PolishBear's World

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From SpaceWeather: On June 12th, just as Russia's Sarychev Peak volcano was erupting for the first time in 20 years, the International Space Station flew directly overhead. Astronauts had their camera ready and snapped one of the most dramatic Earth-science photos ever taken from space.

A death in the family.

My mom's sister, my Aunt Sonia, passed away earlier this week after an approximately two-year battle with cancer. I'm reposting an old photo of Sonia, my mom, and their mother, Ann Petrash, taken 69 years ago. Sonia is the older the two girls:

The funeral is tomorrow morning in Nanticoke, a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania, where my mom, Aunt Sonia, and my Uncle Walter were raised. I'm typing this from my room at the EconoLodge in Wilkes-Barre, a small city about 10 miles north of Nanticoke. I got here shortly before 8pm this evening after a non-stop drive of about seven hours. The funeral will be rather sad, I'm sure ... but it will also be interesting seeing a bunch of cousins that I have not seen in about 15 years. Aunt Sonia and Uncle Nick (who survives her) had four kids roughly the same age range as me and my siblings, and of course I have plenty of fond memories of playing with them whenever my family would visit Nanticoke all those years ago.

My Aunt Sonia's obituary is here:
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/timesleader/obituary.aspx?n=sonia-marshall&pid=128027957

A couple things I'd like to pass along:

First of all there was an absolutely heartbreaking column in USA Today, written by an ACLU executive about the illness and death of his partner, and the somewhat frosty relations with his partner's family. Please read it. It may make you cry. Click here:

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/06/beyond-gay-marriage.html

On a lighter note, our local newspaper has been doing some remarkable coverage of Gay Pride Week here in West Virginia. Not only was there a great article about the drag performer who won the Ms. Pride competition, but on the newspaper's website there's a four-minute video clip about the competition itself. You can watch and read both by clicking here:

http://www.wvgazettemail.com/Entertainment/gazzevents/200906030684

Bear in mind, for those of you in more thriving metropolitan LGBT communities, this may all seem a bit pedestrian. But for West Virginia it's an impressive amount of visibility.

The Latest from Saturn: May 20th

From CICLOPS: Rays of light from the Sun have taken many different paths to compose this glorious image of Saturn and its rings.

This view looks toward the unilluminated (north) side of the rings and, at the top of the image, the night side of Saturn. Sunlight has been reflected on the illuminated side of the rings to the light the planet’s southern hemisphere, seen here as a bright band of yellow-orange. The northern hemisphere, in the top left corner of the image, is dimly lit by light diffusely scattered through the rings. The planet’s shadow cuts across the rings, but light reflected off the southern hemisphere backlights part of the C ring, making them visible in silhouette.

Bright points of light in the image are stars occulted by the rings.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 41 degrees above the ringplane.

A walk in the woods.

Last weekend I went to visit my parents at their home in Virginia. They have a nice home on the shores of Smith Mountain Lake, which is a short drive east of Roanoke. On Saturday we drove about 30 miles north of their home to the Peaks of Otter, a national park and cluster of three prominent mountains located along the Blue Ridge Parkway. My dad is getting just a bit too old and frail to go on lengthy hikes, so he sat in the car and read his book while my mom and I hiked a short loop through the woods, total time about 45 minutes, a pleasant excursion. Here are a few photos:

The latest from Saturn

Anyone who has ever envisioned the rings of Saturn has always wondered what they might look like up close. The Cassini probe has resolved amazing details of the rings and the various moonlets that help shepherd them, but we really havent seen individual boulders or clumps of rubble. But NOW, because the rings are very nearly edge-on to the Sun, Cassini has resolved some tantalizing SHADOWS:

From UniverseToday: "Because Saturn is approaching its equinox, in August the rings will “disappear” from our view from Earth, as the rings will be exactly edge-on. But as the rings ease into alignment with the sun, Saturn’s moons cast their shadows across the rings, growing longer as equinox approaches. Notice the area right near the middle of the image where the rings look kind of fuzzy? That’s not just camera blur; those are more shadows, created by thousands of boulders or moonlets in the ring! Amazing! We’ve never actually seen the small objects that make up the rings — and we still haven’t — but we’re seeing the shadows they are creating!"

