Thank you all for reading.

The newest story was great fun to write.

It started, as many stories do, from a word or phrase that jumped to mind, borrowed traits and aspects of characters and places inhabiting real life, and came to possess a reality of its own — different, but, in a strange way, not far removed from the everyday.

In other words, it is a story. It is not real life. Though, that, perhaps, is not completely sure.

Certainty is a strange concept.

Let’s explore it.

Perhaps, the greatest “certainty” quote of all times is that of the scientist-politician who liked to fly kites and sign declarations. In his private correspondence, Benjamin Franklin states: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Now, that is a mouthful. In life, it was Benjamin’s recorded observation that there are two things you are sure to lose: your life and your money. If that is so, and the experience of almost all who have lived would seem to attest so, perhaps both should be enjoyed to their fullest and not kept too close to the vest. Still, doubt can be a very healthy human quality. Should we jump too quickly to a conclusion?

Certainly not, Francis Bacon would say. Take your time. Shouldn’t a cautious individual consider all the possibilities – at least at first, when full youth and vigor? Or, as the 1^st Viscount framed his comment to that question and Mr. Franklin’s surmise: “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.” Doubt can be said to be the fundamental underpinning of the scientific method, and the one human characteristic that has ensured the advance of modern thought and technology. Doubt everything, begin with crinkled eyebrows and advance with pointed finger to deeper thoughts. Death and taxes may not be so assured as stated. It may depend. Perhaps another view is warranted.

Could certainty be a hobgoblin of the male mind? Could the focused search for the definite be a directed distraction of certain one-sided hormonal prejudices not shared by all the species? Can an intuitive knowing be of equal or better stature? In the fixation on mission, have we become lost in the jungle of manly myth? The great storyteller Rudyard Kipling would seem to think there may be another path to certainty. To quote, “A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty.” Wow. Death and taxes may come and go, but a woman’s guess is the way to go. I knew that, and if I didn’t, I should have. That’s for certain.

There you have it, three quotes on certainty — to paraphrase and in conclusion: 1) Death and taxes are certain; 2) Begin with doubts, then end with certainties (maybe death and taxes aren’t so certain); and 3) When in doubt, ask a girl (quit worrying so much and ask her out for sodas and a talk – no telling what you’ll learn).

And that, I think, is how stories are born.

Have no doubt about it.

Grandpa Jim

“On the Way” is the new Flash Fiction story, and it is posted on the Homepage.

It is a bit earlier in Auckland than anticipated, but I’m on my way to an engagement, and this may be my last opportunity — until later.

We hope you enjoy the story. It was a surprise to the nephew at the wedding.

Jim

When the new story is posted (I can’t wait) this Thursday at 11:00 AM Dallas, Texas, time, it will be 6:00 AM Friday in Auckland, New Zealand.

It will be the morning of the next day in Auckland.

“How can that be?” you ask. “As I travel west from Dallas,” you say, “on my super-fast rocket plane, I loose an hour for every time zone I pass. If the times zones are blinking by faster than a zone a second, shouldn’t I be going backwards in time? I know 11:00 AM, right now, is 9:00 AM in Lost Angeles. Right?”

Well, right, it is earlier there . . . but, you’re going farther and faster, at almost Internet speeds.

“OK,” you say. “But what difference does that make?”

Well, between Dallas and Auckland, there are many many time zones.

If you arrive in Auckland on your rocket sled in only seconds, it would seem you should effectively arrive many hours earlier. For example, and assuming nineteen (19) time zones between the two cities, if you launched out of Dallas at 11:00 AM on a Thursday, you might think you would arrive in Auckland at 4 PM on Wednesday, the day before you left. You would have traveled backward in time.

Like the 1993 movie “Ground Hog’s Day,” you, like Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray), would have to live the day over again. If you kept flying at that incredible speed, around and around the globe, when you eventually landed in New Zealand, it could be weeks or months before you left Dallas. Then, you, like the long-suffering, eventually resigned and finally rehabilitated Phil Connors, would be very, very confused and hoping for a change, any change — a new day.

That is why the International Date Line was invented: to straighten the days out, to prevent you from getting too far behind yourself, to help you reach a new day.

