Chapter 2 - About My Friends

Check out links at end of each chapter...

Chapter 1 - May 14, 2009 - Tutu Troubles

Chapter 2 – Oct. 07, 2009 – About My Friends

Chapter 3 – Oct. 15, 2009 – The Inheritance

Chapter 4 – Oct. 22, 2009 – Finding Answers

Chapter 5 – Oct. 29, 2009 – A New Friend

Chapter 6 – Nov. 05, 2009 – A Treasure Map

Chapter 7 – Nov. 12, 2009 – A Treasure Hunt

Chapter 8 – Nov. 19, 2009 – And Beyond

Chapter 9 – Nov. 26, 2009 – Lost Data

Chapter 10 – Dec. 3, 2009 – Found Data

Chapter 11 – Dec. 10, 2009 – The Castle Cellar

Chapter 12 – Dec. 17, 2009 – Forever Never Ending

RosFrankie and Beyond

Chapter 2

About My Friends

I’m happy most of the time even though I still trip and fall down and roll over. And I can’t sit perfectly right. ‘Not to worry,’ my mother always says, ‘You’ll grow into it all eventually and get it perfect.’

While I am laying down and resting in the mud and contemplating the sky and the clouds and the many different shades of white in the world of color, I start thinking about all sorts of numerous and various things and stuff needing thinking about. Today, I’m thinking that ‘RosFrankie’ is a bit of a strange name but I think it is better than ‘Fido’ or ‘Woofie’ or some long name with all sorts of strange words which I would never be able to pronounce or spell, such as Lady Sir Your Majesty HMS Lord of Yadda Yaddashire Reinforced Duchess of All Dogs etcetera etcetera!!! I am rather not very good at spelling and I tend to ask too many questions which tends to really annoy other people. My favorite words are ‘who,’ ‘what,’ ‘where,’ ‘when,’ ‘why,’ ‘how,’ and ‘what if?’ But today my most favorite word is ‘why’ and I even know how to spell it. I decide to ask my mother why I am named ‘RosFrankie.’ My mother says that the reason I am named RosFrankie is because everyone should know immediately who I am named after and the fact that hardly anybody knows who I am named after is why I am named ‘RosFrankie.’

Naturally, I don’t quite understand this reasoning. Sometimes my mother is not so easy to understand. ‘It’s not really a long name,’ I say to my mother, ‘but it is a little bit long and a little bit hard to spell and pronounce.’

‘Not to worry,’ my mother says, ‘You’ll grow into it all eventually and get it perfect. And someday you will know who you are named after and you will be very very proud of your name and be glad you have it.’

I smile to myself and feel good inside myself and feel good outside myself. ‘Everybody,’ I think, ‘should have a good lay-down in the mud in the back yard. Mud is a cure-all for everything. It makes one tall and thin and straight and, more important, it makes one not care if one is tall and thin and straight or not. Mud is good.’

Sometimes I’m smart.  And sometimes I am very very way-too-not-too-smart. Sometimes being smart is the wrong thing to be and it is better to be way-too-not-too-smart. I don’t always know when it is better to know or to not know. Like when I asked my mother how vegetables were fertilized in the garden. I rather wish my mother never told me because ever since then I have always been suspect of eating vegetables even though I really like vegetables and I know that it’s good to eat them. But, yuck! What they are fertilized with!

When I lie in my mud bog, I think about all sorts of different things and stuff and ideas and stories and, well, just plain ‘things’ in general. Randomly thinking random thoughts.

Today I think to myself, ‘I think I will plant a garden. And then I can share all my bounty with my friends.’

