Closing The Circle

I spent February 15 to 20 back in the Carolinas visiting my relatives, and in a very real sense it was the summation, and completion, of my life's journey.

Sometime in early childhood, maybe around three or four, we start to develop an awareness of an outside world of other people and different places. We start to explore it. It's as if our lives are a gigantic whiteboard and we take a marker and start tracing the path of our lives on that whiteboard. We go through childhood, then adolescence, then young adulthood, and into middle age and beyond. The line made by my marker on my life's whiteboard has often been a dizzying series of loops, swirls, starts and stops; sometimes I took two steps forward but then a step back. It would include stops in places like New York City, Dallas, San Diego, and Las Vegas along with various wives and significant others, assorted writing and editing jobs, flings of entrepreneurship, and periods of obsession with different interests and ideas.

I don't know if I'm typical, but at this point in my life I need to make sense of that line I drew on the whiteboard. It's not that I'm looking for the great cosmic meaning of it all, but I do want to see if there is some common theme, some coherence and sense in all those squiggles.

It was very emotional arriving in Charlotte on the afternoon of February 15. My condition is rapidly deteriorating, and I wanted to make the trip while I was still able to travel without special assistance. I also knew this would be my last chance to see my childhood home and relatives. As with all visits back to the Carolinas over the past two decades, the impact is disconcerting. Everything is so familiar, but everything is also so different. At times, I feel right back at home but at other times I feel like a total stranger.

I said goodbyes that week to many people and places. I visited the graves of my parents and grandparents for the last time and took soil from each; I will have that soil sprinkled on my body when it is cremated. I also got to see almost all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins together on Wednesday night when we all gathered at my Uncle Grady's house. That night, I was able to do something that I needed to do while I still could, and that was to take each of them aside and tell them to their face how proud I was to be related to them, how much I appreciated all the love and support they had given me over the years, and how much I loved them. It was an emotionally wrenching thing to do, but I had to do it and I'm glad I did.

Departing Charlotte on the morning of February 20 was depressing and heartbreaking. In fact, the only time I think I have felt more emotional pain was the death of my mother. I knew that morning I would never see my relatives and the Carolinas again. And I was in a very dark, anguished place as I waited to board my flight to Dallas.

But then I thought back to the gathering with my relatives on Wednesday, and how so many of the stories told were about other family members who had died. The stories were told with great love and affection; the virtues and good points of departed family members were suitably exaggerated while their shortcomings and failures were conveniently forgotten. There was much laughter as what the late members said and did were recounted, and for many minutes those departed members were once again alive and with us. It's on evenings like that you realize you can indeed live on forever in the memories and hearts of those who love you.

And then I also realized that one day they would be swapping stories about crazy cousin Butch----or "little Harry," as some still call me------and that on those evenings I would once again live in their hearts, with all my virtues enhanced and my shortcomings ignored.

That was the moment when I realized the marker I was using on my life's whiteboard had returned to the point where I first started drawing over five decades ago. That crazed, demented circle was finally closed, and I understood the message in all those loopy lines: the love of your family and friends is what makes life worthwhile.

I felt the sadness lifting as I waited for the plane to take off. Yes, I would never see my relatives or the Carolinas again, but they will always be with me in my heart. Things are playing out as they were meant to play out. I have no idea how the end will be, but I do know things will happen just as they are supposed to happen.

Oh, I know this must be confusing gibberish, especially if you are healthy or otherwise not looking down the barrel of a gun. But the world looks different to me than it did just a few months ago. Your perception changes radically once The Beast has you in its deathgrip. But thanks to that trip I made last week, I feel an acceptance of my fate and an inner peace about the sum of my life that it is both wonderful and liberating. And it is all because of my family and friends, and I love and thank all of you.

Five Years!!

Today is the fifth wedding anniversary for me and Di. We did the deed on February 13, 2004 at the Little Church of the West in Las Vegas. As I never tire of pointing out, that was where Elvis married Ann-Margaret at the end of Viva Las Vegas. It was a surprisingly dignified ceremony for Las Vegas. Di chose We've Only Just Begun by the Carpenters to be played while I, of course, selected Johnny Cash's Hurt.

I promised Di last year that I would be around for our fifth anniversary, and I kept that promise. But I know I won't be around for number six. However, I do promise to treasure her every day that I do have left. Di has been an enormous source of joy over the past five years. During my illness, she has been courageous, loyal, kind, and encouraging; there were times when I wanted to simply quit but she kept me moving forward and fighting back. It is no exaggeration whatsoever to say that without her I wouldn't still be alive to write these words.

Thank you, Di. I love you!

I've Been Fighting The Beast For A Few Days

I often say I have my good days and my bad days when it comes to my cancer. What does that mean? "Bad days" are ones in which I can literally feel my body under assault from the cancer and my immune system fighting back. The impact on me is fatigue bordering on exhaustion, a general feeling much like the flu without the fever or chills. As the disease progresses, my bad days are getting more numerous and worse, like the recent episode that began last Friday.

It began Friday afternoon with an increase in my level of fatigue coupled with a loss of appetite; I had to force myself to eat that evening. On Saturday morning, I didn't finish one breakfast pastry and my sole food for the rest of the day was a can of tomato soup. My big activity for the day was lying around watching television and reading. On Sunday, I was determined to do something, so Di and I did some grocery shopping. The bags of groceries felt like they weighed a ton as I brought them in from the car, and I promptly took a two hour nap when I was finished.

Monday was the worst. I couldn't force myself to eat anything other than drinking some milk. At times, I was physically shaking. My cognitive abilities were scrambled; I tried to read but I was unable to concentrate and found myself re-reading the same paragraph two or three times. By afternoon, I had given up and just lay on the bed. I thought, so, this must be what it will be like when I finally die from cancer. By 8:00 pm, I had to go to bed for the evening, and as I drifted off to sleep I had this nagging feeling that maybe this was it, that perhaps this was the night I would die. I know I'm supposed to have learned some message of courage and hope, or some profound philosophical insight, that I'm supposed to share with everyone. But I didn't. All I could think of was, wow, 56 years and all that I've been through, and it might end tonight with a slow motion fade-out. As the old Peggy Lee song once asked, "Is that all there is?"

But I awoke Tuesday morning. I was very weak, yet I didn't feel as totally emptied as I did on Monday. As Tuesday progressed, my appetite returned and so did my strength. I was able to focus on things again and I could think clearly. And today I feel 1000% better than I did 48 hours ago.

Somewhere inside me, my immune system won some battle against my cancer during the past few days. Maybe it was trying to invade some new organ, or that tumor on my liver was trying to expand some more. . . . . . . . I don't know, but I'm certain a victory of sorts was achieved. And I think I got an advance preview of what it will be like to die.

All in all, a very interesting few days. Now I need to get to work and catch up on some stuff!

The Petroglyphs At Steam Wells, California

You won't find Steam Wells, California on ordinary road maps; you'll need a U.S. Geological Survey map to find this petroglyph site. It is east of the semi-ghost town of Red Mountain, CA, on public land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management. To reach it, you take Highway 395 north off Interstate 15 until you reach the town of Red Mountain. Turn east onto Trona Road and follow it a couple of miles until you reach the turnoff for RM14444, a graded dirt road, on the right. At this point, you will be "behind" Red Mountain, a highly oxidized basaltic cinder cone that now has a reddish coloration. Because of the maze of dirt roads branching off from RM1444, you'lll need a good USGS map or directions from the local BLM office to find this site. While a 4WD vehicle isn't usually necessary, deep sand can accumulate on sections of the roads so a 4WD vehicle or a truck with a robust low gear is a good idea.

This is the high desert of southern California, with an elevation of about 3500 feet. Winter is a great time to visit, as it is cool and critters such as rattlesnakes are hibernating in their dens. You'll need to hike about a mile from the road to reach Steam Wells, and the petroglyph site is a basaltic outcropping that rises about one hundred feet over the surrounding area-----it is easily visible as you approach the site. Another clue you're getting close will be a distinctive "rotten egg" smell. This is a geothermally active area and steam wells were drilled to power mining activities at this location in the 1930s. While the wells have since been capped, they do leak enough to create an odor.

The petroglyphs are scraped into the basaltic boulders making up the outcropping. As you climb the outcropping, most of the boulders you'll see will have designs like the ones seen in the photos below:










When you reach the summit of the outcropping, you get an outstanding view of the surrounding desert------talk about being isolated!!-------and there are some petroglyphs at the top:


I have been reluctant to write about the Steam Wells petroglyphs because they have already been damaged by "outlaw archaeologists" who deal in the thriving black market for pre-Columbian artifacts. As you can see below, someone has very professionally cut away some of the petroglyphs, and those missing petroglyphs doubtlessly decorate the home or office of someone with more money than sense. Isolation and limited BLM resources makes sites like this sitting ducks for thieves.




After visiting the petroglyphs, you can follow your nose to the site of the actual steam wells, as shown below. I visited on a January day with the temperatures in the lower 40s, and I could actually see a few wisps of steam floating away from the well nozzles. The smell got a lot worse the closer you got to the wells, so I didn't spend much time there!

Friends I Miss

Okay, so technically these people are not "family." That doesn't mean I can't miss our former neighbors when Di and I lived on the Bar Nothing Ranch.

Below are Sherrie and Leslie. They were the queen bees of the "Loop" (as we referred to Pine Valley Loop, the road on which they and we lived) and were organizers of the social scene. Sherrie is a sales engineer for Teology in Austin, and Leslie was the realtor who represented the original owners of the Bar Nothing Ranch. Like us, Sherrie and Leslie owned and rode horses, and the four of us spent many nice weekend afternoons riding along the trails in the area. They swore that had seen the "ghost donkey," a pure white donkey/ghost supposedly seen by some along the Loop on moonless nights (they were absolutely serious in claiming this). Sherrie and Leslie also hosted the annual Super Bowl Loop party, and this Sunday's game has me thinking about them and all the people who will be gathered there. Sherrie and Leslie were also the best damn pair of lesbian cowgirls in the entire state of Texas, IMHO. I gave them my 4-inch refractor telescope as a going-away present last May; I hope they are using it to stargaze under those wonderful dark skies.


Another great couple on the Loop was Wanda and Stuart Schoop, shown below. Wanda is a survivor of ovarian cancer, and was an invaluable resource when I first was diagnosed back in April, 2006. There is no one who can give you the straight, unexpurgated truth about cancer like another cancer patient; Wanda was more informative about the effects of radiation and chemo, and how to cope with them, than any of the medical professionals I dealt with back them. Stuart was extremely helpful because he continued to interact with me as he always had, never slobbering over me with pity or even acknowledging I was sick. And I loved that, because when talking with Stuart I was "Harry" again instead of "Harry the cancer patient." When I spent time with Stuart, I could almost forget that I had a big problem and felt semi-normal again.


Wanda and Stuart often held get-togethers at their home, a place they called "Sloppy Pines." It had a wonderfully eclectic decor, featuring plenty of signs and posters, Japanese pinball machines, an al fresco bar room, etc, Below is a photo of Stuart and me being goofy one night at their place; my "lobster face" is the result of some radiation treatments the previous week:


The get-togethers also produced some of my favorites photos of me and Di, like the one below. I am being goofy, while Di is being cute. I like this one because it shows Di wearing her glasses instead of her contacts, and I know using this photo will really piss her off good:



When you reach the point in life that I'm now at, your friends------past and present-----become very, very precious to you. The memories of the good times you shared with them sustain you on dark days. I have been very lucky to have known people like Sherrie, Leslie, Wanda, Stuart, and, most of all, Di. And there are many more I need to mention on this blog-----I'll get to it. But until then, I say THANK YOU to everyone out there that I have been fortunate enough to have counted among my friends!

Interesting Stuff In The News

I haven't felt much like writing lately, but I have run across some interesting things in the past week:

• Sometimes I get the feeling the feeling theoretical physicists are just jerking us around. Exhibit A: now they're telling us the universe is just a giant hologram. This is intriguing, mindbending stuff to read, but I really do think too many theoretical physicists are painting themselves into the same intellectual corners that medieval theologians did with their speculations about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. They are constructing theories that are inherently untestable, theories for which no observational evidence is available, theories that might be nothing more than epic works of mathematical fiction. String theory is perhaps the best current example of this obsession with the unprovable, and here's a nice demolition of string theory.

• I recently raised the possibility of a sudden collapse of the Mexican government as being a big problem for the Obama administration. It's a relief to see some people in the U.S. government are taking that possibility seriously. I have bookmarked the web sites for many newspapers in border cities (like Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo, and El Paso in Texas) and reading them gives powerful evidence the situation in northern Mexico is getting very grim; civil authority in many areas has already essentially broken down-----in some regions, there is even evidence the Catholic hierarchy has been co-opted by narco money. Mexico could turn into a monstrous problem very rapidly, even though most large media outlets (with the notable exception of the Los Angeles Times) continue to resolutely ignore the situation.

• Magazines are going through the same rough times as newspaper and book publishers, and the Magazine Death Pool web site chronicles the latest victims. The "Museum of Dead Magazines" link at that site is worth a visit for the nostalgia factor alone-----hey, I remember Crawdaddy and Omni!!

• People who get a diagnosis of advanced, probably terminal, cancer invariably react in one of two ways: 1) they accept the news straightforwardly, are honest with themselves and others as to what's happening, and have no patience for self-deception and bullshit about what's going on, or 2) they immediately go into denial about their situation and enter a world of magical thinking, a world in which a refusal to say the word "cancer" and positive, upbeat thoughts are all you need to beat the disease. I'm a type 1) cancer patient. Steve Jobs is a classic type 2) cancer patient. I don't know the details of Jobs's prognosis, but I don't have to; I've run into plenty of people like him in oncologists' waiting rooms, chemotherapy infusion centers, radiation oncologists' waiting rooms, etc., since 2006. I know the type well by now: often very intelligent and high achievers, but utterly unable to accept the notion something bad has happened, and is happening, to them and there is essentially nothing they can do except hope for some good luck. In talking with such fellow patients, I have often been stunned at how irrational and genuinely delusional such otherwise intelligent people can be. Steve needs to stop kidding himself about his situation and what's going to happen; it's a lot better to spend your remaining time enjoying your family, friends, and life than it is to waste it in a futile attempt to convince yourself that reality isn't real.

• I grew up in the segregated South. I remember "whites only" signs in restaurants, hotels, laundromats, waiting areas in airports and train stations, as well as separate entrances for blacks in places like movie theaters (blacks were usually exiled to the balcony, leaving floor level seats for whites). Segregated schools, a total absence of black voters in any election, casual use of racial slurs in everyday conversation. . . . . . . . . I remember all of that very well. Even as recently as a decade ago, I never thought I would live to see the election of a black man as president. And that makes tomorrow's inauguration perhaps the most memorable event of a life in which I have already been lucky enough to witness some truly amazing events. No longer will be the notion of a non-white president be considered remarkable, and that will truly be a marvelous thing for this country. I am proud to say that I voted for Obama in the Texas primary and caucuses, in the general election, and also donated to his campaign. I wish him the best.

• While I supported Obama, I didn't------as did too many of his supporters------fall in love with the man. While I respected his obvious intelligence, I worried about his inexperience and what I felt was an excess of idealism and a lack of pragmatism. (I had no such doubts about John McCain; I was fully confident, and his campaign bore this out, that he was a senile, bewildered old fool prone to panic-driven snap decisions.) Obama strikes me as a guy who would make a great chess player, for chess is a game of pure logic in which the relative strengths of the players' positions are visible to the entire world. But life and politics are like poker. You don't know which cards the other players are holding and deception and bluff are inherent parts of the game. And I worry about whether Obama has spent too much time in the rarefied air of law school faculties and the Senate to have developed the necessary instincts to determine if his counterpart from China, Russia, or a Middle Eastern state is really holding a pair of aces or is trying to bluff with a two and a seven off-suite. My worry is that Obama might be like Jimmy Carter, another idealistic, not-too-worldly type who reacted with genuine shock to the news the USSR had invaded Afghanistan: why, Leonid Brezhnev gave me his personal word he wouldn't do such a thing!! (That's an absolutely true story, by the way.) My fears in this regard have mounted as Obama has populated his administration with retreads from the Clinton administration, including the ultimate retread of all. I consider the Clintons to be breaded-deep-fried-and-served-with-hushpuppies versions of Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, and I strongly, sincerely believe Obama will eventually curse the day he decided to make Hillary Secretary of State. I think that will come in early 2011, when Hillary resigns and makes blistering criticisms of Obama's ineptitude in foreign affairs. And the next day, by remarkable coincidence, the "Hillary2012.com" web site will go live and the fun will really begin.

Remember, you read it here first.

The Moving Rocks Of The Racetrack Playa, Death Valley National Park

I love Death Valley National Park. When I lived in California, I spent many winter days and nights exploring, hiking, and camping in it. It has a stark, harsh beauty that touched something deep within me. I know the park so well, especially the backcountry and off-road areas, that I could be a ranger there. I have told Di that I wouldn't mind having my ashes scattered in Death Valley after my death.

Death Valley is full of geological wonders, and perhaps none is so remarkable as the Racetrack Playa, a dry lakebed at the northern end of the park. Rocks move across the surface of the Racetrack Playa for reasons we don't yet fully understand.

The Racetrack Playa is reached via a 27-mile dirt road that begins near Ubehebe Crater. Below is a photo of my beloved 4Runner at the start of the road. While the sign says a 4WD vehicle is recommended, the road is generally well-graded enough for most passenger cars. However, the surface is very "washboardy" and a rugged vehicle with a robust suspension is a good idea.


An interesting stop on the way to the Racetrack is Teakettle Junction. For reasons now lost in history, visitors hang teakettles from the sign marking this junction. I didn't have a teakettle to leave, but I did get a kick out of the sign:


The Racetrack Playa is about 2.5 miles long and 1.5 miles wide. In the middle of it is an outcropping of dark basaltic rock called the Grandstand. Below is a view across the Racetrack toward the Grandstand:


The surface of the Racetrack Playa is a hard-packed mixture of dried clay and silt. The drying process has produced a mosaic-like pattern of cracks. When I walked across it, I found the surface to be a little slick, even though it was dry, and remarkable free from dust and particles. I attribute this to the near-constant wind that was blowing during the day:


I walked out to the Grandstand. As you can see, there is erosion around the fringes of the basalt, and the rocks that travel across the Racetrack originate from here:


Here is one of the rocks as it moves away from the Grandstand:


The "trail" left by the rock above was clearly visible to the naked eye, although it came across as faint in the photo below. I've tweaked the color and contrast in the photo below to make it more visible, although the clarity will depend on the resolution of your display:


Here is one link telling more about the Racetrack Playa and here's the official U.S. Geological Survey page about the Racetrack.

A trip to the Racetrack Playa isn't a casual jaunt, but well worth the effort!

More Upheavals In Book Publishing

Ya know, I got out of book publishing just in time. Sometimes I feel like an airplane passenger who arrives at an airport to connect to another flight, and later hears his original flight crashed shortly after taking off from the connecting airport.

Here's exhibit A from yesterday's New York Times. And despite the fey "everything's gonna be fine!" response at the end from the well known has-been Michael Korda, I suspect most people in book publishing today know the good times are really gone forever and things will never be the same again.

A lot of these changes are long overdue. In particular, the return on investment for sales conferences and trade shows such as BookExpo America has been very, very questionable for over a decade; they are more like class reunions, with plenty of opportunities for excessive drinking and extramarital fornication, than they are serious business meetings. In the professional and technical publishing areas I'm most familiar with, I've long questioned the effectiveness of spending to attend and exhibit at various professional society meetings. Two decades ago, I was at Academic Press and each month marketing would circulate sales reports showing how many books were sold at events like a regional meeting of biochemists. Now it might seem impressive to have sold $1500 of books in two days at such an event, but when you added up the travel costs of having an editor and marketing person attend the event and staff the booth, and then you did the math, and you realized Academic Press actually lost almost $2000 by exhibiting and selling books there. . . . . . . . . . witnessing that sort of nonsense firsthand is one of the things that motivated Carol Lewis and I to leave Academic Press to found HighText/LLH.

Robert Gottlieb, quoted in the Times article, is correct when he says excessive spending on travel and entertainment is "small potatoes" compared to other problems publishing faces. But the waste on travel and entertainment is symptomatic of the poor management found throughout much of the publishing industry. Exhibit B is this story from the Wall Street Journal. The author of that piece is an associate professor at the Harvard Business School, and it is more than a little worrisome that someone responsible for training the next generation of business leaders does not recognize the book publishing strategy she describes, with what seems to be approval, is actually nothing more than the strategy of a sucker at a Las Vegas blackjack table with all their chips bet on a hand, sitting on 17, and asking the dealer to hit them with another card. That's not a "strategy"; that's desperation!

The real problem with book publishing today is the number of parasites consuming the revenue stream from the end purchaser. There is the discount given to the retailer. . . . . . and the "co-op" payments to retailers to get shelf space for a publisher's titles. . . . . . and the additional discounts to wholesalers like Ingrams which service smaller booksellers and small orders from larger stores. . . . . and don't forget shipping and printing costs, both of which have grown faster than the list prices of books.

There is hope among some publishers the practice of allowing retailers to return unsold books for credit can be abolished. But doing that is going to be about as easy as getting a junkie off heroin. More promising would be a rapid expansion and use of print-on-demand technology to allow the same just-in-time inventory management techniques that many other industries are now using. The practice of sinking a lot of capital into printing a big inventory of books----and the costs of shipping, storing, and processing that inventory-----is something the book industry can't sustain much longer. Sadly, I see very few larger publishers willing, or able, to consider alternatives to the existing printing and distribution model.

Meanwhile, Google is moving ahead in digital publishing while most print publishers are passively watching. It wouldn't surprise me if Google isn't the largest "publisher" in the world in a couple of decades.

Speaking of Google, I am amazed and dismayed at how inept book publishers are in using tools like Google's AdWords and AdSense to direct web searchers to their titles. Try this experiment: enter the term "programming C#" in Google and see what you get in terms of ads on the search results. You get ads for contract C# programmers, C# programming seminars and classes, etc., but no ads for books on C# programming. Brain dead. . . . . . . . just brain dead.

Yet I wish I was in good health and able to work long hours, because there are sensational opportunities out there for entrepreneurs willing to embrace the digital publishing revolution. The iPhone appears to be emerging as a very potent eBook platform (more here). I look forward to seeing what creative, visionary publishing people will do with these new tools.

2009

A new year was once a time of great plans and goal setting for me. Since getting cancer, it's become a more contemplative, introspective time. This past New Year's Eve/Day was a somewhat somber time for me. I've survived longer than most other patients with my prognosis, but the luck I've often referred to here is starting to run out. I have experienced a significant physical decline since Thanksgiving; I'm really feeling the "tumor load" on my body and, if life is a chess game, then I have definitely entered the end game. With the physical decline has come something of a mental and emotional decline as well. I no longer enjoy doing many of the things I have enjoyed in the past (like writing or playing with my radio equipment) and I am often beset with this puzzling lassitude and indifference. As I told Di a couple of days ago, I sometimes feel like someone who has stayed too long at a party and needs to leave. I have no doubt my physical deterioration is starting to have an impact on my mental state.

