Blogging Regularly Is Hard

It has been nearly two months since I did anything on the blog. Today, I finished Part 2 of the Newfoundland Trip Report, more than three months since these events happened. Let me state here for the record that I have nothing but the utmost respect for those people who manage to juggle career, family, and social life -- and who still manage to post more than once a week. And I am in awe of those people who actually manage to write coherently and post on their blog daily or near daily.

What We Did Last Summer -- Part 2 -- Free in the Harbour

Continued from Part 1.

Saturday, July 29. The George Street Music Festival was on, the hotel was full, and there was a room party going on across the hall. Despite this, we had very little trouble sleeping and only moderate difficulty dragging ourselves out of bed on Saturday morning. In the room next door, Chris, Liza, Cameron and Robin had a similar experience -- the drug of exhaustion helped to put all of us to sleep and keep us there.

In the morning, we had a leisurely breakfast after we hooked up with Bernard, Jean, and Erin. It was an opportunity to socialize and renew acquaintances. In 1997, during the months that the NewTel project had lasted, I had had dinner with Bernard and Jean and their children several times. That was where I developed a fondness for the Newfoundland "Jigg's Dinner".



After breakfast, we walked along the waterfront. The harbour was obscured by mist and fog, and fog was rolling down the heights on the other side of the harbour. The Narrows -- the entrance to the harbour, or from our perspective, the exit from the harbour to the Atlantic Ocean beyond -- was completely invisible in the fog.


Along the waterfront, we saw a private yacht -- the Charade, which I later learned had been formerly owned by Paul Allen of Microsoft, and had been the vessel on which Bill and Melinda Gates had spent their honeymoon in Hawaii. We also saw what appeared to be a Portuguese Ministry of Fisheries vessel, and several local fishing trawlers.

Bernard, Jean and Erin left after our walk, after guiding us to the parking lot of the Johnson Geological Centre, on Signal Hill, midway to the top. The day remained gray and threatening. The Johnson Centre is a science museum, focusing primarily on the geology and geomorphology of Newfoundland. It is a modern, world-class place -- everything that the Ontario Science Centre will become again when its modernization is complete.


The gray and threatening day had devolved into a rainstorm which had slackened to an occasional drizzle. We went from the Johnson Centre to the top of Signal Hill with high winds plucking at us. The top of Signal Hill is one of my favorite places in St. John's. To our vast collective disappointment, the Cabot Tower -- and the museum inside -- were closed that day due to those high winds.


Signal Hill has a commanding view of the harbour, the Narrows, and Fort Amherst on the other side, guarding the harbour's entrance. Lost in the mist beyond Fort Amherst, we could also see a hint of the spit of land that was Cape Spear. In the time that we were on Signal Hill, a couple of the fishing trawlers that we had seen earlier put out to sea, sailing through the Narrows headed out into the Atlantic, retracing the course of countless ships through the ages leaving St. John's.


We spent a couple of hours on Signal Hill before we returned to the hotel.

That evening, Erin came by with pizza to handle child care. With the children secure and with Erin's pizza and a couple of movies to guarantee at least limited tractability on their part, Jill, Chris, Liza, and I went out for steaks.

We ate at Peter Belbin's Steak House and Salad Bar on Duckworth Street -- a meal that was both memorable and satisfying. And let me note that when I worked in Newfoundland years ago, we definitely didn't eat like this. I had a lobster with my steak. It was served with the top half standing up and with the claws outspread, a presentation which caused us much laughter. I developed a taste for lobster late in life, but based on my (admittedly limited) sampling, I would have to say that lobster from Newfoundland tastes better than any lobster than I've had anywhere else -- undoubtedly due to the cold deep waters where the lobsters grow.

Sunday, July 31. I spoke with Kevin at his cottage. Modern technology - in this case, cell phones - are wonderful! We packed up the children, got groceries, and headed off to Kevin's cottage. On the way, we had a minor navigation glitch -- we missed an on-ramp that kept us on the Trans-Canada Highway, and found ourselves in Conception Bay South, where we had to retrace our route.

Back on the main highway, the weather changed suddenly and we went from a cloudy day to torrential downfall conditions. There was so much rain that water pooled on the road, and several times the van hydroplaned or gave indications that it was on the verge of hydroplaning. Chris, who was driving, kept us on the road and safe.

We followed Kevin's instructions to his cottage, where I introduced Kevin to Chris and Liza and the children. Kevin and Jill needed no introductions -- they had met in '97 when Jill came out to Newfoundland to visit me while I worked there. Kevin introduced us to his wife Jen and to the children -- Maryanna, Liam and baby Gavin, and to the host of other guests who dropped by through the course of the afternoon to visit.


Within an hour of our arrival, the sky cleared, and the children did some swimming off the end of the dock. Maryanna, in particular, demonstrated her affinity for moving effortlessly through the water.


At dinner that night, Robin (aged four and a half) said to Jen, "Do-Ming thinks he's smarter than I am." Pausing, she continued, "I just let him think that!"

When we left that night, Jen solemnly promised Robin that she would keep her secret.

On the way back to the hotel, we had a minor adventure -- somewhere along the way, there had been a tire puncture -- the passenger side front tire was flat. By this point, it was late, and the children were asleep in the back of the van. With the user manual for the van, Chris' LED flashlight, and a friendly motorist who stopped to help, we were able to extract the jack, lift up the van, find and remove the spare, and finally change the tire. For future reference, note that the spare for the Dodge Caravan is stored in a well underneath the rear deck of the van, and you have to unscrew an oddly arranged retaining bolt in order to release it onto the ground.

For the most part, the children remained asleep, and we made it back to the hotel with no further incident.

Monday, July 31. Jill's birthday was sunny, bright, and warm -- the very antithesis of Saturday or Sunday.

