033112

tearing off weed tips
in a shower of droplets
spring in a chair

033012

the mock orange
flashes a white sliver
tomorrow, it says

new tornado documentary

Discovering Alabama has produced a documentary about the April 27 tornadoes in our state. I am told that it is a very powerful and moving show. Here are initial broadcast times.


Discovering Alabama: Tornado APT Broadcast Dates:

Thursday, April 5 at 9:30pm

Sunday, April 8 at 5:00pm

Monday, April 9 at 9:30pm

Wednesday, April 11 at 7:30pm (preceding a new NOVA titled “Deadliest Tornadoes.” )

Sunday, April 22 at 10:30pm

Inverted Folk

Anyone who received a PDF copy of my short science fiction and fantasy poetry brochure "Inverted Folk" may have noticed some formatting oddities. At least, if you tried to print it out. Now, Fibitz Reality Adjustment has kindly fixed the formatting and made everything prettier as well. The PDF is still free. Just let me know.

032912

And now my youngest daughter has received her first tax refund. She has discovered how liberating it can be. This means she can spend her own money going on a trip instead of borrowing all of it from us. So: yay!

purple cup
in a green shroud
Clematis in weeds

032812

Turns out the handy-dandy science-fiction club I learned about, located at the University of Kansas, where my daughter could only find a moribund science-fiction film club, is the same club. Apparently all they ever do is talk on Facebook. Apparently all anybody ever does is communicate remotely, even when they live near each other. Not quite true, thank goodness, but I think it's more true if you're 20 than if you're 50.

If it costs $200 a day to see someone face-to-face at a conference and zero dollars to talk to them anytime you like by e-mail....

leftovers huddle
in the cool dark recesses
who will die today

032712

Today I volunteer with Meals on Wheels, which means my helper, who has to make my lunch for me, drives me to the central distribution location, picks up meals, and then drives me to each person's residence, where she gives them their meals. Afterwards, she drives me back to the office. I'm helping, really I am!

in other news
five different roses are in bloom
one to go

032612

greybeards give way
to sinew-ous mantles
trees bear up

Marine critters evolve when we stew planet

Evolution lecture, Tuscaloosa, Thursday, 7:30 pm.

http://as.ua.edu/evolution/speakers-2011-2012/#deWaal

032512

Tree beards
Wave goodbye as we flee
One south for another

032412

the tired poet
eats his pet bibliobird
excretes metered feathers

ICFA

Friday. Reading this afternoon. Enjoyed some talks; eg, Alice as monster in Through the Looking Glass. some folks need to speak up; hope i don't have that problem. made it safely wed. ~4 pm but only now sorta caught up on sleep.strangely, tho this is an academic con, many participants seem to sleep late. met kij johnson, geoff landis, mary turzillo, and more. saw kessel and the duncans. saw readings by sawyer, haldeman, kress. great fun. bought a few books; old sf ppbacks.

w,th,f get one poem

kij thinks my shy
daughter will knock on strange door
hope so

footprints 313 million years old

The fossils at the Minkin site are about 100 million years older than the oldest dinosaurs. They include some of the oldest reptile footprints, associated with footprints of amphibians. The site has also produced footprints of a transitional group that had some characteristics of primitive reptiles but not all of them. Five different tetrapod species, at least, are responsible for the tricks that have been found. More than 100 fish-fin traces were made by small fish. Invertebrate traces were made by millipedes, wingless insects, horseshoe crabs, fly larvae, and others. Body fossils include insect wings and a primitive spider relative. More than 4000 specimens have been collected to date.

This is really a cool site.

The guidebook is about 30 pages long, includes a bunch of photographs, and it's free. I think it will soon be available as a free download from the website of the Alabama Paleontological Society, but for now, just ask me for it.

Trace-fossil site guidebook

Steven C. Minkin Paleozoic Footprint site, Walker Co., AL

Best trackway site of its age in world, best trace-fossil site in AL.

Free pdf. Not yet downloadable, but I can send via email.

032012

Leaving for ICFA in Orlando this afternoon. Spring-breaking daughter cat-sitting & plant-sitting. My internet access'll b limited thru the 25th.

night light red shift
in rear-view interstate ribbon
March summer

031912

Mussels do it contractionally.

031912a

if you intend
to write 2 poems but don't
one audience clapping

031712

night rider
barking up a storm
toll road to heaven

031612

each pile
a project or two
need a bigger desk

HPL's

beneath this stone
an echoic gulf
that which bays

All the Alexanders

Alexander the Tape had the conquest of Eurasia wrapped up in just a few years.

031512

these critters
have very peculiar feet
change as they go
Windwalker snatches exoplanetologist
galaxy burns in beauty

ICFA

Next week, Orlando.
Reading a few poems & learnin about spec lit.
Must review guest list & take bx 2 b autographed.
Will u b there?

031412

tis the t-t season:
hot tea in the morning,
iced after noon

031312

Calypsan wives shift
to ultraviolet in extremis
visible in repose

031212

there was a young poet who read
all the work that he'd written in bed
the problem was crumbs
and a weak pair of lungs
and soon the bed poet was dead

031112

window-stuck
shrinky-dink glassy stare
something fishy

031012

finding our astronauts
in a hole in the ground
told u I could!