The images returned from Cassini are amongst the most ASTONISHING things I've seen in my life. I'm so glad I have lived to see this.

"The Daily Show" Duel in Retrospect
I'm not a late-night person, so I wasn't able to watch Jon Stewart's much-ballyhoo'd confrontation with CNBC's Jim "Mad Money" Cramer until this evening. Anyway, some thoughts:

1: All today I was imagining Jon Stewart starting the interview by putting his fingers together like Mr. Burns and saying, "Wecome to my little 'Variety Show.'" THAT would've been hysterical.

2: I have to admire Jon Stewart for his prep-work. I'm sure his staff did their share of coaching him, but I can't help thinking that Jon is FAR more well-versed on economic and financial matters than I ever will be. He wasn't relying on his telepromter or a script; he REALLY seemed to know his shit.

3: At times I almost felt a bit sorry for Jim Cramer. I'd like to believe that he wants to be, first and foremost, an entertaining guy. And despite his insane Type-AAA personality on-camera schtick, he seems like a genuinely NICE guy who really isn't interested in watching poor shmucks like me lose their nest eggs. But Jon Stewart was determined to hold his feet to the fire, and Cramer was pretty contrite.

4: Perhaps the whole episode illustrates how potentially powerful The Daily Show can be. And I strongly suspect that after all this, the people at CNBC are going to start being a little bit more serious and CAUTIOUS about what they do, and not just keeping their focus on ratings.

QUESTION #7
My friend Mark (aka

kybearfuzz ) asks:
"How do you phonetically pronounce your last name and what variations have you heard over the years? Do you have a specific one that irritates you more than others?"

ANSWER:

My last name is pronounced "an-zuh-LEH-vich" (emphasis on the third syllable).

I have heard ENDLESS mispronunciations over the years, and like everyone else in my family, I take it in stride. I'm proud of my last name, but I accept that people who don't know how to pronounce it are invariably going to mangle it. Doesn't irritate me one bit.

QUESTION #3

icejohn2 asks:
"What is your favorite activity during free time?"

ANSWER:

That would really depend on the weather. I've battled a weight problem all my life, so it's all I can do to get SOME kind of exercise whenever I have the opportunity. Like I mentioned in my QUESTION #2, I really enjoy hiking in the woods: Good for my health, good for my soul. During my lunch hour at work, I will either take a ten-minute walk over the local YWCA for a workout of some kind (usually alternating between weight machines and elliptical trainers) or walk a few miles along the Kanawha River, which flows through Charleston; that's a peaceful, stress-reducing sort of walk that allows me time to ponder whatever needs pondering. I'm also quite a good swimmer (one dear old friend of mine once called me a "tuna") and I feel very comfortable in the water, so I adore swimming in the ocean or freshwater streams and lakes whenever the opportunity presents itself. AND, of course, there's my bicycle, which I purchased almost two years ago; the best minor investment I think I've ever made, and when the weather's nice, bicycling anywhere from 20 to 30 miles is something I find absolutely exhilarating. I'm always asking people I know if they have bicycles, because it would be exponentially more enjoyable to go bicycling with someone else.

But then again, there are those days when the weather outside is horrible, and ya just can't bring yourself to leave the house. On days like that, it is a real luxury just to lie down on the couch, with my beloved kittycat curled up on top of me, and immerse myself in a good book.

Have a question for me during March Question Month? Ask me HERE.

Question #2

Harry (aka

baeritone) asks:
What does the most famous quote (as below) from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by H.D. Thoreau, mean for your life personally, omitting no detail?

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

ANSWER:

First I must admit that I have not read Walden, and the only thing I've read by Thoreau is On Civil Disobedience, and that was some 25-30 years ago. So I'm gonna to have to wing it here. But I do enjoy getting out into the woods, and I often wonder how well I could manage to survive if lost in the woods. I've seen demonstrations of all the different means of starting a fire, and one of these days I'm going to hike out into some local woods and see if I could manage to get a fire started with only what was available (but I would be sure to put it out, Smokey!). Could I build a shelter and stay warm? Could I safely identify edible wild plants and other sources of food? Could I find a safe source of drinking water and not have to worry about raging Giardia? These are skills that I think more people ought to consider, since disasters do happen.

