Kindergarten

Hank with a kindergarten buddy, on the school playground in Davis, California. The lightning bugs on his shirt glowed in the dark.

Springtime in Maine

This was the weekly forecast for Portland last year in .... April. I don't know why it seemed appropriate to retrieve it now, but here it is. This fall, it's been pretty warm and pleasant.

France from Above

Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the photographer who did the "Earth from Above" book and exhibit, also did "France from Above," which included this picture.

I don't have the caption. I know nothing about it. Maybe some of y'all can provide details. If it were in the U.S., I'd say it was probably part of a miniature golf course.....

Were Alabama dinosaurs Republicans?

This chalky bluff is on the bank of the Tombigbee River in west Alabama at a place called Moscow Landing. Geologists come here from all over the world to look at the line between the brownish ground in the lower part of the bluff and the grayish white ground higher up. The black backpack in the picture pretty much marks the line, which is known as the K-T boundary. Below it are fossils of oceanic critters that lived in the age of the dinosaurs, more than 63 million years ago. Above the boundary are more recent fossils--oysters and snails and suchlike. The line itself in some parts of the world has a chemical irregularity associated with meteorites, but not at Moscow Landing, which is just a few hundred miles from the probable impact site of the meteorite that is believed to have extinguished the dinosaurs. Here, the K-T boundary shows evidence of scouring and faulting from ... a tsunami. The thinking is that when the meteorite smashed into the Yucatan, which was then mostly covered by a shallow sea, it caused earthquakes, which just might have caused tsunamis.

The tsunami evidence is controversial. But the boundary itself is obvious--you don't need any training in geology to see a difference between the dinosaur-age fossils in the brown chalk and the puny little oyster fossils in the white chalk.

Best thing about Moscow Landing: the chalk. The fossils are easy to dig out--no hammer and chisel needed.

What is chalk? Fossils of teeny tiny critters that live in anaerobic seas. The oceans have gone back and forth a few times between aerobic and anaerobic conditions--they were anaerobic in the dinosaur age, but they're aerobic now. Why the switch? I don't know, and I'm told that nobody does.

Do rams wear red socks?

The regular soccer season is over now at Deering High School; the playoff season starts next week, as the Rams try to keep up with Red Sox, if it's okay to mix sports in your metaphors. Here's Hank in last week's game with Gorham High School, chasing down a ball.

you were a rock.....

....which pressure-temperature path would you want to follow?

This is Figure 15 from my thesis. I like path #2, and that's my final answer.

Mount Rainier

In July, Norman and two friends from high school, David Wasser and Kenny Gross, went camping together on Mount Rainier. Kenny, who lives near Seattle, met David and Norman at the Seattle airport, with the car already packed full of camping gear and food. No wives, no kids, just the boys. They hiked, cooked, etc. Norm says it may have been David's first time camping ever. Being the age that they are, they had schedules and so couldn't stay long up on the mountain--a couple of nights.

Among them, the three friends from Plainview, Long Island, have 9 children--7 boys, 2 girls. Most of their children are now older than the guys were when they were hanging out together at John F. Kennedy High School. No divorces in this group. And so far, no Nobel Prizes, and no grandchildren.

Music for 12 hands

Following a recital last February, the University of Alabama's renowned piano professor Amanda Penick poses with Joe and her other students.

The shirt off his back

This picture was taken in June 1996, in our old house in Tuscaloosa. Ted was not quite 17. Uncle Jack was pretty young, too. They both look good.

But apparently, some very big person with very long arms lent Ted a plaid shirt for the occasion. I guess it was nice of him.

Buzz off

We got some Capisic Pond honey today: dark sticky stuff in a comb. Capisic is a nice little pond at the edge of our neighborhood, where a a lot of people walk their dogs. A friend of John's once took her dog there, and the dog made the mistake of picking a fight with another dog, which was being walked by a policewoman who had the number for Animal Control on speed dial on her cellphone. The incident ended with John's friend promising to take her dog out of Maine and never come back. Sort of.

These pictures are from a website. They must have been taken a little later in the year; right now, the marsh grass is still green and yellow, and the leaves on the trees are trying to make up their leafy little minds about whether it's time to turn and fall. I don't know where the bees are; the wildflowers bloomed loudly all summer, and I annoyed Norman by slowing down to pick them, but I never did notice any bees.

Wrestling Midshipman

This photo of Midshipman Allan Stein has been posted on the website of the wrestling team at the U.S. Naval Academy. I don't know if this means he should go to court and change the spelling of his name to match the official version put out by Navy Sports.

Meanwhile, looks like a lot of buttons to polish after wrestling practice. But they don't make Division I 125-pounders any cuter than that.

The day after Columbus Day

Monday--Columbus Day--was just plain lost as far as picture-sending is concerned. I'm sorry, but it's never coming back.

For Tuesday, here's John at the United Indians headquarters in Seattle, where he works as...something to do with volunteers, a website, an art gallery, maybe fund-raising, HR, um. Not quite that, or maybe, but whatever.

Bottom rail on top.

Can you hear me now?

The array of low-frequency radio towers at the edge of Machias Bay in Cutler, Maine, is what allows the Navy communicate with submarines that are deep underwater anywhere around the globe. The towers themselves don't exactly add to the scenic beauty of the shoreline, though they may look kind of interesting from space--and they may be the only man-made feature in Maine that's visible to astronauts orbiting the earth. Each of the 27 towers is 1,000 feet high. They're remote controlled--all the radio signals are sent to the towers from Norfolk, VA, and then relayed out to the bottom of the sea, with no human intervention required. A small crew of civilians keeps the grass mowed and presumably changes the light bulbs; there are no Navy folks onsite at all, and no reports of Blackwater folks. The daytime picture was taken from 3 miles away, the nighttime picture from at least 10 or 15 miles away.

There is little or no cellphone service in this part of Maine.

End of an Era

Wednesday afternoon, Waynflete played its last home field hockey game of the 2007 series. Our Fliers beat Old Orchard Beach, 1-0.

For approximately umpteen years, there's been at least one and often two Stein girls paying field hockey in Portland. But from now on, other girls will have to step up and manage without them. As a senior, Amelia's now played her last game on her home field.

Amelia and her friend Chelsea Smith, who've been playing field hockey together since elementary school, are co-captains of the Flyers. They suffered through a couple of years of losing all the time, then turned the corner last season. This year, they've already won 5 games, and they've still got a few more road games to play. They could win more. They could make the playoffs.

Here, Amelia passes to Chelsea during the game with Old Orchard. And afterwards, everybody's happy.

High stakes

This form of poker probably has a name, but I don't know it. We played it at the beach last summer in Machiasport. I don't recall who won, but it wasn't me. 

Say "Cheese"

Pinstripes

Now that the Red Sox are safely in the playoffs, it can be revealed: once upon a time, in another life, so to speak, Joe was a New York Yankee.

#2 Patty Duke

#1 Happy Birthday, Pete! (a bit belatedly)

#2 In the 1960s, Patty Duke starred in a short-lived TV series in which she played two roles: "identical cousins" Patty and Kathy. Recently, this here Good Morning picture show misidentified as Amelia Stein a picture of her cousin Avi Stein. They must both be Patty Duke, because the error was not picked up by many of their near and dear--Amelia herself caught it, though she wasn't sure who it was in the picture, and finally her mother set us all straight.

Here are some little-girl shots of Avi and Amelia, along with two more recent images: Avi with boyfriend Nick, and Amelia a few years ago with her sister Maggie.