accomplished
west_philly it made me think about a lot of things, about what's important, what's not important. If I were really living up to my goals I'd be able to walk away from all my posessions and not think about it -- the idea that all of the important things in life are in your head is one I believe in, but one I'm not particuarly good about following. Slowly cranking down on the book, a couple trips left, maybe one this weekend to pick up some scattered people in central PA.
Roswell and Nooton slept with me last night as though they were magnetically attached limpet mines. If I'd roll over, they'd just snuggle back up. Tatty likes having them both in the house, she's distributing the nose-kisses.
I haven't subjected you to photos of my breakfast lately. Here's this morning's tofu-mushroom omlette.
I've been reading this fascinating book called "The Silent Landscape" about the journey of the HMS Challenger which, in the late 1800's went on a three year mission to survey the ocean floor. They'd sail for 150 miles, then stop, then drop a tether of instruments over the side to measure the depth, the high and low temperature, the central gravity, salenity, etc. of the water, and then they'd drop a dredge and all the miserable sailors would then start to haul half a ton of mud up from a depth of two miles. They'd sift through the dredge, and then sail another hundred and fifty miles. The discoveries are incredible. One thing that I learned was that the theory of Contenintal Drift is extremely recent. The crew of the Challenger discovered a peak in the middle of the ocean, where it turns out the contenents are in fact being driven from, but it wasn't until the mid 1950's that people actually understood what was going on. The proposal was made in 1915 by a bedridden german meteorolgist named Alfred Wegener who was pretty much laughed out of all the good parties in europe. For years after that saying you were studying contenental drift was akin to saying you were studying Sasquach. But then in the late 50's, Bruce Heezner, a geologist from New York started looking at some tables made by Charles Richtor (of richtor scale fame) about locating the source of undersea earthquakes by triangulation and was puzzled to discover that they pretty much all come from the same place. His theory which he called, very cleverly, "the wound that never heals", showed that the earth's crust is indeed pushing upwards and outwards and that europe and america were once part of the same contenent, and africa and south america. amazing stuff. sorry for all the typing.