Something I’ve Learned
This week I participated in a seminar where the facilitator told an interesting story about the Space Shuttle and how their width of its solid rocket boosters was determined by the width of the standard railroad track in the United States — NASA needed to be able to ship them by train from one location to another. He continued to point out that the standard width of the U.S. railroad was based upon the standard width of the British railroad track. And that the width of the British railroad was based upon the width of the paths that the Romans left when they conquered the British Isles in 43 AD. And the width of these Roman paths was determined by the width of a two-horse chariot.
Put simply, the somewhat arbitrary dimensions utilized in the construction of a spaceship in the late 20th century were determined by the size of two horses’ asses during the time of Christ.
Something I Worked On
This week I’m releasing a new story called “Pins and Needles.” It’s a police procedural centered around a stereotypical interrogation scene and was inspired by a headline I read a few months ago about a man being interviewed about the body of his roommate being found buried in his backyard. My version of the story has a different ending.
It’s currently on my Patreon and will also be on my fiction Substack.
I’m currently turning my attention to a Christmas-themed project but I’m concerned that I won’t get it down in time. Stay tuned.
Something Beautiful
In recent days my attention was drawn toward Ulysses by James Joyce. I’m not much of a reader so it’s not a bold statement to say that I’ve never read it in its entirety, and that I wasn’t aware until now that the final chapter was a continuous, stream of conscious passage that had no punctuation. In the final part of this text, I’m blown away by the beautiful way in which Joyce uses the word “Yes”…
and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
A Final Thought
So much of the bad news that we hear today boils down to one group of people doing harm to another group of people. It makes me want to act, to say something, but it also makes me want to withdraw from society all together. Both reactions make me human, which also connects me to the people doing harm, and the people being harmed. We’re all in this together, whether we like it or not.