Monthly Archives: December 2018

Friction

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Our LX @ Low Tide in the Mouth of the Narrow River. Photo JAL

It’s time to bid adieu to a year that has been rife with friction. This year we experienced friction via Tweets, the daily news, stock market crawls, and while surfing (always look for the bright side). Friction is the resistance that something encounters when moving over something else. We should be used to friction as it’s been part of our world since Earth and the moon began their celestial dance. I’ll explain this marvel through tidal friction.

The oceans have tides because Earth has a moon. As Earth spins dizzily on its axis the Moon’s gravity makes the oceans appear to rise and fall. It’s an illusion of sorts. The moon generates colossal tidal waves that ebb and flow across the oceans in accordance with its  pull on our planet. This constant wave motion creates friction between the tides and the rotating earth.  Tides rub both bodies the wrong way. Over four billion years they’ve maintained a friction that makes the moon creep away and drains enough of Earth’s energy to lengthen day length (in the beginning it took just 22 hours to call it a day vs 24 today). There is an upside here, we now have about 35 fewer days a year (regardless of calendar – it’s the time it takes to circle our sun) to deal with the friction that is besotting our news feed. 

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Earth & Moon. View from Mars. Photo by NASA

Friction begets fiction, tall tales, and stories told ‘round the hearth about how good it used to be when we moved faster, back when our days were brighter and plentiful. We create legends about dark forces that eroded freedom and titanic clashes that rendered Nature numb. Some folks blame the dark side of the moon for over powering news cycles. That’s fiction. It’s really friction. We know friction as conflicts or a clash of wills between bubbles filled with us and bubbles full of them. Friction takes its toll. You don’t need to be a physicist to understand that whenever our social/political/emotional bubbles rub against each other the friction is going to wear one out as the other is pushed away. It forecasts an apocalypse of bald tires and pot holes, worn out records and dull needles, and busted bubbles. What we need is an ocean of WD 40 to lubricate the friction between rival fictions and factions.

So as the calendar year ebbs and we settle in for the longest nights, be content that there’s a balance in Nature that will keep the moon in view as we twirl about and circle the sun. Let’s get into the tidal ebb and flow by accepting that for each high we celebrate there’s a low we’d rather pass. It’s okay to slow down and hit the pause button as we end the year. Even the tides slack off for a bit between rising and falling. Be blessed by a Universe that works in accordance with laws that assure us of a future balanced by days and nights. After all, it’s not the fiction (fake) news that’ wears us down  – it’s the darn frikSH(ə)n that makes the news!

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The water is calm but the tide is moving.  The ropes are vigilant though they wear thin the boats rise and fall with the tides. Wickford Harbor, RI. Photo JAL

Salty Solstice

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Blast off! Apollo 8 – 3 guys in a tin can loving a ride to the moon and back. Photo courtesy of NASA.

Fifty years ago, my classmates in the class of ’69, on the shortest day of the calendar year (which provided us with the longest night to make out beneath the Christmas lights), witnessed the launching of Apollo 8. For the first time ever, at the dawn of the Age of Aquarius (and really great music) the man on the moon wasn’t a space oddity, he was an Earthling! That’s how we Boomers celebrated 69’s hibernal solstice! Rather than hibernate until winter passed- we fired up a rocket ship and ventured off-planet to explore the moon. It was a three-day cruise to circle the moon, get a look at its dark side before Pink Floyd did, and snap a selfie of planet Earth. It was a short day that will last long in the history of great adventures.

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View from Apollo 8 of our tiny blue marble. Photo courtesy of NASA.

I’ve spent the past week watching the sun slink into the Gulf of Mexico. The sun never seemed to get very high during the day. It slipped into the sea a bit earlier every afternoon bringing forth evening well before we were ready to call it a day. There wasn’t enough solar energy to warm the beach or seduce me to peel off a sweatshirt and bare my pale skin to its waning rays. Frankly, the sun seemed to be a bit depressed.

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Winter on Indian Rocks Beach.

Even at noon, our star sat so low in the southern sky that the sea appeared to forsake its blue hue for the colorless fabric of old jeans destined for next week’s charity pick-up.

At winter solstice our northern hemisphere tilts as far from the sun as it can without knocking the whole planet upside the head. This is when the rapport between our planet and the sun chills. Northerners hunker down for long winter nights. We ride the north face of our planet sans ample sunshine and like the astronauts, have more time to pay attention to the moon.

My seasons’ tidings on this winter solstice are simple. It’s been a dazzling year, thank you. So my brilliant, Sun, go ahead and rest a bit.

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Day is done. IRB. December.

You’ve got a long climb ahead before it’s  time to play “Even Stevens” with Night at the equinox and then dazzle us on the summer solstice. While you’re building up steam for hot summer days, I’ll be savoring long night times, tucking in, reading by the hearth, and snuggling beneath a down comforter. Winter is here but so far it’s never lasted forever. I’m not hibernating from Solstice to Equinox. In fact, like the Apollo guys and Musk’s Rocket Man, I’ll steadily be gaining energy, rising earlier, and settling down later. While my sunshine will dawdle through winter, I’ll be stocking up on SPF 50 while planning for my 50th high school reunion and next season’s bright adventures, across, at, and on the sea. Shine on!

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Givin’ it a rest on IRB.