a meteorologist for meteorologists -- it assumes an extensive amount of meteorological expertise.  However, the gist of the paper describes how climate scientists don't know yet how sensitive the Earth's ocean-atmosphere system will be to warming associated with the increases of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.  This is true despite the tremendous advances made by climate scientists over the last 40 years, and despite the tremendous increases in computer technology over the same period.  Even something seemingly as "basic" as how much the climate of the polar regions will change as compared to the tropics is uncertain.  The main causes for the uncertainty are associated with some of the most difficult problems climate scientists are working on today: the response of the tropical atmosphere to warming, how global cloud distribution will change with warming, how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will vary, the changes of low clouds in the Arctic, the response of global ocean circulations to warming, the variations in the El Nino pattern over the tropical Pacific.  With such significant gaps in our knowledge, there are still great uncertainties about how the Earth's ocean-atmosphere system will respond during a global warming induced by an increase in greenhouse gases.  In particular, because so much is yet to be learned, there are even greater uncertainties about how the Earth's climate will change regionally (such as, what will happen over the United States vs. over Europe).  The good news is that climate scientists are filling the knowledge gaps quickly.  The bad news is this will take time.  Dr. Rind summarizes this at the end of the paper by saying, "There is no guarantee that these issues will be resolved before a substantial global warming impact is upon us.  How we proceed to act in an environment of uncertainty will, perhaps, become as great a challenge as dealing with global warming itself."

Links:
Abstract
The complete paper

[Weather Minutiae only a Meteorologist could Love] ( July 30, 2008 07:03 PM ) Permalink |

Bike to Work Day...via Wi-Fi Hotspots

Last Wednesday (25 June) for the 11^th year in a row (yes, that's right -- it's been 11 years!) I had the pleasure of participating in the Denver Area Bike to Work Day sponsored by the Denver Regional Council of Governments.  In order to keep it interesting, after all there's nothing worse than a boring 37-mile bike ride to get to work, I've tried to look for new and different ways to spruce up the event for me every year -- like searching out the free LaMar's donuts, or capturing the event as a photo essay from ground level.

Since last year's Bike to Work Day I have become a full-time work-from-home, or "Sun Open Work," employee. [An aside: Sun calls its flexible work program, "Open Work."  It is one of the best programs of its kind in the industry and makes it much easier for me to work with my globally-dispersed team.  Basically, as long as I have network access and a phone, I can work anytime, anywhere.]  Given my change of status -- now as a WFHer -- which meant I did not have to go all the way to Sun's Broomfield, CO campus on Bike to Work Day, I, instead, decided upon more of an Open Work alternative.  Rather than biking to my basement office (Rich Brown beat me to that idea -- see the photo in his "Life as a Telecommuter, Part 1" blog entry), I decided upon a slightly more ambitious adventure.  All I needed was a network link, this was to be my 11^th Bike to Work Day -- why not combine those two thoughts and create: "Bike to Work Day from 11 Different Wi-Fi Hotspots."  Crazy?  Well...

To prepare, I found the locations of various restaurants, coffee shops, and bookstores I knew had free Wi-Fi in the area.  The Panera Bread chain was first on my list because they are seemingly everywhere and they have a good, reliable Wi-Fi setup.  Similar to Panera, next on my list was the Paradise Bakery and Cafe chain.  Not as ubiquitous as Panera, they have several locations here in the Denver area and they, too, have free Wi-Fi.  For coffee shops, I went with Peaberry Coffee -- a local chain with several stores in the south Denver area where I live.  Finally, there was the Tattered Cover -- Denver's premier independent book-seller.

After superimposing the locations of the Paneras, Paradises, Peaberrys, and Tattered Covers on a Denver Area Bicycle route map, I decided to ride east from my home through the communities south of Denver, head north through the Denver Technology Center (the area to the southeast of Denver), work my way into Denver along the Cherry Creek bikeway, then finally head back home down the South Platte River bike trail.  I mapped out a route that looked like this:

View Larger Map

The blue pushpins mark the Wi-Fi hotspots I decided to visit.  The blue line signifies my route.  I started at the Panera at Aspen Grove in Littleton (the blue pushpin on the southwest side of the map), then traversed the marked locations cyclonically (or counter-clockwise here in the northern hemisphere) due east through Highlands Ranch (along the bottom of the map) then up to Tattered Cover's main store on Colfax Avenue in Denver before returning down the South Platte River (the western side of the map) and back home.