I took the van to a Canadian Tire store (which we had seen coming in from the airport) and had them replace the tire. After the tire repair was complete, I went back to the hotel, picked everyone up, and proceeded on to the first of the day's activities -- the Visitor Centre on Signal Hill.


From the Visitor Centre, it was a short walk to Gibbet Hill. The children found blueberries and partridge berries growing on the ground and the slopes. They all raced up, mountain goat-like, but I struggled -- the climb was another demonstration of how overweight and out of shape I have become. Despite my exertions, the sunshine was enjoyable :-) And I didn't die of a heart attack.



By early afternoon, we went down to the waterfront, where we bought tickets for a three hour boat tour. For the record, the boat was called Iceberg Quest 2, not the S.S. Minnow :-)

Our trip on the tour boat took us out through the harbour, past the Narrows, and out toward Cape Spear.


Once out on the ocean, I looked back toward land and saw the Cabot Tower on top of Signal Hill.


The day remained warm and sunny and clear, with only a hint of clouds in the sky. The boat operators insisted that all the children be in life jackets -- a requirement which added to the sense of adventure.


But the main purpose of the tout was whale watching, and we were not disappointed. In celebration of Jill's birthday, a female humpback whale and her calf swam beside the boat for much of the outbound leg of the tour, at one point coming within a couple of boat widths. When they spouted, my glasses got covered with a fine, warm mist -- I had to scrub off my glasses before I could see again. The boys giggled and made remarks about whale snot.


For his birthday in May, Corwin had been given a digital camera -- he used it to take the shot above of a humpback fluke breaking the water as the whale rolled and dived.

Humpback whales can be identified as individuals by the variations in the pattern on the edge of their tail fluke. This next shot, zoomed up, would provide appropriate data to allow identification of this individual.


All good things end. The boat reached the headland of Cape Spear, and followed along the coast, allowing the tour guide to point out the caves in the cliffs before turning back. There are two lighthouses at Cape Spear, dating back to the 1800s. Later in the afternoon, we would be getting close-up looks at them.


We encountered the same pair of whales on the return leg. Our last sight of mother and calf were their two tails in the air as they sounded, a cetacean wave "goodbye".


After we returned from the boat tour, we collected our faithful van from the parking garage. Total cost for parking, in the downtown business district of St. John's on a weekday -- less than ten dollars. This was a sum that caused those of us familiar with equivalent prices in downtown Toronto to smile widely.

For the rest of the afternoon, we went on a road trip to Cape Spear, which we had seen earlier from the boat. Cape Spear is the most eastern point of the North American continent. We managed to get there after correcting from a wrong turn which got us a chance to see a bit more of the countryside around St. John's.



The two pictures above are probably my favourite shots from the entire trip. After parking at Cape Spear, we made our way upward, toward the two lighthouses. I stopped to rest, and Corwin and Robin spent a few minutes with me, hanging out. Jill was there to catch the moment on camera.


So I posted the photo above to demonstrate my quintessential lack of respect for authority :-) However, the sign itself is puzzling. Unlike many other locations at Cape Spear where the path would give way to sudden sheer drops down to lethal looking rocks, this place was a nice and gradual descent to a sheer cliff -- not nearly as apparently dangerous as some other spots.

The photo below documents an interesting architectural detail of the smaller lighthouse. This building design apparently requires windows to be placed in particular locations on the building facade. However, glass windows are weak points on walls of structures built on top of the cliffs at Cape Spear, where they are subjected to extremes of wind and storm-driven rain. The builders recognized that windows were not a good idea, so they compromised -- the lower right hand window, as well as the upper left and upper right are fakes -- artfully constructed of framing wood and paint. This elegant solution allowed the requirements of form to be met without the demands of function taking a hit.


The final Cape Spear photo is a group shot of all of us. Behind us, only a couple of metres away, is one of those sheer drops I have discussed earlier -- complete with not only lethal rocks, but dangerous looking waves to generate enough undertow to drag away the lifeless body of anyone who fell. However, at the moment the shot was taken, we are all as far East as we have ever been while still in North America, and the entire population of the continent are west of us.

The ending to Jill's birthday was marked by dinner at a chain restaurant (in deference to the finicky tastes of children), followed by an early bedtime. Next day would be a long travel day.

Continued in Part 3.

What We Did Last Summer -- Part 1 -- Arriving to St. John's

The Autumnal Equinox has passed and fall is here. So what better time to talk about everything we did this last summer?

The major highlight of the summer of 2006 was our trip to Newfoundland -- a trip that began with a casual conversation with our friend Liza a couple of years ago, identifying 2006 as the year in which all our respective children would be old enough to be able to handle the travel requirements and to appreciate the trip. From this first conversation grew a consensus, then an intent, and finally a plan.

My own history with the city of St. John's, Newfoundland goes back to 1997. Off and on, between April and December that year, I spent many weeks there as an employee of a consulting firm working for Newfoundland Telephone on an experimental component of their Peoplesoft project.

While there, I had worked with Kevin and Bernard, two IT staff members of NewTel. Subsequently, I had stayed in touch with Kevin when he and his partners left NewTel and formed their own company. And every twelve or eighteen months, I would see Bernard -- usually when NewTel sent him to Toronto, although he and his wife, Jean, spent a week of vacation here a year ago.

In the lead-up and planning, Kevin and Bernard offered many suggestions for activities, proving once again that the success of any operation depends in no small part on intelligence gathered on site by operatives familiar with the local cultural, economic, and political environment. Kevin invited us to his cottage, and Bernard offered us his front yard as a parking space when we had considered doing the trip in an RV. When we came to our senses and sanity returned (i.e. we looked at the daily cost of an RV rental), our plan scaled down, and as a preliminary move, we shipped a box to Bernard containing some bulky travel necessities.

