Saturday, August 24, 2013, Uncle Joe and Brother Charles completed this year’s corn harvest.

Here you see the combine beginning to go after the last few acres.

This year, Uncle Joe had about 1,300 acres in corn. Corn is the biggest crop. It was a close one to even make a crop. Normally, the last freeze in Central Texas is around March 15^th, the Ides of March. This year the thermometer dipped to 22 degrees Fahrenheit (5.6 Celsius) on the morning of April 26^th. That is an extremely cold start for young corn. Uncle Joe was amazed. He said you can lose the entire crop when it freezes that hard so late in the season. There were some damaged stands, but the corn largely just kept growing. It was a miracle.

Here you see the kernels moving from the combine’s bin to the grain buggy.

Joe says this year’s yields are pretty decent, averaging about 100 bushels of corn to the acre. The corn harvest was delayed by late summer rains. Uncle Joe and Charles started July 24^th and finished yesterday evening. That’s a month to get the corn harvested and delivered to the grain elevators for market. Uncle Joe said the grain elevator operators kept closing earlier and earlier, and he had some of the last corn to be harvested this year.

Here you see the combine on the last few rows.

After the corn, there won’t be much of a break. The cotton fields are ready to be defoliated. Once the leaves fall off, the white cotton bolls can be stripped from the stalks and pressed into truck-sized modules for transport to the cotton gin. At the gin, the seed is separated and the raw fiber baled and sent on to market. Aunt Martha manages the local cotton gin and has for over fifty years.

Cotton is the last of the four crops harvested each year: The first crop is the winter wheat, then the milo, next the corn and finally the cotton. Cotton and wheat are the slowest to harvest, with the cotton stripper processing about 40-50 acres a day and wheat reel moving at a 60-acre pace on a good day. For corn and milo, the combine with the big headers can handle about 70-75 acres per day. Both the wheat and milo harvests have been pretty good. Uncle Joe was the first to the elevators with milo. The wheat averaged 58 bushels an acre, and milo returned at 4,000 pounds for a typical acre.

The wheat harvest started about a month late this year on June 1^st and lasted about a week. The transition to milo began on June 12^th and lasted until July 22^nd. As noted above, corn started on July 24^th and just finished on August 23^rd. Now, the cotton begins.

As you can see, there is not much time to rest for the farmer at his work, which is why Uncle Joe and Charles were happy to watch the last rows of corn fall at sunset last night.

When the cotton is done, the fields need to be prepared for the next round of crops; and then it starts over again.

At harvest’s end, another day’s begun.

My hat’s off to the farmer,

Grandpa Jim

What is a blue moon and when is it?

Last Tuesday night, August 20, 2013, after I arrived home to Texas from Minnesota, there was a blue moon. I didn’t have anything to do with it, and the moon was not blue, but I did notice there was a full moon.

A blue moon can be confusing.

One lunar cycle, the lunation or time between full moons, is about 29.53 days, which is slightly less than a calendar month. If you divide the 365.25 days in the solar year by this lunation number of 29.53 days, you discover there should be 12.37 lunations or full moons in a year. This is a ridiculous result. You cannot have a 0.37 full moon. It would not be full. It would be a 1/3 moon, not a full moon at all. So, Mother Nature steps in and corrects the astronomers. She saves up those 1/3^rd moons. Every two to three year, when the three thirds equals a whole, she takes that saved full moon in her pocket and drops it into a month of her choosing to make the lunar calendar right. Great Job, Mother Nature!

That’s what I understand to be the blue moon, the extra full moon in a solar year that normally has only 12 full moons. The lucky-13 full moon is the blue moon.

Unfortunately, this whole Mother Nature thing is apparently confusing to the scientists, astronomers and writers of the Farmers’ Almanac. They agree that the blue moon is an extra full moon in a 2-to-3-year cycle, and they agree it is not blue (which is a whole other discussion of why it is called blue when it isn’t blue — which we don’t have time for in this post); but some of the experts want to define the extra moon as the second full moon occurring in a calendar month which normally has only its one full moon, while other experts want to say it is the third full moon in a season of the year with four full moon, rather than the normal three. Remember the seasons (spring, summer, fall and winter) are the three-month intervals between the solstices (longest and shortest days) and the equinoxes (days of equal light and dark), as opposed to the calendar quarters. This debate over calendar quarters versus seasonal quarters does not change the fact that there is an extra full moon, but it does change the full moon you pick to be the blue moon.

The bottom line here is that the blue moon last Tuesday was blue according to the seasonal approach, but the moon was not blue according to the calendar approach. For the seasonal believers, the next blue moon has been selected to be May 21, 2016. For the calendar followers, the next blue moon will be July 31, 2015. Neither will be blue.