I have many friends. There is Mary-Ann-Drusillda, a little piglet with a pink curly tail. A way-too-big for her curly tail. My mother always tells her, ‘Not to worry. Eventually you will grow into to it and it will fit just right.’ And there is HOG who is a hedgehog and really is a HOG who always eats everything. Even uneatable things! And she makes a sound like a motorcycle when she burps and everyone says ‘Ew..!’ HOG and Mary-Ann-Drusillda live in the same haystack over in the back-forty in Daisy’s Field where there are a lot of daisies always blooming…even in wintertime. Some people say that it is a magic field. I think maybe someday I will study it so that I can understand why daisies always bloom there, even in the winter. Maybe there is an underground hot spring. Or a volcano getting ready to explode! I will just have to learn more things and stuff.

And I probably should learn to spell better so that I can look things up in ‘THE’ books. Some people even say ‘THE’ books are magic but this is said only by people who don’t know how to read them correctly. They keep confusing ‘two’ with ‘too’ with ‘to’ and ‘which’ with ‘witch’ and ‘polish’ with ‘Polish’, which is all very easy to do but I don’t want to think about that all now as it generally eventually gives me a headache.

There is also my friend Sunbeam who is a snowman. Sometimes Sunbeam will go away for a long time and sometimes he will stay around for a long time. He doesn’t do much.....just kind of sits in the snow and grunts. But he has a very interesting way with his grunts and sometimes me and my friends will stay by him for hours just listening to him grunt. It is a little bit like mud bogging. Sunbeam just loves sitting in the sun, even though he is often told by people-who-know-things that sitting in the sun is not good for him.

And then there also are my friends Brant and Cana, a mated pair of wild geese. They will also come and go seasonally and sometimes they will have little baby goslings with them. Sometimes I will baby-sit the goslings. Usually afterwards, I will be very tired and I will have to take a very long nap in my mud bog.

There is also my friend Lordy who is a ladybug because there is no such thing as Lordbugs.

Sometimes he gets very confused as to where he is going because his radar antennae keep getting bent when he whacks them accidentally flying into tree trunks but all his friends will always help him straightened them back straight again and he will quickly be on his way again. His radar antennae are way-too-big for him. My mother always tells him, ‘Not to worry. Eventually you will grow and they will fit perfectly.’ But he still is never very sure where he is going. Even though he will lose his way, he never loses his friends. He always says that ‘family’ is not bugs you are related to, and it’s not just bugs you love but that ‘family’ is bugs you can always trust. And everybody trusts Lordy. Lordy also has a photographic memory and can remember absolutely everything. He is like a flying encyclopedia. He just never can remember where he is going!

And, of course, there is Méabh the most friendly neighborhood witch. She is very old and always wears black, except for her bright yellow rubber hat, and, of course, she has loads and loads of warts and can do all sorts of things and stuff and magic , a word which always has to be whispered, but I don’t know why it has to be whispered. I also don’t know why my mother considers Méabh to be most friendly because Méabh is always scowling and cursing and pointing her finger and stomping her feet and pouting and scratching her toes. Before Méabh scratches her toes, she takes her boots off and they always smell really bad and everyone says, ‘Ew..…!’ Méabh just tells them that if they don’t like it, they don’t have to breathe. She’s like that. Sometimes she will just stand tall and squint her eyes and nod her head up and down. Which is sort of amazing because she isn’t tall at all. She has very strange symbols tattooed onto the wrist area of both her hands.

They are strange looking symbols with numbers and letters in a square box and some people claim that they are a special code to identify her as an alien when alien spaceships decide to land on earth and scare people. And Lordy claims that his antennae always go haywire whenever he flies within ten feet of Méabh, but that doesn’t really count as being very important to me because Lordy’s antennae go haywire whenever he flies within ten feet of anything. Some people say that they think Méabh would be more likable if she did something with her hair, but I don’t understand that reasoning at all because I know some people with really nice hair who are not very likeable and are really very unlikable. When I ask my mother about Méabh, my mother always says, ‘You’re too young to understand. Not to worry. You’ll grow up and eventually understand it all perfectly.’ I think maybe I should ask Méabh about Daisy’s Field. Méabh knows lots of stuff and is really good at reading and understanding ‘THE’ books. Once she told me that whenever I touch a raindrop, I’m touching a living thing which has circumnavigated the whole world from the deepest oceans to the highest rim of the sky, to the mountains and the deserts and has even existed as liquid, solid and gas. I think this is most amazing, especially after I looked up the word ‘circumnavigate’ to see what it means.

Well,’ I think as I bogg lazily, ‘If I am going to plant a garden, I will need to buy a shovel, a hoe and a watering can. And, of course, I will need to buy some seeds. What seeds shall I buy? Lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and onion. I like lettuce, tomato, cucumber and onion best. With mayonnaise. But I can’t buy mayonnaise seeds! Maybe I can make my own mayonnaise…..what will I need? Eggs. But I will need chickens in order to have eggs. And if I have chickens I will have to feed them corn. So I will have to plant corn so I can feed the chickens so that they can lay eggs so that I can make mayonnaise to go with lettuce, tomato, cucumber and onion. And I will need to build a big hen house. With wood. First I will have to plant trees and let the trees grow tall and I then can cut the wood and make a hen house. And I will need nails and a hammer and a saw. But by the time I plant the tree forest and build the hen house and plant the corn, I will not have enough land left over to plant lettuce, tomato, cucumber and onion. Mmmm…..maybe I should just plant flowers.

But what kind of flower seeds should I buy?’

I’m getting exhausted just thinking about gardening and I haven’t even done anything yet! I roll over in the mud bog to get my other side mudded.

‘RosFrankie,’ my mother calls, ‘Do you want a salad for lunch?’

I think about all the work and time and effort that goes into making a garden salad, and I yell back, ‘I think just a peanut butter and jelly sandwich today, thank you!’

Then I start to think about all the work and effort that goes into growing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich…..it is even more complicated than a simple garden salad. I think I must be getting what Méabh calls analysis paralysis.

‘Oh,’ I think to myself, ‘I think I have thought too much today and I think I should think no more for a while until I have more time and energy to think about it all!’

And then I fall asleep laying in the warm sun in my nice comfy mud bog.

All text and images copyright 2009 Jule Dupre
Observe much - Think long - Say little...
[Credited to Oxford professor of C. Darwin]
Except, of course, in an emergency. Then you should
Look quick - Think fast - Yell loud!
[Credited to The Evil Grandmother]
Remember to always check your references!
Always question, but question with due respect.

Words to look up:
Fertilize,
Gosling,
Alien,
Circumnavigate,
Radar,
Antennae

Questions to ask:
How are gardens fertilized?
Where do seeds come from?
What is a recipe for mayonnaise?
How is peanut butter made?
What is snow made from?
What is a volcano?
Do you confuse ‘to’ with ‘two’ with ‘too’ also?
What other questions should be asked?

BTW:
Rosalind Franklin: (25 July 1920 – 16 April 1958) was an English biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer who made important contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, viruses, coal and graphite. Franklin is still best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA. Her data, according to Francis Crick, of The Double Helix fame, were “the data we actually used”. If she had lived, would she have received the Nobel Prize? That is a question whose answer can only be assumed. Since she got little credit for her work, one can assume that she would have gotten fewer prizes.

Garden Fertilization: Well composted manure is much healthier than artificial chemicals.

Underground Hot Springs: A pool of hot water just below the surface of the earth.

Volcano: A volcano is an opening, or rupture, in a planet's surface or crust, which allows hot, molten rock, ash, and gases to escape from below the surface. Volcanic activity involving the extrusion of rock tends to form mountains or features like mountains over a period of time. Volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging. A mid-oceanic ridge, for example the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has examples of volcanoes caused by "divergent tectonic plates" pulling apart; the Pacific Ring of Fire has examples of volcanoes caused by "convergent tectonic plates" coming together. By contrast, volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide past one another. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the Earth's crust, such as in the African Rift Valley, the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field and the Rio Grande Rift in North America and the European Rhine Graben with its Eifel volcanoes. Volcanoes can be caused by "mantle plumes". These so-called "hotspots", for example at Hawaii, can occur far from plate boundaries. Hotspot volcanoes are also found elsewhere in the solar system, especially on rocky planets and moons.

Méabh pronunciation and Meaning: Pronounced ‘Meave’, the ‘bh’ like a ‘ve’ this is a Celtic Irish name meaning ‘enchanting.’

Circumnavigation: To Circumnavigate a place, such as an island, a continent, or the Earth, is to travel all the way around it . A basic definition of a world circumnavigation would be a route which covers at least a great circle, and in particular one which passes through at least one pair of points antipodal to each other. In practice, different definitions of world circumnavigation are used, in order to accommodate practical constraints depending on the method of circumnavigation.

Mayonnaise recipe, Julia Child: Mayonnaise is one of the many foods that is referred to as an emulsion. An emulsion is a combination of two unlike components. According to Julia Child, mayonnaise is also something every cook must confidently and rapidly whip up on command with nary a qualm, because it is one of the elemental cookery procedures. 3 eggs yolks, 3-5 tablespoons wine vinegar or lemon juice, 1 ½ cup olive oil, ½ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon dry mustard, and the book ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking.’

Check out:
Canadian geese
Heinrich, Bernd - The Geese of Beaver Bog, HarperCollins, 2004.
Chemistry, periodic table
http://www.dayah.com/periodic/
http://chemistry.about.com/
Friendship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/friendship/
Garden fertilization
ttp://organicgardens.suite101.com/article.cfm/manure_in_the_organic_garden
http://www.umass.edu/cdl/CDL/publications/Mass%20horse%20guide.pdf
Lady bugs
http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef105.asp
http://webtech.kennesaw.edu/jcheek3/ladybugs.htm
Rosalind Franklin
Maddox, Brenda – Rosalind Franklin, HarperCollins, 2002.
http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/franklin.html
http://www.rosalindfranklin.edu/
http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?tip=1&id=1782
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~cwp/Phase2/Franklin,_Rosalind@841234567.html#sip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2GQDU67ink
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/KR/Views/AlphaChron/date/
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/KR/B/B/H/R/_/krbbhr.pdf
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/KR/B/B/D/P/_/krbbdp.pdf
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/KR/B/B/B/S/_/krbbbs.pdf
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/KR/B/B/F/N/_/krbbfn.pdf
Water properties
http://www.uni.edu/~iowawet/H2OProperties.html
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/state.html
http://core.ecu.edu/geology/woods/H2OUNEEK.htm
http://www.chemistry.nmsu.edu/studntres/chem115/notes/ch11.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_(molecule)
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Physical_properties_of_water
X-ray crystallography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_crystallography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_crystallography
http://www.xray.utmb.edu/
http://www.pitt.edu/~geib/Welcome.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/press_releases/profiles_franklin_added07.html
http://www.ntanaka.bio.titech.ac.jp/OldVersion/franklin.html

Next chapter: The Inheritance due to be posted on Thursday October 15, 2009.
Chapter 1 - May 14, 2009 - Tutu Troubles

Chapter 2 – Oct. 07, 2009 – About My Friends
Chapter 3 – Oct. 15, 2009 – The Inheritance
Chapter 4 – Oct. 22, 2009 – Finding Answers
Chapter 5 – Oct. 29, 2009 – A New Friend
Chapter 6 – Nov. 05, 2009 – A Treasure Map
Chapter 7 – Nov. 12, 2009 – A Treasure Hunt
Chapter 8 – Nov. 19, 2009 – And Beyond
Chapter 9 – Nov. 26, 2009 – Lost Data
Chapter 10 – Dec. 3, 2009 – Found Data
Chapter 11 – Dec. 19, 2009 – The Castle Cellar
Chapter 12 – Dec. 17, 2009 – Forever Never Ending