Friday, July 28 The phone rang at an ungodly hour in the middle of the night. We had already been awake and dressed for ten minutes. It was Liza, confirming that their family was similarly up and getting ready. I drove down, picked up Chris, Liza, and their children, Cameron and Robin, and all their luggage and as previously arranged, hauled them up to our house. While I was gone, Jill -- in a last minute burst of superhuman effort -- reorganized our luggage.

With the entire group together, fed with Chinese barbecue pork buns, and luggage on the front steps, we were ready. Shortly, in a not-quite-large-enough van sent by the cab company, we were on our way to the airport and our charter flight to St. John's. Consolidating the cab ride saved some money -- and saving money is always a good thing. We had gotten a good deal on the airfare as well -- it was sufficiently low that airport fees and taxes actually cost more than the flight. The downside was that we were packed into the aircraft at a density level that showed that the charter company (Skyservice) was committed to the idea of using every available centimetere of room for revenue generating seats. In this model of aircraft interior design, the idea of "leg room" was ruthlessly suppressed. Liza, Jill, and myself merely felt hemmed in -- but Chris, with his nearly two metres of height, felt a more acute level of discomfort.

But we survived the flight -- three hours to St. John's, with a one-and-a-half hour time zone shift ahead from Eastern to Newfoundland Time.

The airport in St. John's was larger and brighter than I remembered from when I was there nine years previously. Insteading of walking down stairs from the aircraft onto the tarmac, and then walking across the tarmac into the terminal building, we debarked onto a jet bridge and from there directly into the upper Arrivals level of a renovated, modern, and expanded international air terminal.

The first glitch in the trip was the rental agency wanting to charge extra for Chris and Liza as the extra drivers. Convincing the clerk to check with her manager regarding the policy on CAA memberships solved that problem (and saved a couple of hundred dollars). The next glitch was less minor -- the 2006 Dodge Caravan that we were assigned was the standard version -- not the roomier, deluxe Grand Caravan version that we had tried out weeks earlier at the beginning of June.

Nonetheless, we managed to cram the luggage -- all the luggage -- into the back, got Corwin and Robin's car seats set up, and got everybody aboard. With the help of directions from the tourist information counter in the airport and Chris' GPS device, we drove into St. John's, with a stop at a Tim Horton's for lunch. The directions were perfect, and with the stop for lunch, we got to the hotel on Le Marchant Road just after the three o'clock check-in time.


Once in the hotel, adults rested, children played, and I came to the realization that crucial contact information for Kevin had been left in a file folder in my briefcase at home. I had printed out an email from Kevin containing his contact information, but I had forgotten to forward the email from my work account to GMail. Although I had my laptop with me, and could connect to my work account, I had archived all of my email in anticipation of being away from work for an extended period of time. The email was there -- but it was physically on the computer on my desk at work, not on the network -- and therefore inaccessible. I had no way of contacting Kevin, and his office voice-mail message indicated what I already knew -- he was gone for at least two weeks, at his cottage somewhere outside the city, where the only way to contact him was through a cell phone number which I didn't have.

While I fretted over how to get in touch with Kevin, I was able to check off an easier task -- that being to get in touch with Bernard. Bernard was still with the telephone company -- now called Aliant -- had also just started his vacation, and was dealing with some errands, but he offered to stop by the hotel that evening. Although I was beginning to have my doubts about how much longer any of us could stay awake, all the pieces of the puzzle were coming into place.

After examining my alternatives with Kevin, I decided that simplicity was best -- I made a phone call back to the office in Toronto where I asked a colleague to turn on my computer, log in, open my archive, and forward the email I needed to my GMail account. Seconds later, and thousands of miles away, I had the information I needed, and was able to leave Kevin a message. I love modern technology....


That afternoon, the two boys -- Corwin and Cameron (age 9) -- walked with me from the hotel on Le Marchant Road down to Water Street -- the St. John's waterfront. We passed some old stomping grounds -- the Delta Hotel, and the Magic Wok Chinese Restaurant.

Although I wanted to continue farther, I faced a mutiny in the ranks -- the boys assured me that twenty minutes of walking had reduced their legs to stumps and they could not possibly climb the hill back to the hotel. There was a light, intermittent drizzle and the air was cool -- a definite difference from the heat wave we had left behind in Toronto.

Making our way back to the hotel with the help of a taxi cab, we waited for Bernard, his wife Jean, and daughter Erin to arrive, which duly came to pass by early evening. Bernard brought along the the box which Chris had sent a couple of weeks earlier. In the lead up to this trip, Chris, Liza, Jill and I had identified some "nice to have items" -- Chris and Liza's camp cooler, books, pocket radios, miscellaneous hardware -- and we had shipped all of this to Bernard so as not to take up luggage space for the plane.

After a brief visit, our evening was rounded out by dinner at the Magic Wok -- a Chinese restaurant at least as good or better as some fine restaurants in Toronto. The culinary highlight of the evening was duck and ginger soup -- light, fragrant, and tasty.

Our Newfoundland vacation was under way!


Continued in Part 2.

Space News

NASA has selected Lockheed Martin to be the prime contractor to build the Orion spacecraft, the next generation vehicle that is supposed to replace the shuttle and return human beings to the Moon. The NASA website coverage is much the same as the initial press release, but more details will undoubtedly come out. Lockheed Martin beat a combined Northrop/Boeing consortium to get the Orion contract. The contract is initially worth $3.9 billion USD, with possible additional options for another $3.7 billion USD.

Interesting to note that all of Lockheed Martin's space expertise has been related to unmanned, robotic missions. It's the other guys who have the experience building manned space vehicles -- Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the LEM were all built by companies purchased by Northrop or Boeing.

Since the last Apollo astronauts left the Moon in 1972, not much lunar exploration has occurred, and all of it by unmanned orbiters or landers. Between 1973 to 1976, the Soviet Union sent several of their Luna probes, one of which was a successful sample return mission.

