Ramble With Me.

A Summer’s Tale.

Author: January 9, 2026 2 Comments

The pond is sleeping now. Six months ago it was active all through the night—or at least was active whenever I went by it, or even just went outside. The pond is on an adjacent property next to our driveway, about halfway between our house and our mailbox which is a quarter of a mile away. Sometimes I walk by it at night. In the summer, sometimes in the deep darkness of a new moon, I’d hear at least three different types of frogs: green frogs, leopard frogs, and the deep thrum of a single bullfrog calling out for a mate.

When we moved in to our new house we had fencing placed around the yard. The company that installed the fence left deep ruts in one corner and a day or two afterward it rained. The ruts filled up with water and the large puddle soon attracted the frogs from the pond. I went out one morning and found dots in mats of jelly.

Then the dots became commas, and then little swimmers. I realized the puddle was drying faster the tadpoles were developing so I took a jar and made several trips. I moved at least a hundred to the pond. Just before the puddle disappeared completely a bird helpfully removed the rest, leaving only three-pronged footprints in the mud.

 

I kept half a dozen in a jar in the garage, giving them fresh water each evening and a pinch of fish flakes every morning. It was a thrill to watch them grow and to release them to the pond where, I hoped, they’d start the cycle over.

It seemed like a few returned—I went out on the patio to find them clinging to the door or the underside of the roof. It’s more likely they were attracted by the bugs who were, in turn, attracted by the lights.

I kept a pair of cheap rubber shoes in the garage that I’d slip on whenever I had to go out, but then one day I found this.

I just said, Welcome home. And went to buy another pair of cheap rubber shoes for myself.

Happy Birthday., Nature Talks., Quick Takes., Ramble With Me., Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

It’s Been A Minute.

Author: January 1, 2026 10 Comments

So a few things have changed since we moved, and by “a few things” I mean, of course, almost everything. We’re now out in the country, though I still commute to Nashville on a regular basis. We’re mostly surrounded by trees. There’s a high ridge behind our house and just beyond it there are train tracks. Hearing the regular sound of train whistles is really a nice thing. We looked at several places together but none seemed quite right: the house was too small or the yard was too small. One had everything we wanted but also one thing we didn’t want: a front yard with the road running right through it. It also had half a dozen RVs parked in far side of the front yard. If we’d picked that place I would have kept one and turned it into a writing studio, but that wasn’t a sufficient to compensate for the miniscule backyard or my concerns about how our dogs would react to the neighbor’s chickens. Or how the neighbor’s chickens would react to our dogs since they seemed to have free run of the backyard. 

We looked at another house that had everything we wanted, including a nice shed I could easily turn into a writing studio, and also, just a few houses away, there was a graveyard–something I didn’t know I wanted but was really great–but it would also have meant an hour and a half drive to work. I don’t mind driving but I knew that doing it three hours a day at least four days a week I’d really come to hate it.

Then one Friday morning my wife and our amazing realtor–name available on request–decided to go look at a place that had a little more acreage than we were looking for but seemed promising. And then she called me and said, “I need you to leave work now.” And just like that we found the place. It had almost everything we wanted, including some space where I’ll eventually put a writing studio, and even some fun little surprises lurking in the drawers.

Our realtor, who really is amazing, made the whole process as smooth and easy as selling a place where we’d lived for more than three decades and buying an entirely new home could be. Then she took us out for a nice lunch and I said, hey, if I’d known this was part of the deal I would have sold our house years ago.

First, though, we’d have to move and while we did quite a lot of that ourselves–including one harrowing night drive with the CRV packed full of boxes–we had to rely on professionals for the big stuff. So let me introduce you to the moving crew:

Skip: The first to arrive in a small moving truck that pulled into our driveway ten minutes ahead of the scheduled appointment time. Skinny as a toothpick. Carrying a vape in one hand and a phone in the other. The first thing he said when he got out was, “Sorry we’re late. We got lost. The other truck will be here in ten minutes.” It would take the other, larger, truck half an hour to arrive.

Alex: Arrived with Skip but sat in the truck for ten minutes while Skip surveyed the scene. Skinny as a toothpick. Climbed on top of the moving truck and stayed there until the other truck arrived.

Derek: First off the second truck. Skinny as a toothpick. Bright, chatty, and very funny. At one point, after he’d carried five bookcases by himself, he and I chatted about the time he got poison ivy at basketball camp and told me he was so covered in calamine lotion “I was boppin’ around the court like a brown and pink lollipop.” While I laughed awkwardly he gracefully carried out a box that weighed more than he did.

Anson: Skinny as a toothpick. Carried boxes out so quietly and smoothly he might have gone completely unnoticed if he hadn’t been the only member of the crew with sleeve tattoos.

Jerry: Skinny as a toothpick. Frowned a lot. Borrowed Skip’s vape then proceeded to carry the refrigerator out by himself.

Josh: Carried a bottle of Gatorade in one hand and nothing heavier than twenty pounds in the other hand. Followed Jerry the entire time, talking non-stop. From what I could hear he knows more about Bauhaus the band and Bauhaus the design school than any human being should.

Rowan: Looked like he lifts weights professionally. Was 6’2″–and that’s the width of his chest. Needed help carrying a coffee table.

Of course moving was just the start. It would be followed by unpacking that, well, if you’ve ever moved, you know still isn’t complete, and also a lot of “Where is the…?” followed by “In a box somewhere.” Then there would be getting to know the neighbors, but that’s another story.

 

Adventures In Busing., Hail & Farewell., Not Non-Fiction, Ramble With Me., Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Annual Report: 2024/2025

Author: April 1, 2025 4 Comments

April 2024: Back in 1995, playing around with email for the first time, I created an list to forward funny things that had been forwarded to me. To protect the identities of everyone in the list I called it “Anonymous” and, because I’d learned about the Freethinkers from Mark Twain, I added that to the name. Then I started writing funny things of my own to preface whatever I was forwarding. Then a friend created a website and started archiving the pieces. Then I just stopped forwarding stuff because I wanted to focus on my own things and eventually it evolved into a blog, again with a friend’s help.

I’d read somewhere that the average life of a blog is three years. While I’ve never been able to confirm this I felt that, while I couldn’t pinpoint the exact date I’d started, I was close enough to say I’d now hit the twenty-nine year mark. It would only take one more year to bury the average.

 

May 2024: At this point I’d been playing the ukulele for a little over a year. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact date I started but that doesn’t matter because time is flexible and with almost any hobby there are a lot of different points at which you could say you technically started. So when asked what song I’d like to learn next I said “John Cage’s Four Minutes and Thirty-three Seconds.” This resulted in approximately forty-seven seconds of silence but I’m sure with practice I’ll be able to get through the entire piece.

 

June 2024: I remembered that this was the centennial year of the Surrealist Movement although with something like surrealism, which is more of a vaguely defined style than a single specific movement, there’s no way to really pinpoint the exact date. Even the first members of the Surrealist group claimed Hieronymous Bosch as one of their members and in 1924 he celebrated his 474th birthday. Or at least he would have if he hadn’t died four hundred and eight years earlier.

 

July 2024: I finally decided this was the year I’d find the best milkshake in Nashville. I’d had this idea for several years, though I couldn’t pinpoint the exact date it came into my head, but I do know I always got distracted by the idea of whether I should include chain restaurants of focus solely on local places. Local places would be my preference, and I’d also keep in mind that “best” is subjective. And then I wondered if I should focus strictly on ice cream places or any place that serves milkshakes. And didn’t I also plan to do this with gyros?

 

August 2024: Team members Dave Casman and Joe Bertman came into the office and announced that all of Emily Dickinson’s poems can be sung to the tune of John Cage’s Four Minutes and Thirty-three Seconds and they were immediately told to get out.

