Thoughts from days long ago.

   Have you ever read something about what other people recall only to remember things from your own memories.  I was reading a chapter of some memoirs which got me thinking about times long ago in my own life.  There was a time when imagination was almost as strong as real life.  Memory is a fickle thing.  If you fail to reinforce it now and then things can slowly fade away.  So every now and then, it is a good thing to think back and recall things almost forgotten, before they are.

   Some of what I was reading was about how others have treated you when you were younger, or perhaps even a child.  I grew up in a family business which required interaction with people from the neighboring small town I grew up near.  I recall many an evening having to wait on patrons whom were anything but polite.  The knowledge of knowing that I must be polite even to those who were being down right rude to me.  After all, the money they spent was what help keep food on the table and pay the bills.  Not many kids of seven or eight have learned what it means to do good business.

   What also occurred to me, was the feeling of dread, in that each person I served a meal to, or brought a drink to their table, were the eyes and ears for my parents.  There was nothing I could do in town which would not eventually make it back to the business and my parents.   But, have you ever noticed how bad news travels faster than good?  If there is one thing that people in a small town do love, it has to be gossip.

   The other thing I remember learning, was how to put on a face.  Never let the other person see your hand, we are told in playing cards.  The same is true for business.  You never let a customer know what you are really thinking about them.  You have to make them think you like them.  You have to let them think you really like being their servant.  They want water, you go fill a glass and bring it to them.  They want a beer, you open the bottle and offer to pour it into the glass.  You ask, are you hungry, can I get you anything?  And of course you smile, smile, smile! 

   The other thing I learned was that people like to laugh.  People who are laughing and having a good time, spend more money.  So, you try your best to be humorous.  I think at times I perhaps tried to hard, and was not able to “turn it off”.  This perhaps carried over into my behavior in school growing up as well.  I always felt the need to be funny.  It is perhaps, something that I never grew out of.  Only now, like a matured wine, some of the sweetness of youth has been replaced with a sharper edge to my humor.  I only hope that it is still as well liked as years ago?

Time and Space – part 2

   I wrote a while back about some thoughts on Time and Space.  There seems to be much conflicting information regarding the true nature of the universe.  Another item which crossed my mind the other night as I lay in bed waiting for sleep to arrive, was the rate of the expansion of the universe.

  Hubble measured the expansion of the universe to be one of ever-increasing rates of speed, the farther distant you look.  I have yet to hear of a theory of why this difference in speed exists.  Well, as I was contemplating this issue, a deep dark thought occurred to me.  No, not anything evil, but rather Black Hole Theory.  When you  think about a the gravity well of a Black Hole, the concept that comes to my mind is one of a string of rubber bands.  In this case, rubber bands that start off as weak ones, followed by ever larger ones and more powerful ones as you approach the Black Hole. 

  So what does this have to do with the expansion of the universe?   First you have to think about what is beyond the boundary of the universe?  Based on much of what I have read, what is perhaps most logically to be expected is a total pure vacuum.  Not the vacuum of space as we know space outside the boundaries of the Earth, Solar System, or even the vacuum of space between the Milky Way and our neighbor the Andromeda galaxy.  For this space is anything but empty.  All the partial physicists agree that in the vacuum of space as we know if, you will find molecules abound and particles keep popping into and out of existence in the subatomic regions of space.

   Now back out to beyond the known universe, is the pure vacuum of nothingness that existed prior to the singularity, or event region between different dimensions, which Banged, or Tore itself, depending on theories, into being. 

   I think of this pure vacuum of nothingness as being the source of why the galaxies further away, are moving faster and faster the further you look.  Think of the inverse of the Black Hole effect.  as the universe expands, matter is moving farther away from each other.   This increasing distance correlates to a reduction in the force that gravity can expend between the gravity wells of the galaxies.  This would mean that the true vacuum of space outside the universe, is acting as an attraction force drawing matter ever outward at ever-increasing velocity as the force of gravity becomes weaker as matter is spread ever thinner in our expanding universe.  Thus as the force of gravity increases exponentially around a Black Hole, the force the The True Vacuum outside the boundary of the universe is having an exponential influence on the speed of the expansion of the universe as the universe thins due to expansion.  Thus, the closer the galaxy is to the edge of the universe, the faster it will move, being drawn, or pushed as it were, through a straw, from a region of high pressure of compacted matter, into and toward the low pressure region of the True Vacuum beyond the edge of the universe.

Ok, I think I can go to sleep now.

Round the Merry-go-round and the Garden.

Merry-Go-Round

You will have to forgive some of the blur, but it was a handheld shot.  But, the image does help to portray some of the motion of the grandson’s wild horse ride.  Ok, perhaps wild is too strong of a word, but he sure did seem to be having fun.  Besides, watching the grandson is so much more fun then sharing a cold or flu bug with him!

Now, not that a Merry-Go-Round has anything to do with garden’s, I did want to give an update on the garden.  Pictures will be following, I promise.

I mentioned the garden previously.  It is really starting to produce.  We have been getting lettuce  for almost four weeks now.  But the big news is this week, we picked our first cucumbers, string beans, a d a couple small tomatoes.  Barring a hail storm, we should be swimming in tomatoes in another week.  I think we will have our fill of cucumbers and string beans in another 5-10 days as well.  There is really something about a vine ripened tomato that cannot be found in any store.  Myself, I am not a great tomato lover.  But, I have to say, that the sweetness found in those coming from the garden made them palatable even to me!