Check out links at end of each chapter...
Chapter 1 - May 14, 2009 - Tutu Troubles
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 8
And Beyond
I stretch my arm out straight and makes a fist with my hand. I focus my eyes and place my fist on two stars in the Big Dipper and then I follow straight along their line for three fists length, and, voilà, there is the bight Polaris twinkling back at me.
I listen again to Méabh’s voice in my head, ‘From the end of the handle on the Big Dipper, imagine a straight line through Polaris. On this line, three fists distance from Polaris, is the star constellation Cassiopeia, also know as the Crown or the Vain Queen, depending on whose vivid imagination you want to give credence to.’
I find Cassiopeia’s crown easily. ‘Now,’ Méabh’s voice continues in my head, ‘Following the straight line made by the three stars at the base of the crown, follow three and one-half fists and you will come upon the Swan, known as the Constellation Cygnus. The tail of the swan is the bright star Deneb, which is one corner of the Summer Triangle. The other two corners are the bright star Vega, in the Lyre Constellation, and the bright star Altair, in the Aquila Constellation. Aquila is an eagle. In Japanese mythology, Vega and Altair are the two lovers who only get to meet once a year in the Tanabata Celebration in July. Every culture has numerous myths and legends regarding the stars. Myth is important and interesting to some people. But the best reason to know where the stars are in the sky is so that you won’t get lost at night. And if you do get lost at night, you can find yourself again.’
Méabh knows a lot about the stars. She can find Sirius, the heart of the Dog Constellation, and Orion with his belt and his shoulder star, Betelguese which is pronounced like ‘Beetle Juice.’ She knows where the Princess Andromeda is, where the seven sisters of the Pleiades are, and where the bull Taurus is located. And she also knows a lot about getting lost and finding herself again. I really can not imagine how anyone can grow up properly without a friend like Méabh in their life.
I still have trouble finding certain constellations but I usually can find the Big Dipper, Polaris and Cassiopeia fairly easily. Tonight as I am staring very hard at Cih, the brightest star in Cassiopeia, my eyes start to go in and out of focus because Cih is blinking so much. It is making me dizzy.
Finally, I realize that I am not actually looking at Cih blinking but, depth perception playing the tricks that it does on one’s mind, I am actually looking at a tiny firefly which is hovering at the tip of my nose.
I recover from my surprise and say, ‘Hi. My name’s RosFrankie. What’s your name?’
’ the firefly answers.
‘Huh???’
‘ﻉ ﺹ’
‘Huh???’
‘ȹώϹ’
‘Huh???’
'Huh???’
‘Lucent.’
‘Lucent?’
‘Yes, Lucent. It means light. Enlightenment. You may call me Lucy for short.’
‘Hi Lucy.’
‘Hi.’
‘It’s nice your name means light. I don’t know what RosFrankie means.’
‘I do,’ says Lucy, ‘It’s short for Rosalind Franklin.’
‘How do you know that?’ I inquire.
‘I know lots of stuff. I used to know Rosalind Franklin. I kept telling her not to get so close to the x-ray crystallography camera but she was always so intent on what she was doing that she kept forgetting. She was special. You must be very proud to be named after such a wonderful person.’
‘Oh,’ I exclaim, ‘I am. I really am,’ all the while thinking that I have to ask Méabh more about Rosalind Franklin. Of course, Méabh will tell me to look in ‘THE’ books, but that’s okay because I like looking in ‘THE’ books.
‘Where do you live?’ I ask.
‘I live on the other side of a Black Hole past the Andromeda Constellation.’
‘Oh, that’s very far away. I live right here and this is my mud bog. You are welcomed to use it anytime you want to rest and relax,’ I tell Lucy.
‘Thank you. I’m a bit tired right now.’
‘Have you been away from home for very long?’
‘Not too long. Only three thousand years,’ Lucy answers as she closes her eyes and lays back on my nose.
‘Three thousand years!’ I am surprised. ‘How old are you?’
‘By your years, I’m just over twenty billion years old. I haven’t even reached my prime yet. I’m rather young to be doing what I am doing.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Gathering information and data about Earth to bring back home to be studied by those who study things and stuff. I call them Those In The Know. But they’re really okay as creatures go. They like to study and learn things.’
