The Queen at Rest

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Photo #468: Content QueenLocation Taken: Arcadia, Michigan
Time Taken: December 2006

A few more years back, and other dogs show up in the pictures. This is Abby, the miniature schnauzer my Grandparents had before Maggie. In her natural habitat.

By which I of course mean sitting by the large window-door, watching for deer to bark at. Her favorite toy, a wolf slipper, is right next to her, ready for any play fighting that needs to be done. There aren’t even any of the visiting dogs bothering her at the moment, so she’s queen of the house once more.

And my goodness can we get a lot of visiting dogs when the various families come a visiting. There’s the local schnauzer, at this time Abby, and now Maggie. My set has two dogs, both medium-sized. My cousin has a feisty little Llasa Apso who lost an eye in a fight and is downright proud of it. And his parents have a Newfoundland, which if you don’t know, is a dog large enough that you start considering riding it. They’re usually all female, too, with Revel the one and only exception that I can remember. Admittedly, he’s probably more effeminate than the rest of them put together, but hey…

The queen is always my Grandparent’s schnauzer, though, and has been for all three of them I can remember. She’s always the smallest in size, but largest in attitude, and she knows that it’s her territory. The rest come and go, but this, this is her land.

And her deer to bark at.

And her wolf slipper to drag around.

  

Is there anything as awesome as a first romp in the snow?

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Photo #467: Distant DogsLocation Taken: Arcadia, Michigan
Time Taken: January 2011

You know what, we need more puppy pictures!

Here’s my two enjoying the snow along the beach of Lake Michigan.

This was the first time we’d let Revel (the black one) off of the leash. We can’t do it where we live, due to leash laws, but up at my Grandma’s place free-roaming dogs are normal. And it means that they can run at the speeds THEY want, which is both great for their health and great for them no longer trying to dislocate my arm.

But it does mean building a certain amount of trust and love first, to make sure they come back, and it does mean taking it slowly to check for quirks.

Well, Revel has hordes of trust and love, but he also has a few quirks. He really likes cars, including, well, chasing them.

So while we could trust him to not run for the hills, we couldn’t trust him to not run for the road. So well, it was back to carefully watched excursions outside for a while, letting him out with a chaperone rather than letting him use the dog door.

Which was far easier than you’d think, since he’s never managed to figure out the dog door at my Grandparent’s place. Despite using the dog door at our place. Despite the other dogs using it quite happily and easily. He’ll still just stand at the door and look pathetic until we let him in. Or out. Or one followed by the other as he changes his mind.

On the plus side, we’ve managed to stop him chasing cars. Well, the small cars anyway. He’s cornered a few snow plows over the years.

  

There’s three dogs by my Mother, and Maggie’s the only one that can sit up there.

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Photo #466: Little MaggieLocation Taken: Arcadia, Michigan
Time Taken: May 2011

I’ve had three days of heavy science and philosophy. Plus I’ve listened to all of the Freakanomics radio archives, am listening to Star Talk Radio, AND am reading a book called Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology. My brain feels like it’s been on overdrive lately.

Which means time for a cute PUPPY PICTURE!!!!

This is my mother, at her mother’s place, with the local dog. Her name’s Maggie, and she’s the most cuddly of all the Miniature Schnauzers my grandparents have owned. She especially likes my Mom, since Mom helped with her early training when Maggie was just a little fluffball. And she’s small enough to fit on the couch arms when my mom’s sitting there crocheting and watching TV.

  

I actually have something to say about sunsets this time!

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Photo #465: Brilliant SunsetLocation Taken: Valparaiso, Indiana
Time Taken: October 2007

It’s rare to see a sunset that’s quite this brilliant. Usually if it’s colorful, it’s not that bright, and vise versa.

I suspect it has something to do with particle size, or perhaps particle location.

Colorful sunsets require lots of particles in the air. They absorb, amplify, and spread the light around to cover the entire sky. That’s why ash from volcanoes triggers colorful sunsets across the world. It also helps to have lots of clouds to provide the purple shadows that so magnificently balance the oranges.

Bright sunsets, on the other hand, require very few particles in the air. Mind you, there’s always going to be particles in the air, if only, well, air molecules. But those particles that spread the color to the entire sky also dilute the brightness. Bright light requires lots of photons traveling in the same direction, so a group of them hit your eye at once. Now, photons like to travel in the same direction (it’s how lasers work), so it’s not too uncommon to see bright sunsets even with all that air in the way. But toss in enough particles and the photons will just keep on running into them and have to go a different way, breaking up the group. Have you ever tried to walk as a group through a crowd? It’s similar to that. You might be able to all get through, but not exactly the way you wanted to, and not in the same arrangement as you started in.