I hope this is as confusing to you as it is to me.

There are blue-colored moons. This visible effect is caused by smoke or dust particles in the atmosphere. The blue-colored moon observed over Edinburgh, Scotland in 1950 was caused by moonlight traveling through a cloud of particles from forest fires in Canada. Blue moons have also been reported after the Krakatoa, Indonesia volcanic blast in 1883, the Mount St. Helens, USA explosion in 1980, the El Chichon, Mexico volcano in 1983, and the Mount Pinatubo, Phillipines volcanic activity in 1991.

However determined or observed, it is the rarity of the blue moon which apparently resulted in the colloquial expression: “Once in a blue moon.”

“Once in a blue moon.”

I like the phrase. A blue moon is something special. I’ve seen one in my life, and it was to me truly blue. An extra full moon is full, but it is not blue.

Sorry, astronomers, scientists and writers of Farmers’ Almanac, I’m sticking with my blue moon.

You know it when you see it,

Grandpa Jim

For the last week, I’ve been enjoying the cooler weather of Minnesota with my 94-year-old mother. It is still summer up North, but the signs of fall are approaching. The Minnesota State Fair, which begins this week, is traditionally the last gasp of “heat.” Up there, 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) is “hot.” Down here, in Texas, we would call that a “cool” front.

Mom and I took to “walking” around the little lake next to her assisted living. I pushed the wheelchair while she pointed. It was quite a fair trade and a joy to view the late-summer flowers of Minnesota.

Here you see the wild daisies that greeted us each morning and evening on our post-jentacular, post-prandial circumambulations.

Beside the shores of the small lake, the tall cattails waved in the breeze and hid the young ducks paddling from our view. The cattail is a wetland plant who prefers to keep its feet in the water. You can see the unique flowering spikes of the cat tails between the flat blade-like leaves. A curiousity of the Norhtlands, it has always been to me the “cattail”.

Circling back near the building, we found a cultivated bed of pink phlox and purple cornflower. The masses of little pink blooms on the phlox graced my Dad’s rock garden in Iowa. In Texas, we have wild phlox in the spring, but the delicate phlox blooms do not last this long into our summer. Purple cornflower or echinacea is a member of the daisy family, with a wide range and an acquired tolerance for heat that lets those pretty heads lift and smile even now in the Lone Star State and attracts a buzz of friendly bees in the Gopher State of our walk.

A last lingering thistle poked out from the forest edge. The purple thistle is an ancient Celtic symbol of nobility and the national emblem of Scotland. Introduced into the Americas, it has traveled widely and is a bright and welcome sight along our roadways and water edges.

At this time of year in the Land of a Thousand Lakes, most thistles have gone to seed. The rounded, pineapple-shaped receptacles at the base of the faded blooms have dried, cracked and burst open in a cloud of white-feathered seeds. Like tiny parachutes, the seeds float in the wind across the water and over the roads to find a new home for next year’s crop of thistles.

For our northern cousins, it is becoming that time of year before the leaves on the oaks turn colors and the acorns drops. (Can you see the few thistle chutes among the corns?)

Along the roads and paths, the flowers of the sumac bushes have turned to dense spear-head-shaped clusters of reddish-brown drupes, called sumac bobs. On a drive to town, I saw the sumac leaves already red and orange along the hillsides. When the sumac bobs and turns, cooler weather is not far away.

Until then, a white rose blooms in a quiet nook warmed by the late-summer sun and bids me fair winds and good travels as I take my leave until another day.

There is much to be said of the “Yellow Rose of Texas” and for the “White Rose of Minnesota.”

They both show well and have their own special stories,

Grandpa Jim

In the beginning, there was one big island and that island was “the continent.” That first great continent has been called “Pangaea.” The name is a combination of two Greek words: “pan” for entire and “Gaia” for earth. Pangaea was the entire solid earth in one great piece protruding above the waters. The surrounding waters were named in Greek “Panthalassa,” with “thalassa” meaning ocean. The entire land and the entire sea were Pangaea and Panthalassa. And, so it was at the beginning of days.

In time, much happened below the earth and water, and things changed on the surface of the land. Cracks appeared. Earthquakes occurred. Volcanoes grew and erupted, and the lands separated into pieces that seemed to float off into the waters and away from each other. The seas always touched, as they must, even to this day — it is their way. The lands, not so, and still they float.