‘That sounds like a really important and big assignment.’
‘It’s been an interesting and fun assignment until now.’
‘What has happened now?’ I asks.
I notice Lucy bow her head. Well, she bows her head as much as any lightening bug can bow their head, which is hardly at all and barely perceptible. But I am very perceptive. After a pause, Lucy replies, ‘I’ve lost much of my data.’
‘Oh, that’s terrible,’ I sympathize, ‘Can I help you find it?’
Oh, would you do that? That would be wonderful!’
‘Of course I would. And I will ask all my friends to help. It will be an adventure.’
‘Oh,’ replies Lucy, ‘Thank you so much! I feel so much better.’ Then she asks me, ‘Do you have many friends?’
‘Oh, I have many wonderful friends. First are my parents, of course, and there is Méabh. Then Mary-Ann-Drusillda and Lordy and HOG and Brant and Cana and Puff and Sunbeam and But and Ms. Wiseman and her friend Dr. Keddy and, now you Lucy, and, of course, there are all the friends whom I have not met yet.’
‘Wow,’ Lucy says, ‘You’re very lucky. I know many creatures who are my acquaintances but I seem to always be too busy to have friends. You are my first friend.’
This statement, which sounds kind of sad to me, makes me ask, ‘What is the difference?’
‘Oh, it’s a very important difference,’ Lucy answers, ‘A friend is someone whom you can trust even when you know that they are wrong. You know you can tell them they are wrong, and they will trust that you are right. Unless, of course, you’re wrong. Friendship is a very interactive thing.’
‘Well,’ I smile, ‘then I really do have a lot of friends. Méabh says that one can never have enough friends. Méabh is always right. Usually.’
‘I can’t wait to meet all your friends,’ Lucy says as she lays back comfortably on my nose and falls asleep. Leaning on a friend one trusts makes for a very sound and deep sleep. I don’t move until Lucy wakes up again, and I never mentions to Lucy that she is a very loud snorer. Sometimes being a good friend means that one doesn’t have to tell all the truth all the time, but only sometimes.
After Lucy has a comfortable and restful nap on my nose, I say, ‘Why don’t we have a nice cup of Peppermint Tea while you tell me all about your Lost Data?’
‘That would just hit the spot!’ exclaims Lucy, using one of the many colloquialisms which she has learned during the last three thousand years. It took me a bit of time to find a tea cup small enough for Lucy. However, living where I do, on a farm in a village near a city and mountains and the ocean, usually whenever I need something, I can usually find it if I look hard enough.
The aroma of the peppermint is very refreshing, but just as Lucy is about to take a sip, the sound of a great roar fills the air and the ground begins to tremble and shake so strongly that huge waves of tea spill over her cup and into the mud bog. ‘What is that?’ she asks with fear in her voice as she hugs up closer to me.
‘What’s what?’ I ask, because I am so familiar with the roars and rumbles that I no longer notice them, ‘Oh, you mean all the vibrations. That’s nothing. That’s just Timmy with another tusk ache. He’s on his way to HOG’s haystack. Every time he gets a tusk ache, she fills it with cloves so that it doesn’t hurt him anymore. If you look over towards Daisy’s Field, you’ll see him. He’s quite a gentle creature unless he has a tusk ache and then he gets a little rambunctious.’
As Lucy looks towards Daisy’s Field, she sees a large furry creature with huge curly tusks running and stomping and roaring through the field. It’s eyes, ears and mouth are all covered with fur and one can only assume that they are there rather than actually see them. The critter looks like a big round fur ball with tusks for handles. But it would take a giant to handle this fur ball.
Lucy gasps in disbelief at what she see, ‘But, but, but that’s a Wooly Mammoth!’
‘Is it? I guess so. I don’t know. All I know is that it’s Timmy. He’s really quite nice. He gives us fun rides through the fields and woods when his tusks don’t bother him. This tea is quite good,’ I reply as I sip my tea.
‘But he’s a Wooly Mammoth. Wooly Mammoths are extinct!’ Lucy excitedly proclaims.
‘Are they?’ I say, and then I ask Lucy, ‘What does extinct mean?’
