Legendary Physicist Albert Einstein demonstrates a thesis- getting it wrong. Photo Telegraph
“It was Albert Einstein, no less, who proposed more than 100 years ago that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. But science world was left in shock when workers at the world’s largest physics lab announced they had recorded subatomic particles traveling faster than the speed of light. If the findings are proven to be accurate, they would overturn one of the pillars of the Standard Model of physics, which explains the way the universe and everything within it works….”
– Science Note from the Telegraph of London, UK
Funny- I had just heard a story within the last couple weeks that it was confirmed that nothing could move faster than 186K Miles per Second (MPS). Now this news from the latest experiment conducted at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN). The Large Hadron Collider apparently clocked neutrinos whizzed by faster than light.
Beam me up, Scotty! The universe could be open to us after all, and not by pointless sub-light speed (endless) journeys to arid Mars. I wish it was possible to harness the neutrinos to the rental Caddie and hurtle me back to DC faster-than-light.
Things continue apace in the Little Village By the Bay. The process is not faster than light, but it is moving swiftly.
In addition to entertaining the folks, I vowed to work on Dad’s office, which is the last unconsolidated area in the main house. I was going through the wreckage. Piles of disassociated paper are strewn about with no particular rhyme or reason in the heaps plastic storage boxes.
There are stacks of e-mail that Mom printed for Dad to read- as he transitioned into Raven. His once considerable set of skills peeled off him, and the office piles are evidence of the progressive decay. Email on line was an early casualty. Many of my stories were printed, which made me blush at the realization of how much he loved his kids, and the others are a dozens of notes that constitute a roll-call of dead friends.
My sister Annook did a great job on cleaning up the library upstairs, but we are down to books, gee-jaws, and Big Mama’s records and files. I need to see if the local Historical Society needs them. There is enough stuff to do here, even though things are much better that I could spend a month or two getting it sorted out.
Then, I hit the mealtimes over at the Village. I may have to arrange for Raven to travel by wheelchair soon- he is frail and I hold his hand on the trip from the apartment down to the Dining Room for the Challenged. He falls, periodically.
Meanwhile, Big Mama is progressively losing her grip on the present and is off on several imaginary, or part-imaginary lands.
They are curiously linked to things she used to know, and which she is determined to get back, though the efforts to research them do not get far. She wanted me to check at the Bellaire, OH, high school library for information on Ernie Hemingway (“Next time I am there,” I responded brightly, “for sure.”)
She seemed to be very pleased about some coup d’etat I had apparently organized to control the International Hemingway Convention scheduled to come to the Little Village in June of 2012. She thinks it is a huge secret, for some reason, and then she was immensely pleased to confirm that I had been born here in the village (which of course I was not).
Strange, but not bad strange. Just strange. Almost fun in a sad sort of way. I have much more discretionary time here now that my appearances at Potemkin Village are now individual events, unconnected to any coherent plan.
Stacks on the way to Raven’s former inner sanctum. Photo Socotra.
Dad’s office is filled with plastic storage boxes, all with identical contents: dozens- if not hundreds -of note pads, most with writing only on the first page, pens, and unopened packets of file tabs and office organizing materials. I am sorting into three piles: photos and things with writing on them, empty plastic bins and office materials. Once the latter two have been consolidated and donated I can go back and look at pile number one.
I need to get back to DC over the weekend, but will be back up for Thanksgiving. I hope my brother makes in up in October and Annook has sworn to do Christmas.
I think I will head out of here after I get Dad’s wild wispy hair hacked off this afternoon, the first appointment I could get. He looks much better shaved and with a haircut.
I need to move some piles out from downstairs, and it is going much slower than the speed of light.
Fall comes to the Little Village By the Bay. Photo from the Socotra iPad.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com