Normally I'd be optimistic and bubbly at the start of a new year, but this year I am under no illusions. I know 2009 will be a bad year. I can see the storm clouds approaching. I know I am going to get stomped hard in 2009, and there is nothing I can do to prevent that from happening. All I can do is get a good grip, grit my teeth, and try to be as stoic as I can in dealing with what's ahead.

I probably won't be updating this blog as often as I've been doing; most days I just don't have the motivation. But I'll try to keep posting interesting things about the places I've visited and items in the news; I don't want to turn this into a poor-poor-pitiful-me whinefest.

I greatly enjoyed the Twilight Zone marathon on the SciFi channel yesterday. I especially liked the "Monsters on Maple Street" episode. This involved a sudden power and telephone system failure in a small town at the same time a large, bright meteor was seen. Very soon, the anxious, nervous townspeople start wondering what happened and why, and the people soon disintegrate into a hysterical mob convinced the meteor was a flying saucer, the power and telephone failure was caused by the flying saucer, and that space people are in their town preparing to take over Earth. The townspeople start suspecting each other-----even children-----of being "space people," and one neighbor even gets shot in the panic. Of course, none of them are "space people," and the episode was actually a powerful commentary on the McCarthy era. But it still has relevance today as a warning against allowing your fears to dominate your common sense and to not see "monsters" where there are only shadows. It's a warning applicable to entire nations, and also to people like me facing an uncertain future. I'll try to keep it in mind as 2009 goes forward.

I hope everyone has a great 2009 and my best wishes to all of you! Thanks for visiting and reading here!

Links To Stuff I've Been Reading

I haven't been feeling well lately and haven't felt much like blogging, but I've been reading some interesting things I'd like to------as Rod Serling used to say on The Twilight Zone-----submit for your consideration:

• The Greensburg, KS tornado of May 4, 2007 was a F5 monster that destroyed that unfortunate town. It was also just one of several violent storms in Oklahoma and Kansas that evening. It now seems as if those storms were part of an extraordinarily rare meteorological event-----a cluster of "inland cyclones" and "super tornadoes"------that caused the parent thunderstorms to develop eyewalls, much like hurricanes, and the Greensburg tornado to reach a width of four miles on the ground! That link is to a discussion on the Stormtrack.org website; it's often detailed, and not easy, reading but is a fascinating look at the same phenomenon that may well have produced the great 1925 Tri-State Tornado. (It now seems, based upon the data gathered from the Greensburg tornado, that the Tri-State Tornado was probably a single tornado rather than a series of them.) Tornadoes are produced by super-cell thunderstorms, and it now appears on rare occasions that super tornadoes may be produced by super super-cell thunderstorms! As one of the participants in the Stormtrack discussion asks, can you imagine what a storm like this would do if it hit a populated area like Kansas City, Oklahoma City, or Dallas?

• As if that's not enough to worry about, there has been a swarm of earthquakes under the caldera of the Yellowstone supervolcano. Let's face it; we're all doomed.

• A web site called Strange Maps is worth everyone's attention!

• Don't look now, but the government of Mexico is coming apart at the seams and could collapse at any moment, producing widespread chaos and mega-problems for the United States. Think I'm kidding? The cause is the war between Mexican drug cartels and the wobbly, post-PRI Mexican government, and the Mexican government is currently losing. The Los Angeles Times is covering this situation very well. Visit that link, read the stories, ponder how long a border we share with Mexico, further ponder how open and undefended it is, and then shudder. President Obama's first major foreign policy crisis may not be in the Middle East or Russia, but instead on our southern doorstep.

• I'm so old that I remember when Caroline Kennedy used to be Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. Behind her Senate bid is less a commitment to public service than an apparent desire to frustrate the senatorial ambitions of a former "associate member" of the extended Kennedy political clan.