‘It means they don’t exist anymore.’ Lucy answers knowledgably.
‘Timmy exists,’ I state knowledgably.
‘Yes, I can see that,’ Lucy smiles, ‘and I can see that I have also found some of my Lost Data. When we finish our tea, and the ground stops shaking, and the roars stop roaring, can we go visit your friend HOG and her guest Timmy?’
“Oh, of course. I was planning that anyway. Right after tea. Drinking tea and relaxing in mud bogs must never be rushed. That would be bad for the digestion,’ I state, and then realize that I sound very much like my mother. My mother really loves a good cup of tea. And I love my mother but I'm not too sure that I want to sound like her. After all, she is her and I am me.
After tea, Lucy flies and flutters by my side as I walk to HOG’s haystack over in Daisy’s Field. Which is not very easy for Lucy to do because I must keep making sudden moves to avoid stepping in all the holes which HOG has been digging looking for buried treasure.
‘I think,’ I mutter to no one in particular, ‘that we are going to have to ask HOG to fill the holes back in after she digs them. It is getting very difficult to walk around these fields.’
‘Does she ever find anything valuable?’ Lucy asks, even though her mind is more on the Wooly Mammoth she is about to meet.
‘Yeah, Lots of neat stuff. She’s found nuts which a squirrel had buried so then she made Squirrel Nut Bread; a plastic bag which is very very old, maybe; a tree branch which some witch had turned into a rock; and once she even found black liquid gooey stuff which she didn’t think tasted good enough for any of her soups but she did find it burns slow and makes a good light when the days are dark and dreary.’
At this point, HOG sees me walking, or rather stumbling, through the field, and, with Timmy comfortably napping after having his tooth fixed, she runs excitedly to meet me.
‘RosFrankie! RosFrankie! Guess what I found when I dug a hole over in The Enchanted Wood,’ HOG yells as she alternately runs and rolls toward me.
‘What? No, wait! First, you must meet my new friend Lucy,’ I introduce HOG and Lucy to each other but Lucy, not meaning to be rude, can not take her eyes off of the huge sleeping fur ball of a Wooly Mammoth called Timmy..
‘I never….’ Lucy vocally trails off in disbelief.
I can tell that HOG thinks that maybe Lucy is a little socially retarded, but that isn’t the kind of thing that really matters to HOG anyway, as she looks at me, and trying very hard not to roll with excitement, exclaims,
‘A diary. A real, honest-to-goodness and very old diary.’
‘A diary,’ I repeat her words, ‘How exciting. How interesting. Who wrote it?’
‘I don’t know. It does not say.’
‘Oh, I think we will have to read it and do some investigating. I haven’t done any investigating for a very long time. At least three days!’ I say. I’m suddenly filled with anticipation.
‘Eww…’says HOG, as she starts to roll, ‘That sounds adventurous. Dangerous!’
‘Don’t worry, HOG,’ I comfort her as she unrolls, ‘You don’t have to do any of the adventuring. We all can do it. Especially now that we have Lucy to help. She knows lots of stuff and things and she needs us to help her find some Lost Data.’
‘Oh, well, that’s alright then. I won’t worry,’ HOG replies as she looks over at Lucy. Lucy is softly petting the giant fur ball who goes by the name of Timmy. ‘ But is she safe to be with all alone? She’s acting very strange. One would think, looking at her, that she had never ever seen a Timmy before in her life.’
‘Actually, much to my surprise, I believe that she has not ever seen a Timmy before in her life. She said something about there not being any Timmys anymore that she knew about. She said Timmys were all part of the Lost Data which she needs to find before she goes home again.’
As I am explaining this to HOG, Mary-Ann-Drusillda comes out of the haystack which they call home and overhears the explanation and the dilemma which Lucy is in.
‘What other data has she lost?’ Mary-Ann-Drusillda asks with curiosity. As a mathematician, Mary-Ann-Drusillda understands the importance of finding lost data.
‘We’ll have to ask her when she recovers from meeting Timmy. We were having tea in the mud bog and she was about to tell me when Timmy rumbled by. She called him a Wooly Mammoth and said he is extinct.’
‘That’s not a very nice thing to say!’
