A Blessing

I meant to tell this man that his shirt was a blessing to me today, but then I lost him in the crowd. Thank you, sir!  

 

 

Trinity

At 05:30 mountain time on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb test occurred at Los Alamos, NM. The "gadget", as it was called, exploded with the force of 20 kilotons of TNT. It was an implosion-design plutonium bomb, of the kind dropped within a month upon Nagasaki: shock waves from explosives were focused toward the solid plutonium core to release the strong force that binds atomic nuclei. Costing the 2023 equivalent of $27 billion, the Manhattan Project was led by Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and directed by J. Robert Oppenheimer. The code name for the detonation, Trinity, is attributed to Oppenheimer who was inspired by a line from a John Donne poem, "Batter my heart, three person'd God." After the celebration that the "gadget" hadn't been a dud, as many had feared, one physicist told Oppenheimer, "Now we are all sons of bitches."

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Pat Paulsen for President!

"Now I ask you: Will I solve our economic problems? Will I ease the causes of racial tension? Will I bring a peaceful end to Vietnam? Sure, why not?" A lot of us fondly remember comedian and satirist Pat Paulsen, a regular on The Smothers Brothers Show. He made a humorous, deadpan run for the presidency in 1968 as a candidate of the STAG Party ("Straight Talking American Government") with slogans like "Just a common, ordinary, simple savior of America's destiny", and "We’ve upped our standards, now up yours". Paulsen was born July 6, 1927. (Photo from https://www.tennessean.com/picture-gallery/news/local/2018/03/23/nashville-then-comedian-pat-paulsen-campaigns-for-68-presidency/33179247/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2p1SD_OuAW-ZcUs-UYDbcbafT-Red50VPcrwbdGwrB0h_GOlib3epxTH8_aem_XWcdRN9u7Zgg0BlcoHtLtQ Copied under fair use principles)  

 

My Dad's Grandparents

July 7, 1886 is the wedding anniversary of my dad's maternal grandparents, Wesley McDonald Carson and Mary Alice Carson. Here they are in about 1896 with four of their children, Janie (my grandma) and baby Lonnie in front, Ross (forebear of some cousins here on FB) and James in back. The Carsons were early settlers of Fayette County, IL and include a Revolutionary War soldier. Alice's Colburn family were among the earliest settlers of Sangamon County, IL, and long before, of Massachusetts Bay Colony. A few years ago I wrote a book of poems, "Walking Lorton Bluff" about Mac's father. 

Rest in peace, Mac and Alice and your parents and your fourteen children! 

Roswell Anniversary

On July 7, 1947, rancher W.W. Brazel told the Corona, New Mexico, sheriff's office about a "flying disc" that had crashed on his property. The next day, July 8, the public information officer at the Roswell Army Air Field issued a news release stating the Army had recovered the "flying saucer." Army officials retracted the statement later that day. But the legend of "aliens" at Roswell was born. We drove through Roswell a few years ago and purchased some souvenirs. 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/in-1947-high-altitude-balloon-crash-landed-roswell-aliens-never-left-180963917/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3BPOpbktOkcRFza23DxbRCo2zN_ZKLifGpaMAPlCqnQB9bLZtpMlDv5WM_aem_dkCTuqdIKqy54ByNhHkIdA

Back Home in Flagstaff

Flagstaff, AZ was named on July 4, 1876, when settlers from Boston removed the limbs of a tall tree to fashion a flagstaff for the American flag. I'll have to get out Platt Cline's history of the town, to remember his discussion of where the tree was possibly located. A few years ago 🙂 Beth and I actually arrived in Flagstaff for the first time on July 4th in preparation to moving there in August. (I remember hearing on the local news that year that a child had been injured during the fireworks show.) Beth, who was nearly finished with her PhD. work at UVa, had a job as assistant prof at Northern Arizona University. I was all-but-dissertation and had a wonderful adjunct position lined up at NAU, teaching world religions, and eventually I also did church work in Flagstaff. With that teaching job, world religions became one of my primary specialties. The Lord was at work! Best of all, our beautiful and amazing daughter was born there. We lived in Flag for four years. It was a special place and time. (Photo from the internet.) 

July 5 Birthdays in Science!

Weak force is the subatomic interaction responsible for radioactive decay, and in particle physics, the electroweak interaction or electroweak force is the unified description of electromagnetism (electromagnetic interaction) and the weak interaction. Electromagnetism and weak interaction, along with gravity and strong interaction (the binding force of nuclei) are the four fundamental interactions in nature. Born July 5, 1946, Dutch theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft won a shared Nobel Prize in 1999 "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions". A long introduction to the birthday, I guess, but it was fun for me to learn.

Born July 5, 1867, A. E. (Andrew Ellicott) Douglass was an astronomer who discovered a correlation between tree rings and the sunspot cycle. He founded dendrochronology, the method of dating wood by analyzing the growth ring pattern. He made his first discoveries while working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, then he moved to the University of Arizona in Tucson. There, Douglass led the effort that eventually led to a research-class telescope in Tucson and the founding of the Steward Observatory.

In the cloning process called somatic cell nuclear transfer, the nucleus (and thus the DNA) of an unfertilized egg cell is removed and is replaced with the nucleus of a donor cell. As the cell is stimulated to divide, it is implanted into a surrogate. According to what I read, the success rate of SCNT resulting in an offspring is comparatively low. But on July 5, 1996, the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell was born: Dolly the sheep! Two mammals had been cloned before, but from embryonic rather than adult cells. The former have more potential for growth into other cell types (totipotency), and so the successful cloning of adult cells was a breakthrough. Dolly’s birth led to advancements in stem cell research. Dolly lived until 2003, when she developed a lung issue unrelated to her cloning.

Born July 5, 1805, English naval officer and scientist Robert FitzRoy gained a favorable reputation as a surveyor and ship commander during a hydrographic survey of Tierra del Fuego on the HMS Beagle in 1828-1830. He led a round-the-world surveying voyage of the Beagle in 1831-1836, publishing an account of the trip in 1839. 

On board with FitzRoy was the 22-year-old Charles Darwin, tasked to study geology and natural history. Darwin wanted to get his father off his back about medical studies, which he did not like. Darwin, too, published a well-received account of his travels. Of course, one important stop that the Beagle made was the remote Galapagos Islands, 600 miles off the Ecuadoran coast. There, Darwin noticed interesting and unexpected variations in the characteristics of certain birds and of tortoises--observations upon which he eventually built his theory of natural selection. 

FitzRoy served as governor of New Zealand in 1842-1848. During the 1850s, Fitzroy became an important innovator in meteorology. He founded the first meteorological office to provide sailors with weather information. He coined the term "weather forecast", developed and distributed a barometer for sea ports, and introduced other means of anticipating storms. 

By 1859, his old friend Charles Darwin had published his epochal book, "On the Origin of Species." FitzRoy expressed regret for his contribution to Darwin's theories.

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