Due to a certain amount of "been there, done that" thinking, there was a hiatus of 14 years where no active lunar research happened. It was not until the 1990s that spacecraft returned to the Moon, starting with the Japanese Hiten in 1990. The Americans sent Clementine (1994) and Lunar Prospector (1998-1999) -- both mapping missions, with Lunar Prospector having an additional objective to search for water ice at the lunar poles.

Dr. Alan Binder was the Principal Investigator for the Lunar Prospector mission. I met him at the Apogee Books table at the Worldcon last week in Anaheim. Dr. Binder is highly critical of NASA and its contractors -- he has written a near future science fiction disaster novel -- Moon Quake -- to illustrate what he feels are NASA's shortcomings.

The Europeans sent SMART-1 to the Moon in 2003. The SMART-1 probe was a platform to test new technology developed by the European Space Agency. Chief among these was an ion engine, which SMART-1 used to place itself on a spiral trajectory to the Moon over the course of a year. Since 2004, SMART-1 has been in a polar orbit over the Moon, conductiong a photographic reconnaissance. Over the last two years, its fuel reserves have diminshed, and shortly the spacecraft will be unable to manuever. Therefore, ESA intends to crash SMART-1 into Lacus Excellentiae this weekend, on Sunday September 3, around 0200 EDT. It is hoped that the crash can be monitored from earth with telescopes, which will allow some information to be obtained on lunar surface composition. Depending on conditions, the light intensity of the crash may range from magnitude 7 (visible with binoculars/small telescopes) to magnitude 15 (forget trying to see this with anything except a really big telescope at a major observatory).

The next item of space news is the upcoming launch, by mid-September, of the first woman space tourist -- Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-born U.S. entrepreneur who is traveling to the International Space Station. She will go up in a Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft from Baikonur, with ISS Expedition 14 -- cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and U.S. astronaut Miguel Lopez-Alegria. Ten days later, she returns with Expedition 13 -- Pavel Vinogradov and Jeff Williams, who have been on the ISS since April 1.

Ansari and her husband, Amir, co-founded the Texas-based Telecom Technologies, Inc. They were major donors to the X-Prize, which is why it was called the Ansari X-Prize. Anousheh Ansari is following in the footsteps of space tourists Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth and Greg Olsen, other millionaires who also traveled to the International Space Station aboard Russian spacecraft. Ansari's contract prevents her from discussing her trip's cost, but in an interview, she noted previous space tourists have paid some $20 million USD for each of their flights.

For two million bucks a day, Ms. Ansari and all those who come after her need better accommodations -- like the space hotel complex that Bigelow Aerospace want to eventually put up into space, and whose precursor is currently undergoing testing.

For those of us who are less well heeled, our only hope is for the price to drop. The first seeds of that hope may very well be with the proposal by Planetspace, to build a spaceport in Cape Breton (the same latitude as Kazahkstan). Their objective is to get a piece of the space tourism business, as well as resupply contracts for the ISS. If it works, there is the Canadian gateway to outer space...

Worldcon 2006

We are at LACon IV, the 64th World Science Fiction Convention, here at the Anaheim Convention Center in the suburbs of Los Angeles. This has been a pretty low key event for us. I haven't been to many program events, but it has been a great opportunity to see friends.

The highlight so far is captured in this photograph which shows (left to right) Karl Schroeder, me, and Jean-Pierre Normand, taken at the Edge Publishers table in the Dealer's Room. Karl is seated behind a copy of his short story collection The Engine of Recall, for which Jean-Pierre did the cover art.



UPDATE: The 2006 Hugo Awards were given out on Saturday night. This is a partial list:

Best Novel - Robert Charles Wilson for Spin from Tor Books -- a well deserved victory, and doubly sweet since Bob Wilson is from Toronto (although he now lives on the West Coast)

Best Novella - Connie Willis for Inside Job, published in Asimov's January 2005

Best Novellette - Peter S. Beagle for Two Hearts, published in F&SF October/November 2005

Best Short Story - David D. Levine for Tk'tk'tk, published in Asimov's Asimov's 2005

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form - Serenity (Universal Pictures/Mutant Ennemy, Inc.) Written and Directed by Joss Whedon

John Scalzi won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, in his first year of eligibility. Again, well deserved. Note - if Scalzi is an A-list blogger, then I most likely don't even make the scale!

Someone else will undoubtedly put the full list up soon, but these are the highlights.

Pluto - A Planet No Longer

At the IAU conference in Prague, Czechoslovakia this week, astronomers voted to reclassify Pluto into a new category of solar system object -- a dwarf planet. This class of objects would include Pluto, Sedna, Quaoar, and the recently discovered 2003 UB313 (Xena).

While I understand why it happened, I am sorry that astronomers reached this particular decision. The reaction that I most like is the bumper sticker from Cafe Press that says "Honk If Pluto Is Still A Planet".

Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, and for the last 75 years, has been part of the cultural consciousness of what defines the Solar System. It will be a while before popular culture catches up to the new definition.

Something similar happened in the nineteenth century. Ceres was discovered on January 1, 1801, and was declared to be a new planet. But it was soon realized that Ceres was the first of many similar objects. By the 1850s, astronomers had defined and named that new class of solar system objects -- asteroids -- and relegated Ceres, Pallas, Vesta, and all the other small objects discovered between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter to be members of this new group.

In the current view, Pluto was the first trans-Neptunian dwarf planet discovered. As technology -- both optical and sensor -- improved after the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, more of these trans-Neptunian Kuiper Belt objects were found, and the current view is that there may well be thousands. Hence, the need to redefine and recategorize.

Regardless of the arguments and quibbling of astronomers, the New Horizons space probe continues on its way to Pluto. Launched on 19 January 2006 from Cape Canaveral, New Horizons crossed the Moon's orbit before midnight that day, aimed for a Jupiter flyby in February 2007 and ultimately, a flyby of the Pluto/Charon dwarf planet system in July of 2015. When that is completed, the initial reconnaissance of the major bodies in the Solar System, as known in the twentieth century, will be completed.