‘I don’t think she meant it in a bad way. Maybe something got lost in the translation from her native tongue. She really seems very very nice. I really like her and I think you both will also when you get to know her better. I think when she saw Timmy she kinda felt like HOG felt when she got the letter from the lawyer saying that she was to inherit something very valuable.’
‘Oh,’ says Mary-Ann-Drusillda, thinking that she hopes Lucy does not try to stuff Timmy into a bucket of salt. Mary-Ann-Drusillda is pretty sure that he would not like that at all.
‘Oh,’ says HOG, thinking that she really would love to have an AGA stove someday when they can afford to make the kitchen bigger in their comfy little haystack.
HOG sighs, and then realizes that it is time for her to wake Timmy out of his slumber before he forgets that he is suppose to wake up. “Mary-Ann-Drusillda, will you please help me with Timmy?’ As they go over to the giant sleeping fur ball, Lucy returns to my side.
‘I am so excited,’ she says to me, ‘To finally, after all these generations, finally meet and see and touch a Wooly Mammoth. You just can’t imagine…’ she trails off. I’m not too sure whether I can imagine or not imagine because I know that I can imagine quite a lot and sometimes I am accused of over-imagining.
My thoughts are interrupted by the sudden appearance of Lordy who walks straight up to Lucy without saying anything to anyone else. His little heart starts beating fast and he immediately says, without thinking or hesitation:
..
.-..
---
…-
.
-.--
---
..-
And Lucy, temporarily turning the color red, becomes invisible, but even though she is invisible she immediately replies, without thinking or hesitation:
-..
..
-
-
---
And from that moment on, they are never separated, no matter how far apart they are physically. Some say they are soul mates, the stuff of legends.
The phenomenon of Lucy becoming invisible so distracts and confuses me that I don’t even ask Lordy and Lucy what all the dotting and dashing was all about, but rather I say to Lucy, when she becomes visible again, ‘What was that? What happened? Where did you go? You were invisible? You disappeared. That was really cool! But you were gone. You weren’t here. You were invisible. Did that have anything to do with magic invisible ink? But you came right back. Without being pressed by a hot iron. What really just happened?’
I finally pause to catch my breath and Lucy answers, ‘Just because you could not see me does not mean I was invisible. It wasn’t me that is the problem but your eyes. I was breathing fast, so fast that I was actually pulsating and vibrating so fast that you could not see me. Your eyes can’t focus that fast. It takes time for chemical impulses to run all around your brain from your eyes and back and forth. You just couldn’t see fast enough. It’s kinda like a Persistence of Vision thing. Like when helicopter blades turn so fast that you can only see a blur.’
‘Oh,’ I look at her with a little doubt in my eyes, ‘but something else was also going on.’
‘Well, yes, I guess,‘ Lucy answers, trying hard not to look at Lordy and have the process start all over again, ‘you must remember, I am a little different than you. When I breathe fast I become invisible to your eyes and I also change colors to go along with my emotions.’
Lucy’s attempt to prevent me from questioning her about the effect Lordy has on her works very well and I instead ask her about the meaning of all the different color changes. After all, Lordy and I have been best friends since forever, and because of that friendship I don’t think I will ever be able to see Lordy through the eyes of Lucy. Lordy seems to be having enough trouble understanding it all himself. I sense something going on but I don’t know what I sense, so instead I just ask Lucy, ‘So what do all the colors mean?’
‘Mostly I’m yellow, which is peaceful and secure, joyful even. When I’m grey I’m in deep-thinking mode. When I turn black, I’m really sad. When I turn red, I’m excited and start to breathe fast. When I’m blue, I’m friendly. Green means I’m feeling lucky and hopeful. Purple means I’m confused. When I’m orange I’m playful. When I’m brown I’m very stable. Invisible is a color we don’t see. But mostly I am just me, which is yellow. Peaceful and joyful,’ Lucy very successfully sneaks the color red in the middle of all this muddle where she thinks it got lost from my curiosity. It didn’t quite work but I sense that Lucy isn’t being dishonest with me, her new friend, but that she just doesn’t want to have to explain something to me which she herself does not quite understand. I think she really is just being honest with herself.
