Sunday, November 15, 2009, 05:45
A Briefer History of Time
Here I am again, in utter disbelief that another week has gone past. Where the does time go? It starts out on Monday well enough, but then it seems like in the blink of an eye, a couple of meetings and some interviews, and a half dozen newspaper stories written, it's Friday already.
Speaking of time, I just finished reading Stephen Hawking's "A Briefer History of Time," and it is a book that makes a person feel quite insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
For example, Hawking says we now know that our Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. Since light travels at 186,000 feet per second, it is just about incomprehensible for me to think about the distance light would travel in one year, never mind 100,000 years. They also know that the Milky Way, a spiral galaxy with rotating arms, rotates around the center once every hundred million years. The Milky Way is one of a hundred billion (yes, with a "b") galaxies that can be seen with modern telescopes.
In fact, there are so many stars in the universe, and the universe is so vast, Hawking says if stars were grains of salt, the number of stars we can see in the sky would fill a teaspoon. But that's just a fraction of all the stars in the universe, which would fill a receptacle eight MILES wide.
I know how wide a teaspoon is, and I know how wide eight miles is. I don't have such a good concept of what one hundred million years is or one hundred billion galaxies. I just know it is a very great many.
Something to think about the next time you go outside at night and see stars in the sky.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Monday, November 09, 2009, 05:24
Mowing the Lawn in November
I have been wanting to mow the lawn "one more time" for the past six weeks.
October was not very conducive to mowing the lawn -- raining, snowing, raining again, snowing again, cold, cloudy, damp, wet, raining, snowing yet again.
Saturday the temperature was 60 degrees, and it was sunny. I figured now was my chance. Randy mowed some of the drain field Saturday morning around the tomato bed. Saturday afternoon, it was my turn to head down the hill to the barn to get the lawn mower out.
We have two lawn mowers. A "new" one that is about three years old. And an old one that is 22 years old.
The three-year-old lawn mower has not wanted to run all season. Randy has spent several hours trying to get it going. Nope. Nothing doing.
The 22-year-old lawn mower is quite reliable. It's a heavy beast, but it runs well and chews through just about everything without much of a problem. And if it does happen to choke on too much grass and stop, it starts again with one pull.
I dragged the old lawn mower out of the lean-to. Since it had been running only a few hours earlier, I did not think starting it would take much effort.
Actually, starting the old lawn mower did *not* take much effort. That's because after only a few pulls -- the pull cord broke.
Randy came down to the barn.
"I broke the pull cord," I said. "Well, *I* didn't break it. It wore through and snapped all on its own."
"Guess I'd better get some tools," he said.
A few minutes later, Randy returned with his tools and set about taking the lawn mower apart.
"Doesn't that just twist your knickers," I said. "The very idea. That lawn mower is only 22 years old. The pull cord didn't have any business breaking."
"Nope. They don't make 'em like that anymore, I suppose," he said.
Randy dismantled the top part of the mower so he could get at the pull cord. He cut off the frayed section and threaded it through the handle again.
"Do you think there's enough cord left to actually have enough cord to start it?" I asked.
"Only one way to find out," Randy said.
A few minutes later, the mower was back together again.
And a few pulls after that, it was running.
"Yee-hah," I said. "And away we go."
It was, of course, much easier said than done. The grass really was long and tangled, and it was very slow going. I wanted to get it cut over the drain field and in back of the house and in places where I know I'm going to have to shovel snow. I find it exceptionally frustrating to try to shovel snow where there's long grass underneath it.
The old mower stopped a few times where the grass was especially thick and tall, but it started again just fine.
The yard looks much better now that the grass is cut.
Randy pounded in some four-foot tall stakes by my newest lilac bush (just a twig now) and by a small cedar tree we transplanted. That way I'll be able to see them when I'm out with the snowblower. If we should happen to get so much snow that the stakes are covered, I will have plenty of other problems to deal with, and the path through the east side yard will be the least of my worries.
I am delighted that we were able to get the lawn mowed one more time this fall. I don't know how long our 22 year old mower will hold out. But no one can ever say that it hasn't given its best.
I would imagine lawn mower manufacturers would be appalled to find out that a 22 year old mower is still cutting grass and doing it quite well. No, they would much rather that people owned three year old mowers that conk out but are not able to be fixed so we have to buy new ones every three years.
If everything had been so poorly made way-back-when, why, just think, I could have had seven new lawn mowers in the last 22 years instead of only one. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph