On March 13th, 1781 the astronomer William Herschel spotted what he thought was an unusual comet but which he and other astronomers would quickly discover was a planet. It’s the first planet discovered in modern times which makes Uranus very special. Take a little time to explore Uranus, probe its mysteries, and consider what we’ve learned about Uranus since William Herschel first looked up and saw it two hundred and thirty-seven years ago. Like its neighbors, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, it’s a gas giant. Uranus is full of hydrogen and helium but also in its depths contains ice and rock. Uranus also has a complex cloud system with the lowest clouds believed to be made up of water while the upper layers are methane. There’s a lot of methane in Uranus.
On January 24th, 1986 the Voyager 2 spacecraft probed Uranus. Astronomers at the time called it “the most boring planet” but subsequent studies have shown just how interesting Uranus is. Less than a decade earlier, in 1977, astronomers first discovered rings around Uranus, and then in December 2005 the Hubble telescope detected two additional rings much farther out.
There are also twenty-seven known moons orbiting Uranus. The largest, Titania, orbits Uranus every 8.7 days and because of its closeness to the planet the same side always faces Uranus. Uranus itself orbits the Sun every eighty-four years, which means that since its discovery Uranus hasn’t even been around the Sun three times. However Uranus has a very fast rotation: one day on Uranus is just seventeen hours and fourteen minutes.
Of course Uranus is not alone. There’s also the city of Uranus, right in the middle of Missouri. Uranus is a well-known tourist stop along the historic Route 66, although I think the stretch surrounding it should be renamed the Herschel Highway. The city is known for its fudge factory and also a tattoo place for people who want to be able to say they got a tattoo in Uranus.
Today and every March 13th I hope you’ll join me in spending a little time contemplating Uranus.
Nowawadays travel is easy, or at least easier than it used to be. You can use the web to look up schedules, maps, points of interest, and even estimate times–you can plan out a whole itinerary without leaving your chair. This doesn’t prevent accidents from happening or things going badly–the best laid plans of mice and travelers, you know–which is something I thought about while listening to “The Holiday Coping Mechanism Spectacular” episode of The Hilarious World Of Depressionpodcast. Host John Moe shares a story about the year he and his wife decided to skip seeing their families for the holidays and take their young children to Sequim, Washington, which, as soon as he mentioned it, I added to my list of places I want to go, which, admittedly, covers pretty much the entire planet, but that’s another story. The trip wasn’t exactly disastrous, but it wasn’t as happy as they hoped either. No spoilers–go listen. You won’t regret it.
And it took me back to a place I’ve visited several times–metaphorically, since I haven’t been able to go really go back since I last passed through in 1991. While I’ve mentioned the little Welsh town of Carmarthen in previous yarns about my pilgrimage to the home of Dylan Thomas I’ve never given it the space it deserves. It was purely an accident that I found myself there, and even though I was just passing through I kind of fell in love with the place.
The first time I even heard of Carmarthen it was just a dot on the map, the end of the train line but close to my intended destination. And also I’m very much a freewheeling traveler. The best thing on any trip, for me, is to be surprised, which is why I set off on so many journeys without a clear idea where I’m going. The best part of any journey is the journey itself when you don’t have a destination. So I left Swansea on a rickety train that I’m pretty sure dated back to, and may have even been built by, George Stephenson. It was dark and cloudy most of the trip and then pouring rain by the time we pulled into the Carmarthen station. It was late on Saturday night and without realizing it I’d taken the last train. It was in the train station that I found the information I’d need for my second, and more successful, trip to the home of Dylan Thomas. Still I was stuck spending that night in Carmarthen and, because everything in Wales shuts down on Sundays, I wouldn’t be able to take the train back until late the next afternoon.
On that second trip I was, of course, better prepared: I made it to Dylan Thomas’s home and then took the last bus back to Carmarthen. I struck up a conversation with a guy on the bus who informed me he’d never met an American before. We made plans to meet up later at the pub, although we didn’t specify which pub and Carmarthen, small town that it is, has about fifty pubs. And anyway when I got off the bus I stepped right into an enormous crowd. I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire town was there because it was the lighting of the town Christmas tree. The mayor of Carmarthen was there with the city council and he made a nice speech wishing everyone a happy holiday season then turned on the lights. Everyone cheered and started milling around and going to pubs. I went in to one too and spent the rest of the evening talking to several nice people who informed me I was the first American they’d ever met. Before that I shook hands with the mayor, although I didn’t get to talk to him, unfortunately, because I might have been the first American he ever met.
