John Wise

Yikes, just sat down at Starbucks and in 15 minutes I need to write something, but I have no ideas about a subject. The reason I’m in a hurry is that I must leave shortly to pick up Caroline from her office. So here are some random observations: One guy just ran in for the toilet. He was smiling on the way in and I noticed a bandage on his elbow like he had been donating plasma earlier. His backpack and state of clothes suggested homelessness, but not in the way that had me thinking he’d been on the street long. He emerged too quickly to stoke the imagination regarding drug use so I’ll let that go.

I see two students studying together, from the size of the books it looks like nursing school. An elderly couple is sitting in the soft chairs reading the newspaper; who reads the newspaper anymore? Across from me is a guy with glasses and full headphones with a large notebook computer plugged in, giving me the impression of a gamer, then I spot the game controller under the table confirming my ideas of pigeonholing him. Drive-thru is keeping the staff busy and a slow trickle of people continually enters the lobby, but it’s slow for a Friday afternoon. There’s a 65-ish-year-old woman sitting out front with short-cropped reddish hair; she’s overweight and reading a book about Berlin. I’m getting the sense of my mother sitting out there, except my mother is dead.

Earlier this morning, instead of writing, I was testing some website functionality that resulted in the owner of the company throwing $100 of free software my way. The guy is Michael Hetrick who makes VST’s a.k.a. music plugins. Years ago, while he was writing his thesis about modular software units based on Eurorack designs, I’d made a contribution to his efforts. Today he said thanks again and let me know that his gift was a token of his gratitude. I am touched by his generosity. Afterward, still before noon, I ran into Kenny from HEK Yeah BBQ at Costco and after completing my shopping proceeded to go to his place for an early lunch. While we were at Costco he picked up some rib-eyes that he would be smoking this afternoon, so that, along with some asparagus, will be dinner.

Currently, it’s a pleasant 72 degrees with cloudy skies while it was over 95 degrees and windy just two days ago. I’m about to turn down the computer after I hit “save draft” as Caroline will go over this for grammatical issues and ensure I’m making sense (not always a sure thing). With the computer packed up, it’ll be time to start our weekend as soon a the wife is in the car.

I’ve been working on writing five different things, but none of them are ready for the light of day yet. One is my version of a fairy tale, one is a dark piece, one about death, another on things mundane, and finally, the last one is a return to the subject of time. Regarding time, this is not a look at my usage of it or others who waste it; instead, I’m looking at the very nature of what it is. Then a hint about the entry on death: I’ll be considering how little I can know about it and that I’ll never be able to convey anything about it from my own experience in a blog entry.

Been dealing with a few dozen loose ends that pertain to many things in our lives as we get ready for summer, a kind of spring cleaning. Finished our taxes today, that’s always a relief. Then there are all the other things that need clearing out before any serious travels can commence.

Trying to get a lens that I’ve dropped repaired for the fourth time, this time to fix a dented front filter ring that is stopping me from attaching and removing a polarizer. It was just this past July that I’d sent it in to repair most of its guts as the auto-focus no longer functioned and some broken interior piece was causing serious zooming issues with the lens when we were in Europe last year. Previous to that it was a dysfunctional image stabilization system. If you think I should change brands from Canon to something else, you’d be mistaken. This 17-55mm f2.8 lens has snapped well north of 150,000 images for me and is simply perfect. That lens has taken photos in the wilds of Alaska for more than 30 days, it’s been weeks in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, visited Death Valley and Yellowstone where it encountered hot and cold extremes.

Today I received the first firmware update to the Bionic Lester MK3 that is really allowing the filter to feel like a real module. Sound in and out is a bit limiting, but with some modulation capability life begins to be injected into the thing.

Caroline had her hair trimmed today by Sydney who’s been taking care of these duties for nearly a decade now. I’m out this evening writing this stuff (look at the time stamp on the iced tea above) because the wife is out for dinner with her coworkers who are dining with a visitor that had come into town. The big news though which should probably be a blog entry of its own is that Caroline is starting to move the ball forward in trying to resolve her need for dual citizenship. You see Caroline is still a German citizen working with a Permanent Resident card a.k.a. the Green Card. There are reasons for desiring both German and American citizenship and maybe someday I’ll write about what they are, as of today it was simply getting some documents notarized for sending them off to Cologne, Germany.

So not a lot to share that has any real novelty. Some might say that has been true of many of my entries, but these are for Caroline and me and the digital memory that will be constructed by an A.I. in the future from these fragments. That memory will effectively be a shadow of me representing an artistic interpretation of a person born in the middle of the 20th century. Hmmm, I should write a blog entry just about that, titled “A.I. John and how the landscape turned digital.”

How often do you step outside on a bright clear day to look deep into the sky and seriously ponder that you are looking at the same sky you see at night except now the air has its oxygen molecules illuminated by the star burning almost 93 million miles away in space?

Do many people take pause to consider that the gas around them not only sustains our lives but also colors our view of space? Twenty-one percent of the air is oxygen which is tinted blue compared to the 78% nitrogen that has no color and is transparent. In the evening when photons are mostly absent, we can easily see through our atmosphere and take notice of the bright specks of light known as stars.

The clouds are densities of water crystals whose particles are significantly larger than oxygen molecules and instead of scattering blue they scatter the white light of the sun and our clouds appear in their distinct billowy puffs that drift effortlessly against the dramatic blue background.

This all happens for the majority of us out of sight and out of mind, but we should never take this incredible bit of science for granted, as it is the complex relationship of systems that are essential to sustaining our version of life.

Have you stopped to watch a cloud form or seen it simply disappear into the blue? I’d venture to guess that most people who live in urban settings have watched more television than they’ve consciously gazed upon the heavens above.

Sometimes I don’t realize how lucky I am that we see blue skies over Arizona nearly every day, including stormy days. I’ve lived in a city for 10 years where the majority of the year seemed to have cloud cover that obscured the sky beyond more often than not. It wasn’t easy to visit the ocean or a large body of water either. Although I’m now in a desert, Caroline and I haven’t encountered too much resistance to making our way to America’s waterways and oceans. This though is a luxury while looking out upon the sky merely requires us to go outside.

Consider how amazing the opportunity is to see with our own eyes the play of elements that flash within the minds of humans fortunate enough to comprehend the reality of the sky above us. We are here only momentarily to see it for ourselves, but do we choose to witness this spectacle firsthand, or do we remain oblivious to how profound this part of the world around us truly is?