The writers-about-all-things on the nets of Wikipedia and in the search-rays of Google describe seven lands that can be called continents. The seven, in order of their size, are: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe and Australia. Of course, even here, there is disagreement. In many Spanish-speaking lands, the list is six: Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica and Australia. Some whittle this to five by excluding Antarctica, which, apart from a research station or two and the occasional cruise ship, is largely uninhabited. Then, there is the 4-continent approach, which I call the “A-Model” for its front-and-back alliterative niceties, which includes: Afro-Eurasia, America, Antarctica and Australia.

To me, and in the shadow of Pangaea, it seems that a continent should, in its first appearance at least, be seen as an island unto itself, ground that can be walked end-to-end without feet dipping to touch in that traverse the great surrounding water. As John Donne meditated in 1623: “No man is an island.” As reflected at earth’s first emergence, it could be stated: “Every island is a continent.” To be surrounded by the sea is, for the earth beneath our feet, to be truly free; and in such truce, there is the space a continent can be.

In its Latin and English origins, the term “continent” means connected land. So it is, but should it be? Is every bit of island to be a continent, and are not some islands so great they can and should be more than one continent?

On the land before its splitting, they arose, the men and women that walked its bounded ways. In their pacings of those, their places, the creatures of the land defined its length and breadth and its meaning to them and others of their kind. So, when the pieces broke and traveled, the residents moved with their earth and found it home. For them, they were content. For them, it was their continent. Every bit of island was a continent to those on board who called it home. That, their Gaia, was their earth in its span; and it troubled not their minds to search for more or parse their young narrative with continental discussion.

Then, from where did that discussion arise, and where does it reside today?

Original men and women did not move beyond their island homes, until three things converged: Science, Technology and Commerce. All advances in the history of man and woman occur when these three converge.

Science is the study of all things and the understandings of it. From science arises insight and idea. From insight and idea arise desire. Desire spawns technology to create and make new things to meet and complete those insights and desires. The newly created things of technology awaken yet unknown wants and needs which lead themselves to barter, marketing and a commerce in the things created, which fuels and energizes the cycle to occur again and again.

One day, the desire was travel. The technologies were caravans and ships. The commerce was trade in noodles, silk, sugar, tobacco, corn, tomatoes and potatoes. From Marco Polo to Columbus arose a new idea of island which was “continent.” The convergence of science, technology and commerce had seen a new way for the peoples to divide and call the lands they stood upon.

All of which is fine and good and has stood well by us for over 700 years (Marco returned from Asia in 1269 and Columbus sited the Americas in 1492). You gotta’ love those Italians: First the noodles and then the tomato sauce. The world hasn’t been the same since, and we’ve been running with up to 7 continents adrift in a sea of smaller islands for about that long.

Now, it’s time to move on. Science, technology and commerce have again converged. The science is travel, as it was; the technology is a new stream to pass over and in a new way; and the commerce is the world-wide net. The age of the Global Information Highway is upon us; and in this age, the continents themselves are being left behind and will be largely lost.

With great foresight, John Donne made his statement for the individual: “No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” As only a poet and visionary could know in his use of the singular phrase “the continent,” the earth in its pieces and parts has converged without a mighty crash and fanfare of words. The continents have realigned. They are separate no longer. No mighty cataclysm shakes the earth at this their re-joining. Rather, the cymbals, tambourines and new-age sounds of the Fifth Dimension in the 1969 song “The Age of Aquarius” echo sweetly in the background as we all stream silently together.

Today is the dawning of “The Age of Pangaea.” We are each the parts of the joining of the entire earth in the one great island where it began — and beyond even there. For us, the many on our computers, laptops, pads and hand-helds, the continental distinctions do not separate. We are truly no longer each an island. We are, every man, woman, young adult and child, “a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” As John Donne knew “no man is an island,” we now know and experience “no continent is a island.” The geographic boundaries between the continents have blurred and been lost in the dawning of the new Age of Pangaea, the single virtual continent that is itself no longer an island and is home to all without division.

In January 1964, Bob Dylan released “The Times They Are a-Changin.’”

In August 2013, they have changed — the islands are no more.

Welcome to the New Virtual Age of Pangaea.

May the five lattices guide you.

Live long and prosper,

Grandpa Jim

Lutfisk is not the last name of a plumber from Minnesota.

Lutefisk is a Scandinavian fish dish — of sorts.

The word “lutfisk” is a combination of two words. “Fisk” is recognizable as “fish,” and “lut” is Swedish for “lye.” Lye is a strong alkali or caustic base solution. The word “lye” is an alternative name for the sodium hydroxide pellets you dissolved in water in chemistry class to make the high pH liquid for your experiments. So, lute or lye is strong stuff. What those Nordic (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish) folks did was soak white fish in cold lute until the pH was about 11 to 12, then they soaked that fish in cold water to make it edible again, and then the Nords stored the fish over-winter in its altered form.