It was a month before Christmas but being there for the lighting of the Carmarthen tree, to be able to spend an evening with the people who lived there, to share in their holiday spirit and their pride in the little Welsh town at the end of the train line, was a fantastic gift. And the best part is I hadn’t even planned it.
Last year I went to Nashville Nightmare, a haunted house attraction north of Nashville, and had a blast. This year I went back and, well, there was the good, the bad, and the ugly. First, general admission is $33.01 ($29.99 plus tax), which, for an event like this, is pretty good. The bad thing is there’s a “Slash Pass” that’s $50.40 ($44.99 plus tax). Slash Pass holders get to go in ahead of those with general admission, which is where things get ugly. I was at the box office when it opened at 7pm and left at nearly midnight, and missed two of the houses because I’d spent almost four hours just standing in line. Part of this is because the crowd this year was much bigger than last year, but most of it is just poor planning by the owners.
There are four houses—this year they were Industrial Undead, The Reformatory, Phantasms, and Fairy Tale Hell, all set up in a block of buildings on a strip mall. The houses are linked together in pairs: once you’re through Industrial Undead you’re immediately shuttled through The Reformatory with no way out. It was great fun once I got in, but getting in took more than two hours. For every one general admission ticket holder who went in at least ten Slash Pass holders went in, and because most people were in groups and wanted to stay together this meant a lot of waiting no matter what you’d paid.
There’s a constant stream of heavy metal music and costumed performers wandering among the crowds and I realize now they were there to keep people entertained while we were standing in line, but even I can only listen to Alice Cooper’s Feed My Frankenstein so many times.
The way the houses are paired also means you can’t pick and choose. Industrial Undead and The Reformatory were both pretty gory and terrifying and had warnings that they were not recommended for children. Phantasms and Fairy Tale Hell, if they were anything like last year’s attractions, are lighter and more fun—like a walk-through version of Disney’s Haunted Mansion. It would have been nice if I could have taken a breather after zombies and entrails and enjoyed some twisted fairy tales before going back for the horrors of The Reformatory.
Splitting up the houses could also cut down on wait times for both general admission and Slash Pass holders by putting people in four lines instead of two.
Now for the good: last year there was no clear entrance so I was able to wander among the various carnival-type attractions outside of the haunted houses until someone asked to see my wristband. This year not only was there a fantastic entrance with box offices but right out front were a couple of fire eaters performing for the crowds.
“Now that’s a spicy meatball,” one said.
“Does it give you heartburn?” I asked him. That got a solid laugh and he replied, “Not as much as you’d think.”
When I went to buy my wristband the young woman looked at my Rocky Horror shirt, a gift from my parents, and said, “You can get in for free if I can have that shirt.”
Just outside the entrance to The Industrial Undead I asked a guy with deep red eyes, “Are you having fun?” He grinned and nodded.
The highlight of the evening, though, was when I was going through The Reformatory, where possessed students beat desks and demon-faced nuns chased after us. I said to the guy in front of me, “My sister was a nun until she found out what ‘none’ meant.”
If you don’t get it say it out loud, and if you still don’t get it you’re like the guy in front of me who said, “What does it mean?”
Some other highlights of the evening:
We’ve all wondered, what if The Joker and Curly Howard had a baby?
I asked this guy, “Are you having fun?” He smiled and nodded vigorously.
So the good, the bad, and the ugly is that it was a lot of fun, but too much waiting to be worth the price.
With a common impulse the multitude rose slowly up and stared into the sky. I followed their eyes, as sure as guns, there was my eclipse beginning! The life went boiling through my veins; I was a new man! The rim of black spread slowly into the sun’s disk, my heart beat higher and higher, and still the assemblage and the priest stared into the sky, motionless. I knew that this gaze would be turned upon me, next. When it was, I was ready. I was in one of the most grand attitudes I ever struck, with my arm stretched up pointing to the sun. It was a noble effect. You could see the shudder sweep the mass like a wave.
It’s a great moment in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court when the hero Hank Morgan convinces the medieval rubes that he rules the skies and is causing the eclipse. I went back and reread it recently because, as you may have heard, there’s an eclipse crossing the continental United States today, albeit well away from Connecticut, and it will be the first total eclipse over Nashville, Tennessee in ninety-nine years. That would be ninety-nine complete passes of the Earth around the Sun.
In human terms that’s a small number, but in solar terms it’s piddling, paltry, a trifle—which makes me think trifle would be a good food for an eclipse party, but that’s another story.
There are two things that fascinate me about astronomy. The first is the, in human terms, enormous spans of time. At the end of its life our sun will have probably shone for almost ten billion years. It’s also so far from us that the light we get has taken eight minutes to get here—and since we’re talking about the speed of light which is a universal constant your mileage never varies.
The other thing is that in spite of those enormous spans of time astronomy is so dynamic. At its maximum the eclipse will last about two minutes and forty seconds. And the night sky, if you know when to look, can be full of surprises. I remember when I was a kid and my father woke me up at about 2am to see a total lunar eclipse. Another night we went out in the bitter December cold and watched the Geminid meteor shower. One year when I was in junior high school there was a partial solar eclipse in late spring. My friends and I left school during it and for several minutes everything had a strange bluish pallor. By the time we got home it was over.
Here’s something else to consider: without the Moon the Earth would probably look a lot like our neighbor Mars. The Moon, formed in a matter of days more than four billion years ago when another planet slammed into Earth, has stabilized the Earth and limited the number of punches it’s gotten from wayward meteors, allowing life to not only develop but survive here. There’s something to think about if you’re under the eclipse.
Every summer the Nashville Shakespeare Festival puts on at least one play in Centennial Park. This summer they’re being especially ambitious with two plays: Antony & Cleopatra and The Winter’s Tale. Really they’re being extremely ambitious by putting on The Winter’s Tale in Nashville in the summer, although part of the play does take place in the summer, but that’s another—no, wait, it is the story. Never mind.
The funny thing to me is I read both of these plays in a college Shakespeare class under the tutelage of a professor who pointed out that they’re two of The Bard’s least-produced plays. Productions of Romeo & Juliet or Twelfth Night are like episodes of M*A*S*H—always on somewhere, and obviously the NSF, which put on its first play in the park in 1988, has decided there are only so many times they can do The Comedy of Errors (3), Much Ado About Nothing (3), AMidsummer Night’s Dream (3), The Taming Of The Shrew (2), or The Merry Wives of Windsor (2).
And they’ve done The Winter’s Tale before, in 2005, which makes me think the the rerun is a little early since the play itself covers a span of sixteen years.
While the plays themselves are always great I also like to go and look behind the scenes. I didn’t interrupt but I did catch some of the cast at work.
Here’s the stage still under construction. Notice that they’re using one stage for both plays, which is one of the interesting things about Shakespeare. The original productions were in a grassy area behind the Centennial Sportsplex with no sets, only a very few props, and almost no costuming. Well, the actors did wear clothes, and for that we should be grateful—Falstaff couldn’t get the wrinkles out of his birthday suit—but originally the dress code for cast and audience alike was come as you are.
And since all the world’s a stage who could resist a look behind the scenes?
There were a bunch of pennies on the sidewalk. Why someone left them there is beyond me, and I could have just left them, but instead I picked them all up. Hey, if you see a penny and pick it up all the day you’ll have good luck, right? And even though the day was mostly over and I was headed home I figured maybe it’s a twenty-four hour good luck and maybe it’s cumulative so picking up all those pennies I’d get nine or twelve days of good luck. I couldn’t use the pennies to pay my bus fare, unlike that time several years ago when I poured exact change–all in pennies–into a bus fare collector, but still pennies add up. That’s at least one reason I think the US Treasury keeps producing pennies, unlike our neighbor to the north Canada that abandoned the penny a few years ago. And that’s one of the few things Canada has done that bugs me a little. When I was a kid I was bitten by the numismatic bug, although the doctor gave me a shot and I got better. It was finding Canadian pennies in change that got me interested in coin collecting; it made me feel in touch with the rest of the world. Years later I’d get a job in a mailroom and the foreign stamps that came in turned me into a bit of a Johnny-come-philately, but that’s another story.
