You are looking at the bottom of a very long formation set above Longfellow's Bathtub in Carlsbad Cavern, toward the end of the Big Room tour, shortly after Rock of Ages. The Cave Research Foundation completed a project last year that has been underway for ten years, cleaning the mud and silt from the bottom of this pool. We took advantage of the unusually dry state of the cave (which has lasted well over a decade) to painstakingly transfer water to a dry pool, remove mud, and move it back by the end of each long holiday weekend we spent in the cave. The results have been spectacular; if you could see the before and after shots, you would agree.

Thanksgiving weekend we worked on the Red Pools area (which will now have to be renamed, or they will when we finish removing the red clay that has discolored them). But while we were working, we checked the Bathtub to see how it looks. It has begun refilling! The shiny look of the flowstone tells you that it is active and wet. The pool is being dripped in, and the water level is already several inches higher than it was. And that wall has been dry for about thirty years - I last saw that wall wet that long ago.

We got it done just in time. It is now too deep to transfer enough water to nearby pools.

This morning in the sky

OK, that was freaking awesome!
We went outside at six, and of course there was the crescent moon hanging low in the sky, with Venus shining brightly to its immediate left. Above them a little ways was Saturn, as expected, and Mars was much farther up than I expected - almost directly overhead. Directly opposite the moon (spin around with those binoculars), but much higher in the sky, we saw the fuzzy ball of light that was Comet Holmes, the comet that exploded October 23.

Then, at 6:20, we started watching for the space shuttle and the International Space Station, which would be rising just about... oh, darn, right behind that huge tree. Well, wait for it. At 6:23, they popped out from behind the tree, shining brighter than Venus, one following the other. The larger and brighter of the two lights was in front, probably the ISS. They were almost directly overhead Andrews to the northwest, but high enough in the sky to be spectacular, without having to strain our necks!

We didn't see anything from the Southern Taurid meteor shower, which peaked today, but we didn't really expect to. That one produces about five meteors an hour if you're lucky - though those do tend to be really special as meteors go - and I'm not quite that patient.

It almost makes the Ron Paul money bomb pale in significance, but I'll enjoy that, too!

If any of you got up to see any of these wonderful things, post a comment here, would you?

Sky stuff

Get up early for some neat stuff in the sky, tomorrow morning, November 5. In the east, you should see a crescent moon, with Venus to its left shining brightly. Above them will be Saturn, and above Saturn, Mars. In the western sky, look for a soft fuzzy ball of light about half the size of the moon in appearance. That's a comet that exploded October 23, and it's expanding as it moves away from us. All you need to make it complete is a spaceship or two to go by - and we have that, too. The International Space Station and a Space shuttle will be flying overhead and lit by the morning sun before it rises for us, rising from the southwest and flying toward the northeast. It should appear at 6:20 am and go out of sight at about 6:25

What is old, anyway?

OK, I'm officially old.

I watched Jay Leno just now, mostly because my hero Ron Paul was appearing. It was a good interview, and can't hurt him, but he was immediately followed by musical guests the Sex Pistols.

Now, the Sex Pistols are sort of nostalgic. They began their sporadic and notorious career in 1975, and I thought they had disappeared for good. But here they were on Leno, singing what sounded like "Anarchy in the UK," a song whose lyrics - were they lyrics? - were unintelligible to these old ears. They gestured in a friendly way to Dr. Paul and I heard the words "Hi, Mr. Paul" emerging from the cacophony of sound filling the studio audience. I think it was a show of support, but I'm not sure.

Now, I'm not in favor of anarchy by any means. I am for less government, and so I suppose given the huge beast that government has become these days, an anarchist would favor the candidate who wants to govern the least.

But who do the Sex Pistols influence today? Do the young folk look up to a three-decades old band whose trademark is revolt against the music popular in 1975? If so, why? Do the current 40-year-olds remember them fondly? And here I am, fondly remembering tearing off the plastic shrink wrap from my new copy of the White Album.

So here I am, supporting a 72 year old man for president because he stays loyal to a 220 year old document that everyone else ignores, and watching him share a stage with an aging, arthritic punk rock band who also seems to like him, and feeling glad that my 86 year old father who fought the Japanese in WWII never stays up late enough to have seen anything like the Sex Pistols singing about anarchy.

Well, shoot - I'm going to send another $17.76 to Ron Paul on November 5 just to add to the money bomb scheduled for that day. That ought to make me feel younger.

Our baby ocotillo has established its root system. I've never managed to grow one of these, my favorite desert plants, from a seed. But a friend gave me a cutting from hers, and I stuck it in the dirt and misted the stalk daily. It grew a leaf or two to prove it was still alive, and eventually the leaf turned yellow. So instead of misting it, I watered the dirt it was planted in, and just as they do in the desert, it leafed out within an hour or two, to take advantage of the "rain" it had just received.

Some day, if I take care of it, this little baby should grow to a magnificent tree. Yes, the ocotillo is not a cactus, it is a tree. You can tell when one is alive by looking for a green stripe running its length. The little curly "thorn" is actually a future leaf. The thorn on the end is where the plant will grow taller next time it rains.

My little yard and its friends

Oh, the joys of Midland.

One of the joys of living here in Midland is that I put a pond and stream in my backyard. Each day we have squirrels, pigeons, blue jays and other of God's creatures visiting us for a drink at harB's friendly oasis. There are other visitors - we have seen yellow tanagers, hummers, and once we had a hawk land for a drink briefly. He didn't leave a tip, but then hawks are known to be predators, and predators are by nature selfish.

Today we had about seven grackles. GA calls them Wal-Mart™ birds, because they like to hang around parking lots and feed on dropped food. You've seen these scavengers - they're not afraid of people or cars, and they stay just out of reach, hopping around looking for pizza crumbs. They're large and black, and they have an annoying "song," which I guess could be compared to heavy metal or something. Grackles are not my favored birds, because they poop on the bridge that spans the stream, and when they wash, they get oil in the water which clogs the filter. But birds are birds, and you can't be selective about who visits your water feature. That's nature. But at least they don't hang around long; they just come for a quick drink and a bath, and then go back to America's store.

Outside the fence is a large bed of harvester ants, sometimes known as Texas Red Ants. I leave them alone, because Midland is on the edge of fire ant territory, and the two species are battling for the turf. You can easily see a harvester ant bed, while a fire ant bed can sneak up on you when you're pulling weeds, and besides, fire ants hurt more and they're considerably more aggressive, so I favor the harvester ant any day. But the clincher is that the harvester ant is the only food source for the Texas horned lizard (or the "horny toad," to use the technical term) - when the harvester ants are driven out, the lizard disappears. They are already completely gone in the more rainy climates, such as Wichita county where I grew up. They used to be as common as tax increases in a non-election year.

I'm pretty much "green" and organic, but I make two exceptions: I will use fire ant bait, albeit sparingly, and I will use Roundup™ to control weeds. I'm told that Roundup goes inert when it hits the ground, and doesn't affect the soil, which is important to me. I feel bad about the fire ant bait, but you have to do what you have to do.

How to avoid a midlife crisis self-destruct

A MySpace friend once asked me how I avoided my midlife crisis. So I thought about that. I'm well past the age for it - if this is the middle of my life, I should live to be 110, and that ain't happenin' friends.

How did I avoid my midlife crisis?

I don't know. I kind of have this view of life that may be a little different. That could help. Then too, I had the advantage that when I should have been having it, my ex-wife apparently had hers instead, so the truly important things had their proper perspective for me.

See, I think what usually happens is that when you reach a certain age - not really old yet, but your prime is far enough behind that you understand mortality - you realize that youth isn't eternal after all, and gee, what if you're missing something. Other people have gorgeous babes and you don't - you're stuck with this woman who doesn't appreciate you or have sex with you often enough, and the next thing you know, if you're not careful, you're feeling sorry for yourself and objectivity goes out the window. You forget to consider that the proverbial grass on the other side may not be all it looks to be, and might be full of ticks and chiggers and sexy-but-evil bitches, and that you really have it pretty good with this person beside you who, incidentally, is tired too. Life isn't perfect for anybody, and you can forget that, and drop the treasure in your hand while you're reaching for that sparkling whatever-it-is just out of reach.

And that might have happened to me, too, if I had had a chance to choose it. I will never know. When reality is already kicking your little ass, it's hard to tell yourself it isn't waiting in the front yard for you to clean its teeth, and so you think about it with a little more objectivity, and you wait a bit before you go opening doors too quickly.

And so I feel happy about being 55, and I treasure my bride, and I enjoy being around the younger "kids" and try not to be frustrated by what they don't and can't possibly understand yet, and I am grateful that they allow me to hang around at all. I keep volunteering and staying busy, and visiting folks on MySpace, and taking fair advantage of my old age, just as the Red Hat ladies do. I cultivate that air of eccentricity so that people aren't shocked when I behave differently, and I have the freedom I never had when I was 30, because I wasn't in the theatre yet. I maintain a good sense of right and wrong, carefully arrived at, and I don't worry if somebody thinks I should do something as they do just because they say so. I choose my choices and live with the consequences, I drink because I enjoy it, I don't smoke because it's so destructive in the long term, I am careful not to hurt people (though I sometimes do inadvertently), and I'm not afraid to die. I love my friends to the risk of being hurt, and if I get hurt, that's life too. And every once in a while... not too often... I engage in run-on sentences. Deal with it.

So life is good, you see.