zweekin re-vew

This has been a busy and distracted week for me. Wednesday and Thursday I went to Mobile for a conference about carbon dioxide sequestration underground. So a fair amount of Monday and Tuesday was spent making sure all of the logistics were taken care of. Got up early Wednesday to drive to Mobile. Got back from Mobile only slightly earlier than I usually get home from work. (And what was it that made "Mobile" sound so much like "Tokyo" that Dragon NaturallySpeaking picked that as its second choice interpretation of what I said?) Wednesday I tried to stay awake during speeches from about 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Because this was immediately preceded by a tremendous lunch featuring crawfish étouffé, this was no mean feat. That night I was still not at all hungry, even after a 1 1/3 mile-long walk to a local restaurant. The walk would have been a bit shorter, but a friend of mine who gave us directions began with "turn right" when he ought to have begun with "turn left." At least if he wanted us to get there. We went to the original location of Wintzell's Oyster House, a justifiably famous chain of Alabama seafood restaurants.I ordered one of the smallest items on the menu and couldn't even finish that. Thursday, after a larger than usual breakfast, more speeches, and then a trip to a coal-fired powerplant. You can't see much at a powerplant. This is even worse if you can't get up the stairs. Add to that the fact that the place was running, so I could hear almost nothing that we were told. Fortunately, we had already been told the exact same stuff in one of the speeches. It was interesting, and I saw some nice wildflowers. This was followed up with the best box lunch I've ever had and the long drive home.

This week I had the unfortunate realization that something very important had slipped my mind. I needed to get some samples made so that I could describe them in time to write a paper in time to give a talk at a meeting this summer. I am not entirely sure that logistics will work out for me to attend the meeting, but first things first. The samples should go out Monday afternoon.

Several things are going on with the Science Fiction Poetry Association. I think I have now done what I had to do for today. This involved finding some verbiage and writing some more, gathering some information and making a spreadsheet, and other things that usually don't sound very exciting in a blog even if completing them is pretty important. I do hope I have finished everything I had to do, because tonight we're having dinner guests. A group of friends that was originally intended to number about six and actually numbers about nine. It should be fun.

Great weather today. Temperature is in the high 60s (Fahrenheit) and it's the first day in a while I had time to go look at the flower garden. There is no vegetable action this early in the year, because we did not get snow peas planted when we should have. Possibly the very last daffodil flower is in full-blown. Snowdrops are almost gone. We have quite a few grape hyacinths, the Lady Banks rose, a star of Bethlehem as well as a lot of weeds that have flowers resembling miniature Star of Bethlehem flowers, white, pink, and red azaleas, buds (which of course actually has pink flowers when they are open as they are now), poppy buds, lots of green shoots, buds on the seven sisters rose, and other things I'm sure that I have forgotten.

030912

t-shirt weather
for the old me
space heater

030812

how do I make it
till I'm supposed to sleep
music

this is for tomorrow

when I'll be away.


drilling for raisins
in the muffin worlds
chocogusher

030612

some dead philosopher
millennial work written
by age 23

Alabama science education update

I do have permission to reprint the following message:

Dear Alabama friends of science education,

As you may have heard, House Bill 133 was approved last week by the Education Policy committee. For background and news reports, see these NCSE posts:
http://ncse.com/news/2012/03/credit-creationism-scheme-passes-committee-007232
http://ncse.com/news/2012/02/background-credit-creationism-scheme-007211
http://ncse.com/news/2012/02/credit-creationism-scheme-unconstitutional-007209
http://ncse.com/news/2012/02/antievolution-legislation-alabama-007208

HB 133 is now listed on the House calendar for Tuesday, March 6, meaning that it will very likely be voted on by the full House tomorrow. There is still time to contact your House representatives by e-mail or phone to ask them to vote against this attempt to enable public school credit for teaching of creationism.

A list of representatives, with links and phone numbers, is here:
http://www.legislature.state.al.us/house/representatives/houseroster_alpha.html

Note that you can find your legislator by zip code on the same page, if necessary.

Thank you for your help in opposing HB 133.

Best wishes,
Eric Meikle

new science-poetry pamphlet

http://sfpoetry.com/files/SFPA_Cosmos.pdf

030512

these creatures destroyed
themselves in a geologic instant
excellent preservation

internal skeletons
we've never seen the like

giant moons
once thought to suppress evolution
of higher life

free science poetry

http://www.sfpoetry.com/promos.html

workshop in paint

2012 Trace-Fossil workshop

or

playing in paint

Yesterday morning I got up at five o'clock to drive to North Alabama to do a trace-fossil workshop for teachers. By "drive," I mean "beat driven by." Yes, I have a chauffeur wherever I go. Too bad I don't have the Bentley that usually goes with it. So Doug, Doris, and I drove up to Camp McDowell, an episcopal nature camp in rural north-central Alabama. We taught members of the Environmental Education Association of Alabama, mostly if not entirely K-12 teachers, about tracks, fossil tracks, what you can learn from them, and how to have fun with students in the process. I didn't invent this activity; I slightly adapted it for my own purposes. We had 19 students and everybody had fun. 17 of the 19 people took off their shoes and socks, stepped in paint, and walked on long strips of paper. I consider that an achievement, considering that it was only in 50s outside and that's where we did that. We measured foot length, both measured and calculated leg length, measured stride length, used an empirically derived formula, and figured out how fast people were walking. The only thing we lacked was a stopwatch to determine whether our walking-rate calculation was accurate. Maybe next time. I heard a number of people say their students would really enjoy the activity, so I know we achieved our primary objective.

We also gave away plant fossils (we were under strict instructions to do so) and various publications (like posters and postcards). We didn't have time to go on the afternoon field trip, and I was afraid I would not make it up a steep slope at the outcrop, because of the previous night's torrential downpour. Maybe next time for that too.

I would write more, but I have a lot of things to try to accomplish today before I get back to reading Spook Country, by William Gibson.

030412

dirt-streaked teacher
in faded t-shirt skips
I found a mushroom

030312

the relief
of knowing
tax refund

030212

sticks I pulled
from a beaver dam
rebuilt in a day

030112

Feb 30 brthdays
not rare at all
Hobbiton