The Best Definition of Success...

...is how your child describes you to a friend.

An observation made on Thomas Barnett's blog that I agree with.

My Secret Reading Vice

Okay, so perhaps it's not so secret. But made you look!

Ever since I was a kid, I have loved comic books. Comic books were one of my early motivations in learning to read. I have a childhood memory from Grade 6, of an assignment from a teacher who understood the opportunity inherent in the number of comic books in evidence in his classroom. He required us to each pick one, and retell the story, focusing especially on written descriptions of the action happening on each page, in each panel. At the time, I thought of it as a better than average Reading assignment, but it never occurred to me that I could devote further analytical thought to comic books in general.

My first awareness of comics as something that mattered came when I read Lupoff and Thompson's "All In Color For A Dime" when I was 12 or 13. This book made me aware that comics had a history, and is probably the influence that made me start collecting them, as opposed to merely reading them.

My own collection extends back into the 50s (only a few examples, and all mostly cowboy comics), has some representation through the 1960s and early 70s, becomes fairly strong (at least as far as mainstream publications) in the late 70s and most of the 80s. By the time I met Jill in 1990, I had stopped regularly buying comic books. This happened for sseveral reasons -- first, available time became a semantically null concept as far as my own life was concerned; second, simple economics dictated other priorities; third, most importantly, I lost interest.

However, I have always resisted the notion of selling off my comics. Too many hours of personal history are tied up in those multi-coloured pages.
So therefore, it was a pleasure to find a web site that has thousands of comic book covers, many from books that I remember reading.

I am now an occasional comic book buyer. Prices are the most noticeable thing. How do kids afford comics today? The answer is that they probably don't -- the comic book market has shifted so that target audiences are mostly adults, rather than entirely for children. This is probably a development which would not have been anticipated, fifty years ago at the height of the anti-comics frenzy.

My son learned to read over the last year and a half, and I see some aspects of my own early reading experience repeating themselves. Corwin has gotten to the point where he can figure out a hitherto new word, all on his own. This last week, he could often be found with his nose buried inside a copy of "Teen Titans Go!" or the "Star Wars: Rogue Squadron" graphic novel. My nice warm feeling comes when I know that it took no effort to get him to read, and his reading is motivated by his own interest. How much better than that does it get??

An earlier geeneration, indoctrinated by the wrong-headedness of Fredric Wertham, would undoubtedly brand me as a Bad Parent for deliberately exposing my child to the corrupting influence of comic books. Nice to be able to relegate Wertham's views to being a msitake of history.

Return to the Moon -- Orion/Ares

Back in the late 1950s/1960s, Freeman Dyson worked on a theoretical study called Project Orion -- a concept for a nuclear pulse propulsion system.

Now, NASA has revived the Orion name for the Crew Exploration Vehicle, the spacecraft which will be the successor to the space shuttle.

Unfortunately, this new Orion will not be nuclear-pulse powered. Instead, it will be sent into space using an expendable launch vehicle.

The launcher will be named "Ares". The NASA illustration shows the two configurations -- the Ares I crew launch system on the right, and the Ares V heavy lift cargo launcher on the left. Ares is the Greek god associated with Mars, and the "I" and "V" designations pay homage to the Apollo-era Saturn I and Saturn V rockets.

The Ares I launcher will be used to put an Orion into orbit. The Ares V heavy lift system will be used to boost space station components or the hardware elements of a lunar mission into space.

It is clear from the illustrations that the Ares launcher is an evolved version of the space shuttle solid rocket booster and fuel tank system. Similarly, Orion is recognizably an enhanced version of the Apollo Command and Service Module combination.

The obvious comment is that this sytem is an extension of the 1950s brute force approach to getting out of the atmosphere. The romance of the rocket lives on, tinged with regret over what might have been.

Brute force rocket launches are what NASA -- and indeed every other space agency in the world -- knows how to do. The Orion/Ares combination may in fact return Americans and their international partners to the Moon. It may even take them to Mars.

But a true future in space requires that the price to send a kilogram of cargo into orbit be dropped from the current level of thousands to tens of thousands of dollars down to hundreds of dollars or less. Rockets are likely not the answer to achieve this goal, although systems like Orion/Ares need to be implemented until alternatives can be developed.

Charters (aka the humanitarian)...

..is a new play produced by my cousin, Wayne Sujo.

The play is part of the Summerworks festival in early August.

We last saw Wayne perform on stage at Stratford a couple of years ago, and of course, he was in Iron Road a few years back. Note -- We've also seen him more recently -- just not on stage :-) It is great that his career is expanding in new directions -- being the "producer" of a play must be a lot different, and probably a lot scarier, than being an "actor".

Charters (aka the humanitarian) is on at the Factory Studio Theatre on Bathurst Street at Adelaide, on August 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12. See their website for times of performances.

Update: Wayne mentioned in an e-mail that he received an offer last week from Canstage to be one of 3 actors in the World Premiere of Morris Panych’s play What Lies Before Us.

Wayne's involvement is from December 11 – April 15. The play travels from Toronto to Winnipeg to Edmonton.

Here are the links to the Winnipeg and Edmonton venues:

the Manitoba Theatre Company
the Citadel theatre in Edmonton

This is the Canstage blurb about What Lies Before Us:

It’s 1835 and Ambrose and Keating, two junior surveyors, are lost in the Canadian Rockies with Wing, the Chinese cook. As the snow begins to fall, the men’s discussion of colonialism, women, faith and the future, descend into petty and hilarious squabbles. What Lies Before Us is another brilliant trip from twotime Governor General’s Award winner Morris Panych. What Lies Before Us is a darkly comic look at man, mountains and the meaning of life.