Coins even helped teach me some history, like when I first found a 1967 Canadian penny which, unlike the regular maple leaf penny, has a dove. So it doesn’t bother me that my collection of Canadian pennies, large as it is, is still barely worth a loonie–even less than that, now that the pennies are no longer legal tender. It’s a shame the 2017 Canadian coins, which celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the Canadian Confederation, won’t include a penny.
Still I wish Canada good luck on the sesquicentennial. Hey, here’s a penny.
The future of every sport depends on the kids who play it. The reason soccer has finally gotten major recognition in the U.S., after long obscurity in spite of being the most popular sport in the world, is because the kids who were driven to afternoon and Saturday games by their soccer moms have now grown up. I remember playing soccer as a kid and being asked by my friends, “What’s soccer?” And then when I met people from other countries and told them I played soccer as a kid they’d ask, “What’s soccer?” and I’d have to explain that in the U.S. we have a completely different game that has usurped the moniker “football”. Unlike what Europeans call “the beautiful game” American football players hold the ball. With their hands. But that’s another story.
As a big fan of pool and billiards I’m really excited about the 2017 Atlantic Challenge Cup that’s going on in Klagenfurt, Austria, from July 5th through 8th, that’s sort of a junior version of the Mosconi Cup, with young players representing the United States and Europe facing off against each other. Pool and billiards have been in decline since, well, they’ve had their ups and downs, more downs than ups. The days when someone like someone like self-described “Billiard Bum” Dan McGorty could travel cross-country with no money in his pocket, hustling pool in every small town for just enough money for meals, are long gone. It’s hard to find a pool hall even in a large town now, and even when you do find one it’s likely to only have standard American pocket tables. Forget balkline or other kinds of tables. A woman I used to work with told me her husband, a professional drummer, regularly played snooker.
“Where does he go that’s got a snooker table?” I asked, intrigued because I love the game.
“Oh, he goes to John Prine’s house,” she replied breezily. Only in Nashville.
And I get it. Even a single pool table requires a lot of real estate. Soccer is popular because all it requires is a field and a ball. Or a slightly round object. Or at least something that can be kicked. It’s no accident that most professional pool players are the children of pool players. It’s an expensive hobby, and the shrinking number of pool halls makes it even more expensive, with players having to go as far as, well, Klagenfurt, Austria, for matches.
Sure, I’m rooting for Team U.S. and its members like April Larson, who’s such an exceptionally talented and dedicated player she’s already made the cover of Billiards Digest–and she’s still in high school, where she maintains a 4.0 GPA. But I’m also just glad there’s a new generation keeping what I call the other beautiful game alive.
The last time I rode a Greyhound bus was in 2000. I recently took one to Cincinnati. It would have been cheaper to fly, but since there are no direct flights from Nashville to Cincinnati the flight would have meant stopovers in Dallas, Honolulu, and Poughkeepsie, and while I didn’t mind that my wife thought it wasn’t such a great idea. I was also looking forward to seeing what had changed.
The first change, of course, was the Greyhound station itself. The old one was dull, gray, and dingy, and filled with an assortment of drifters, grifters, and sifters. The new one, in an entirely different location, is a much brighter shade of gray and seemed to have picked up a higher class of clientele. The old black and white TV sets firmly attached to chairs that cost you a quarter for five minutes of viewing were gone, replaced with plugs for charging whatever devices you happen to be carrying. I couldn’t use any, though, because there was no sitting room. My bus was scheduled to leave at 5:05 am. I got there at 4:15, hoping to beat the crowd, not realizing that the crowd had been there since at least the day before and taken up almost all available space. Maybe recent events in the airline industry have prompted more people to stay grounded.
In the old days there’d be an announcement of departures over a crackly intercom. This time a driver stood at one of the terminal doors and, in a clear voice loud enough to be heard by everyone, announced, “ALL THOSE DEPARTING FOR MEMPHIS, ST. LOUIS, KANSAS CITY, AND ON PLEASE LINE UP HERE!”
Needless to say this was not my bus. My bus, it turned out, was leaving from the terminal next to it, the one where the driver walked in, looked around and mumbled something to the people closest to him before leaving again. I had to ask around a bit to confirm that it really was the bus to Cincinnati because the LED sign on the front of the bus said HAPPY HOLIDAYS.
I’m not making that up. It was part of Greyhound’s War on Some Late May Holiday.
In the old days whenever I’d take a Greyhound bus there were usually a lot of seats available. This time when I stepped onto the bus every seat was taken except one. In the very back. Next to the bathroom. A woman sat in the window seat on the far right. Next to her, in the middle seat, was a man holding a baby with his legs spread so far apart his knee was in the aisle.
The only open seat was to the left of him.
I tried to make myself as small as possible and we both might have been more comfortable if he’d put his knees together. Instead he decided to complain bitterly about the bus being too crowded. And I realized that f-bombs, unlike other forms of munition, lose their strength when you drop one every other word, but that’s another story.
The woman leaned across him and smiled at me. “Excuse me sir, could you move to another seat?”
“I would if there were one.”
It was true and also resulted in the man dropping several more f-bombs, none of which, surprisingly, were directed at me. Then we got a lucky break: a bus company representative came on and offered travel vouchers to anyone who’d take a later bus. I might have taken the offer but my diaphragm was compressed by my fellow passenger’s lower thigh. Several people did, though, and I was able to squeeze out and grab a window seat.
The bus finally got underway a little after six and I settled back with approximately two days of podcasts I’d downloaded in preparation for a long trip.
The bus stopped at Louisville en route to Cincinnati. In the old days I only had to get off the bus at my final destination. Disembarkation is now mandatory at every stop, so I got to look around the Louisville station and get yelled at for taking pictures of the cop and his sniffer dog.
The Louisville station, by the way, has been updated like the Nashville one, and, in addition to a bright gray color and lack of dinginess, also boasts a gift shop and game room.
Then it was back on the bus and I was fortunately able to snag another window seat. The rest of the trip was blissfully uneventful and, possibly because the driver exceeded the speed limit a few times, we arrived in Cincinnati on time.
The Cincinnati Greyhound station has not been updated, and I’m pretty sure they even still had some of those chairs with the TVs. Next time I may opt for the flight with the stopovers, even if it does mean going to Poughkeepsie.
The Acklen Post Office has a wall of fame. Where most post offices used to put up wanted posters—or so I’ve heard, or rather read, since a wanted poster in a post office was once a key plot point in an Encyclopedia Brown story—they put up headshots of notable visitors. As the hub of country music and a major recording center Nashville certainly draws a number of celebrities, and if there’s one thing famous people love to do it’s buy stamps. And if you’re ever waiting in line to buy your own stamps and not in the presence of a live celebrity you can peruse the names and faces of those who’ve come before, people like…
The truth is I don’t recognize most of the people whose headshots grace the walls of the Acklen P.O. A few might be on the D-list but the rest don’t even make the list. Some are has-beens but most are never-weres. If they’ve paid their dues they deserve a refund.
I’m not trying to be too snarky because I believe most, if not all, have done something to deserve their spot on the wall. They may not be known to me but they were, and maybe still are, wanted somewhere, and their only crime is that they fell short but still tried. And it’s not as though I’ve accomplished anything. It’s not as though I’ve earned my spot on the wall.
Maybe I could, though. Just between us it goes through my mind every time I’m in the Acklen post office. What if all I have to do is have a few glossy headshots made?
And I’ll just carry them in and maybe buy a few stamps and hand one over. To make it really easy for them I’ll even bring in my own marker and autograph it for them, and maybe add a personal message: “Stay cool and don’t take any wooden stamps.”
