This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history.
Is that the tagline for a summer blockbuster disaster film? No.
Is it true? No.
The past six years, emails have spread that story or something like it around at this time of the year.
The emails also say that on August 27, Mars will come so close to Earth, the red planet will be “as big as a full Moon” in the night sky. Not true.
It seems to have started back in 2003 when Mars did actually make a close approach. It came to its closest distance to Earth in about 60,000 years at about 35 million miles away, so it did appear about six times larger and 85% brighter in the night sky than normal. I recall making my sons go out on the deck with me to see it. However, it did not look “as large as the full moon when viewed with the naked eye.”
Mars actually reaches opposition every couple of years. In 2007, it came within 55 million miles of Earth. The next opposition is January 30, 2010.
One line in that hoax email that is true is that Mars will not be at that 2003 distance from Earth again until the year 2287. Nothing historical about this summer.
, when it came out in 1993. It’s a strange novel which imagines what Einstein may have been dreaming about in Bern, Switzerland before he published his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905.
describes the dreams which occur between April 14, 1905 and June 28, 1905. Of course, all of it is pure imagination. There’s science in the imagined worlds where people’s lives are based on time being circular or flowing backwards, or slowing down.
I wanted to build a time machine
. I probably read the Classics Illustrated comics version of the novel before I read the novel. I had boxes of discarded electronics and machines in my basement that I had culled on garbage collection days. I loved playing with the gears, knobs and circuit boards. I learned some things along the way, got some nasty shocks and burned myself on my soldering iron, but I never did get a working time machine. Many years later, watching the movie E.T., I watched the alien build his communicator in that same ridiculously easy way.
Can we go back in time? Einstein was not much fun for time travel enthusiasts. Though we might imagine going back in time and righting wrongs (small ones of our own or large historical ones), he pretty much concluded that if we were to travel back, we would be who we were and do what we had done again. It’s an infinite loop. It doesn’t make for a good story or film. (So much for Back to the Future.)
There is a Japanese cultural habit of healthy eating called hara hachi bu, which means eat only until you are 80% full (literally, “stomach 80%”).
It’s based on a traditional Okinawa diet which emphasizes vegetables, whole grains, fruits, legumes (soy foods) and fish, and it limits meats. Many people see the diet as a a model for healthy eating and healthy aging.
We call them dandelions which is (according to my French-speaking wife) a corruption of the French dent de lion meaning “lion’s tooth.” The French named it that because of those jagged-toothed leaves. Other European languages have similar versions – Italian dente di leone, Spanish diente de león, Portuguese dente-de-leão, Norwegian Løvetann, and German Löwenzahn.
, the novel by Ray Bradbury. It’s a book I read in junior high and it was part of a whole summer of Bradbury books.
The novel (really more like a collection of related stories) is nostalgic and lyrical work and a world viewed through the yellow filter of a bottle of dandelion wine. Still, I recall some serious moments that had me thinking that summer I read it. Along with the nostalgia, Douglas’ summer also contains his recognition that he will die some day. It’s something that comes with the end of summer, losing companions and his grandfather’s presence.
which is the sequel to Dandelion Wine. It wasn’t published until 2006, so it didn’t exist in my own childhood or in my days teaching middle school. I’m not sure I would pick it up if it was all about the end of summer, growing old and dying.
. A collection of stories was published much later under that name, though I’m not sure it followed Bradbury’s original plan.
that I really like. It is usually listed as a children’s film (probably because it was made by Disney) and I did watch it with my boys when they were younger than Jim & Will, but it is pretty scary on lots of levels.
Being a gardener, my favorite name is the Full Corn Planting Moon.
Composting is a way for us to imitate nature’s recycling plan. A compost pile turns into some very active organic matter. If done correctly, you get a dark, crumbly soil with beneficial fungi, bacteria and earthworms, enzymes and acids. It is much better for your garden (especially the vegetable garden) than 
I stir as I go along and add some good soil. Some people say that you should add two parts brown to one part green. Brown/dry materials would be the leaves, pine needles and dead plants. Greens are all the live/wet grass clippings and kitchen scraps. Then I add water. Moist is good. Soggy is not. If it smells, something is wrong – either too wet or too green.