I could be wrong here, but I am going to guess that Wayne is playing the role of Wing, the Chinese cook :-)

Break a leg, Wayne!

Pimp My Ride

On the subject of being a Star Trek geek, as noted in my previous post, here is a bit of silliness from Allan Goodall's blog.

Update - here is a photo of my car, just to demonstrate that it isn't as, ahem, nicely decorated as the vehicle that Allan has displayed on his site.

So whaddaya think? White paint, then red racing stripes down the sides, a Starfleet logo...?

Moon Landing Day

Today is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969. Back then, it seemed certain that a revolution in space travel was about to happen -- first the moon, then Mars -- and with a few scientific and engineering breakthroughs, perhaps even Alpha Centauri and the galaxy beyond would be within reach. It was a Star Trek geek's dream.

But alas, such was not to happen. The cost -- in energy, in dollars -- of getting people and equipment the first 200 kilometers up into Low Earth Orbit was and continues to be the biggest obstacle hindering the development of humanity's future in space. It is sad to think that the current plans for returning to the moon aren't based on any substantive technological advance beyond what was used for Project Apollo.



In this NASA archival photo, Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, Apollo ll mission commander, works at the modular equipment storage assembly (MESA) of the Lunar Module Eagle on the historic first extravehicular activity (EVA) on the lunar surface. The moonwalk began at 22:56 EDT on July 20, 1969 when Armstrong stepped onto the Moon, the first human being to set foot onto another world. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin followed a few minutes later. Aldrin took this photograph with a Hasselblad 70mm camera.

Most astronaut photos from the Apollo 11 mission show Buzz Aldrin. This is one of only a few that show Neil Armstrong (some of these are blurry).

The third member of the crew, Astronaut Michael Collins, remained in lunar orbit in the Command Module Columbia.

When we think of the Wright Brothers, we see their first flight as a first step in massive technological and social development that built on what they achieved and extended it further. When we think of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, we remember them as the ones who were first to a place to where we have lost the ability to return. My hope is that we all live long enough to think about Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins in the same way that we think about the Wright Brothers.

The Kids of Summer

In order to fulfill my ongoing ambition of being a Bad Influence, I ensured that Brie had an opportunity to play Scrabble for money. This happened during the All Barbecue All The Time weekend at the end of June.


My intention of having Brie fund my retirement with her Scrabble winnings didn't pan out, unfortunately. Brie went home at the beginning of July, having spent two weeks with us.


The following week, we accepted a refugee application from Robert, who needed time away from his parents in a high intensity science fiction environment. And where the heck would he go for that but to us???


We took shameless advantage of the presence of both Brie and Robert to not do much cooking. Robert's visit culminated with a trip down to the Danforth for a Greek meal at Mezes, followed by dessert at Demetre's. Note the large container of ice cream, somewhat larger than the kid's head. The funny thing about the sundae is that Jill was away from the table, and I had taken Corwin to the washroom when the waiter came and took the dish away. We gave Robert a hard time for not being able to prove that he had actually finished it!

However, all good things come to an end. Robert's mother, Elaine, whom we had missed seeing at the Mid Year Barbecue, came to retrieve her son. The penultimate event of Robert's visit was an evening at Medievel Times. The next day was Robert's birthday. After a buffet lunch pig-out that could only happen with a sixteen year old boy, Robert and his mother headed home.

Poor Corwin misses not having his buddies around!

A Cousin Discovered, Old Memories, and Glimpses of Family History

This month, the Government of Canada apologized for the head tax on Chinese immigrants imposed between 1885 and 1923. I've never thought much about the head tax, and when I did, it was a topic flagged Ancient History - Not Applicable to Me. However, the head tax, and the Chinese Exclusion Act which followed it, very likely shaped the way my family's history evolved.

Some of this history became clearer when I got an e-mail earlier this month from a man named Tak Chow in Florida, identifying himself as a cousin on my father's side of the family.

Tak had been googling "Lichee Garden", part of a search for relatives of Harry Lem, owner of the Lichee Garden restaurant in Toronto. One of the hits that he got was my father's obituary.

As he read the article, Tak concluded that his family and mine were related. He e-mailed me and we corresponded and spoke on the phone. Based on the e-mails, the phone conversation, some discussions with my mother, and some thought, this is a summary of some family history. Getting this information has been an evolutionary process, and the history is subject to revision.

My great grandfather, Lum Goey Hien, had an older brother. Goey Hien's nephew, son of his brother, was named Lum Sen Hong. Sen Hong was married in Hong Kong, and among other children, had a daughter -- Lum Hay Chun, who married a man named Chow, and who had two sons and a daughter -- with the younger of the two sons being my cousin Tak Chow, born in 1952.

Lum Goey Hien and his brother came to Canada in the early part of the twentieth century, as did young Sen Hong. All three of them would have paid the head tax to enter the country. Lum Sen Hong took the English name Harry Lem. All this happened before the Chinese Exclusion Act stopped Chinese immigration to Canada between 1923 to 1947. My hunch (completely unsubstantiated) is that they arrived in the 1916 to 1919 range, when the demand for Chinese labourers caused the immigration rate to briefly increase. Like all other Chinese immigrants of the time, the Chinese Exclusion Act would have prevented the three of them from bringing the rest of their families to Canada.

In Toronto, Goey Hien spent some time in jail, having run afoul of the law over an unlicensed distillery and its output. Sen Hong spoke to the authorities on his behalf, and was involved in the process which got him out of jail. For this, Goey Hien forever after spoke of Sen Hong as his smart, clever nephew.

Lum Sen Hong -- Harry Lem -- became a successful businessman in Canada, and even married again. There are no sources that can speak to how he felt about his first family, left behind in Hong Kong. The Lichee Garden restaurant which he started in the late 1940s would become famous. In the 1950s, for a time my father worked there, earning the princely sum of $15 a week. In later years, Sen Hong was involved in the local organization of the Lum Si Ho Tong society -- the Lum family association.

My father, Lum Suey Chong, was born in 1931, son of Lum Yoey Nien, who was the eldest, but adopted, son of Lum Goey Hien. Yoey Nien and Sen Hong were therefore adoptive cousins. Yoey Nien never returned home after going to fight the Japanese in the aftermath of the invasion of China in the late 1930s.

The fact that my grandfather -- my father's father -- was adopted into the Lum family is something that I only discovered today, in conversation with my mother. I am still assimilating this datum.

After the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1947, my father joined his grandfather, Lum Goey Hien, in northern BC in 1950.

My mother left the family home village in 1957 and made her way to Hong Kong via Macau. In Hong Kong, she stayed with Hay Chun and her husband. At the time, they lived in Shau Kee Wan. Hay Chun and her husband, two sons (Tak and his brother), Hay Chun's mother (Sen Hong's first wife), and Hay Chun's brother's wife and young son -- seven people, eight counting my mother, in one flat. My father and Hay Chun would have been second cousins, but my father would have addressed Hay Chun as "elder sister" because of the difference in their ages.

Tak was 5 in 1957, approximately the same age as his cousin. His brother would have been a couple of years older. Tak remembers my mother as a shy young woman who looked after him and played with him and was his buddy. My mother was there for three months before she came to Canada. She remembers Tak and his brother as two small, energetic boys, and forty nine years later was amazed that Tak would remember her.

As I have written in the story of my father's life, Goey Hien walked out of our lives in the early 1960s to retire to Hong Kong. Growing up, I had always imagined that he lived out his remaining days in splendour, but the reality was probably a less crowded version of the flat in Shau Kee Wan. Word came to us some years later that the old man had said that my father was an ungrateful wretch who did not appreciate what had been done for him. My father was so enraged by this that it very likely prevented the two of them from ever reconciling.

The last vestiges of the Chinese Exclusion Act were repealed in 1967, the year my family moved to Wonowon. This helped to pave the way for my grandmother coming from Hong Kong to join us in the late 1960s.

Tak attended school at Iowa State University in the 1970s. His education in America was made possible by Lum Sen Hong. In Hong Kong in the early 1980s, Tak attended the funeral of my great grandfather Lum Goey Hien. When Goey Hien passed away, he was in his 90s.

Sometime in the 1980s or 1990s, Lum Sen Hong also passed away.

In May 2005, Tak and his parents visited Toronto, to visit the grave of Lum Sen Hong, to finally close this chapter of their family history that had begun so many years earlier.

Following Tak's initial contact with me, my mother and Hay Chun spoke on the telephone, in the first of what I hope will be many conversations.

As my dialogue with my newly discovered cousin has progressed, I continue to marvel at how things and people and events are connected -- and how events nearly a century ago still echo through my life and those of my family -- all of them, no matter who and where they may be.

Mid Year Dim Sum Aftermath

More often than not, we've gone for some variation on breakfast the morning after the Mid Year Barbecue. There have been notable exceptions -- such as 2005, when the majority of the Lum clan were sick with the heaving awfuls.

This year, fortunately, there were no stomach bug episodes for anyone.

The Mid Year Barbecue ended around midnight on Saturday. Bob and I traded children -- Brie went for a sleepover with Lisa at the hotel where Lisa and Bob were staying. In exchange, we acquired Robert, who wanted some up-close in-depth hands-on with Quake 4. And of course, we were just the guys to let him do that.

Robert admits to crashing some time around 3am.

Next morning, Jill, Corwin, and I were up by 9:30. Shortly after that, Robert, confronted with Corwin's morning cheerfulness, got up in self-defence. Then Bob called to say that the girls were going for a swim, and they would all eventually get here.

There was time for some barbecue cleanup, virtually all of which Jill did, because I was zoned out. We collected our neighbour Pam shortly after 11, when Bob, Lisa, and Brie descended upon us. After limited debate, we made off for the place formerly known as New World for dim sum.


According to the menu, what was once New World is now Empire Oriental Cuisine, but this is subject to my faulty memory. Might have to go back to verify all this. The food and decor is much the same.

In the first photo, you see Robert and Corwin looking much too happy.


We had an ideal spot -- right beside the kitchen, so all the dim sum carts had to pass us.

Here are Lisa and Bob. What, does everyone except me present such a great appearance after so little sleep??


The food was about like New World's usual standard -- not exceptional, but by no means bad.

Here are Lisa and Brie. Lisa is understandably suspicious of my good intentions.


Both Brie and Pam like shrimp -- which was good, because many dishes contained shrimp.

Here is Jill -- possibly the only woman on the planet mentally equipped (i.e. patient enough) to cope with me.


The service was typical for New World, but my sense was that prices had gone up.

Here is me -- fat, balding, middle-aged, grumpy, not-enough-sleep computer-geek dude. Very happy that another successful Mid year Barbecue is over.

Kid Activities

I have long believed that the perfect family size consists of four people -- two parents and two kids, ideally a boy and a girl. For the next little while, our family has expanded to include Brie and has become the perfect size. It's nice to have her around. Certainly, Corwin thinks so!






Link

The Tenth Mid Year Barbecue 2006

Brie arrived just in time on Thursday to be put to work to help in the preparations for the 2006 Mid year Barbecue.

I honestly can't remember how many years we have had this event. In 1999, we skipped a year -- we had Corwin's first month banquent instead. But generally, we have held this barbecue on the last Saturday in June, and we've done it since shortly after we moved in to the house. So I am guessing that we would have started in 1996. If so, this was the tenth. (And if we had done one in 1999, this would have been the eleventh.)

On Thursday, with Brie to help with Corwin-wrangling, we got the sausages and the main course -- forty pieces of pork tenderloin. Mid Year Barbecue prep had been underway since Wednesday, when Jill and Peter did a massive round of yard work.

