Saturn @ MindSay

For all you stargazers out there, you may have heard, tonight will be a total lunar eclipse. Unfortunately, they are predicting poor weather all over the country, so it may be hard to see. I thought it was funny that the article reports that "this will be the last lunar eclipse until 2010." So? It isn't like that is that far away. Not anymore.

 

But, if you're interested, get outside at about 9 pm CST and you might get to see the eclipse and maybe even Saturn and its rings. And some bright star...I'm not much on astronomy.

 

 

I’m not a scientist, although I admire those who chose this field of study.  So, let me begin this article and its questions with a disclaimer: there’s a lot I don’t understand.

 

Before the questions, a little background.  There is a moon that circles Saturn, Enceladus, which apparently is geologically active and venting water toward Saturn.  The water from these emissions is believed to have formed one of Saturn’s outer rings.

 

Astronomers are really excited about Enceladus because there is water there.  And, they surmise, where there is water, there is a likelihood of life.  They speculate that they may find life, though primitive and simple, on Enceladus.

 

This is where my ignorant questions come into play.  Why don’t scientists employ sterile water here on earth, add whatever chemical agents and conditions they think are necessary for optimum success, and see what happens?  To put it another way, why would scientists think that they would be more likely to find life 800 million miles away, spontaneously generating in such a hostile environment than in conditions that are optimum?  If I remember correctly, I think the surface temperature of Enceladus is 300 degrees Fahrenheit below zero.

 

For those scientists out there, please correct me.  I’m serious.  I don’t understand.

 

Is it because if you find life on Enceladus, it will confirm your theories about how life evolved in this solar system?  If that’s true, wouldn’t a better first step be to see if it’s possible if life can really just spontaneously generate on earth first?   

  

Help me here.

           

Once more Father Time passes his torch on to Baby New Year. Of course he was not always Father Time, in Roman times he was known as Saturn and he carried a sickle just like the grim reaper of current fame. To the Greeks he was known as Chronos (or Chronus) a name that has is roots in time (chronology). He preceded Jupiter as the king of the gods and in Greek mythology is actually the father of Jupiter. The planets are named after Greek and Roman gods, I wonder why Saturn and not Chronos?

 

 

Baby New Year appears to be a more recent appearance. He typically shows up in his diaper and sash with the new year printed upon it. He abruptly shoves aside Father Time and proceeds to age at a rapid rate so that by the end of the year he appears again as Father Time. Do you think this is the first evidence of cloning?

 

 

I do not think people could handle Father Time for longer than a year. It would be like having your mother-in-law on a permanent visit!

Today is a bittersweet day -- a day of goodbyes.  It's probably a bit more emotional for arrrgylesocKs, but it's quite a day for me as well.

Rewind about eleven years. socKs had moved up to DC and had been working through an internship downtown. Ultimately she found a new job which she liked (and which paid a bit better), and she decided to move to the Virginia suburbs into her own apartment.  She also had gotten rid of the old Ford Escort she had been driving long before the move.

She and her Dad shopped around and found a nice Saturn. 2 door coupe. A purplish magenta sort of color.  socKs decided to name her Magenta -- because of the car's color and her fondness for "Rocky Horror."  Maggie for short.

Maggie and socKs -- they were practically inseparable. She lived her life with that car. She learned to drive in snow and ice, mastering the technology of anti-lock brakes. The almost endless storage in the trunk which could house pretty much anything she needed to bring to her side job working with the local youth group.

And there were the trips!  After socKs and I met, (Yes. Maggie pre-dates me.) she drove it up to New Jersey once or twice. We had our first road trip together, driving from Princeton to the Ben and Jerry's factory in Vermont. There were also trips down to North Carolina when I lived there -- as well as an even longer road trip to Atlanta.  When we moved in together to live in blatant debauchery and sin for the three months before we were married, I became further acquanited with Maggie as we would often drive each other's cars.

There were good times. Good tunes, even. Both volumes of The Commitments soundtrack pretty much lived in Maggie's tape deck. A different tape had become ensnarled within the tape head mechanism, but we still had the radio.  There were countless trips all over the eastern seaboard, to the rolling hills of Charlottesville and through the mountains of West Virginia.  Maggie also found her way deep into the heart of Washington, DC -- where her positive parking karma certainly paid off on numerous occasions.  And, of course, her surpirising storage capacity helped us move into our new house.

When  aviblog was born almost four years ago (and several weeks early), we had to get the car seat installed -- a tough feat when there's no "middle" in the back seat and the only option was converting the shoulder.lap combination belt. Fortunately, one of my co-workers and good friends has a husband who is a police officer trained in such installations, and we were able to get this done with ease.

We ultimately traded in my old car for a new mini-SUV (from the same dealership from which socKs bought Maggie eight years previously) and bought MP3/CD players for both vehicles. (After all -- when there's a new car in the family, you have to pay attention to the big sister too, right?) I got a cheap system from Best Buy whose radio pretty much didn't work, but it could play MP3 CDs just fine. (And it had a line in jack for any external MP3 players.)

There came a time, more recently, that we realized Maggie was getting old.  There was normal wear and tear. And rattling sounds. Grumbling. And Av was getting pretty big for the back seat in his much larger car seat. The defrosting system wasn't working well enough for those cold mornings. We knew that Maggie would likely need to be retired soon.

That day is today.

Holding us over for a year or two or three before we start shopping around for new cars again is Khaki, the car which my Mom used to drive. Maggie's been sitting on the sidelines as we've been fighting bureaucracy to get all the paperwork in order due to some miscommunication between institutions about her title. Last night, however, I cleaned the final remains of everything out of the car and vacuumed. I drove Maggie to work today -- and when I leave work I'll be driving across the bridge into Maryland -- where I'll drop her off at my Dad's place. we'll be donating her to a local social services agency, and they'll get the car from his home. Then I'll take the Metro back in to the city and head on home.

Maggie is just a car, I know. I'm not crying over this. But I am reflecting at the things I'll remember about her... er, it.  The little idiosyncrasies -- having to start braking before everyone else "just in case."  Needing to pay strict attention to the gas gauge because this was the one model where Saturn forgot to add a "low gas" warning light.  Having to put the car into park before putting it into reverse for the engine to catch. And the precise adjustments one has to make during cold weather to not let the windshield fog up.

Just this morning, in fact, there was frost on the windshield and I had to make these maneuvers.  I won't miss them one bit. Nor will I miss the other thing that happened this morning -- when the CD player started freaking out and the volume started climbing all by itself, only halted by disconnecting the faceplate of the radio.

Goodbye, Maggie.  On to new things...