The important thing is I won’t ask because asking, “Am I famous enough for you to hang up one of these?” would give away the gig. If you have to ask if you’re well-known then you don’t have to ask. Also one of the keys to success, or so I’ve heard from people who I assume aren’t locked out, is projecting confidence. As my kindergarten teacher used to tell us, if you dream big, work hard, and believe in yourself there’s a small chance you’ll find happiness and won’t end up sneaking off to the teachers’ lounge at naptime to pour cheap brandy in your coffee. It could be the start of something big. It could prompt me to really accomplish something. At the very least people might start to recognize me. They’ll stop me on the street and say, “Hey, aren’t you…um…do I know you from somewhere?”
And I’ll smile and nod and say, “No, I’m the other one.”
April 2016-Freethinkers Anonymous planned to celebrate its twenty-first year with the party theme “If This Blog Were A Person It Could Now Drink” with the subtitle “Except In Britain Where The Drinking Age Is Eighteen and Germany Which We’re Pretty Sure Has No Drinking Age And Could Someone Check To See If Wikipedia Has A Section On World Drinking Ages?” When the ordered banner arrived it read “If This Blog Was A Person It Could Now Drink”. An ugly riot broke out in the editorial department and left everyone in a subjunctive mood.
May 2016-Staff were reminded that last year’s annual report was delivered late. A committee to write each annual report a year in advance has been formed but so far has been unable to meet due to scheduling issues.
June 2016-After multiple all-staff meetings and outside consultation a company-wide vote was held. Employees unanimously agreed that founder and CEO Christopher Waldrop should take a shower. Please.
July 2016-The Annual Report has stopped loading due to a long-running script.
August 2016- Judge El: Only three contestants remain and I’m very excited to announce our celebrity judge. His comedies are still controversial for being so explicit and for satirizing major figures. He included numerous specific details about his time and where he lived and yet the messages remain timeless. He lived in Athens from around 446 BC to 386 BC. Please help me welcome…Aristophanes! Aristophanes: κωμῳδοδιδασκαλίαν εἶναι χαλεπώτατον ἔργον ἁπάντων. Kevin (#teamhashtag): This guy comes out in a toga and my first thought is, it’s all Esperanto to me. Judge Nine: Aristophanes, will you please do the honors of announcing the winner? Aristophanes: ἀλλ᾽ ἀνδράρια μοχθηρά, παρακεκομμένα. Kevin (#team#): I am such a Greek geek. This is so exciting to me. I can’t believe we’re being judged by a major playwright of ancient Greece and the master of Old Comedy. Aristophanes: ἡμῶν γὰρ ἄνδρες, κοὐχὶ τὴν πόλιν λέγω. Judge Backspace: Congratulations Team Ampersand! Unfortunately, Kevin, that means you’ve been typed out. Kevin: (#team@) When I got my first computer, a Commodore-64, it really was a £ sign. Go figure.
September 2016- Management announced an end-of-summer plan to find the best local milkshake. A staff project team was formed to list local milkshake places, to consider how to limit the definition of “local”, whether precedence should be given to places that mainly serve ice cream and desserts over burger and fries joints, and one flavor versus several. After the plan was developed, reviewed, submitted, prorated, amortized, finalized, and approved management announced the funds would be used to just buy a new blender.
October 2016-After much consideration staff agreed that vampires, zombies, aliens, ghosts, miscellaneous monsters, and even werewolves have lost their ability to scare and that therefore the theme of this year’s Halloween party would be “Math Teachers”.
November 2016-A subcommittee decided that the preferred office doughnut would be the creme-filled kind. While there were strong opinions in favor of the custard-filled and even jelly-filled ones the deciding factor was that the creme is whipped with air. And that’s gotta mean less calories, right?
December 2016-As a holiday bonus the building was kept open around the clock so staff could fulfill their requirement to work overtime without pay.
January 2017-The company shareholders passed a series of resolutions including “We’ve got reusable bags in the back of the car, let’s remember to take them in the store” and “What exactly are we doing here?”
February 2017-Everyone in the office received a Valentine’s Day card except Kevin.
March 2017-Facing a sudden backlog in work and reviewing an overall decline in productivity during the previous year all staff worked together to produce this year’s annual report titled Seriously, Gang, All We Did This Year Was Get Chris To Take A Shower?
Staff were then sent to cover the World Croquet Cup in Montevideo.
Last year 