Friday morning, I made the char siu marinade, unwrapped the tenderloin, and repackaged them in ziplock bags to marinate overnight.

The char siu marinade recipe for this year (it tends to vary a bit) was as follows:

in a large non-stick pot on low head, I added
8 squirts of ketchup
8 glugs of teriyaki sauce
8 bottles of char siu sauce
1 bottle of hoisin sauce
16 shakes of white pepper
24 shakes of garlic powder

This mixture was allowed to warm up as it was slowly stirred. One of the eight empty char siu bottles was refilled with the heated mixture and allowed to cool.

The meat was prepared by first rinsing in cold water. With one scoop of marinade in the bottom of a ziplock bag, five tenderloins were added to the bag. On top, a light sprinkling of salt, four shakes of white pepper, and a glug of cider vinegar. Then a second scoop of char siu marinade. The bag was then sealed, and squished around to get the meat coated with the marinade.

In the preparation process, no raw meat was ever allowed to touch the supply of amrinade in the pot. Leftover marinade in the pot was set aside for use as sauce.

The bags of meat were left in the fridge overnight.

Friday afternoon, I went on a road trip with Brie, and got more supplies. On our way home, we picked up Corwin from school at the end of his last day of Grade One.

On Saturday morning, I refilled the propane tanks. This year, I had a tank which had gone past its ten year limit. The guy at the service station offered to fill the tank anyway -- something which has to make you nervous about what people actually do with old tanks.

Michael and Lorna dropped by in the early afternoon, and we did the beer, ice, and fruit run. After unloading, there was enough time to relax and hang out. Around 2:00pm, the Phinneys arrived -- sadly, without Elaine, who had a camping weekend with her colleagues on the same weekend. With Bob, I did the chicken wing run -- 200 medium wings from the St. Louis Bar and Grill -- and the Mid Year Barbecue was in full swing.

Starting around 3:00, other people began to arrive.



Around 4:30 or 5:00, after the chicken wings and the sausages, the tenderloins were hauled out and thrown on the barbecue to cook on low heat. The bottle of char siu mix set aside at the beginning was used to brush on the meat (actaully spooned on and rubbed in with a spoon because of the viscosity of the sauce).

I wasn't as happy with the meat this year as I was last year, because I felt that the heat had been overdone. However, no one seemed to mind.



So, another successful Mid Year Barbecue goes down in history.

There were 60 people this year, and the event ran from about noon to midnight. And for the record, I seriously overestimated the amount of meat needed. Again.

Brianne arrives!

My goddaughter Brianne arrived from Tennessee on Thursday afternoon. I took the afternoon off, picked her up from the airport, took her to lunch at that most Canadian of establishments, Tim Horton's, and got her back to the house by mid afternoon. There was enough time for a brief visit (and for Brie to begin unpacking) before we went off to get Corwin from his second last day of school.

Shortly thereafter, on Thursday afternoon and evening, there was much romping in the back yard.



Bri has been visiting since Corwin was four years old. To say that they both enjoy these visits is probably not overstating the case.

Gemini, Spitzer, Space Dust, a Flat Tire, and a Voice from the Past

On Saturday morning, I discovered that I had a flat tire, brought about by too agressively snugging the Volks against the stone wall beside our driveway. I've backed the car in successfully, hundreds of times, but this time, I misjudged and scraped the front passenger side tire, bashing the valve and causing the tire to go flat.

After a morning spent at the office (using the other car to get there) I went home and faced up to my problem. The valve was badly crunched, but there appeared to be no other damage. With Jill's air pump, we got the tire inflated again. It leaked, but looked like it might last until I got over to Canadian Tire (fortunately not a long drive).

However, it was clearly not my morning -- I shortly realized that I had forgotten my money and credit cards in my pouch, left hanging on the door. Fortunately, I had my cell phone, and a quick call later, Jill came to the rescue. In the meantime, I had pulled into the parking lot of my son's school. A few minutes to get the tire pressure back up, and shortly after that, Jill arrived. We even figured out that bending the valve stem and stuffing in a wad of plastic from a grocery bag beside it significantly reduced the leakage.

Once again, I set out. It was shortly before 1 o'clock as I pulled out of the parking lot. The radio was on, tuned as always to CBC. and Quirks and Quarks was on. Bob MacDonald was interviewing an astronomer, whose observations of interstellar dust grains using the Gemini Telescope, and the Spitzer Space Telescope, had demonstrated that some of these dust grains -- essential raw materials of planets -- would have formed in the supernovae of the earliest stars formed in the aftermath of the Big Bang.

Then I realized -- the astronomer being interviewed was Doug Welch, my classmate in university -- a very bright guy, who has obviously made it to the big leagues. It was one of the bright spots of a day which hadn't been all that great.

A PR fluff piece of Doug's research is available on the Gemini website.

I recall that it was Doug's custom to wear a cape on the day of the Spring and Fall equinoxes -- on that day, he was Captain Equinox. Somewhere in my collection of old paper photos, there is undoubtedly one of Captain Equinox, dating from the late 1970's, leaping down from the top of some campus structure.

The podcast of the June 17 Quirks and Quarks show is available from CBC radio.

I had another bit of good news a little later -- the tire was only $30 to repair, as opposed to a complete replacement.

Cobalt

In response to Mick's comment on the first Temagami post, I looked through the photo collection for photos of the town of Cobalt. Interestingly, I have none in digital format, although there are undoubtedly some in actual photo-on-paper format. (But those are hard to search through).

The best I can offer are a couple of photos of the Highway Book Shop, which is just off Highway 11, fairly close to the exit to Cobalt.





This whole region is quite lovely, and we visit whenever possible. It doesn't hurt that the Highway Book Shop is there -- a drug calling to the addict.