The International Date Line is an imaginary line out there, somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, between Dallas and Auckland. Traveling west from Dallas, when you cross that line, you are required, by the conventions of man and the agreements of the global societies, to add 24 hours to your clock and advance to the next day. On your lighting-fast ship, you are forced, by conformity and good manners, to add a day, even though you left Dallas seconds before.

So, you see, because of the International Date Line, you can’t get lost on an endless clock twirling backwards.

For you, there will always be a tomorrow.

I can see the smile on Bill Murray’s face.

Thank you, the inventors of and compliers with the International Date Line.

All of which is a long way of saying that when the brand new and never-been-seen-before story (and, it is not an Uncle Joe story) is published on this web site at 11:00 AM Thursday, which it is the firm intent to do, the story will arrive, almost instantaneously, by traveling on the Internet Flyer, in Auckland the next day, Friday, at 6:00 AM. It will not move backward in time and be lost. It will move forward in time and be tossed on the front porch for a quick read before the Friday morning rush hour in New Zealand.

If that doesn’t make you wonder a time or two, stop back here on Thursday or Friday, your time, and have a new read and new wonder of your own.

The story is on the way.

Almost.

Grandpa Jim

We are in a deep freeze.

The temperature outside in Dallas, Texas, is 34 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius). My handheld says, with the north wind a’blowing, it feels like 24 F (-4 C). My face almost froze on my walk earlier today.

I know I shouldn’t complain.

It is much colder up north. In Cedar Falls, Iowa, where I was born (the coldest spot in Iowa), the temperature is 25 F (-4 C), and it feels like 12 F (-11 C). In Burnsville, Minnesota, where my sister and her family are inside shivering under a mound of  blankets, even with the sun shining, the outside is only 22 F (-6 C), and it feels like 10 F (-12 C), and, to add insult to injury, its been snowing.

Ok, ok, that’s the north.

This is the south. This is Texas, not Iowa or Minnesota. South of the Red River, things are supposed to be warmer. It’s not halfway through November, and the inflatable Thanksgiving turkey on my next-door neighbor’s front lawn is flatter than a pancake with frostbite. Squirrels are in hiding beneath their hoarded nuts (the little monsters – those are our pecans), and the birds have left for the Caribbean to sun on beaches and sip from fancy bird baths floating with little colored umbrellas.

Here, on the street, no one moves. It looks like outer space.

Comet 67 P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is in outer space. Presently, it is about 316 million miles from Earth, give or take a million or so miles. I know, because we just landed on it. More precisely, the European Space Agency has placed a washing machine-sized landing craft named Philae on the surface of the comet.

I am not making this up. It was in the paper this morning. It’s all over the Internet.

This has never happened before. It has taken ten years and $1.75 billion for the Rosetta orbiter spacecraft to get close enough to launch the Philae lander onto the comet’s surface. And, it worked. Well, mission control is not sure how firmly attached Philae is to the ground, but she’s there. She’s arrived.

The ground is a 2.5-mile-wide ball of rock, ice and dust that looks like a cracked and beaten shooter from an ancient game of marbles in the sky, a leftover from when the solar system was young and forming, a shot that went wild, beyond the ring, and is now traveling at 41,000 miles per hour, searching for the other players. There may be something on that comet to help us understand how those first games went and how our planet came into its own, which is what Philae and Rosetta are hoping to measure and send back to the scientists at home.

You know, it’s really not that much colder there than here.

Data from Rosetta says the average surface temperature down on the comet, where Philae landed, is about -70 degrees Celsius (-94 degrees Fahrenheit). That seems warm for outer space. I mean the coldest recorded day in Antarctica was -89.2 C (-128.56 F). So, the surface of the Earth has been colder than the comet. Yes, it is cold there. But, for a marble in space with no fast-food restaurants or people to keep warm, is it really that cold? And, that marble is headed for the sun, so it will get warmer.

Wait. . . .

That could be an issue for Philae, who could be damaged by the hotter temperatures.

I worry for little Philae. She cared enough for us to travel all that way to get a local weather report and retrieve some lost data from the first solar games. You know, I think “Philae” means “caring one.” Well, there, we need to think more about her and less about us. She needs to stay cold and safe from the sun.

Wait!

What am I saying? I’m freezing. I’m in favor of warm. I want more sun. What’s going on here? Why am I concerned about a small robot WALL-E lost in space? Why am I becoming agitated about an extraterrestrial ET who hasn’t really called home for ten years or more?

Why don’t I even notice the temperature outside right here, right now?

You know, I don’t. I don’t even feel the cold anymore.

That’s it, all I needed was a new adventure.

Something to distract my thoughts.

Someone to help me feel —

Warm, right here at

Home.

Grandpa Jim

For 3,800 years, the tallest structure in the world was a tomb.

“Let’s write our names behind the wall here, with today’s date,” one worker said to the other.

“If Pharaoh Khufu finds out, we’ll be buried here before he will,” the other worker cautioned.

“Come on. Are you a scaredy cat?”

Well, cats were sacred to the ancient Egyptians. So, this was equivalent to jumping to the “Triple-Dog-Dare-You” from the movie “The Christmas Story.” (By the way, that movie is one of a few where the written words in the original story — in the case, Jean Shepherd wrote the book — are pretty much the same words spoken by the actors in the movie.)

Now, what could that worker do with that dare?

“Ok,” he answered. “But write farther back – there where it’s really dark and no one will ever find it.”

But, someone did, thousands of years later, and from the graffiti left by those workers, the Egyptologists determined the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the oldest and largest of the three pyramids on the Giza Necropolis in Eqypt, was finished around the year 2560 BC.

When completed, the Great Pyramid was 280 Egyptian cubits tall, which by today’s measures would be 146.5 meters or 480.6 feet (let’s round it to 481 feet), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the tallest structure in the world.

For 3,800 years, Pharaoh Khufu rested relatively peacefully, except for the intrusion of an occasional tomb robber or absent-minded archaeologist. The Pharaoh didn’t really mind the scribbling behind the wall, and it was nice to be #1 for so long.

Then, the churches started arguing.

“My spire is 149 meters (489 feet), the tallest of all,” said Old St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England, around 1250 AD. “Nah, nah, nah.”

“Nah, nah, nah to yourself,” said Lincoln Cathedral in London. “Your spire got blasted by lighting. My spire, at 159.7 meters (524 feet), completed in 1300 AD, is the tallest of the tall.”

“No more for you, Mr. Lincoln Cathedral,” chided St. Mary’s Church in Stralsund, Germany. “Your spire collapsed in 1549. Now, I’m the highest of the high at 151 meters (495 feet).”

And so it went, back and forth, up and down, with spires collapsing, buildings burning and lightings leveling, until in 1901, the Ulm Minister in Ulm, Germany, was the last tall church standing, at 161.53 meters (530 feet).

Churches had ruled the roost from about 1250 to 1901 AD, around 850 years. And, at the finish of that rather long period of building and bickering, the height of the tallest building in the world had only increased about 50 feet. A good size flagpole could make Pharaoh’s tomb taller.

Let’s put that in perspective.

In some 4,650 years, the tallest building in the world was still only about 500 feet high.

Something needed to be done.

It was time for a great jump forward and upward.

Business and commerce huddled, clapped hands and responded to the challenge.

Leaping high into the sky, leaving ancient tombs and soaring churches below, the skyscraper was born.

To start, in 1901, the Philadelphia City Hall, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, the town that brought us the Declaration of Independence and the Crack in the Liberty Bell, declared its rights to height and rang on high at 167 meters (548 feet), the tallest structure of any kind, yet, but still not much over 500 feet, the ancestral limit of high achievement.

But, the race to reach had begun.

In rapid succession, the skyscrapers kept growing. From 1901 to 2010, just 109 years, the tallest building in the world grew from the Philadelphia City Hall at 167 meters (548 feet) to the Burg Khalifa megatall skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, at 829.8 meters (2,722 feet), currently the tallest building in the world.

Count ’em, folks.

Over some 4,650 years, we grew about 50 feet (15 meters), from tomb top to church spire. For that period, about 5,000 years, our buildings grew at an average of 0.01 feet per year. That’s about an inch every 8 years, and that is very, very slow.

In the last 109 years, we grew 2,174 feet (663 meters), and the climb has just begun. This means that, for the past 100 years or so, our buildings have grown at about 20 feet per year. That’s 2,000 times faster than the previous 5,000 years, and that is — comparatively — very, very fast.

If you ever doubt that the pace of our global society is on a rapid increase, just look up at the building next door.

We are truly reaching to scrape the sky.

For that, there is no end in sight.

Hold tight & enjoy the ride.

Grandpa Jim

“Uncle Joe and The Tunnels of Nith,” the newest Uncle Joe story and the tenth tale in the series, has published and is posted on the Homepage.

Be the first in your house, the first on your block, the first in your town, the first in your state and the first in the country to read this never-seen-or-read-before adventure.

Hurry go see. Joe there be. With new me. Who me be? Read and see.

Discover more with “Uncle Joe and the Tunnels of Nith.”

Grandpa Jim

It has been just over a year since the last and ninth Uncle Joe story was posted right here on the official home and only source of Uncle Joe Stories.

You may remember “Uncle Joe and the Flying Fortress.” If not, you can find the story under the “Uncle Joe Stories” pull-down tab on the homepage. That 9^th and last-released Uncle Joe story issued just before Halloween 2013, and it involved a sighting near Birome Creek.

If everything goes as planned, the tenth and newest Uncle Joe Story will issue here, tomorrow on our Halloween 2014, and it may include a sighting of another kind near Birome Creek. Like the previous nine tales, this 10th story is a completely original writing that has never been seen or read before, and like the other nine stories, it can only be found here.

Keep your fingers crossed and your eyes focused toward this web site.

Truly, you never know what you will find in an Uncle Joe story.

I think Joe was amazed by what he found in this one.

I’ll be reading with you as the ‘morrow dawns.

Or, for our readers in Asia/Pacific areas,

As the evening enfolds before us.

Until the next story, then.

Grandpa Jim

For some, the “Big Four” of health problems, those that pose the most concern and present the most worry, are identified as: Stroke, Heart Failure, Cancer and Diabetes.

I hope you have never have any of the Four.

The Guna people of Panama and Colombia appear to have a very low occurrence of the Big Four. Guna are reported to drink up to 40 cups of cocoa a week. Some feel there is a strong link here, and one that should be considered by more than the Guna.

I am looking at a bar of chocolate from Switzerland. On the back, under ingredients, it says “cocoa butter.” The on-line dictionary defines “cocoa” as “a chocolate powder made from roasted and ground cocoa seeds.” There’s that word: “chocolate.” No one knows for sure where the name chocolate came from, but everyone knows chocolate is sweet and wonderful and made from cocoa. Cocoa is the root and well being of chocolate and the source of its many beneficent qualities. Watch the 2000 movie “Chocolat” and see yourself the joys and benefits of cocoa turned chocolate.

Science is catching up. Scientists been studying, studying chocolate, studying cocoa.

In cocoa and the chocolate in my pantry and on your counter is an antioxidant. Don’t throw out the chocolate! Antioxidant is not a bad word. It means “anti” for against and “oxidant” for oxidation or oxygen, against oxygen. Don’t stop breathing! Oxygen is OK, and other oxidants are OK, most of the time. What happens is that oxidants sometimes steal from other things in our bodies, good things, stable things. They take away electrons from the good things and make them upset and unstable and radical, free radicals. As we get older or something weakens our systems, oxidants hold greater sway and free radicals appear more often and become less disciplined, they misbehave more, and this bad behavior can trigger strokes, heart failure, cancers and diabetes. We need something against these free radicals and the bad oxidants who led them astray. We need antioxidants.

Some scientists recently made a bunch of healthy people, aged 50 to 69, drink a whole bunch of chocolate, the average of about two-thirds of a pound of dark chocolate or seven full-size bars a day. Actually, it wasn’t that good. (I would have signed up had it been.) The scientists made the test group drink a mixture containing an antioxidant found in chocolate called “epicatechin.” That’s a big name for a complicated molecule. A better name might be “home-room mother.” Well, that teacher’s aide sits those misbehaving free radicals down and gives them a new electron of their own. The kindness is too much. The radicals settle down, behave normally and refuse to be lured away again by those bad oxidants. Madam Antioxidant, Home Room Mother Epicatechin, not only returned the room to normal, the students are performing like they did in the old days.

In the real study, our “senior” subjects, and I quote from yesterday’s paper, “performed like people two or three decades younger on the study’s memory task.” Go see that movie “Chocolat” again. Cocoa really is a fountain of youth, an antioxidant to be admired and savored — although I can’t say I would recommend seven bars a day.

We can say the active ingredient in cocoa did improve the brain function of the study participants.

The newspaper went on to state: “The findings support recent research linking . . . epicatechin . . . to improved blood circulation, heart health and memory in mice, snails and humans.” I didn’t know mice and snails had a fondness for chocolate. I am certainly on the human side, and I second those findings.

Science still has a way to go. The Big Four are still the Big Four. Still, it is heartening to know an effective treatment may be only steps away.

See you later. I think I need an antioxidant.

Where did I put that medicine?

One bar should do.

Grandpa Jim

Nothing stays the same for long.

2014 looks to be a good example of just that.

Worldwide, September 2014 was the hottest month in 135 years of recording temperatures – since 1880. January through September 2014 tied with 1998 as the warmest first nine month ever measured thermometrically – meaning you could go outside and watch the high red line rise on the porch thermometer. The Earth is on a roll up, with no end in sight.

At this rate, 2014 will be the hottest year in human history.

Not in Minnesota. Relative to average temperatures for the year thus far, Minnesota, USA, is the coolest place on the Earth in 2014. My sister in Minnesota told me something like that, and now I have confirmed it. There is a lesson here that she has been trying to teach me for years: Listen to your sister. Truly, 2014 may be a record-shattering year. I’m listening.

Other places are also not that hot. For the USA as a whole, September 2014 was only the 25^th warmest of record. California set records up. Minnesota, as noted, is setting a record low. North Texas and Dallas fall somewhere in the middle, with no records showing. Truly, the world is a mixed place of extremes and not-so extremes. However, when you put them all in a bowl, stir, dip your spoon, lift, blow gently and sample – yes, it is hot, and, to the senses, the hottest ever.

Does that mean we have global warming? Certainly, incontrovertibly and experientially, we have change. As the statistics show, we have change in the climate over a measured period of time. So, we have climate change, which we have had since the beginning of measuring. Perhaps, we have climate change that is representative of a trend in global warming?

Arguments don’t always convince. This can be argued to be a penchant of the species home sapiens. Don’t tell me, show me. This is another enunciation, I think, of the same apparent and possibly shared tendency. If I can’t touch it, can it be real? Approach everything with a grain of skepticism.

Is it a hobgoblin? Could it be a mischievous creature creating a superstitious fear, a bogeyman in the closet causing us to pull the covers over our heads and hide until dawn? I don’t know. These may appear timely thoughts at this Halloween of the year. For sure, the hobgoblins are about. I saw one lit on a porch in the cool of this morning’s walk.

The world has not set a worldwide record for cold since 1916 — except for Minnesota, of course. For all the places of the earth as a whole, the recent records are predominantly hot not cold.

Death Valley, California, is the hottest place on the planet. On July 10, 1913, the thermometer hit 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 degree Celsius). One hundred and one years (101) years ago, Death Valley had its hottest day. It’s been cooling since, highs only in the 120’s F (low 50’s C). Is this that mixing-bowl effect: many other places are hotter, and, upon average, it is the globe that’s warming — except, of course, near Furnace Creek in Death Valley? I’ll let you sample the mix and decide, but you may want to consider a somewhat cooler place.

How about Vostok Station, Antarctica? Russia has a facility there. On July 21, 1983, the hardy scientists in residence recorded a natural ground-level temperature of -128.6 F below zero (-89.2 C). Now, that is sitting down and freezing in place cold cold cold. Thirty-four (34) years ago, the world may have had its single coldest day, though that year as a whole was not one of record chill.

If you can’t convince one audience, move to another or a different subject. That may be an additional axiom of good argument. It certainly can be a crowd pleaser.

Don’t go to the same well too often, or sample the same fare too quickly.

If at first you don’t succeed, try try again — but perhaps not right away or with the same folks.

Take a breather. Take a deep breath.

Enjoy today for today. Let tomorrow worry for itself.

We’re not there yet. There’s always time for one more slice of pie.

Ala mode, of course — delicious hot pie with scrumptious cold ice cream atop.

Now, that’s a change of global proportion. I think I can manage the warming and cooling of those two together.

Food does have a way of making friends, building bridges and mending fences – around the corner and around the globe.

Enjoy,

Grandpa Jim

In the USA, the end-of-year festivities begin with Halloween in October, progress to Thanksgiving in November and crescendo with Christmas in December.

In the far-old days, say 30 or 40 years ago, holiday lights were reserved for Christmas and went up, at the earliest, the day after Thanksgiving. In the far-far-older days, say 50 or 60 years ago, the lights of Halloween were bonfires of dried leaves.

Fire is one of the oldest of man’s inventions, and light is the oldest of his entertainments.

Today, in this thoroughly modern incandescent and LEDed era, the colored lights appear earlier and earlier, and they appear where light has never been seen before.

The Halloween of my childhood was a night of costumed children and tasty treats, with a tiny trick added for fun. There was little preparation or exterior decoration. Now, across the street, for over two weeks, perch a vast array of smiling, frowning and frightening pumpkin faces – all lit from within. Through the window glass of that house, orange-bulbed wreathes flicker and sparkling ghost-like eyes twinkle. Down the street, the fronts of other houses are pumpkined with assorted fall presentations, each adorned with glowing, glittering and captivating lightings of its own.

To me, Halloween has become the first and earliest lit of our fall festivals. People want to start the party and lighten the darkening days. We, in this country, have no grand tradition of Octoberfests. So, the night of ghosts and goblins is a natural fit to brighten the streets and lift the spirits in the waning of days. I find the effect not scarifying, rather an inviting and comforting neighborhood parade into the holidays.

In the nearing future, my senses heighten and I begin to detect the spiced smell of pies baking for the Thanksgiving feast. Thanksgiving is a timeless holiday. It has acquired few additional trappings in the span of my years. It is, as it has always been, a meal with family and friends — if perhaps the largest such repasts of our year, with great cooked beasties and uncountable accompaniments and sweets that would make any Who proud and a welcome guest. Just the other day, I was at a laughing Grandmother’s house where she, the matriarch of culinary creations, was eyeing the very large pumpkin by the fireplace and commenting how soon she would convert the massive vegetable into delice-defying fillings for an army of pies. Mouths watering, we listened in rapt and attentioned anticipation. The great feast approaches. Thanksgiving is the day of the most eating, followed by the most quiet snoozeful resting, of the year. We give thanks for each.

Around the corner is Christmas, and that corner seems to be taken more quickly each year.

Turning the corner in my car only yesterdays ago, I saw the men at work. Lights there were, reds and greens, being applied, installed and positioned down the driveway and along the eaves. A gasp escaped my mouth. Could it be? Yes, they had done it. In the midst of the orange, brown and blacks of scarecrows, jack-o-lanterns, broom-sticked ladies and spider-laden gauzes, before even the pies had found their fillings, an early bird had gotten the worm. They had captured the prize. They were the first on the street to decorate for Christmas.

But . . . not to light — not as yet. Even in the elation of first installation, the residence has refrained from overstepping the seasons. At evening dark, the bulbs have not been electrified. In small victory, tact has, for a time, triumphed over tendency. The victor’s laurel is theirs. We begrudge them not that. Yet, we appreciate the small grace to allow a step-wise approach toward year-end and an appreciation of each holiday for its own.

In their ways, the days of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas offer much for little expended. A light there, a pie here and a gift under a tree are sufficient. For the more exuberant, decorate with glee. We do appreciate the efforts. We love to walk and drive the colorful lanes and visit the bright-lit shops. The days are better for the efforts, big and small. The seasons are best for the memories, made and remembered, that last long after the lights have been taken down and the pie pans stored in their cupboards for next round.

Grandpa Jim