Water on Mars?

That’s been known for years.

To date, there have been at least seven landers placed on the surface of the Red Planet. Those rolling robots have prowled about taking samples and analyzing data. Here’s a selfie by the most recent robot recorder, Mars Rover Curiosity.

Above Curiosity in orbit, there have been at least six circling spacecraft taking pictures and recording data. The one with the pictures causing the current stir is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or MRO.

Weather working on the ground or in the air, Curiosity, MRO and their buddies have acquired a wealth of information. All that data and all those pictures have shown that Mars has ice.

Frozen Martian water is nothing new.

Flowing Martian water is new.

That’s the new news.

Take a peek at

This pic.

That’s a far distant and barren Martian ridgescape. It looks pretty inhospitable. But notice the lines down the slope fanning to darker tones. The astroscientists squinting at the picture call those lines “lineae” — an old Latin word meaning, you guessed it, “line.” Those are fancy Latin lines on the planet named for the Roman God of War.

Well, those scientists watched and watched those lines. They noticed in Mars summer, the lineae reach and extend down the slope. In Mars winter, the lineae stop where they reach, extend no more, and turn a darker shade of gray.

In another picture, the studious studiers followed gullied rivulets cutting and cascading down a sandy fall.

Abandoning their Latin, the smart guys in the back room slowly stood on their chairs with hands raised to the stars and shouted, “That’s liquid water! It flows, evaporates and leaves behind a darkened residue. It cuts, shapes and forms a carved canyonet. That’s liquid water, and it’s flowing!”

Not bad. It only took four years, but not bad. A graduate student spotted the liquid lines in 2011. In the back room, things take time.

“Was ice, now water. So what?” you say.

Good question. Simple answer.

Living organisms, as we know them, need liquid water to form, grow and survive. We humans are in the range of 60% liquid water. Yes, we are mostly water; and without water, we would be mostly gone. Considering how little liquid water there is on Mars these days (and the intermittent lineae would seem to confirm the sparcity), this may explain why our curious rover has found no wild men, white apes or Princess of Helium on Barsoom (the name Edgar Rice Burroughs gave the Mars of John Carter).

Still, there may be bugs. Bacteria may thrive where hominids dare to travel. Bacteria are simple one-celled organisms who are themselves 80-90 percent water. For their smaller size, the bacterial bugs are more resistant and less demanding than larger creatures. Importantly, though tiny, they do constitute “life” as we know it, which is why the scientists are so excited. Liquid water may mean bugs, and bacteria may mean life and a living planet.

Now those with the pocket protectors and taped black glasses are standing higher on their chairs, reaching and chanting: “Life on Mars. Life on Mars. Life on Mars.”

What’s all the fuss.

Some have known that.

Just ask Marvin the Martian.

Disney had this figured out long ago.

Grandpa Jim

Today in Persia (modern Iran) when you wear a belt around the waist, you are wearing a kamarband. Kamarband derives from the Persian words kamar (waist) and band (closed). You have closed your pants with a kamarband.

In the early 1600’s, the British military officers in India began to wear lighter kamarbands for waist sashes in place of the heavier and hotter waistcoats brought from the cooler British Isles. When those officers returned home and attended formal functions in their dress uniforms, they wore their cool Indian kamarbands, which they renamed cumberbunds. The cumberbund was an earned badge of Colonial service.

The English formal elite was quite taken with this new dress idea and designed their own cumberbunds to wear with tuxedos to black-tie events.

Of course, as eveningwear the cumberbunds of the nobility were designed with the pleats facing up to stow and show the best tickets to the evening’s play.

It was all a bit of show and nonsense. Good clean fun. Tending somewhat to the funny and unusual in appearance and nomenclature. Even today, at formal festivities, the men in black are often held in place by cumberbunds. “Quite odd,” you might say with a chuckle, “what men do wear and name their clothes.”

There was another British fellow who was himself quite famous for fun and nonsense naming.

Edward Lear is the father of literary nonsense. He had a knack for mis-applying and even inventing words, especially words with a funny sound or unusual form of their own. Perhaps his most famous nonsense poem is the “The Owl and the Pussycat,” which contains these memorable lines of an avian sage and fanciful feline at their wedding reception:

So they . . . were married the next day

By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon,

The moon,

The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

“Runcible” has itself become one of the most loved non-words in the history of rhyme. While, the dancing phrase “ by the light of the moon” has come to embody an affable, fanciful and dear-hearted play at words and life.

After they fell into the sliding-roofed gymnasium pool in 1946 at the start of Frank Capra’s film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” James Stewart and Donna Reed wander home hand in hand in borrowed clothes and wrapped towels singing loudly this song to their sleeping neighbors:

Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight?

Come out tonight, Come out tonight?

Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight?

And dance by the light of the moon.

It’s that owl and the pussy cat again. Pure unrestrained nonsense. No fear here.

Lest you be overly consoled, there can be in nonsense verse a worrisomeness around the strange words that there do appear. You thought the cumberbund a belt of lowly origin and haughty status. Could it be something else entirely unimagined?

When Edward Lear visited India, he saw in his own words what was really that fearsome sash squeezing so tightly.

Drawing a deep breath and exhaling quickly, the author on June 22, 1874 published in The Times of India (Bombay edition) his truer understanding of the clamping cumberbund in “The Cummerbund – An Indian Poem.” Here is a selected sampling of the lines, followed in turn by a curious reading of its own:

She sat upon her Dobie,

To watch the evening star,

* * *

Below her home the river rolled

With soft meloobious sound,

* * *

And all night long the Mussak moan’d

Its melancholy tone.

* * *

When all at one a cry arose, —

“The Cummerbund is come!”

In vain she fled: — with open jaws

The angry monster followed,

And so, (before assistance came,)

That Lady Fair was swallowed.

Oh owl, cat and buffalo gals, run, run, run!!!!

For by the light of the moon, the Cummerbund is come.

[embedyt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47u5HOwQr1A[/embedyt]

Grandpa Jim

Flying Piano Discovers Dog.

On January 19, 2006, the New Horizons interplanetary space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to discover who Pluto really is. At the time of the launch, Pluto was the ninth planet from the sun in our solar system. Some nine months later, on September 13, 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially reclassified Pluto as a minor or dwarf planet. The hue and cry has not abated to this day, and it is reported that the New Horizons launch team has never accepted the diminished status of their goal.

New Horizons is about the size of a flying piano, with additional bells, whistles and assorted gadgetries – of course. On July 14, 2015, just over two months ago, the flying piano passed Pluto and the pictures were snapped. Many pictures were snapped. Because of the distance and technology involved, those shots are being rationed back to earth. They show an incredible and unsuspected landscape.

Curiously, in these pictures there appear to be vast regions of lighter colored dunes. It is not known if these dunes are composed of sand or ice particles; and, on a planet with no known winds, it is not known how dunes could have formed. Nonetheless, dunes are there to be seen; and those dunes — of whatever origins they may be — form bright areas. One of those areas has an interesting, intriguing and perhaps unsuspected outline.

On March 24, 1930 (less than a month after the discovery of the celestial object on February 18, 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh), the new planet was named Pluto by eleven-year-old Venetia Burney in a contest she gracefully won. In ancient Greek mythology, Pluto ruled the deep earth, while his brother Poseidon ruled the sea and his other brother Zeus ruled the sky. Young Venetia said she chose the name Pluto because the planet was dark and far away like the mythological ruler of the underworld.

At the time of its naming and until the recent fly-by, the planet Pluto was little more than a smudge on the end of a telescope with no discernible surface features – or so it was thought.

Enter Pluto the dog.

Pluto is one of Disney’s biggest stars. He is Mickey Mouse’s pet, and he first appeared in the film The Chain Gang in September 1930. At that time Mickey’s dog was not called by a name. In fact, Minnie Mouse called the kind canine Rover a month and a half later – but we don’t know if Minnie knew the dog’s real name. It wasn’t until 1931 in The Moose Hunt that Mickey in his endearing high-pitched voice called Pluto to his side and the world knew the true name of the lovable mutt.