I have to wonder what Thoreau would think of our digital technology obsessed age. Cell phones, texting, blogs, the internet, Twitter, iPhones, iPods, and God only knows what's next to come down the pike. Would Thoreau embrace these tools, or would he be appalled by them? We can only speculate. Some of these tools I like, some I don't, but I do know that while these various permutations of digital communications technology were ostensibly designed to keep us all better connected, in many ways they are driving us all further apart. The consequences and perils of all this were speculated upon quite early in such stories as The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, and It's Such A Beautiful Day by Isaac Asimov ... and more recent novels such as The Masters of Solitude by Marvin Kaye and Parke Godwin.

I hope that even the most technologically-obsessed of us con't lose sight of the sublime pleasures of getting out into the woods and feeling, however briefly, some reconnection with nature. Not far from where I live there is place called Little Creek Park; people go there for picnicking, reunions, softball games, tennis ... and there are also miles of wooded hiking trails through a part of the park called Trace Fork Canyon. A couple of weeks ago I spent a couple of hours hiking in these woods by myself. At times I felt almost lost; the trail map that I had was not to scale and was all but useless. And yet I didn't worry, and simply immersed myself in the welcome solitude and relative quiet, the sound of birds, the breeze in the trees, the merry trickle of water over stones. To pause and breathe deep the smell of the forest, all by myself, was quite a luxury in its own way. It seems fewer and fewer Americans want to take the time to enjoy such things.

I don't know if that was the philosophical answer you were looking for, but it'll have to do!

R.I.P.: Wendy Richard

She was best known to American audiences for playing sales clerk Miss Brahms on
the British sitcom Are You Being Served? ... but Wendy Richard later went on to play
Pauline Fowler on the BBC soap EastEnders, which I followed fairly religiously when
it was shown on BBC America back in the day. She died yesterday at the age of 65.
Click on her photo for the full tribute in England's Daily Star:

ABOVE: Wendy on the set of EastEnders.

BELOW: Wendy as Miss Brahams in Are You Being Served?, along with John Inman as
Mr. Humphries (who himself passed away two years ago).

The Future of Manned Space Exploration

Space exploration is not a waste of money. Quite the contrary: It is essential to the survival of the human species. As astronomers such as Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson have made abundantly clear, Earth exists in a cosmic shooting gallery, and if we neglect spacefaring technology, we resign ourselves to an evolutionary dead-end. That's why I'm encouraged that NASA's Constellation Program is moving right along. Click on the image below for a series of pretty impressive photos:

My One-Size-Fits-All Response:

DEAR REVEREND (fill in the blank):

The United States of America is not a theocracy. Perhaps you would be happier if it was. Perhaps you would like it if this country was renamed The United States of Christ. Until that happens, you must accept the fact persons of ALL belief systems (whether Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Christians, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Pagans, etc.) are on equal legal footing.

It would appear obvious that YOUR church would not be particularly welcoming to Gay individuals, particularly Gay couples, and that YOUR church is opposed to marriage equality for Gay Americans. But other Christians and congregations are more supportive and accepting. Are you suggesting that only YOUR views should apply to the formulation of public policy?

Here is my advice to you: Your faith is a personal matter. And if your personal faith informs you that Gay relationships (no matter how monogamous or long-term) are anathema, you are welcome to conduct your personal life as you see fit. You do not have the right to demand that persons of other faiths do the same.

When marriage equality for Gay couples finally becomes a reality (and it eventually will), I can promise you with 100% certainty that it will not affect your life, your marriage, your church, or your children ONE BIT. You will never have to worry about being denied a job or your love because of YOUR sexual orientation. Your church will never be forced to marry Gay couples, any more than it is forced to marry non-Christian couples.

Perhaps the best thing for you to do when it comes to your dealings with Gay individuals and couples is simply to obey The Golden Rule: Treat them as you yourself would wish to be treated.