 

September 2024: Conseils d’application: Répartissez le conditionneur de manière uniforme sur les pointes et le centre de vos cheveux. N’appliquez pas le conditionneur sue votre cuir chevelu. Laissez le conditionneur s’imprégner pendant quelques minutes. Rincez abondamment. Avertissements: Réserve a un usage extreme uniquement. Conserver hors de portee des enfants. Cessez de utiliser en cas d’irritation.

 

October 2024: This is a test. This is only a test. Please stand by. Do not adjust your television set. We control the vertical. We control the horizontal. Scarecrows and magic and other fatal fears do not bring people closer together. There is no magic substitute for soft caring and hard work, for self-respect and mutual love. If we can learn this from the mistake these frightened men made then their mistake will not have been merely grotesque, it would at least have been a lesson. A lesson, at last, to be learned.

 

November 2024: I decided to participate in “No Shave November” and by the end of the month had acquired what most people would describe as a “five o’clock shadow”. All right, technically it was closer to four-thirty, but it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact date.

 

December 2024: The final month marked the end of yet another year, although these annual reports get filed in April, and anyway time is arbitrary, wibbly-wobbly, and as soon as you focus on a single moment it’s already on to the next. There’s nothing to do but keep going and hope things will get better.

 

January 2025: Team members Dave Casman and Joe Bertman came into the office with the idea of finding the best place in Nashville to get Boston cream pie, New England clam chowder, Belgian waffles, Baked Alaska, Buffalo wings, Pad Thai, Swedish meatballs, Turkish delight, Vienna sausages, Black Forest cake, Swiss chard, Brussels sprouts,Chicken Kiev, Canadian bacon, and Eggs Benedict and were immediately told to get out.

 

February 2025: I would procrastinate if I ever get around to it. Anyway while digging through the backseat of the car in search of some ketchup I found my gym shorts and realized it was well past time to wash them. In fact I could pinpoint the exact date because there were a couple of receipts for a milkshake and a gyro in the pocket.

 

March 2025: I’d read somewhere that the average life of a blog is three years. While I couldn’t pinpoint the exact date I’d started, I knew it was close enough that I could safely say I’d been doing this odd little thing I called “Freethinkers Anonymous” for thirty years. It would have been nice to gather everyone who’s been with me on this journey together in one room, but you’re all so scattered, and some fell by the wayside. Many years ago—I can’t pinpoint the exact date—I read the Epic of Gilgamesh and found comfort in the idea that nothing is permanent. At the time I thought it meant that everything ends but as I’ve gotten older it feels deeper than that. Everything changes and as soon as you focus on one moment it’s on to the next, but as long as we’re here the important thing is to keep playing.

Hail & Farewell., Happy Birthday., Not Non-Fiction, Quick Takes., Ramble With Me., Submitted For Your Approval., The Vault, The Weekly Essay

Moving Right Along.

Author: March 28, 2025 2 Comments

So my wife and I have been considering moving for various reasons. It would be a big change and it occurs to me that, unlike most people I know, I feel like I’ve been in one place most of my life. I’ve traveled halfway around the world and somehow ended up back in the city where I was born. My family moved when I was just four, and though I have very vivid, and happy, memories of the first house we lived in, moving wasn’t scary or traumatic. It was fun and exciting. Then I went off to college, which wasn’t exactly moving—just transferring some of my stuff—then got married and, well, settled down. My wife and I have lived in the same house for as long as we’ve been together. That’s because we’ve been happy with the place, and still are, mostly, but around us things are changing. We had neighbors who moved out and their house sat empty for a month or so, then one morning I went to work and when I came home in the afternoon there was a pile of brick and broken wood and glass and shingles where their house had been. It’s a scene that’s played out up and down our street: as houses get sold they get knocked down and are replaced with oversized McMansions. So, to paraphrase Billy Joel, if that’s movin’ up then we’re movin’ out.