Apparently, once “luted,” the fish would last outside in the cold all winter long and no animal would touch the stuff because of the lye and the smell. In his book “Lake Wobegon Days,” the Minnesota-born writer and humorist Garrison Keillor is reported to have described lutfisk as “a repulsive gelatinous fishlike dish that tasted of soap and gave off an odor that would gag a goat.” Garrison has a way with words. A family member described the concoction more simply: “Fish-flavored jello.”

Nonetheless, many in Minnesota report to like the stuff. Yesterday morning at my Mom’s table in the assisted living, one lady said she and her best childhood girl friend (the two married brothers and became sister-in-laws), would sneak off to one of their houses, only blocks apart, after the brother-husbands had left for work and the kids were off to school, where those two conspirators would make up a whole pan of lutfisk. Smiling, they’d sit together, finish the whole thing and see spots before their eyes. That’s what she said, honest, spots. It seemed she found it a fond memory, spots and all.

Yes, even the staunchly Minnesotan waver on this subject. A relative, who abides well and long in the state of his birth, tells of a young child who regularly accompanied his grandmother to her favorite restaurant. The two ordered lutfisk together, which made the grandmother so very happy . . . until one fateful day. On that day of passage, after grandmother had placed her order for the house special lutfisk, the young boy said to the astonished waiter, “Chicken, please, Sir.” “What?” His grandmother arched her matronly back and with the wisdom of years asked the insolent boy, “Why aren’t you eating your lutfisk?” To which, the child replied sweetly with the wisdom of youth, “Why am I eating lutfisk?”

A good question and from out of the mouths of babes does it arise: Why indeed?

There is a purported golden rule of life that dates back to the times of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Phoenicians, Columbus and the Mayflower: If you shouldn’t say it or do it in the presence of a child, don’t say it or do it at all. The enunciation and consumption of lutfisk may be the only exception to this rule in the history of the human race.

Lutfisk has been announced and served to adults and unsuspecting children from time immemorial, and though the spongy fish has turned many to the light of other foodstuffs, many remain enamored with and committed to the amorphous and wiggly expression of strained sustenance. And, I might add, this has occurred with no known damage to the youth of the world. In fact, the senses of those emerging citizens may be better off for their close experience with the preparation, and our younger generation may be better able to make up their own minds in an engaging world because of their exposure to the lye of lutfisk.

I can’t say this next with absolute certainty, but it has been suggested that Columbus carried a pot of lutfisk with him on his maiden voyage to the New World. One unknown chronicler may have observed and recorded the offering of a fish nibble from that basin to the Grand Chief of the native population. After the first polite bite, it appears the chief was ready to provide a very large and distant track of land at no cost to the immigrant disembarkees. That lost record is also said to relate the chief’s insistence to provide directions to the kingdom of his closest rival.

The Romance of Lutfisk: We have hinted at this, in the spots of the sisiter-in-laws, but I would be remiss if I did not, before leaving the subject, emphasize that many have very strong and good feelings and remembrances of their lives with lutfisk. As a young girl, my mother has memories of her father, my grandfather, coming home from the butcher shop and saying, “It’s lutfisk time, daughter.” She remembers the excitement and anticipation. The meal was special and the lutfisk was served with melted butter and boiled potatoes. She remembers the fun of it. Grandpa was a butcher who understood meat and fish and how to cook them. So, I am sure the lutfisk was well prepared and tasty as only lutfisk can be. Mom remembers that it did taste like fish, but not like fish, and how much she enjoyed as a child the meal of lutfisk  with her Dad. I think I can see now how lutfisk managed to be the only exception to that golden rule of life. After all, is there anything more important than the children?

In summary, lutfisk appears to be an acquired taste, that not all may be inclined to acquire, but for which many have acquired very close and comforting recollections — despite the taste.

To end, it might be said: To each, his or her own, and be happy that such is so for some, if not for all, and wish them all, “Good lutfisk to you and yours, and watch for the spots in front of your eyes — it may be fun!”

Grandpa Jim

PS: Don’t forget Little Lorraine. The new story has moved under the Flash Fiction pull-down tab. There may be no lutfisk in India, but Indiana is not far from Minnesota, and my Mom’s name is Lorraine, so the possibilities of a lutfisk encounter are real and not just imaginary. I wonder what she’ll think. Hobbes, on the other hand, may be a different story.

