HomeNovember 19, 1997
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why the sea is boiling hotWell, the sea is boiling hot isn't it? At least in equatorial Pacific where El Niño is at play. There was satellite picture of the earth in yesterday's paper showing the water temperature around the globe. The El Niño current showed up as a big white swatch near the equator. It was very obvious. Chet Raymo's column in the science section of the Boston Globe dealt with a group of New England weathermen visiting the oracle at Delphi to ask for predictions about the effect of El Niño on the New England weather this winter. The oracle claimed even Zeus can't predict the New England weather. What I really want to know is do weathermen in the rest of the country have as much fun as the ones in New England have all the time, or only in an El Niño year? whether pigs have wingsElliot is finally over his diarrhea. He spent 2 days at Dr. Grillo's last week while I was out sick, and he came back mysteriously cured. I say mysteriously because Dr. Grillo didn't actually do anything... This supports Roberta's theory that Elliot's problem is psychosomatic. I thought only humans could have psychosomatic illnesses. Since when does this happen to cats? Do pigs, dogs, cows, crows get psychosomatic illnesses? I felt a bit like I was working on an assembly line today. It seemed like dishes and litterboxes were multiplying right before my very eyes. I did dishes/litterboxes and load after load of laundry with single-minded focus on getting everything done by 11:30. Roberta has two exams today and so had to leave early. She also was not in a very talkative mood. Slinky could sense this and was a little combative. There's a new black cat named Bob (I think we used to have a big black cat named Bob a couple of years ago too but this is not the same one) who rubbed up against my shins most of the time that I stood at the sink. I don't know if it's me or the sink he likes. The news on the adoption board says we had 51 adoptions in October. Yet, we are full to overflowing again. Since nobody's sick right now we have well cats in the sick room - we have no place else to put them. Cats in the conference room. Cats in the office. Cats everywhere. Every one of them a unique individual with its own needs and habits. I marvel at how Dawna and Eileen can keep track of every single one of them by name. I'm lucky if I know half the names. Fortunately their charts have pictures. Japan storiesWhen I got home from the shelter, I showered and changed, ate lunch, and spent the rest of the afternoon sorting through the Japan pictures and rearranging them in the album in preparation for meeting Julie & Anthea for coffee. They specifically wanted to see the pictures, so I figured this was the time to reorganize them so they tell a story. I finished at 10 minutes to 4:00. I met Julie & Anthea at 4:00 as scheduled. Such timing. We sat with coffee and pictures until 6:00 swapping stories about Japanese food, Japanese toilets, trains, how life in Japan has changed since Tom & Julie lived there in the 1960's, everything. I told my daphniphyllum story with great drama - the bus creeping up the narrow road with the cliff falling away, the collapsed roadway, Curly backing up for several kilometers... all for the sake of a rare plant. Who knew botany was this dangerous? Anthea questioned my Latin pronunciation of the plant names, but I freely admitted to butchering the Latin. I did not, however, admit to having had 4 years of Latin in high school. That's just too painful to admit - it's like admitting to being severely overeducated. And the worst part of it is, the nuns were furious at me for switching to the scientific track so I could take physics instead of reading Virgil. I needed physics to get into MIT. There wasn't a single thing I needed Virgil for. Of course, I was wait-listed at MIT and never did go there except for one course as a special student many years later. But it was the principle of the thing. To do math/science/engineering stuff in college I was supposed to have physics in high school as well as chemistry. And even then Latin was dying out as a component of a well-rounded education. My friends in public school were not required to take any Latin at all and so few students took it that it became an extra-curricular activity instead of a regular course. So in the parochial school I slaved over Caesar's Gallic Wars, little knowing Latin would come in handy someday for plant names and bird names. I did endless experiments in the physics lab, did badly in chemistry, graduated at the top of my class, went to college, majored in math ... And I never did read Virgil, even in translation. |
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