What would you do if you could go back in time for, say, one day? When would you go, and perhaps just as importantly, where?
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For today’s educational adventure I learned how to make a portal. Next time I’ll choose an image with a puddle for the reflection, but the effect is still pretty magic.
So, we have a target place, a target time, and a portal. Who wants to go first?
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Fiction-related aside: Time travel usually isn’t my genre (weird for someone with a history degree once upon a time, but there it is), but this series about historians tasked with maintaining the time stream is fun:
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“History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, ‘Can’t you remember anything I told you?’ and lets fly with a club.”
Thinking about my grandfather yesterday got me thinking about our trip to Sweden. Here’s one of the best souvenirs I brought back, an adjustable driving distance calculator. The sheet inside slides to show distances from a given starting location. I like maps, and this one is particularly well done.
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For fun, here’s one of the first known distance maps, the Tabula Peutingeriana, with measures for (where else?) the center of all things at that time, the Roman Empire. Although at 22 feet long, it’s not exactly portable!
Conradi Millieri derivative work: Thecinic, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Today would have been my grandfather’s eleventy-first birthday.
Paul Johnson loved golf, travel, photography, his Swedish heritage, fishing, the beach in Florida, women, and a good game of bridge, not necessarily in that order. He and my grandmother married in secret for the usual reasons, then again two years later when he was able to support them both. (She wore a light blue dress, again, for the usual reasons.)
One terrific part of life is that you can choose how you want to look back. When I think of my grandfather, I don’t dwell on the Parkinson’s and how it took so much from him before it finally took his life. I think of his smile as he watched a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral, the heart-felt yet hilarious haircuts he used to give my long-suffering brother, and the way he remembered to call me Princess even after he’d forgotten my name.
He saved sand dollars from the beach, enjoyed hot dogs with sauerkraut and introduced us to tomatoes with sugar, always kept a bag of butterscotch for the grandkiddos, tolerated both hijinks and shenanigans with good cheer, and had the best laugh, right from the belly.
He was a wonderful grandfather.
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Photo by T. Johnson. Location: Pine Grove Mills, PA. Date: Summer 1974. Probably.
I had a plan for the day. It was a good plan. It was shiny and perfect and now it is gone. In its place I have a Post-it that looks like a Rorschach test, a list of things I did not intend to do (but did, so that’s nice:) and a handbasket of good intentions.
Let’s hear it for tomorrow!
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“The belief that tomorrow is a different place from today is certainly a unique hallmark of our species.”
In memory of the pretty tree in full bloom around the corner, which our neighbor just cut down.
Also, it’s Tuesday.
(This is the part where I like to bring it back to a cheerful ending. Right. Hmm.)
Ah yes! I’m making excellent progress on the bird front, lots of goldfinches, robins, cardinals, chickadees, juncos and sparrows. Nature finds a way, even if it sometimes needs a little help:)
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“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”
I have this funny thing I do where I associate certain visuals with a functional emotion.
(By associate I mean I pull it out of the old memory bank when I run into a situation that makes me feel a certain way. And by functional I mean that this visual helps me shift to a more useful mindset.)
You know that feeling you get when you’re lying in bed worrying about that weird pain just above your right eyebrow? Or imagining fingernails on a chalkboard or what it would feel like if a sentient Matrix probed your belly button?
That feeling? I counter it with a shimmering green shield surrounding my body like a superhero suit. Sure, no one else can see it, but it works.
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Or when it’s Monday morning and my mind is chock full of random crap, to do lists, things I should have said, things I shouldn’t have said, questions that need to be asked and answered, etc. etc. etc. ad freaking nauseam.
I do a superhero landing complete with dramatic cloud of mental chaff blasting away from the point of impact.
Just the act of imagining either of these things helps defuse the mental pile-on.
Of course it’s not real. Despite decades of absorbing scifi via bio-ocular interface, I cannot actually will a force field into being. But my worries are all in my head. Why can’t the solutions be there too?
It’s time for more free fiction! The Locus SF Foundation has announced the top finalists in each award category. Many of the shorts and novelettes are free to read online.
Check out the full roster from Locus, with standard font links for open access work and bold for purchasing links. Here’s the abbreviated list of free material:
Seriously though, I couldn’t be an astronaut, how do they scratch their noses? I think I’ll design a pivoting arm with a micro joy stick on the outside of the helmet. Unless they already have those? Photo by Adam Miller on Unsplash
I mean, I’m mostly nice (with just the right amount of geeky snark), I make a pretty terrific brownie, and try to be a good partner, daughter, friend, neighbor, and co-worker, but I haven’t started a food distribution center to feed first responders this past year, or learned a new language or solved the medical problem that’s stumping a family member’s doctors or crossed off everything on my to-do list or single-handedly saved Ontario’s bees. At some level, I feel I should have done all of those things and more, but no.
I’m not Melinda Gates, Mother Theresa, Jane Goodall, José Andrés, Greta Thunberg, Jonas Salk, David Suzuki, world-changingly great.
Sorry, supportive parental units. You tried.
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And please don’t take offense, but you probably aren’t either. I bet you are kind and thoughtful and a good hugger with excellent taste in music and a winning smile who looks out for pets and children, but you aren’t, say, Malala. By definition, most people aren’t.
So I’m not extra special super amazing. You’re probably not extra special super amazing. And that’s ok.
Because together, we are magic.
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What makes a society great?
I submit to you that we regular folks have far more impact on society than we’re given credit for. The median is the best indicator of a curve’s central anchor, not the outliers.
Yes, innovation like the automobile, vaccines, or the personal computer can upend the ways we live and work, but those events happen within a context.
That context is the one we build every day, with every action, big or small. Have I sent out Mothers’ Day cards, let myself off the hook for not sending those cards sooner,* waved at the neighbor, picked up that annoying plastic bag stuck in the cedar, fed the birds, voted, donated to a nonprofit doing good work, planted for pollinators, baked for our mechanic, followed traffic laws, ignored rabid commentary designed to monetize my attention at the expense of democracy, and generally done my best to help steer the ship to a better place?
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What we do matters. Maybe I’m not extra special super amazing, but that’s ok. I don’t have to be. I can still be part of something great.
I’m a little bit beat. I know it’s May the Fourth and therefore Star Wars Day, but I’m not quite up to a long-form essay on all that this world has meant for me.
If you’re in the mood for a quick recap of the main movies (or an introduction, I won’t judge!), here’s a quick summation by Star Wars actor Daisy Ridley, with a little help from Jimmy Fallon:
Yesterday we made yogurt and pizza. Today I’m baking bread and it’s almost time for lunch, so let’s stick with the food theme.
These are more recollections than recipes, and from a time when I didn’t worry about pesky things like saturated fat or fire codes. My tastes have changed over the years, but I happen to be having macaroni and cheese for lunch today.
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Hard salami
Don’t ask how we came up with this idea but my brother and I decided that fried salami would be a pretty good late-night snack. This was back in the days when we shared a bedroom and were often sent to it before we were sleepy enough to go to bed. Reading in our bunkbeds with matching shelves and lamps, it seemed perfectly natural to want a little something to eat. Hard salami was always high on our list; who doesn’t like the seductive appeal of a food that’s half fat and salty to boot? The McDonald’s empire was built on such foods. We loved it. Our real innovation, though, was to cook the salami so that its texture was similar to that of pepperoni on pizza. The only way to accomplish this in our bedrooms was to fry each slice on our reading lamb light bulbs. The edges curled and the fat melted a bit, making the salami a warm succulent treat. I have no idea why it didn’t all just burst into flames.
Kraft macaroni and cheese
I made this so often that I knew the recipe by heart at age 9. I’d eat it one elbow at a time, sliding a fork tine down into the elbow’s open center and chewing slowly while reading in the La-Z-Boy by the window.
Mushroom and oyster soups
These two brands of Campbell’s soup were my favorites. Something about the rich creamy taste and filling texture made them perfect snacks for a winter’s afternoon. I’ve probably had more than my fair share of sodium and modified food starch, but at the time it was delightful.
Stir fried whatever
Usually I’d pull out whatever was in the fridge and toss it into the wok. First slice up an onion or scallion, some ginger or garlic if available, and stir fry for a minute or so until brown at the edges. Add frozen peas, and other vegetables you may have, cook for another minute, then add cold leftover rice and break an egg over top of it all and stir like mad for another minute, or until egg is thoroughly dry. Add soy sauce and snack.
BLT
When my brother finished his “meat-itarian” phase he was once again willing to accept a bit of green on his plate, at least when chaperoned by large quantities of meat. One result of this broadened perspective was his version of the BLT. It was simple, relying more on size and shock value for impact. I’m not sure anyone makes them quite like my brother.
Slice half a tomato thickly, grill up half a package of bacon, find a couple of lettuce leaves in the fridge. Slather mustard onto one piece of bread and hot chili paste onto the other. Assemble the sandwich using all ingredients. If you survive a few months of these, you’ll have a cast-iron stomach and cholesterol levels that are through the roof.
Dad’s grilled cheese
The secrets to a great grilled cheese sandwich are lots of butter* and a cast-iron pan. I remember Dad slathering the outsides of two bread slices with butter, filling them with cheese, and then grilling it all until crisp and brown. He’d even cut mine on the diagonal, just the way I like it.
* Note from the future: mayonnaise is even better than butter for crispiness.
Pumpkin seeds
Every fall Halloween would roll around and it would be pumpkin carving time. Some years my designs would be better than others but I always got a kick out of the process. First, spread lots of newspaper on the kitchen table or floor. Then cut around the pumpkin stem with a sharp and sturdy knife until you can pull the top out. Take a big spoon and scrape out all the strange, stringy membranes inside. Spend an inordinate amount of time rinsing these interior scrapings to separate out the seeds. When as done as you can stand, dry and spread the seeds onto a cookie sheet, then bake at 350ºF for a few minutes until golden brown and crunchy. Salt liberally and enjoy.
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Photo by Anna Tukhfatullina Food Photographer/Stylist on Pexels.com
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