Venetia Burney never deviated in her claim that she did not name the ninth planet after the dog Pluto. Supporting her position are the facts that Pluto did not make his cinematic appearance until about six months later and Mickey did not call his dog by the name Pluto until over a year later. Walt Disney, a close friend of both Mickey and Pluto, never said a word about when or why Mickey’s dog was named Pluto.

So, why was the dog named Pluto and why is the planet (now dwarf) named Pluto?

Enter the Lincoln-head cent, the current USA penny in wide circulation.

This penny is called the Lincoln cent because the face on its surface is the face of President Abraham Lincoln, the 16^th President of the United States of America.

Now, take another look at the new picture of the planet Pluto and the face on its surface.

The face of the dog Pluto is on the planet Pluto, and the name of the dog Pluto is the name of the planet Pluto. Though its seems to defy logic, the only logical conclusion is that the planet, like the penny, is named for the face on its surface.

I do not know how this can be so, but I can see now that it is irrefutably so.

The flying piano discovered the dog on the planet that bears its name.

* * *

With due respect to Ms. Venetia and Mr. Disney and their motives and motivations — whatever they may have been and whatever sources the two may have been privy to, the planet itself speaks louder than their words or their lack of words.

* * *

After 85 year, we now know that Pluto is Pluto.

We may never know why, how or who.

But we know with new certainty:

The universe is truly an —

Amazing place.

Grandpa Jim

Ipomoea obscura, the obscure morning glory, blooms profusely on the white dunes of the Florida panhandle where it binds in place the sands, holding them back from the beaches and breaking waves of the Gulf of Mexico.

This blossom is the same shape, color and form as that of Ipomoea alba, the moonflower, the tropical white morning glory that blooms only at night. The two are identical in appearance, but not in size. The beach morning glory is 2-3 inches (5-8 centimeters) across. The night moonflower can grow to 10-12 inches (25-30 centimeters), the size of a plate.

Ipomoea is a Latin word derived from the ancient Greek words for snake (ipo) and like (moea). The snake-like vines trail, twist and twine along the ground, up the mound and onto lattices and fencing. I have grown the intertwining vines of the morning glory and moonflower on the fences of Texas. Both love the sun. The morning glory is early out. The moonflower delays its night blooms until late in the summer season when the heat has built and the nights grow longer with the approach of fall. It is slow to bloom but larger still.

* * *

The light through the window woke me from sleep. I slipped from my bed, crept quietly through the house and peaked carefully around the curtains and out the window. Under the full moon, the moonflowers waited wide and sparkling white. A shadow raced past and back to hover in fast motion before a bloom.

* * *

The night moth is the size of a small bird. For years, I didn’t know what it was. I know now it is the hawk moth or hummingbird moth. The ones I watched under the full August moon were larger than hummingbirds and never sighted during the day. Fairy dust and moonglow, the zip, dash and hover of their flight was the twinkling of starlight to starflower and the memory of moonflower.

There is another thing about that blossom. Day or night, look closely. Do you see it?

It’s there: The five points of a star. The shaped points of the pentagram rest and reach in that blossom that lights the night and greets the day.

The pentagram or five-pointed star is the oldest of the human-scrivened stars. In the Uruk of Gilgamesh, 5,000 years ago, a pentagram was inscribed on a clay tablet. A 1,000 earlier in the desert sands of the Negev, 6,000 years ago, an ancient artisan sketched the five-pointed star in one fluid motion on a flint scraper.

By our ancestors and children, the pentastar is easily diagramed (pentagram) in five connected lines.

For the life of our kind, there has been the five-pointed star of the morning glory and moonflower. We are the components of that star: head, hands and feet. When we extend and reach, we are the five points and the interlocking triangles of the pentagram. It is the star of our form. We find the point and shape in the lights of the night sky, the blooms of our vines, our selves and the forms of our family members. For its place, the pentagram has fascinated mankind since the beginnings of time.

Carlos Santana has a sound of his own. From Woodstock to today, the mystery and movement of his guitar acoustics have fascinated audiences with the quick flights and slowed motions of sounds that can be heard and sometimes, if you are quiet and watch closely, seen. “Moonflower” was released as a double album in 1977, and the song “Flor d’Luna (Moonflower)” is the second cut on side three.

[embedyt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5b3VBUW2ok[/embedyt]

Grandpa Jim