We can’t just pick up and move, though, so we’ve been looking at some different houses, which has been fun. With every place I think, what would our lives be like here? I thought it would be easy but just one day of visiting various potential domiciles disabused me of that notion. At least one of the advantages of moving now is we can look at houses online without having to actually visit them which makes it easy to narrow the search, though several looked great on a screen but, when seen in person, looked like their photos had been retouched, airbrushed, and finally replaced with a picture of another house.

The first house was perfect and had everything we wanted—if it were knocked over on its side, since the design was tall and narrow. The hallway to the bedrooms wasn’t big enough for two people to pass. The bedrooms themselves were spacious, if, like Spider-Man, we could stick to the walls. At least there was a nice big yard to make up for the lack of interior space and the week-old-salmon-colored cabinets could always be repainted.

The next house was perfect and had everything we wanted and several things we didn’t, including a giant crater about fifty feet from the front door that looked like someone had started digging a spot for an Olympic-sized hot tub and then forgot about it. At least there was a nice big yard. The only problem was the road that ran right through the middle of it. On the other side of the road, in what would be the rest of our yard, there were several abandoned camper vans. My wife said that if we picked that place we’d make hauling those away a condition of closing the sale. I thought we could keep one. I’d turn it into a studio space and name it “Beethoven”, but we decided to pass on the place entirely.

The next house was perfect and had everything we wanted and then some. It had a nice big backyard with a shed and woods and a deck built around a tree with a couple of chairs for sitting. There was even a graveyard just a few doors down which I thought would be really convenient if it became the place where we spend the rest of our lives. Unfortunately the commute to work would be two hours every day and that’s at least an hour more than I want to spend driving.

The next house was perfect and had everything we wanted if we were looking for a staircase so steep it was like climbing into an M.C. Escher print. The amazing thing about it is from the outside it looked almost identical to the house of a friend of mine, even down to its position on a cul-de-sac, and, aside from the vertical stairs, had very similar floorplan. Years earlier he bought a car that matched ours, since he liked it so much, and it tickled me to think I could tell him we were moving into his house’s twin. It also had a nice big backyard, though the downside was it was all downside, the whole house overlooking a gully.

So we decided we’d continue searching, and a week later while I was at work my wife called to say she thought she’d found one that had everything we wanted, but we decided we’d look at it together to see what it didn’t.

Adventures In Busing., Ramble With Me., Submitted For Your Approval., The Vault, The Weekly Essay

Passing Through Uranus.

Author: March 13, 2025 1 Comment

Source: Wikipedia

On March 13th, 1781 the composer, musician, and amateur astronomer William Herschel looked through his telescope and realized what he’d initially thought was a comet was, in fact, a previously unknown planet. It was the first planet discovered in modern times and, after a lot of discussion, would eventually be named Uranus, after the primordial Greek god of the sky. Although it had been observed since ancient times it was so distant and so difficult to see it was assumed to be a star. The discovery that it was a planet is why I think Uranus deserves special recognition.

When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986 astronomers were unimpressed and thought it was a pretty boring planet. Since then interest in Uranus has picked up. Seasonal changes and wind speeds of 560 miles per hour have been found on Uranus. Its temperature of -200 degrees Celsius means Uranus is a very, very cold place. Until very recently it was thought to be the only gas giant that didn’t emit detectable heat. Now it’s been determined that it does emit heat, though less than Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. It also remains unusual for its axial tilt of 98 degrees, making Uranus the most lopsided planet in the solar system.

If space travel advances Uranus may someday also be very important as a launching point for missions leaving the solar system. The large quantities of methane in Uranus may even be a source of fuel, if we can tap into it. It’s fourteen times more massive than Earth so Uranus has a very intense gravitational pull. It’s also not easy to get there. Even traveling at the speed of light it would take an Earth ship almost two and a half hours to get to Uranus.

More terrestrially there’s the town of Uranus, Missouri, a small stopping point for tourists along the historic Route 66, where you can visit the Fudge Factory And General Store, and where, the mayor tells me, they have a special celebration every March 13th.

This is why I think Uranus Day is an event we can all get behind.

Source: Uranus Fudge Factory

Adventures In Busing., Happy Birthday., Keep Looking Up, Ramble With Me., Submitted For Your Approval., The Vault

Morning Light.

Author: March 10, 2025 2 Comments

The change to Daylight Saving Time this weekend meant that for the first time in months I left for work in the dark. Because my morning commute takes me almost due east there were a few days when I was driving right into the sun. Maybe that’s why this morning I was so conscious of the artificial lights I passed, still aglow in the rising dawn. If there’s an advantage to the time change it’s that it makes me more aware, although I may be unusual in that. While waiting at a red light I saw two guys in the middle of the cross street standing by a white pickup truck; there was a dark blue pickup truck right behind it. The blue pickup’s front was touching the white one’s back fender. They were both laughing about it and before the light changed they pulled into a parking lot, presumably to exchange insurance information, though from my vantage point I couldn’t see any damage.

It’s strange that I’d see an accident on my way to work. For one thing I don’t see many accidents anyway, and I’m grateful for that. But also at least one study has found that there’s a drop in accidents following the spring change to Daylight Savings Time, with an increase in the fall.

Seeing a small fender bender made me even more conscious of the road ahead as I drove into the dawn, streetlights winking out and lights still on in businesses and apartments dimming as I got closer to work, the sun still not over the horizon after I parked and walked across the roof of the parking garage.

Adventures In Busing., Quick Takes., Ramble With Me.

Night Watch.

Author: February 28, 2025 2 Comments

Orion was high in the west last night before I went to bed. Jupiter, the brightest object in the sky right now with only a very thin crescent Moon waning towards new, was up too, and almost directly overhead was Mars. I know a lot of people think of Mars as our next step into the universe now that we’ve been to the Moon, though we haven’t been back in more than five decades now. In so much science fiction Mars is inhabited, or at least habitable, a home away from home for terrestrial life, but last night looking toward the brighter planet I thought about how Jupiter is really the New York of our solar system: if we can make it there we can make it anywhere. Not that Jupiter even has a surface we could land on, and if it did the gravity would crush almost anything we’d send down, but it’s got dozens on moons we could settle on if we could overcome a few challenges like creating a breathable atmosphere, producing food, dealing with the intense radiation—Jupiter spews out more energy than it receives from the sun—and also hauling almost everything we’d need more than a billion miles through space. Getting to Jupiter makes the Oregon trail look like a hop, skip, and a jump.

Then I turned toward Orion, the constellation of the hunter, the second constellation I learned to recognize after Ursa Major. I was never very good at connect-the-dots puzzles but there’s a certain clarity about constellations. After seeing a picture of the Orion constellation in a book I just looked up one night at the right time and there it was, literally right before my eyes, a distinct figure, not quite pareidolia but close.

Winter is hunting season, when herds are culled and freezing temperatures and snow mean meat’s on the menu so it’s fitting Orion is high in the sky. But Orion is at its peak I also know it means winter’s coming to an end, the grass and hibernating animals will be waking up, the spring birds will be coming back. The squirrel nests, big clumps of dry leaves taking up space in the empty branches of trees, will be replaced by green leaves. The horizon I can see now will be obscured by greenery, and the sky directly overhead, so clear right now, will get hazy with humidity.

It was a warm night for late February and I stood out there for a long time thinking about the planets, the stars, and also how all of us, even when completely still, are always in motion.   

Keep Looking Up, Ramble With Me., The Weekly Essay

It’s All In The Timing.

Author: December 23, 2024 4 Comments

Source: Pinterest

How do you decide when a vacation has begun? I had to work Friday so technically when I clocked out in the afternoon that was when my time off started but I also rarely work weekends so Saturday and Sunday I really didn’t feel like I was on vacation yet. Then this morning I had that strange experience of waking up and not being sure if it was Sunday or Monday. Now that I’ve had my morning coffee I can confirm it is Monday. I don’t have to report until early next year so I can definitely say I am on vacation and looking forward to Christmas. One of the nice things about having a holiday during a vacation is it helps me organize my time. And one of our Christmas Eve traditions is I make Eggs Benedict which, like most recipes, is largely dependent on timing.

This recipe serves three, or six people if you’re serving it with a side dish, or one person if they’re really hungry and are trying to send their cholesterol level off the charts.

You will need:

  • About three billion eggs, or maybe only a dozen
  • A pound of butter (or two eight ounce sticks) at room temperature
  • Six tablespoons of lemon juice
  • Three English muffins (which are neither English nor muffins)
  • Canadian bacon (which is not technically Canadian and is also purely optional;  some recipes substitute avocado slices, crabmeat, or nothing—go with whatever you like)
  • Five or six kilos of a hard silvery-gray transition metal with the atomic number 24

First halve and toast the English muffins. Classic Eggs Benedict calls for a slice of ham on the English muffin halves, but for some that may be too much. Tasty alternatives include slices of avocado or smoked salmon or nothing or whatever you want.

Poach six eggs. If you have an egg poacher you can use that. I’ve also poached the eggs by adding water and a small amount of vinegar to a shallow pan, but that’s tricky because you have to keep the water just below boiling. Place an egg on each of the English muffin halves.

You can now set this aside in a warm oven.

The Hollandaise sauce is the hard part, but it comes together quickly. That’s why it’s hard, though it should stay soft enough to pour. This ain’t a recipe you can walk away from. First separate the yolks from the whites or, to be more accurate, from the clears. It’s okay to leave some of the clear with the yolks. Since this version of Hollandaise sauce is basically a savory lemon custard–yes, you’re serving eggs over eggs–some albumen will help it hold together. 

Combine the egg yolks and the lemon juice in a pan over low heat.  

Add half the butter. Stir slowly.

Once the butter is melted continue stirring for about a minute then add the second half of the butter. Stir vigorously. At this point the eggs will start to cook and the sauce will thicken. This is when you have to work fast. Just after the butter is completely melted the sauce is culinary nitroglycerine. It won’t blow up but it is seriously unstable. Get it off the heat and evenly distribute it over the English muffin halves and poached eggs.

For some color sprinkle on a little paprika or some parsley or both for a seasonal red and green effect. In fact this is a recipe and you should always go with what you like, so if you want to substitute actual muffins and Cadbury chocolate eggs don’t let anyone stop you. 

Serve on hubcaps because there’s no plate like chrome for the Hollandaise.

Adventures In Busing., Ramble With Me., Submitted For Your Approval., The Vault

Something For Everyone.

Author: October 31, 2024 3 Comments

For three years now people on my street have managed to block, or at least restrict, traffic for a couple of hours so families and kids can wander up and down trick-or-treating safely. It’s been a great event and a nice chance to meet people who live in my neighborhood—sometimes people from nearby streets come over, and the more the merrier. Rather than making anyone walk all the way down our fairly long driveway in the dark I set up a table with a bowl of candy and a lantern and set off on my own, trusting any takers to follow the honor system. The ideal bowl of candy, I think, should have a good mix—a little something for everyone. There’s an assortment of chocolate but because not everyone can have chocolate I make sure there are plenty of non-chocolate sweets.

And since not everyone can have candy last year I added stickers to the mix, hoping, again, that trick-or-treaters will follow the honor system and the ones who can have candy will take it and leave the other goodies for those who can’t. Last year when I came back to check the stickers were the first things to go—all that was left was a few lollipops and those eventually got picked up too. I was glad because, while it’s nice to have a little leftover Halloween candy, I really don’t need it.

Source: Yarn

This year I’ll be including something special at the very bottom of the bowl. The worst thing I think could happen to any trick-or-treater is going away empty handed and I want them to know that good things come to those who are late.

With that it’s time for Halloween though, as always, the last word goes to Lou Reed.

Adventures In Busing., American Graffiti., Happy Birthday., Quick Takes., Ramble With Me., Submitted For Your Approval., The Vault

Can We Talk?

Author: October 18, 2024 4 Comments

I believe life exists on planets other than Earth, and even life that’s intelligent in ways we could recognize and even communicate with. I don’t think that’s a controversial idea but this week I did get into a conversation with someone who said that if intelligent life forms are out there surely we would have found some evidence by now. After asking them not to call me Shirley I think I made a pretty good case for why we haven’t found evidence yet. For starters we haven’t really been looking for that long. Telescopes in the modern sense have only been around about five hundred years, and that’s just the ones you use to see Saturn’s rings or what your neighbors are doing. Even the most powerful telescopes are extremely limited. The first planet outside our solar system wasn’t found until 1992, and even though a lot have been found since then we haven’t gotten any up-close view of any of them. A few years earlier, in 1990, Carl Sagan convinced NASA to use the Galileo probe, on its way to Jupiter, to see if there was any evidence of life on Earth. The answer was, “Maybe.”

We don’t even know how many planets could potentially have life because we’ve got a sample size of one out of an unknown number. And there’s the question of why intelligent aliens, if they’re out there, haven’t visited us yet. Maybe they have—I’m not sure about that—but if they haven’t it’s probably because, as Douglas Adams said, “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.” Here’s my own perspective on that: you may think a one-hundred thousand mile warranty on your car is a sweet deal but that would barely get you one percent of the way to the Sun, and that’s the closest star to us. Even if super-intelligent aliens have somehow discovered a way to travel between stars, even if they’ve found a way to travel beyond the speed of light there’s so much space out there the odds of aliens even passing through our neighborhood are, literally, astronomically low.

So what about communication? Why haven’t we heard from anybody? That’s where I think things get really interesting because, yes, we can beam radio waves out into space, but we’ve been doing that for less than a hundred and fifty years. There are a lot of stars within that distance but anybody out there listening would have to have something that could pick up those signals, interpret them, and send a message back. If they’re at the farthest point it would take just as long for their message to get back to us and we’d have to be still be listening, and have some way to filter the message out of all the galaxy’s background noise. Now imagine aliens on other planets having the same issue with their signals.

That’s assuming they even communicate the same way we do, which makes it even more complicated. We can’t even communicate with our closest genetic relatives on this planet. In stories about animals it’s funny to me when different species all speak the same language—when birds can talk to rabbits, skunks can talk to raccoons, and so on. It’s a nice ideal but, let’s face it, I’ve watched enough real backyard wildlife to know that even squirrels and foxes have vastly different priorities. And what if creatures on other planets don’t even communicate through sound? In the sequels to Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama humans meet, among other things, spider-like aliens that “speak” with bioluminescent rainbow patterns. In an episode of Star Trek: Voyager the crew encounters a spacefaring giant centipede that communicates through chemical emissions. And speaking of that there’s the alien Kurt Vonnegut imagined who came to Earth to tell us how to prevent war and cure cancer in its native language of tap dancing and farting which, now that I think about it, isn’t that strange—I had an uncle who communicated by farting, but that’s another story.

And this doesn’t even get into one of my favorite science fiction tropes which is that alien species are so often monolithic, speaking the same language, even having the same culture, across an entire planet. Every time that comes up in a science fiction story I want to ask the writer, “And how long have you lived on Earth?” Admittedly it’s plausible that there are advanced alien species that are like that—it’s a big universe and there are a lot of possibilities.

And speaking of monoliths, or rather monologues, no, I didn’t spout all this out at the other person—I’d have to have been babbling away longer than Hamlet. These are all just thoughts I had and that I felt the need to share with the universe.

Keep Looking Up, Nature Talks., Ramble With Me., Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay