Aliy is taking a break.

Aliy Zirkle was the second sled into Galena, behind 4-time Iditarod winner Jeff King. Galena is an old mining town on the Yukon River. At that point in race and time, Jeff was technically in first place and Aliy in second in “The Last Great Race” across Alaska.

Galena, population 527, is the 5^th of 16 checkpoints before the final run from Safety to Nome. Galena is 396 miles along the trail, with 583 miles yet to sled past the checkered flag and home.

At each stop, or checkpoint, the musher has the option to rest or continue on. Aaron Burmeister did the latter. At Galena, Aaron checked in, dropped the pen, stretched his legs, jumped back aboard, yelled, “Hike!” (another term for Mush! or Let’s go!) and off he and his dogs went flying into the bitter cold. It was -17F (-27C) outside. That was a brief 19-minute breather, and it put Mr. Burmeister, for a time, at the top of the pile ahead of Jeff and Aliy, but Aaron has yet to take one of his mandatory “layovers”.

Enroute, each driver must take an 8-hour and a 24-hour layover before qualifying to cross the line in the snow on the coast near the Bering Sea.

I think Aliy is taking her first “official” nap in Galena.

There is strategy at work here: when to stop and when to mush on. It can make a difference, and this makes the early statistics difficult to interpret. A musher could be in the lead one minute, and the next minute, that racer could be asleep with other sleds passing in dreams over their head to take the lead. Only after the leaders have all checked their sleeping bags and are all on the trail to the finish, will we be able squint and see who really has that top sled.

Speaking of squinting, my favorite word picture from the trailing reporters was this one made over the night: “Jeff King is on the move, followed by Aliy Zirkle. . . . We caught up with him on the river not too far out of town and his team was moving extremely well. 10 plus miles before hour. No wind to speak of and Northern lights dancing above. That run does not get much better than that.”

I begin to see why someone would run a piece of wood and leather for almost a thousand miles over snow and ice behind a team of leaping, panting, barking dogs.

I begin to, and then I realize there are some things you can watch and follow, but never completely understand.

Some things are better that way.

Time to take a break and dream of Nome and home.

And wake, get back on, yell “Hike”, and fly away into the snowy night.

Grandpa Jim

The Iditarod has started!!!!

The Iditarod Annual Dog Sled Race Across Alaska, “IADSRAA” – to coin a new name, has begun. Iditarod, as it has been locally known for the 43 years since its beginning, is the dog sled race across the snow in the cold from Willow, near Anchorage, to Nome, Alaska. Only, this year, there wasn’t much snow, it wasn’t very cold (by Alaskan standards), and the start of the race was moved to Fairbanks, Alaska — for, hopefully, more snow and cold. Though conditions may have changed, it is still the race to reach the “far distant place”, the “Iditarod”, and Nome by the Bering Sea.

Monday morning, May 9, 2015, at 10:00 AM, local time, the first musher, a rookie to this race, 48-year old Rob Cooke, originally from Worcester, England, (Yes, the home of the original Worcestershire sauce), who now resides in Whitehorse, Yukon Territories, Canada, mushed his team of huskies across the start line and on toward Nome!!!! That was exciting just to say. I can’t imagine what it was like to be there.

Every two (2) minutes after Rob, another sled, musher and dog launched into the cold for the run to the coast and Nome.

Mitch Seavey, 55, whose dad ran the first Iditarod in 1973, was lucky #17 out of the start gate. You may recall that Mitch won two years ago in 2013 in an exciting finish, for a 1,000 mile dog sled race, just minutes ahead of Aliy Zirkle, who I was cheering on to the finish. Go Aliy! Aliy has finished second the last three years. Last year in 2014, she was 2 minutes and 22 seconds behind the winner, Dallas Seavey, who is Mitch’s son and who finished with the fastest Iditarod time ever at 8 days, 13 hours, 4 minutes and 19 seconds. Now, that’s a race. Go Dallas! By the way, dad Mitch was third behind Aliy last year. Go Mitch!

Aliy and her dogs were #31 out of the chute at 11:00 AM local time, followed 28 minutes later by Dallas Seavey in the #45 slot. If Aliy wins, she won’t be the first woman to win the Iditarod. Susan Butcher claimed Iditarod victories in 1986, 1987, 1988 and 1990 before retiring to raise a family. Go Susan!

To review: On March 9, 2015, 78 sled dog teams started the long and grueling mush to the Bering Sea and the Joe Redington, Sr. Trophy to be awarded the 2015 Iditarod winner.

Next Wednesday, on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2015, 68 basketball teams will start the long March maddening pace of the big dance to the 2015 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship and the Wooden Trophy awarded the prevailing squad whose members earn the right to cut down the nets at the end of play.

If Dallas Seavey’s speed last year is an indicator, the last musher to reach Nome will claim the Red Lantern awarded to the last sled to reach that far distant place about the time the surviving Sweet Sixteen basketball teams complete the first weekend of hoops play and board their planes for the next round of games.

This means the tired mushers of the Iditarod can rest and recuperate with their feet propped up, before their televisions sets, and enjoy two full weekends of championship basketball — maybe more, if they hurry.

Now, there’s a reason to mush even faster to Nome.

Go mushers! Sled, glide and slide.

Go teams! Dribble, run, leap and shoot.

Rain, snow or shine, these are exciting times.

Grandpa Jim

In an interlude of sleep, I saw these words, grabbed a pen and wrote on a pad in the dark:

“That I may worry

“And work to find the answers

“To my worry”

Not sure what that meant, I focused on the four words in the order recorded: “Worry Work Answers Worry”.

And there, I realized, could be different meanings, depending on where the punctuation marks were placed: 1) Worry? Work! Answers Worry. – The cure for worry is work; 2) Worry Work. Answers? Worry? – If the cure for worry is more work, why do I still worry? 3) Worry!! Work!!! Answers Worry. – Work harder! 4) Worry? Work? Answers? Worry? – Maybe something else is going on here. What is the answer?

And so it went, back and forth, Worry and Work and more Worry with no Answers, until the following sequence drifted to mind:

Inanimate objects do not worry.

Only human mortals seem to really worry.

Dogs don’t really worry. They fidget and bob and hope.

Human mortals worry more and more. We are in a constant state of worry.

And, only human mortals worry and work and hope to Not Worry.

Dogs don’t – they spin and scratch and hope for more.

Humans work and seek the state of Not Worry.

Dogs don’t. They sit, beg and smile.

And wait for the next biscuit.

Human mortals believe Not Worry can and does exist.

But, humans know Not Worry is not truly achievable as mortals.

Human experience demonstrates mortality does not possess Not Worry.

Yet, humans continue in a shared belief that Not Worry does exist somewhere.

If Not Worry is not here, where is it?

If not in mortality, where?

We must believe Not Worry exists in a state beyond mortality.

And, to be beyond mortality, Not Worry would be a state of immortality.

Do humans believe in immortality because Not Worry is accepted and not here?

Everything here is here mortal, but not so Not Worry, which we know is not here?

To believe is to accept something as true that cannot be proven.

Therefore, in our worry, we accept Not Worry, which cannot be shown to be true.

Belief in Not Worry demonstrates a common human belief in immortality.

For Not Worry there is no earthly proof, yet we believe it exists.

That belief demonstrates human belief in the immortal.

Immortality, of course, cannot be proven.

Perhaps its belief can be shown.

It appears for humans.

If not for dogs.

Don’t worry.

And, try to get a good night’s sleep.

Tonight.

Grandpa Jim

In the history of the Star Wars, the Second Trilogy was filmed first. This means Episode IV, “Star Wars – A New Hope,” was released first on May 25, 1977, followed three years later on May 21, 1980, by Episode V, “The Empire Strikes Back,” and three years after that on May 25, 1983 by Episode VI, “Return of the Jedi.”

At this point, we, the viewing audience, thought, “It’s over.”

I remember the first “Star Wars.” That was how we all heard and thought of “Episode IV.” I don’t think we even noticed the “Episode” number or the “New Hope” title. The movie was “Star Wars.” That was it, and it was slow to receive attention.

Some weeks after the film’s release, a friend stopped me and said, “You should see this movie.”

I did. I went with a young, blond-haired boy who was our first son. It was our first Star Wars. After that, things were not the same for us and for many others. They never would be. There is still an army of Star Wars figures and Lego spacecraft from those first three shows hidden in ambush in our storage units. The movie and the two sequels were a game changer, a life changer, a generation mover and a family of new friends flung to the far-away stars. To this day, I can transport myself back to the theatre for that first opening scroll, hear the music of a space opera, and anticipate the mystery and excitement of a new adventure.

It is fortunate and unfortunate that real people are behind those scenes. I would like to think it all occurred in a galaxy far, far away, but I know in my mind, if not my heart, it occurred not so far away in and around a star system called “Hollywood.” Admittedly, that is a place in space perhaps as surreal as the show itself, but it is nonetheless a real, if unreal, place. The characters we watched with wonder were actors, the words were written and the action scripted – all by characters of and on our planet. With that, I have burst the bubble, and, for that, I apologize. All good things must come to their end and be revealed.

Only, they didn’t and they weren’t, and it wasn’t over.

Those guys in the back rooms under the palm trees with the pens and special effects wouldn’t give up when they were ahead – one trilogy and three episodes ahead of their time. They had to go back, and we couldn’t wait. It was a new and old generation, the children of the first three shows now parents of the children of the next three shows, all waiting in line for the fourth show which should have been the first show. It was all wonderfully confusing. Our universe was turned upside down, and we couldn’t wait.

On May 19, 1999, twenty-two years after the first Star Wars and sixteen years after the last episode, the next “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” was released to jumping, howling, waiting, screaming fans around the world. The first of the First Trilogy had landed and was among us. As our tiny planet in a backwater of the cosmos bridged forward from its Second to its Third Millennium, Star Wars imploded backward from its Second to its First Trilogy. The skies above and the ground below were new and unknown, and, at times and in parts, they were old and familiar. That dry, odd fringe planet of Tatooine emerged again from obscurity. On this visit back in time, we met a young, blond-haired boy with a well-remembered last name, Skywalker, and a new first name, Anakin. Different and the same, we waited for the screen to explode.

In a next post (linearity may bow to patience here but persevere), we will begin to explore the First Trilogy of the now older story.

The wait was long.

Worth the wait?

Time it will tell.

Will it in time?

Find the Third.

The Third to find?

Mystery enshrouded.

Unshrouded mystery find?

Grandpa Jim

Winter gasps.

Snows rage.

Dallas cringes.

Kids caged.

The snows arrived after the students entered their schools. “The bells toll for thee,” John Donne sagely observes of the now captive young scholars. “Caught, they are,” Yoda knowingly echoes. “These are the times that try parents’ souls,” Thomas Paine bemoans the Mom and Dads slushing and slogging to reach their stranded ones. “Let my children go,” Moses rises to part the weather and make way for the rescue wagons.

Still the white.

Floats and coats.

And slows not to stop.

Birds hide inside and venture not from their sleeted sheds.

A bench alone holds silent vigil from its whitened seat.

Plants with budding thoughts wilt to coat their icy pots.

Water worries.

Divers slide.

Berries hide.

A red ball shivers and cringes trapped in its fenced corner.

Trees bucket up the weather and wait for groundhog’s spring.

Soon children will arrive to see and change the still to a winter play land.

Until that quiet prevails and waits for their first laughs.

When cold drawn angels do transform.

The worries of the sages.

To the joy of.

Kids.

It is fun to wait to watch.

And believe to.

See.

Grandpa Jim

Dallas has slid to a frozen halt.

It is no longer 80 degrees.

It is 25 and white.

With sleet.

& ice.

The kids across the street are playing soccer on the frozen grass and sliding all over the place. It looks like great fun, but I think I’ll stay inside where it’s nice and warm and dry. I have yet to see a car drive by. Most seasoned Dallasites stay off the roads when it ices for the very good reason that we drive in the stuff so infrequently our odds of fender bending go snow high. It is better to sit and watch and wait for the inevitable melt. In Texas, the only thing certain about the weather is that it changes quickly and often. Mittens today, shorts tomorrow — wait and see. One brother in Florida and the other in Puerto Rica texted little sympathy to my photo of our sudden winterscape. The sister in Minnesota was more sympathetic. It was -7 degrees Fahrenheit there. Brrrrrrrr. The old adage rings true: It is always colder somewhere else. I am content with our waning winter watch and temporary temperature changes.

Speaking of watching and changing, the Academy Awards were last night. I stayed sitting in my chair, mesmerized by the glittering Oscars, staring in anticipation to the very end. Now, I have more movies to watch each to their “The End.” For that, last evening’s show was a scintillating spectacle sprinkled with the outlandish oddnesses and dancing delights of Hollywood at its night’s well-dressed and tuxedoed best. In Los Angeles of California, the celestial scene changes as quickly as it does here in our Texas skies, but with real stars rising and falling rather than sleet sifting and settling, a different dynamic under the palm trees than the winter weather covering our live oaks. There, the winners have weathered their storms, been knighted by their Oscars and are now added to my must-see list. A good movie on a winter’s day is a joy.

Another joy of the season approaches. March Madness and the Big Dance are near upon us. In this country, college basketball’s regular season has only a few weeks of remaining play. Then, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men’s Division I Basketball Championship & Tournament begins. Oh, these are times that lift the spirit and bring a bounce to the step. Selection Sunday is March 15, 2015. On that day, 68 teams will receive the call to board the planes and advance to the designated stadiums of play. Oh, the unfounded joy that awaits our watch. On March 17-18, 8 teams in the First Round (called the First Four) play for 4 play-in spots. Without a break, on the very long weekend of March 19-22, the now 64 teams battle in the Second Round with 32 winners prevailing to smash the boards in the Third Round and yield the 16 surviving squads of the “Sweet Sixteen.” That was a long weekend and a statistical tsunami of fun. Everyone gets a few days break. On the next long weekend of March 26-29, the Sweet Sixteen are whittled to the “Elite Eight,” who are then paired in combat, with four to emerge victorious and be titled the “Final Four.” The National Semifinals on Saturday, April 4, pit the Final Four against each other to yield the two teams to play for the victor’s laurels. On Monday, April 6, the Championship Game is fought and won. The winner is crowned and stands alone the number one team of the land. That is a marathon of hoops and baskets to make James Naismith (the inventor of basketball) proud and fans across the globe exhausted and happy with drooping smiles and nodding heads. I cannot wait for the march.

That’s the latest report from the States: Sleet Dallas, Oscars LA and Baskets in the Wings — cold to warm to waiting — climatic, cinematic and collegiate.

Never a dull moment.

Grandpa Jim

I’m hungry.

The celebration is over.

Fat Tuesday is past.

Ash Wednesday is here.

Lent has begun.

Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, marks the end of the Winter Celebration which began on Epiphany with the arrival of the Three Kings to Bethlehem and ends at midnight of Fat Tuesday when Mardi Gras ceases in cities around the world, the festivities stop and Lent begins.

The first day of Lent is Ash Wednesday.

Lent is a remembrance of the 40-day period that Jesus of Nazareth is recounted in the three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) to have spent fasting in the desert after his baptism in the Jordan River. Observers fast from food and abstain from meat. The fast is formulaic: one regular meal and two smaller meals, which combined do not equal the larger meal. You cannot combine the smaller meals and have two full sit-downs during the day. I ran this by the regulators, who applauded my creativity and said: “No. Eat light. He fasted. We fast.”

Abstinence is another matter. It means to abstain from meat, but not all meats. Hamburgers, steaks and chicken strips are off the menu. Fish and shrimps are on the plate. I grew up with this each Friday. In those old days, every Friday of the year was a day of abstinence. These days only Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of both fast and abstinence, while the other six Fridays of Lent are days of abstinence but not fasting. I guess there wasn’t much meat in the desert. Fish either. So, the practices of abstinence appear to be more symbolic in suffering remembered and less direct in historical derivation.

Ashes go way back. On Ash Wednesday, ashes are drawn on the foreheads of the recipients. We can blame Adam and Eve for this one. After their transgression in the Garden of Eden, the book of Genesis recounts the first couple’s reprimand, which ends with these words: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” A sign traced in the dust from the burned palm fronds (branches) of last year’s Palm Sunday reminds us, like our original parents, to turn from our mis-steps and resolve to do better and treat each other better. Personal resolutions to abstain and improve are another practiced tradition of the Lenten season.

The forty days of Lent have begun: 40 days to Easter. Only, it’s not exactly forty days. It’s 46 days: 40 days to recall the fast in the desert and 6 Sundays. I think the extra 6 Sundays were necessary, in part, to align Easter with the sun and the moon. In current practice, the celebration of Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal (spring) equinox.

When the computations are completed and the backtrackings accomplished, the march of time yields for any given year a date of Ash Wednesday between February 4 and March 10, with a mid-point around February 22. The 2015 spring equinox (this year’s first day of equal light and dark, and by tradition the first day of spring) is March 20, 2015. The means the 2015 Ash Wednesday is February 18. So, this year’s Ash Wednesday is a few days earlier than normal, and Easter on April 5, 2015 will itself be a few days ahead of the norm.

No one every said these things would be easy, which is, I think, why we have Ash Wednesday.

Perhaps there should be a time to slow the body and increase the mind and will in thought, memory and resolve?

Spring is not far off, and Easter soon will follow.

Enjoy the quiet.

Grandpa Jim

“OOOOHHH!!! Gru touched Lisa. Lisa’s got cooties.”

That is one of my favorite clips from the 2013 movie “Despicable Me 2.” In a flashback, the gangly super villain Gru becomes a tiny Transylvanian boy in a black suit holding a blue flower in a schoolyard. Young Gru is about to ask a girl for his first date. As soon as student Gru touches the much taller blond on her arm to get her attention to make his shy request, a red-headed schoolmate with big glasses screams: “Cooties!”

“Despicable Me 2” (2013) is reported to be the most profitable film in the 100-year history of Universal Studios. Grown-up Gru returns from the first “Despicable Me” (2010) and teams right back up with Kevin and a hoard of yellow, bumbling, endearing, hilarious minions. This second combination has made more money for the home lot than the Academy Award Best Pictures “Gladiator” (2000) and “A Beautiful Mind” (2001), combined.

Universal’s next installment is reported to be a movie entitled “Minions,” with a planned release date of July 10, 2015. This new film will focus itself on the pill-shaped curiosities with the blue overhauls, odd glasses, no noses and sparse tufts of occasional black hair. By Wikipedic definition, “Minions are small, yellow creatures who have existed since the beginning of time, evolving from single-celled organisms into beings who have only one purpose: to serve history’s most despicable masters.” Perhaps their motivations are not the best, but their actions must be the most entertaining yet for the evolutionary descendants of bacteria. In the realm of biochemistry and my long-ago science experiments, bacteria were affectionately referred to as “bugs,” which brings us back to cooties.

Cooties are bugs. How do I know? I played with them as a child. A postman in Minneapolis, Minnesota invented the game in 1948. In the box, you got bug parts (bodies, heads, antennae, eyes, proboscises (noses), legs) and dice. You rolled a die, took a turn, grabbed a part and started to assemble a cootie bug. First to build a whole cootie won. The game was incredibly successful. Over 50 million boxes of bug parts sold between 1949 and 2005. In 2003, the Toy Industry Association immortalized the Cootie Game as one of the 100 most creative toys of the 20^th century.

Before the game, the original cooties were real bugs. In the damp trenches of World War I, crawling, biting, itchy bugs bothered the tired troops. They weren’t nice bugs. Somehow, somewhere, those bugs were called “cooties.” The name stuck and traveled back home with the soldiers. In their backyards, they swatted bugs and called, “’Cooties,’ get away from me.” Their children heard and yelled to each other: “Cooties. Cooties. He has cooties. Run!”

Poor Gru.

That’s where it all started — out there, in the backyards and on the playgrounds of life. Girls used the term to run from boys. Boys used the term to run from girls. The separation of the sexes had begun, and it had found a new term to perpetuate and justify the distance.

Poor Gru. He had cooties.

I think the creators of the Despicable Me movies may have played the Cootie Game. Their young minds made and assembled cooties. They built them and yelled at kids on the playground and met and collaborated and invented a new cootie. The writers created minions who were not bugs themselves but were the descendants of bugs. They envisioned new bugs, nicer bugs, milder bugs — with wayward tendencies, yes — but funnier and more loveable bugs.

Why is Gru not despicable? Didn’t he have cooties? Yes — we remember the playground. Didn’t everyone run from him? Yes – he was and is a quirky guy with a limited wardrobe and skinny legs. Didn’t he steal the moon? Yes – I guess that was bad. But, wait, he found his minions. Even before the three little girls and the pretty spy lady, he had his minions. Those fun-loving relatives of bugs and their wildly disarming antics were at work on his shy, rejected, hurt heart. Who better to cure a super villain of the cooties than the relatives of cooties themselves?

We have now seen a miraculous transformation in the march of time, bugs and cinema. Cooties have evolved from real insects that bite, to plastic bugs in a box, to the bumbling fumbling yellow progeny of bacteria whose big smiles and disarming manner cure the cooties of that small boy we found alone on the playground so long ago.

Even a super villain has no chance when confronted with a minion, or a million or two cooties.

Roll the dice, start assembling and let the next show begin.

Minions cure cooties!

Grandpa Jim

A Revisionary Valentine Story

© James J. Doyle, Jr. 2015

“Harold, where you going with that titanium zonk ray?”

“I am going, Maud, to flash some sense into those asteroid miners. Toss me the keys to the flyer.”

“Have you lost all your earth sense, Harold? It’s the revenue from that asteroid mine that finances our colony, your job and our home.”

“Look there, Maud, out your kitchen bubble. Do you see our nitro bean home fuel garden? Do you see what’s left of our labors?”

“Oh, Harold, they’re gone. All those cute little beans.”

“Flattened to paste. A loose piece of ore smashed those little fellows to smithereens. Enough is enough. First our pet snooze squealer. I know it wasn’t really alive, but I did build it from leftovers. Then that hole in the chicken-on-a-stick coop. It wasn’t a small hole either, and there weren’t many chickens left still on their sticks. That was not a pretty sight. Now this. Enough is enough. I’m flying over to that rock plant and having it out with them, me and Billy Bob.”

“William, Harold. Your friend’s given name is William, not Billy Bob. He does have a doctorate in solids manipulation.”

“He’ll manipulate those rock handles. They’ve got to pay, Maud. It’s not fair. We didn’t come this far into outer space to be knocked around by some cowboys tossing asteroids. It’s not fair.”

“It isn’t Harold, and they’ll pay. They did for the squealer and the coop. Poor chickens. I’m sure they’ll atom flash a credit slip for the beans. They always do. I’ll call.”

“But why and what for, Maud?  I don’t care about the money. I’m just tired of all the falling rocks. Why?”

“Harold, didn’t you read the Intergalactic Geographic article I put by your float chair, next to the Dr. Pepper you’d just laser popped open.”

“I read the pictures between sips. Billy Bob — ok, ok, I mean William. He says one blink speak picture is worth a thousand respirator wheeze words. Figured that out, he did. That’s why he stopped with only one advanced degree, even though you can’t do much more than push solids with a single doctorate these days. Said he’d learned enough. Now he’s got a bunch of techno savvy and reverse science magazines full of blink speak pictures. He is an educated man, that William.”

“Where do you boys get these ideas?”

“Guys, Maud. We’re not boys.”

“Boys in your club house.”

“It’s an Ice House, Maud, not a club house. That’s where we figure things out.”

“Which is why I left you the article, Harold. Asteroid mining is important. Back on Earth, a big asteroid is worth 150 times more than a comparable terrestrial stone. Space asteroids can contain over 50 times the gold, 80 times the palladium, 300 times the platinum, and 800 times the iridium than the ordinary rocks under a planetary corn field.”

“What do I need iridium for, anyway?”

“The sleece field wire powering our home, Harold. The flip jack connections for your think talk handheld. And all the internals that keep your pink back flyer afloat.”

“That’s a custom flyer, Maud. Don’t you go talking down that machine. It’s done us good.”

“It is a good flyer, Harold. But that flyer and the parts to keep it floating need those metals. That’s why those miners are out there in the asteroid belt.”

“William says that what with flinging all them asteroids around here and smashing up the colony, there won’t be enough left to hold up that asteroid belt. Then the pants are going to fall right down and the whole seller system be made a fool of. We had a right good laugh at the seller system without its pants on.”

“It’s a solar system, Harold, not a seller system.”

“Well, that’s what they do with the rocks. They sell them.”

“Yes, they do, but the asteroid belt is rocks circling the Sun. It’s not a belt. William must have rocks in his head to take up a notion like that.”

“No notion at all, Maud. William says we are upsetting the planetary balance with all this mining. We need to go ‘spacey’ like our environment out here in space, just like they went ‘green’ in the old days for their green environment back there on earth.”

“Land of Goshen, Harold, now you’ve gone and joined up with a crowd of space activists down there at your Ice House.”

“You got it, Maud, Ice House, not club house. And they call me Bubba Smooth down there.”

“Will wonders never cease?”

“Maud?”

“Yes, Harold.”

“I bought this for you.”

“Why, Harold, it’s a big red metal heart.”

“It’s a mechanalized robotic nuclearated heart. You open the flap here and put in some leftovers. Smashed nitro fuel beans work fine. Then shake and open this little door here. Careful. Out pops a piece of reconstituted simulated chocolate candy, just like back home. It’s the latest in space age valentines. Now open the card. See I wrote ‘LOVE’ in big letters and signed right there, under the letters. The heart and the card were a special down at the Ice House. I thought of you as soon as I saw them.”

“Oh, Harold, I love you.”