And just what did these hotspots look like?  Well, I took a digital pic of each as I went along.  The facades follow:

Stop #1: Panera Bread, Littleton (Aspen Grove)

Stop #2: Tattered Cover Bookstore, Highlands Ranch

Stop #2.5: Thundershowers Developing to the West, Highlands Ranch

Stop #3: Panera Bread, Highlands Ranch

Stop #4: Panera Bread, Highlands Ranch (near Park Meadows) -- with a dry thunderstorm overhead

Stop #5: Peaberry Coffee (north of Park Meadows)

Stop #6: Peaberry Coffee, Greenwood Village

Stop #7: Panera Bread, Greenwood Village (with a loud truck out front)

Stop #8: Panera Bread, Denver Tech Center

Stop #9: Paradise Bakery and Cafe, Cherry Creek North

Stop #10: Panera Bread, Cherry Creek North

Stop #11: Tattered Cover Bookstore, Main Store, Colfax Ave., Denver

In the end, I managed to travel a total of 57.5 miles, a bit less than what a round-trip ride to Broomfield would have been for me.  The total ride time was about 4 hours.  However, with the various con-calls I attended at some stops and email storms I responded to at other stops, my "Bike to Work Day from 11 Different Wi-Fi Hotspots" took about 12 hours to accomplish.  In addition, I learned a few things about the Wi-Fi services these establishments sponsor:

• The Panera Bread Wi-Fi network was robust and reliable.  It worked well with a laptop running OpenSolaris (by far the slickest operating system on the planet -- download your copy today!), the current Vista incarnation of Microsoft Windows, and with OSX on an iPod Touch.
• The Cherry Creek North merchants have set up and support a Wi-Fi network throughout the Cherry Creek North shopping district.  Like Panera's network it seemed reliable and robust and I could connect to it with the devices and OSes I had.  Kudos to Cherry Creek North.
• Peaberry Coffee's Wi-Fi network did not work with my iPod Touch (the authentication software tried to pop up two windows from the browser, but the second pop-up always failed).  It did, however, work just fine from a laptop.  On the other hand, Peaberry's had the best coffee on my trip and they had pretty decent burritos as well.
• I didn't actually use the Paradise Cafe network because I could link up nicely with the Cherry Creek North Wi-Fi when I was at the only Paradise Cafe I visited.
• Tattered Cover's Wi-Fi network is a bit flaky.  It seemed slower than the others I used on the trip and it dropped my connection more than once.  It connected with both the iPod Touch and my laptop.
  

Last, but never least, this year's artwork on the t-shirt was colorful, modern, and, depending on your preference, either cutely stylish or stylishly cute.  I have added it to my ever-growing collection of B2WD T-Shirts.

Eleven years, eleven mostly successful Bike to Work days.  I'm thinking next year I'll try really something different... :)

[General] ( July 01, 2008 06:33 AM ) Permalink Comments [1]

Thundering Verse

We're nearing the end of National Poetry Month so it must be time to recite some meteorological verse...

The Mill-Pond by Edward Thomas The sun blazed while the thunder yet Added a boom: A wagtail flickered bright over The mill-pond's gloom: Less than the cooing in the alder Isles of the pool Sounded the thunder through that plunge Of waters cool. Scared starlings on the aspen tip Past the black mill Outchattered the stream and the next roar Far on the hill. As my feet dangling teased the foam That slid below A girl came out.  "Take care!" she said -- Ages ago. She startled me, standing quite close Dressed all in white: Ages ago I was angry till She passed from sight. Then the storm burst, and as I crouched To shelter, how Beautiful and kind, too, she seemed, As she does now!

 

From:
The Rattle Bag
Edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes
London, England
Faber and Faber, Limited
1982, pp. 288-289

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[General] ( April 25, 2008 09:33 PM ) Permalink |

Asleep or Awake?

National Poetry Month continues with a poem by David Whyte about a daily occurrence for all of us...

What to Remember When Waking by David Whyte In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake, coming back to this life from the other more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world where everything began, there is a small opening into the day which closes the moment you begin your plans. What you can plan is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep. To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others. To remember the other world in this world is to live in your true inheritance. You are not a troubled guest on this earth, you are not an accident amidst other accidents you were invited from another and greater night than the one from which you have just emerged. Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window toward the mountain presence of everything that can be, what urgency calls you to your one love?  What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky? Is it waiting in the fertile sea? In the trees beyond the house? In the life you can imagine for yourself? In the open and lovely white page on the waiting desk?

 

From:
ten poems to change your life again and again
By Roger Housden
New York, NY
Harmony Books
2007, pp. 93-96

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[General] ( April 24, 2008 10:19 PM ) Permalink

Silken Sonnet

It's time for a return to the sonnet form in our meandering through the month, National Poetry Month, that is.  This one by Robert Frost is one of his better known sonnets, although he wrote many.  Like much of his poetry, Frost excelled as few others have with various poetic forms -- for instance, his sonnets compared favorably to the masterpieces penned by William Shakespeare.

The Silken Tent by Robert Frost She is as in a field a silken tent At midday when a sunny summer breeze Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, So that in guys it gently sways at ease, And its supporting central cedar pole, That is its pinnacle to heavenward And signifies the sureness of the soul, Seems to owe naught to any single cord, But strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To everything on earth the compass round, And only by one's going slightly taut In the capriciousness of summer air Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

 

From:
American Sonnets, An Anthology
Edited by David Bromwich
New York, NY
The Library of America
2007, pg. 81

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[General] ( April 23, 2008 09:27 PM ) Permalink

Deciduous Rhyme

With my allergies being one indicator, and the greening of the trees another, spring has definitely sprung here on this day two-thirds of the way through this year's National Poetry Month.  And speaking of the blossoming trees...

The Trees by Philip Larkin The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old?  No, they die too. Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

 

From:
Poem A Day
Edited by Retta Bowen, Nick Temple, Nicholas Albery, Stephanie Wienrich
Hanover, NH
Zoland Books
2003, pg. 157

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[General] ( April 22, 2008 08:39 PM ) Permalink

Today's advice

Another day of National Poetry Month leads to another poem from an American poet, this time from Kay Boyle.  Although she was born in Minnesota, she spent many years of her life in Paris, France -- living there with her French husband.  Today's advice:

Advice to the Old (Including Myself) by Kay Boyle Do not speak of yourself (for God's sake) even when asked. Do not dwell on other times as different from the time Whose air we breathe; or recall books with broken spines Whose titles died with the old dreams.  Do not resort to An alphabet of gnarled pain, but speak of the lark's wing Unbroken, still fluent as the tongue.  Call out the names of stars Until their metal clangs in the enormous dark.  Yodel your way Through fields where the dew weeps, but not you, not you. Have no communion with despair; and, at the end, Take the old fury in your empty arms, sever its veins, And beat it fiercely, fiercely to the wild beast's lair.

 

From:
Poem A Day
Edited by Retta Bowen, Nick Temple, Nicholas Albery, Stephanie Wienrich
Hanover, NH
Zoland Books
2003, pg. 371

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[General] ( April 21, 2008 09:54 PM ) Permalink Comments [1]

A Poem Toss

I have never thought of tossing a poem around, but I guess anything is possible during National Poetry Month...

Catch by Robert Francis Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together, Overhand, underhand, backhand, sleight of hand, every hand, Teasing with attitudes, latitudes, interludes, altitudes, High, make him fly off the ground for it, low, make him       stoop, Make him scoop it up, make him as-almost-as-possible miss it, Fast, let him sting from it, now, now fool him slowly, Anything, everything tricky, risky, nonchalant, Anything under the sun to outwit the prosy, Over the tree and the long sweet cadence down, Over his head, make him scramble to pick up the meaning, And now, like a posy, a pretty one plump in his hands.

 

From:
The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart
Edited by Robert Bly, James Hillman, Michael Meade
New York, NY
Harper Collins
1992, pg. 186

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[General] ( April 17, 2008 10:13 PM ) Permalink |

Everything in 18 lines

Moving from yesterday's syllabic meter of Elizabeth Bridges to some free verse from a current American favorite poet, Mary Oliver (as National Poetry Month continues)...

Everything by Mary Oliver I want to make poems that say right out, plainly,       what I mean, that don't go looking for the laces of elaboration, puffed sleeves. I want to       keep close and use often words like heavy, heart, joy, soon, and to cherish       the question mark and her bold sister the dash. I want to write with quiet hands. I       want to write while crossing the fields that are fresh with daises and everlasting and the       ordinary grass. I want to make poems while thinking of the bread of heaven and the       cup of astonishment; let them be songs in which nothing is neglected,       not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems that look into the earth and the heavens       and see the unseeable. I want them to honor both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;       the gladness that says, without any words, everything.

 

From:
New and Selected Poems, Volume Two
by Mary Oliver
Boston, MA
Beacon Press
2005, pg. 4

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[General] ( April 16, 2008 09:54 PM ) Permalink

Another View of Mountains

The next installment for National Poetry Month is a piece by an English poet, Elizabeth Bridges.  The mountainous theme is apropos for those of us living next door to the Rocky Mountains.

Verse 16. by Elizabeth Bridges The mountains beckon me             To endure the storms, The valleys offer me         Rest in their long arms. In dreamy forests         Have I ever dreams, Whispering my secrets         To whispering streams, And what can I do now         When glad Spring's abroad But leap, and merrily         Laugh and shout aloud!

From:
Verses
by Elizabeth Bridges
Cambridge, England
Oxford
1916, pg. 23

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[General] ( April 15, 2008 10:27 PM ) Permalink

Poetry about Poetry

Something by Marianne Moore as we continue our journey through National Poetry Month.  In this piece, Marianne wonders about just what poetry is and why it can be so alluring...

Poetry by Marianne Moore I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important                           beyond all this fiddle.     Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it,                           one discovers in     it after all, a place for the genuine.         Hands that can grasp, eyes         that can dilate, hair that can rise             if it must, these things are important not                           because a high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but                           because they are     useful.  When they become so derivative as to become                           unintelligible,     the same thing may be said for all of us, that we         do not admire what         we cannot understand: the bat             holding on upside down or in quest of                           something to eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless                           wolf under     a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a                           horse that feels a flea, the base-     ball fan, the statistician --         nor is it valid         to discriminate against 'business documents and school-books'; all these phenomena are important.  One                           must make a distinction     however: when dragged into prominence by half poets,                           the result is not poetry,     nor till the poets among us can be         "literalists of         the imagination" -- above             insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in                           them', shall we have     it.  In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,     the raw material of poetry in         all its rawness and         that which is on the other hand             genuine, you are interested in poetry.

From:
Poetry Out Loud
Edited by Robert Alden Rubin
Chapel Hill, NC
Algonquin Books
1993, pp. 192-193

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[General] ( April 14, 2008 10:04 PM ) Permalink

Snowy Springtime Timelapse

During this transitional season, here in the central Rockies, as the Sun travels higher in the sky each day and hints of summer's warmth become more frequent, the weather responds to the nature of the season as well.  Often there are days when still-chilly northwesterly winds are accompanied by frequent snow showers in the unstable atmosphere of Spring -- unstable because the atmosphere retains its cold memory from winter, while the Earth's surface is being rapidly warmed by the relatively strong springtime Sun.  The timelapse animation below shows a typical springtime afternoon in the Rockies with frequent snow showers forming and spreading southeastward pushed by strong, cold winds from the northwest:
This 30-second timelapse shows about 3 hours of afternoon weather over the central Rockies from two weeks ago, 29 March.  The camera is pointed to the south-southeast.  The images used in the animation were taken once every 20 seconds.  The location is just west of the Continental Divide in the Colorado Rockies, about 100 miles due west of Sun's Broomfield, Colorado campus.

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[Weather Minutiae only a Meteorologist could Love] ( April 12, 2008 12:11 PM ) Permalink Comments [2]

Another Lightweight for a Friday

Following the pattern begun last week on the first Friday of National Poetry Month, here is another lightweight poem by America's 20th century master of whimsy and wordplay...

 

The Sniffle by Ogden Nash  In spite of her sniffle, Isabel's chiffle. Some girls with a sniffle Would be weepy and tiffle; They would look awful, Like a rained-on waffle, But Isabel's chiffle In spite of her sniffle. Her nose is more red With a cold in her head, But then, to be sure, Her eyes are bluer. Some girls with a snuffle, Their tempers are uffle, But when Isabel's snivelly She's snivelly civilly, And when she is snuffly She's perfectly luffly.

From:
The Best of Ogden Nash
Edited by Linell Nash Smith
Chicago
Ivan R. Dee
2007, pg. 33

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[General] ( April 11, 2008 01:50 PM ) Permalink |

A Room of Poetry

As we continue stepping through National Poetry Month, here's another modern poem from the present day American poet, August Kleinzahler:

Rooms by August Kleinzahler In the sleep that finally gives rest I take the stairs slowly out past the azalea dell and bison paddock, out of view from the meadow, and down through these rooms once more, this endless house under the lawns still wet from mist, the root systems and mulch, only to find you at a sales counter arguing with a Russian woman. Her English is rough but adequate, your argument well-reasoned, controlled. You will in the end prevail. The salesclerk is charmed by the snatches of Russian you mix into your conversation, the garment exchanged for credit. I seldom find you in these rooms anymore, certainly not for months. So when our eyes meet you look momentarily bemused, the shiver of surprise softening to pleasure. You are lovely, somewhat older than I remember, business-like in a tailored suit. Our conversation is courtly, flirtatious in what we imagine an Old World way. How strange to encounter you here in this harsh light, the tableau of a downtown department store with its cases of perfumes, gels, and leather goods. And how inexplicably refreshed I feel afterward lying here alone, awakened precisely as our commerce ended by the shouts of children going to school.

From:
Sleeping It Off in Rapid City
Poems, New and Selected by August Kleinzahler
New York, NY
Farrar Straus Giroux
2008, pp. 122-123

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[General] ( April 10, 2008 09:49 PM ) Permalink