Stories

Six Words: Center, Particle, Constellation, Cinema, Requirement, Regret

I don’t know what you’re going to regret more this afternoon: this list of words or that you let a geek like me participate. You’ll probably think you’d rather be at the cinema, because I’m going to tell you a little bit about the God particle.

For most of us it was a requirement to learn some science in school. You probably learned something about atoms and that atoms are like a constellation with protons and neutrons in the center, and electrons spinning around them. That description of an atom was described in 1913 by Niels Bohr, so it is called the Bohr atom (NOT the bored atom, and I won’t bore you much longer).

When some students – surely not you – learned about the Bohr atom, they wondered why they needed to know that at all and hoped they could remember it long enough to pass a test. But not physicists. Physicists want to know what protons and neutrons and electrons are made of, and what makes them stick together. Today we know that the things that make them stick together are called bosons. There are also officers on ships called bosons, but they’re boss men, not sub-atomic particles. The bosons in atoms get their name because a man named Bose first identified them.

Of course physicists want to know what bosons are and the answer to that was proposed by a group of people, including a man named Peter Higgs. Because the Higgs boson was so hard to find, when Leon Lederman wrote a book about it, he was going to title the book, The God Damn Particle, but the publisher wouldn’t let him, so the title was shortened to The God Particle.

Class dismissed.

Six Words: Musical, Cattle, Kidney, Forget, Bottle, Aquarium

A lot of the fish that we eat is farm raised, and of course we can’t forget that all of the meat that we eat is farm raised. Fish and fish farms have some things in common with cattle and cattle farms. Cattle are kept from wandering away by fences. Fish are kept from wandering away by the edges of their container. Cattle farms are kind of musical because of the mooing and burping. If you’ve ever had an aquarium, you may have seen bubbles from fish burping, but you’ve never heard the sound of a fish’s burp.

Fish and cattle are both dependent on water for life. Cattle often have access to a stock pond where they drink, and wade, in water. Fish do everything in water. Fish and cattle both have kidneys and digestive tracts, and you know what that means. It means be careful where you fill your water bottle.

Six Words: Opponent, Factor, Ostracize, Shadow, Letter, Infect

The Health and Human Services Secretary is an opponent of vaccines! He has issued letters and policies to that effect. He doesn’t factor in how many people will get sick or how many children will be infected with preventable diseases. Some will suffer lifelong disabilities. Some will die. It is no wonder that he is ostracized by scientists and the medical community and even by his own family. Many members of his family cast a long shadow because of what they have contributed to this country. This man doesn’t cast a shadow at all. Neither do vampires.

(referring to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)

Six Words: Radiation, Determine, Dribble, Unlawful, Clinic, Governor

Radiation was never supposed to escape from the reactor. But as people started showing up at the clinic with their eyes glowing and an aura of light around their heads, the medical staff became suspicious that radiation probably was escaping, and not just a dribble of radiation. The head of the clinic contacted the head of the reactor and was surprised at her reaction. She said that they knew about the leak, that it had been going on for months, and they were working to determine the site of the leak and to fix the problem. She also said the governor was aware of the problem but didn’t want the public to know because it would cause panic and because the finances of the entire state would be impacted. She even said it would be considered unlawful to tell the press. What would you do if you were the clinic manager?

Six Words: Cooperation, Product, Ancestor, Cottage, Variety, Landowner

We’ve all seen cottage cheese. It’s sometimes served on the salad bar during brunch, so even if you’ve never bought it yourself, you’ve at least seen it. Most of us have eaten it. But have you ever wondered where it comes from?

The product looks a bit like cotton balls. One legend is that some clever landowner, living in a small cottage in a remote area, discovered a plant growing in his field, cultivated it, selected the variety that produced the whitest, roundest, largest balls of the stuff, and with refinement they became the ancestor of today’s cottage cheese. Then, with cooperation among landowners in neighboring cottages, the volume of cheese balls they were harvesting and storing in their cottages grew and grew and they realized there was a marketing opportunity for the stuff, even a way to get rich.

Speaking of ways to get rich, it turns out that the sap of the cottage cheese plants is also marketable. The first name they thought of for this sap was cotton juice, but people would probably think that is what you make cotton candy from. Many other names were considered as well, as they tried to settle on a way to become rich. As they brainstormed, they began writing down their ideas on a white board. At the top of the white board, they wrote a title line that said: “Way to get rich”.

Suddenly, one of them yelled: “That’s it, right there in front of our eyes.”

“What is?” asked the others.

We should call the sap “way”, but we need a catchy way to spell “way”. And that is how the whey, “w-h-e-y” sap from the plant and the ball part of the plant came to be products in our grocery stores today.

They even created a catchy jingle to help sell their product. You all know it:

Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her cheese balls and whey.

Six Words: Intervention, Category, Combine, Voyage, Identity, Realism

The pictures I took on the voyage combine several categories of living things and inanimate objects. In trying to capture nature, I hoped to show both realism and places where people had intervened. When a photograph is of a bird, it is a personal challenge to try to determine its identity. The software on my phone makes that much easier than it used to be, but is that cheating?

Six Words: Explain, Aware, Eavesdrop, Colleague, Venus, Picture

The Florida Congressman was not aware that people were eavesdropping when the Congressman was telling one of his colleagues that he had a picture of the Mount of Venus of one of the interns and explaining how he got it. It led to the resignation of the disgraced Congressman.

Six Words: Environmental, Poem, Animal, Dramatic, Reluctance, Serious

What kind of poem would an animal write
If an animal could write poems?
What kind of animal would write a poem about the environment?
Is there any animal that would not write about the environment?
Perhaps a fish in the ocean would be reluctant to write about the environment,
After all, the ocean is growing and warming.
For some fish warmer waters and more of it would be a blessing.
But for others, warmer waters mean they have to migrate to find the cold waters they require.
Forced migration is always dramatic.
Whether it is whales – yes, I know that whales are not fish, they just pretend to be,
Whether it is whales migrating hoping to find cold water,
Or people migrating to survive,
Migration is a serious endeavor,
And migrants never know when they’ll encounter ICE.

Six Words: Dinner, Parameter, Decrease, Composer, Deficit, Category

The Director of Dining is in the same category as a composer, creating a unique dinner menu for each evening. Given his budget parameters, he increases or decreases the cost per meal, insuring that he never runs at a deficit. We could have more steak if some people drank less wine, not naming names though.

Six Words: Other, Experience, Predator, Calendar, Orientation, Outfit

We’d been marking off the days for weeks. Our outfits had been carefully selected and packed. Finally the calendar had told us that it was time to get to the airport and fly off to our safari adventure. This was going to be an experience like no other we’d ever had.

After 36 hours of travel time, and settled in to our rondavel, we were ready for our first game drive. It began with our driver giving us an orientation. We were told to stay seated and not to wave our arms beyond the sides of the vehicle – especially if we saw predators. He explained that the animals seemed to view the vehicles as another animal, with four feet on the ground, eyes in front, and that could move very fast. But arms flapping around could indicate an animal in distress and we could become fair game ourselves.