So, more particles equals a colorful sunset, while fewer particles equals a bright one. So how do you get a bright colorful sunset like this one?

I’ve got two hypotheses.

First, particle size. Large particles far apart from each other wouldn’t break up groups of photons as often, but would occasionally intercept an entire group and send it off to a different part of the sky, amplifying the color in the process.

Second, particle location. Only the clouds have the particles. The clouds gain the color-boosting effects of their particles, but elsewhere the photons continue unimpeded. Also, since the photons like going the same direction, they’re likely to bounce as a group if there’s only a few particles in the way, like turning and going a different path if you’re with friends trying to get past a crowd.

It could also be both of these, and of course, it could be something else entirely. I’m only an amateur meteorologist, and I don’t have the equipment required to test these hypotheses. And yes, it’s hypotheses rather than theories. It helps a lot to know your scientific terms.

  

So, IS it Fun?

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Photo #464: National ArchivesLocation Taken: National Archives, Washington DC
Time Taken: November 2008

Today I was on the Minecraft multiplayer server I frequent, merrily building a giant tree and reading the chat to pass the time. One of them was joking around, pretending to be Australian, in full stereotypical way (I’m not sure he even knew anything about Australia other than “they have kangaroos” and “G’day Mate”.) And then, one of them, a young British teen I chat with a bunch, randomly asked me a question.

“Sharayah, is it fun being American?”

And I couldn’t give an answer.

Now, it was a half-joking question, and I wasn’t actively participating in the conversation, so I answered by not answering, if that makes sense. But it got me thinking. IS it fun being American?

Or more specifically, do I have fun being American?

I mean, sure, you’ll find plenty of people for whom the answer is an enthusiastic “Yes!”, and a large group with the equally enthusiastic “No!”. And plenty of people for whom the answer is “Yeah, I guess so, never really thought about it.” And of course, 6 billion people for whom the answer is “I’m not American”. Well, unless they’re one of the people who get irritated by the term American applying to just citizens of the United States of America and go “Yes, I’m American, I live in South America” or the like, but hey, there’s all sorts out there.

Me, I don’t have an answer.

Now, do I have fun? Well, yes. Am I American? Also yes. But to me, those things really aren’t connected in any way. There’s nothing about my “American-ness” that adds or subtracts noticeably from my enjoyment of life.

And really, when I list out the attributes of who I am, American doesn’t make the list. Mind you, neither does “brown-haired” or “Germanic ancestry”. They’re aspects of myself, but they’re by no means important ones to me.

I guess I’m not nationalistic enough or something. Not to mention that I’ve seen enough of this wide country to see just how diverse it all is, so there’s no one set of attributes I consider “being American”. And I don’t have anything in common with the national stereotype, so I can’t just fall back on that.

At a more fundamental level, I don’t strongly feel the tribalism streak most humans have strongly. I don’t root for a sports team just because they play nearby, I don’t support stopping immigration because the foreigners are taking all the jobs (to me, it’s humans on both sides), I don’t ascribe to any political party, and so on. The closest I come is that most basic of tribes, my family and friends, and even then…

I suppose even amongst the humans I feel closest to, I also feel like a bit of an outsider. Or rather, an observer. I’m just watching these odd humans do their odd human things. I don’t have a best friend, and all of my close friends have their own closer friends. I keep myself a bit apart from the crowd, just naturally. And I never feel like I fully join anything I do, always leaving a mental avenue of escape if I should choose to quit. I’m not sure why, it’s just one of my personality traits.

In some ways, you can say I’m in a tribe of one.

Which, really, may be why I’m not nationalistic or tribalistic. It’s Us vs. Them, but well, when “Us” is “Me”, it gets lonely. So I open up to all those “Thems”. But you’re all “Thems”. There’s no fundamental distinction between groups to me, just flavors of all the paths humans can take. I give everyone the same chance to prove themselves to me, whether they’re that nice person down the street who bakes cookies on Tuesdays or a Siberian Yak Herder or someone who’s homeless or what have you. Or at least I do when I emerge from my hermitage of a room.

So, is it fun to be American?

I don’t know. But it is fun to be me.