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Maud.”

“And Happy Valentine’s Day to you, my interplanetary adventurer and outer space activist. Now come on over here so I can give you a big down-to-earth hug and kiss.”

“Oh, Maud.”

“Harold, there’s time before the evening meal vaporates on the table, why don’t you take the flyer over to that Ice House. You can have a Dr. Pepper and figure things out with the guys. Then, come right back here to me.”

“Gee, thanks, Maud.”

“And . . . don’t be late, Bubba Smooth.”

“Oh, Maud.”

Post Note from the Colonies: Some things never change on Valentine’s Day – no matter where you are at, in the solar system. Don’t forget to fly by and pick up a card on the way home from outer space. It will be worth the trip, and it’s not spacey at all.

Some things happen quickly, others do not, and a good ending is to be appreciated.

How to tie up and end a story like Harry Potter’s?

At Year 7, Harry is 17. He and his close friends do not return to school. They elect instead to unravel the sign of the deathly hallows and seek the end of the evil menace that threatens their world.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” is the 7th book and, in two parts, the 7^th and 8^th movies of the epic to preserve pure magic.

Movie 7, Part 1 of the Deathly Hallows, is the prelude to the final installment. For this last book and the last two movies, there is a word: “horcrux.” In the Harry stories, there are a total of eight horcuxes: two persons, a creature and five things. No further clues will be given here. Into these too many horcruxes, the Dark Lord has divided, strained and poured portions of his tortured soul. If a single horcrux is killed or destroyed, Voldemort survives in another of his deadly creations and by so doing defeats death. Immortality is the Dark Lord’s goal and it will be achieved – unless all the horcruxes can be destroyed. Harry discovers that these pieces of his nemesis have been his task since Year 1, when the first horcrux of Voldemort’s living essences perished in the basement of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry destroys one or two of the objects. Friends and enemies dispatch the others. It is Harry’s path to the soul of his enemy that fuels their struggle and makes this their story.

By the final Movie 8, Part 2 of the Deathly Hallows, four horcruxes remain hidden. The race to their discovery begins. A monumental battling of forces breaks into view. In scope and complexity, the pace to finish is astonishing and to be applauded. Part 2 is one of the highest grossing pictures of all time, and the film does deserve its share of goblin treasure.

As I sat the other day in an office of modern magic, the young practitioner across from me said simply: “You will not be disappointed. Your questions will be answered.” As the youthful doctor promised, they largely were — although, even after Movie 8, in the realm of Harry Potter and his friends, questions remain. I think they always will.

For me, these films present the triumph of the plain people. The actors we follow for seven years grow and change. At the end, they are each less in appearance than they would have been had Hollywood been allowed to recast their efforts. By feature and in physical appearance, Harry and his friends become quite ordinary looking — in a kind everyday sense. I like this. It is an artifact of the extended filmmaking process and so unlike Hollywood’s natural behavior. Yet, this telescoped televisioning of life is a refreshing reality show of its own so like Hollywood’s normal behavior. I find the contradictory and confirmatory combination somehow appealing. I wonder what the author, J. K. Rowling, thinks of what time has drawn so naturally upon the faces and bodies of her actors.

Mother’s love wins out. A palate of protective love is the paint that binds these pictures. It is that nurturing background that torments its lead detractor and sentences him who has so long denied love’s embrace to a fetal limbo of the soul. For all the wizards helping Harry in his endeavors, it is the witches who ensure his success.

Harry’s mother, Lily Potter, saves her son at story’s start and is the strength of his heart at story’s end. The force of wand of Hogwarts’ real headmistress, Minerva McGonagall, is the slight wisp of shaken hair that signs the school’s rock solid defense. Harry’s best friend’s mother, Molly Weasley, will not surrender, and it is her unwavering nerve and solid arm that forecast her daughter Ginny Weasley, Harry’s future wife, onto a platform of hope. His best enemy’s mother, Narcissa Malfoy, preserves Harry’s life to save her son and doom the Dark Lord. Harry’s best young witch friend, Hermione Granger, reaches into her purse at the right times for the right answers to place Ron Weasley and their family securely at that future station on the right platform waiting on the children’s train. The pivotal role these determined women play is not lost on the young ladies reading the books and watching the shows. They are the faithful followers who make Harry Potter successful, and they are the true and pure magic surrounding us all.

I am grateful for each and every one of them.

They make for a great ending.

Grandpa Jim