Gamification is hot.

The word on the street is that 70% of the corporations on the Forbes Global 2000 list (the 2,000 biggest businesses in the world) are expected to gamify in 2014. Think of 1,400 giants deciding to play the same game and hope you’re not the goalkeeper – that’s what seems to be going on out there on the world’s field of play.

So, what is gamification, and why would those very large businesses want to play?

Games have existed forever. Cavemen threw rocks to knock rocks off rocks – most modern professional sports teams still engage in this form of gaming. Cavewomen searched the underbrush to find new foods and were rewarded with a better dinner and award points from the diners – many game applications have players running through mazes capturing carrots and low-hanging fruits for golden reward currencies and fan-fares of recognition. So, gaming is not new, having fun doing something is not new, and being rewarded for doing something well or finding something new is not new.

So, what is new?

In the early 1970’s electronic gaming made its big advance. In the arcades and on the TV screens, we took turns blowing up spaceships, stacking blocks and eating dots. Then, in the late 1970’s, some smart kids in the back room figured out a way for players to play the same game at the same time. Through the 1980’s and 1990’s multi-player video gaming took off: “BANG! ZOOM! Straight to the moon,” as Jackie Gleason never imagined. The honeymoon was over.

Multi-player video gaming moved into its home in the suburbs and commuted to work each morning, because computer gaming had a job.

Businesses were using computer-based gaming applications to promote their products. Schools were using gaming softwares to teach their students. Politicians, like Howard Dean, were using video games to convince caucusing Iowans to vote for Dean. TV shows were using gaming approaches to hook viewers. Sweden gamified traffic laws to slow down drivers and fund a lottery for safe drivers.

These gaming applications were fine and good, but wasn’t it marketing to promote old ideas? Nothing new was happening, right? People might call this stuff “gamification,” but with due respect, isn’t it the Fuller Brush Man with an old brush and a new spiel. I’m for better marketing, but where’s the new vacuum cleaner.

Then, in 2011, something happened.

Scientists at the University of Washington, a public research university in Seattle, Washington, had been scratching their heads for a decade over the correct structure of a protein. Proteins make up about 75% of the dry weight of our bodies, so they are very important to us and our proper functioning. Well, those eggheads at the University of Washington couldn’t figure out how this one protein was folded.

Now, a protein starts as a long chain, composed of some twenty or so basic amino acids mixed up in an extended sequence, like a string, a very long string – say ten feet long. Then, this string of amino acids folds itself back and around on itself, like a stuck-up and wound-together ball of twine, but a ball with a unique folded structure that is critical to the proper performance of its protein function.

Those scientists were sitting around folding that string for ten years, and they just couldn’t get it right.

One day, and this is the important part, someone said, “Let’s try a game.” Folks were skeptical. Then, the voice in the back of the room added, “Let’s try a multi-player, computer-based, video-game-type, competitive contest, open to all and anyone, to see who can fold our string the best?” “Okay,” someone else chimed in, “but what do we call it?” “’Foldit,’ of course.”

And, they did and the game did it.

57,000 players played Foldit, and in ten days that crowd of gamers came up with folded results that allowed the scientists to map successfully the structure of a protein to fight infections and save lives.

A crowd-based gaming approach had produced a new idea, not promoted an old one.

Two heads are better than one, or 57,000 gamers may beat a roomful of PhD’s at their own game.

True gamification had been born, and the world’s corporations are lining up for the new ideas those gamers may just produce.

Have a productive day, and have fun at whatever you’re doing.

You may want to let the kids keep playing.

Who knows what may result,

Grandpa Jim

PS: An overarching observation with respect to gaming in its many forms may be that the common and shared purpose of all games and gaming is simply “to find something.” That’s it: Find Something. The first “find-something” of computer-based, multi-player video gaming is to find the prize and, in so doing, to be entertained. The second expression of the “find-something” principle is the use of gaming to help potential customers find the product of their dreams, to use video gaming technology to market an existing widget. The third application of “find-something” to video gaming is the use of gaming maneuverings to find a thing that was only a possibility but then becomes a reality, to establish a new idea which can become an entirely new product, like electricity, the telephone or space exploration — a key on a kite for Benjamin Franklin, a can with a string for Alexander Graham Bell or, if you really want to get crazy, an equation, E-mc2, from the greatest game developer of all time, Albert Einstein, as a way to get everyone to find the new physics. Now, that third “find something” is really exciting, and it might be suggested that only the third is true “gamification.” But, then, what’s in a word? It’s the results that count or electrify or ring your phone or blast a colony to Mars and beyond. . . .