Anyway, Lucy is saved from further questioning from me by the sudden appearance of Méabh. Méabh has heard from the eagles that there is a new critter in the area and she wants to check this critter out. I make the proper introductions and Méabh feels that Lucy is not only a safe critter to have around but also a most interesting critter, Rather novel, even for someone of Méabh’s wide range of critter expertise.
After Lucy explains her mission and directive to Méabh, Méabh asks Lucy if there are any experts who might be able to help her find her lost data.
Lucy sighs and answers, ‘I don’t usually go by what the experts say because usually the experts can only tell what they know. They’re not any good at all in knowing what they don’t know.’
Méabh nods her head knowingly.
Then I ask Lucy, ‘So what else have you lost?’
Words:
Constellation
Mythology
Colloquialism
Rambunctious
Questions:
Have you ever heard of a tree turning into a rock?
What time of year is Orion’s Belt most visible at your house?
Do you want to ride a Wooly Mammoth?
Do you have a secret language, like Morse Code, which you use with your friends?
What other questions should be asked?
BTW:
Tanabata: Tanabata, also known as the "star festival", takes place on the 7th day of the 7th month of the year, when, according to legend, the two stars Altair and Vega, which are usually separated from each other by the Milky Way, are able to meet. You can check these stars out with a star chart or on the computer with Stellarium, and see how close they look to each other on 7 July.
Morse Code: Morse code uses a standardized sequence of short and long elements to represent the letters, numerals, punctuation and special characters of a given message. The short and long elements can be formed by sounds, marks, or pulses, in on off keying and are commonly known as "dots" and "dashes" or "dits" and "dahs". Originally created for Samuel F. B. Morse's electric telegraph in the early 1840s, Morse code was also extensively used for early radio communication beginning in the 1890s. For the first half of the twentieth century, the majority of high-speed international communication was conducted in Morse code. However, the variable length of the Morse characters made it hard to adapt to automated circuits, so generally today it has been replaced by machine readable formats. The most popular current use of Morse code is by amateur radio operators. Pilots and air traffic controllers are usually familiar with Morse code and require a basic understanding. Morse code is designed to be read by humans without a decoding device. For emergency signaling, Morse code is extremely versatile. SOS.
Check out:
Color theory
http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/a/colorpsych.htm
Extinct
http://www.britannica.com/bps/search?query=extinct&source=MWTEXT
Languages
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0855611.html
http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=EN
Light
http://www.howstuffworks.com/light.htm
http://www.learner.org/teacherslab/science/light/
http://www.answers.com/topic/light
http://www.physics4kids.com/files/light_intro.html
Lightning bugs
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/firefly.html
http://iris.biosci.ohio-state.edu/projects/FFiles/
http://www.backyardnature.net/lightbug.htm
Morse code
http://www.wrvmuseum.org/morsecode/morsecodehistory.htm
http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/morse.html
Space exploration, Hubble telescope, Dr. Hubble
http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS315US316&q=hubble+telescope&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=8ny2Sc_cE6DOMuXqiOUK&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title
http://hubble.nasa.gov/
http://www.stsci.edu/resources/
http://books.google.com/books?q=hubble+telescope&source=bll&ei=8ny2Sc_cE6DOMuXqiOUK&sa=X&oi=book_group&resnum=18&ct=title&cad=bottom-3results
http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/hubble_essentials/edwin_hubble.php
Star constellations
http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/stars/attractions/index.html
http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~jkaler/sow/sowlist.html
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/time/constellations.html
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=438
http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/st6starfinder/st6starfinder.shtml
Tea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea
Martin, Laura – Tea, Tuttle, 2007.
Gautier, Linda – Tea Aromas & Flavors, Chronicle, 2006.
Wooly Mammoth
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schooladventures/woollymammoth/
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/mammals/mammoth/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/04/0408_050408_woollymammoth.html
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7lo7m_baby-woolly-mammoth-discovered_animals
http://www.nps.gov/bela/historyculture/woolly-mammoth.htm
www.amherst.edu/~pratt/
Next chapter: Lost Data due to post on November 26, 2009
All text and images copyright 2009 Jule Dupre
unless otherwise noted.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment