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On Christian Writing

First Published: 2023 November 2

Draft 1

Yesterday I talked about how my goal for this NaNoWriMo is writing something more explicitly Christian. I said that I did not have the time or energy to discuss what that meant in that post, and I do stand by that. However, as I tossed and turned in my bed last night, I thought about what it means to have Christian writing.

Of course, like anything else, the concept exists in a spectrum. At one end is something like the Golden Compass, which is a fiction book meant to mock and denigrate the Church.1 At the other end of the spectrum2 is something like Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth, which is wholly a reflection on the Lord, more a work of theology than of creative writing.3

Closer to the areligious side would be the works of Ernest Hemmingway, a devout4 Catholic who actively tried to avoid being labeled as such in his writings. My scale may not be absolute, because I don’t know how to rank Tolkein, who created a wold which was completely in line with the Catholic faith, though not meant to be seen allegorically, against Lewis, who wrote didactic tracts on faith with the slimmest metaphor.

Of course, there are plenty of non Christian fictions written by non Christians. As someone who is, however, I wonder about how it should be reflected in my writing. I don’t think that, at this phase of my life, at least, I’m called to be writing pure theology. Certainly I’m not well enough read in the theology or formed in my faith5 to feel as though I have things that need to be said to the world of theologians.

However, I do also have a platform. As of this morning, I have almost twelve hundred followers on my webnovel, and my chapters are read an average of almost 4000 times. With an audience like that, I have to wonder if there’s something I can do to spread the Gospel, if only covertly. Certainly I don’t want to suddenly shift the tone of my book to something explicitly religious, for two reasons.

First, I don’t really love didactic Christian writing as a genre. There are books I’ve read that I really enjoy, but I find that I tend to get too caught up in where the metaphor falls apart. I don’t feel confident enough in my ability to portray nuance to where I think that I could write something without leading people astray.

I also feel like didactic Christian writing tends to only stand when read with that intention.6 That is,7 while I feel like a work of art tends to stand on its own, even when divorced of its context, I find that a lot of didactic writing requires people to be seeking out a book that will lecture them in order to be enjoyable.

That leads to the second concern I have, which is that a blatantly Catholic piece of writing is not what the readers of my book have sought out. Now, there is an argument I respect that people do not always know what they want, but I don’t know if it really holds here. After all, there is almost no cost to people dropping my story if they do not like it, and I don’t know if the morals I’m espousing in the book are particularly non-Christian.

I guess that question is certainly one that I have. To what extent does a work I write become Christian and what are the important parts of a Christian fiction to me?8 There’s something to be said for the idea that a Christian book can be as much about the worldview it espouses as any particular theological point.

In that regard, I think that my web novel is at least somewhat Christian in its view of the world. Violence is not something that the main character idolizes, and his family is filled with people who care deeply for each other. Man made institutions are ultimately fallible, but people by and large are good and motivated by a desire to see the world improve. Without adding a messianic character, I suppose that it’s hard to get too much more Christian, especially given that Christ is9 central to the Christian faith.

I don’t know if this musing did what I wanted it to. I think that I wanted to find a way to write in a way that I considered more Christian, despite never really having considered what that would look like. Instead, I think that I’m walking away from this posting with the idea that I should just be more intentional about the morals I’m espousing implicitly and explicitly in my writing. I don’t think that I’m good enough at writing or thinking to effectively weave in allegory yet, though that is something I should consider.10

Daily Reflection:

I

  1. I think? I’ll be honest, I heard that as a child and saw a few things which corroborated that story and was never interested in researching further. I’m fully willing to believe that it is not true.↩

  2. in my own world view, and compressing any orthogonal things into one single projected axis↩

  3. Ok so I’m absolutely realizing that I should have two axes (hmmmm, maybe not. I don’t actually know if that’s the case↩

  4. maybe faithful? I’m not sure which word is better for describing someone who was self professed a poor Catholic but who still believed strongly and deeply.↩

  5. despite framing like this, I’ll be the first to say that the two are, though not mutually inclusive, at least fairly well linked. It’s not two distinct axes, but the two don’t overlap exactly↩

  6. Hmm that’s not well phrased, let’s see if I can say that better↩

  7. the two words that every author afraid of not making sense loves↩

  8. if you couldn’t tell, I’m using this posting as a way for me to consider these questions, not because I already have the answers and I’m leading you to them as readers. It would be funny if I, the person who just said that I dislike didactic writing, would have done so, and I won’t say that I never do that. Here, though, I’m really exploring the thought as I type. (One side effect of learning to type without self editing is that thoughts become much less filtered as you type them. In the book I’m writing, this often manifests in new plot threads being picked up, often in ways that I never could or would have considered. Here it means that I’m approaching the question through the lens of each word I type, which is a weird thing to realize)↩

  9. shockingly enough,↩

  10. I suppose I’m trying some allegory in the NaNo book I’m doing.↩

  11. which is funny when you consider that my sprint writing pace can often meet or exceed 60 wpm, implying that I’m writing for less than half of the hour.↩

  12. maybe the wrong word for day two, but c’est la vie (la vie)↩

  13. see the whole doing a writing session with a friend before work↩

  14. because I was singing at a mass tonight↩

  15. A year ago today, a friend invited me to go pray with her. She’s one of the people to whom I want to write a letter, and so it seemed somehow relevant↩

  16. It will never not be strange to me that didn’t and did not have such different connotations↩



NaNoWriMo 2023!

First Published: 2023 November 1

Draft 1

Well, it’s another November, which means it’s time for another installment in “I1 try my hardest to drive myself insane by doing something related to NaNoWriMo again.” In 2018, when I began this blog2, I did not have the drive to actually write a novel. Instead, I attempted to add fifty thousand words to my ’blog postings over the course of the month. As I am sure you3 can guess, I was unsuccessful at that mission.

By 2019, I had forgotten about my musings well before November rolled around. 2020 and 2021 likewise passed by me without anything to point at.4 I suppose that there may not actually be all that much from 2021, given that I worked on the same journal from November of 20195 through August of last year.

Last year, as I certainly remember, I attempted to do NaNoWriMo for what I had a vague idea was my first time ever. As it turns out, I had made an account back in 2011, and had attempted to do NaNoWriMo that year. I, unsurprisingly, failed at that goal.

Last year, however, I was successful, at least in terms of writing 50000 words of fiction and finishing one narrative. The two did not align with each other, as I needed to start a sequel in order to get to the needed word count. Of course, I gave up on the story almost as soon as I could. One year later, I have no interest in revisiting that story.

I also wrote a story this past April, as part of a writing competition for the website where I currently post my ongoing novel.6 I made it to the word count for that book7, but was tired of writing it by the end of the word count and rushed the ending.

Well, rushed may be a bit of an understatement. The book was set over the course of twelve years. I spent all but fifteen hundred of the words on the first three weeks, then rushed through the next twelve years in the remaining word count. One commenter’s reply was that they were grateful that I did not leave the work unfinished, for all that the ending was incredibly unsatisfactory.

So, that brings us to November. As I mentioned yesterday, I am also trying to revive this ’blog and get further ahead in my other book at the same time. Will it work?

Who knows.

Will I burn out before the month is done?

Almost certainly.

Am I still going to ride this train for as long as I can, in hopes that I might be able to salvage a number of words from the situation?

Absolutely.

Anyways, the book this year is something I’ve never tried before. I realize I’ve only really written third person limited in the past, so I’m writing this book in first person. Now, whether that’s going to be a good idea is yet to be determined.

The general plot of the book is that there’s an order of vampire fighting werewolf priests in the modern day United States.8 I’m not sure how much of the balance I’ll have between conversation and action, but given that I’ve spent all of today’s content9 on the main character getting ready to meet with the monastery, odds are good that this book will also end up somewhat rushed.

In any case, it’ll be the book I try to write.s I’m hopeful that I can tell a story, and a story with faith, since I haven’t really touched my faith in any of the writing I’ve done.10 I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it to anyone’s satisfaction, let alone my own, but I have been thinking a fair amount about how to interface my faith and writing.

I feel like that topic deserves far more consideration than I can give it at this point in the night.11 It’s currently past my bedtime, and I’m well above my word goal for the day.12

Daily Reflection:

I

  1. Initial draft said my first name, but I am unsure if I’ve ever posted it here, and may as well do a little bit of not self doxxing if I haven’t↩︎

  2. I keep wanting to say ’blog, and I think that I might just start doing that from now on↩︎

  3. the hypothetical reader↩︎

  4. on this site, at least. I am almost certain that there are any number of artifacts that I can look at.↩︎

  5. interesting, I had not connected that I finished that journal midway through what could have been another NaNoWriMo↩︎

  6. the more I write, the more uncomfortable I get with ending sentences in prepositions. I know that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the prior sentence reading “for the website I currently post my ongoing novel on”, but the construction reads weirdly to me now. I wonder if that’s a sign that I’m getting better at writing.↩︎

  7. fifty five thousand, five hundred and fifty five, to be exact (on the word count, not on what I wrote. I think I got somewhere closer to 57,000)↩︎

  8. well, in the modern day. I think that the plan is for the order to exist across the whole world, but the main character, and therefore, story, all will take place in the US. Right now I have it set near Ann Arbor, but that is entirely just because I wanted a single location cue and it was the first vaguely metropolitan location that popped into my mind↩︎

  9. two words less than eighteen hundred↩︎

  10. well, at least I haven’t touched on my faith intentionally in any of the fiction writing. The many reflections on the readings I’ve done here aren’t counted, for obvious reasons. It’s also probably obvious that I have a Catholic world view given the other writing I’ve done, but I am not the person to analyze that.↩︎

  11. I wrote this post in three sittings, the third of which begins with the final sentence of the prior paragraph.↩︎

  12. which is approximately 5000↩︎

  13. with pauses as needed to complete quests↩︎

  14. and middle and end↩︎

  15. admittedly rushed↩︎

Monthly Reflection

First Written: 2023 October 3

Draft 1

Shoot, somehow it’s the end of October. I really feel like I blinked and suddenly the month has completely vanished.1 Despite the fact that this month is gone without any blog postings, I still managed to keep up my five a days.23 As a result, I can still give some highlights for the month.

This past month I:

Let’s see how that lines up with my things I was excited for from last month’s reflection.

Hey, that’s pretty close to overlap. As always, there are new and exciting things that I did not know I was going to do at the start of the month. I also set my standards incredibly low, which made it easy for the lists to overlap. Let’s see how we did against last month’s goals, though.

So, as expected, I did not do a great job on my goals. But, there’s always the future to improve, and that’s what my goal is now. Next month, I’m excited for the following:

Once again, a fairly small list, though one that’s spaced a little more over the month, which is probably good for me. Goals for the upcoming month:

This means that I’ll have a daily reflection that looks like:

  1. Of course, there are reasons for this (which I will not be discussing on this blog but it seems important for future me to remember) (also present me)↩︎

  2. I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before, but, in short, (hmm is that too many commas in a row? probably, at least in that the essay as a whole will suffer)↩︎

  3. with a few exceptions that I fixed↩︎

  4. I keep being told there’s a better way to frame this, but wow I cannot find it↩︎

  5. a live cast version, which was fun↩︎

  6. Saw this in my notes but wasn’t sure if I’d already mentioned it↩︎

  7. They were fun!↩︎

  8. mentioned↩︎

  9. I did not end up talking to kids much about careers, though I did enjoy talking to them↩︎

  10. I did not do that. Oops↩︎

  11. though I should really reach out to the prof and figure out what, exactly, that will entail↩︎

  12. I’m not entirely sure what about him, because I didn’t write that down, but the bishop will be there, which is cool↩︎

  13. unheard of, I know↩︎

  14. or, as I am right now, reclined with my arms cocked weirdly↩︎

  15. read: often↩︎

Monthly Reflection

First Written: 2023 October 1 First Published: 2023 October 311

Draft 1

Well, another month as flown by, carried away on the wings of time.2 As you3 can tell from the lack of posts lately,4 there are many updates since the last time I talked.

In short, I:

Let’s see once again how that compares to the list that I tried to make about things I was excited for this month.9

Oof ok. So, I did do the first three of those, but I had already done them by the last reflection. I did not record a song, which is a bit of a shame. As you might guess from the lack of postings lately, last month was not a good month for me in many regards.14

I’m mostly ready for my upcoming talks, though that’s a brand new development. Yesterday I gave a practice version of the talks to my groupmates, who resoundingly hated the talk. In their defense, I agree with absolutely all of their comments. They mostly boiled down to the fact that a public presentation should be a story that’s somewhat educational. Instead, all that I had was a list of facts.

As a result, I more or less restarted, this time much more focused on collecting pretty images than anything like having a coherent set of facts. After all, it’s far easier to make a coherent set of facts when you have a story than it is to make a story from a set of facts. I don’t think that I have quite enough content yet, though, so I’ll need to think about other ways that I can pad the content. One option is obviously just to add in some more specific facts about what the different kinds of months are?15

I started hashing out the planning for the talk I’m giving at a real school. It’s for sure happening, which is really nice. I even have a date16 nailed down, which is great. Other than that, I vaguely know what I’m going to talk about.

So, what am I excited for this month?

All in all, it’s looking like it’ll be a pretty calm month, which will be nice, especially with how hectic my summer was.20 I’m sure that I did a bad job with my goals last month, but let’s see just how bad.

Goals for this month:

  1. Whoops↩︎

  2. Someday I’ll learn how to write poetry. Until then, we all get to deal with this↩︎

  3. hmm who is the you in this situation? Is it potentially future me?↩︎

  4. this phrasing implies that I expect to have active readers, which I don’t think I do↩︎

  5. which should go in my yearly goal post↩︎

  6. well, office, but close enough↩︎

  7. for a very, very generous definition of learn↩︎

  8. I think? The point of the session was a little muddy to me↩︎

  9. I wrote everything before this on the first, and nothing has really happened since then, so that still works, I guess.↩︎

  10. I did it on the first! I think I pr’d↩︎

  11. did that this morning/early afternoon. (it was a long swim time↩︎

  12. I am ninety percent sure I’ve used the program name in this blog before, but if I haven’t, this will not be the first time. I did it, in fact, last night! It went really well. Without (many) spoilers, there were like seventy people again!↩︎

  13. depending on Bureaucracy↩︎

  14. it’s much better now, though↩︎

  15. idk, I’m really lost and not feeling particularly inspired by anything right now↩︎

  16. i think↩︎

  17. real in the sense of a talk that was explicitly asked for and that I have legitimate plans for↩︎

  18. I should probably prepare something for that↩︎

  19. kind of? it’s a like “this is what science research is like for graduate students” event at a local high school↩︎

  20. it says something that giving two talks and two school visits is a boring month to me↩︎

  21. starting now↩︎

St. Jude’s Relic

First Published: 2023 September 14

Draft 1

Today I had the opportunity to see the relic of St. Jude.1 It was a beautiful experience, made more so by the fact that I got to sing at a Mass led by the Bishop.2 Unfortunately, that did mean that it’s later now than I’d like it to be, and continuing to blog will take more time than I think that I want to spend.

  1. his arm. I’m not sure which arm, but I think the left.↩︎

  2. who now knows my name! He recognized my face from one of the previous times that he’s met me, which is nice.↩︎

Euchre Tournament

First Published: 2023 September 13

Draft 1

As I mentioned yesterday, I have done a number of things during my downtime from blogging. I’d say one of the most fun of them was going to a friend’s euchre tournament last Saturday.1

I think that I knew how to play euchre before the tournament, though I’m not entirely sure if I ever actually did. For those who don’t already know what euchre is, it’s a trick taking game. As far as I’ve ever played it, it has four players.2 The deck is comprised of a standard deck of cards, though with only cards 9 and higher.

Each hand is played in the same way. The dealer passes out five cards to each player, then turns up the top card of the remainder. If someone wants that to be the trump suit, they tell the dealer to pick it up, at which point it becomes trump, and the dealer gets to replace any card in their hand with it.3 From there, the person to the dealer’s left leads with the first trick. If no one tells the dealer to pick it up, the card is discarded and everyone once more goes around and can choose to pick trump. If no one does the second time through, there

Points are scored at the end of each hand. If your team4 took a majority of the tricks5, you get a point. You get another point for taking all five tricks, and another if the other team called trump. I’m told there’s also a benefit if you choose to go alone, though that was banned at the tournament I went to.

For those who’ve never played a trick taking game, the general rules are that high cards win a trick. Each trick’s suit is the suit that the first player led with6. However, the trump suit always beats any other suit.

In euchre, you are mandated to play in suit if you can, including if you have trump in your hand. That’s an interesting variation, and one that I’ll have to consider more as I keep playing it. I’m sure that it does things to the strategy that I did not immediately think about.

Euchre also introduces an interesting variation on trump, where the Jack of trump suit becomes the highest value card. The second highest value card is the jack of the other same colored suit.78 After that, trump goes down ace, king, queen, 10, 9. It’s kind of fun that jack goes from being a middling card to the best one if and only if the suit is trump. I’m not sure how that impacts when you should have the dealer pick up the card, but I am certain that it will.

Ok so, explanation of euchre out of the way, let’s talk about the tournament. Of the twelve participants, three had played before, and I vaguely knew the rules of trick taking games. I ended up on a team with one of my group mates, and we got absolutely destroyed in the first game. I primarily blame luck for that, as it’s hard to win a game when you don’t have any trump cards in your hand.

The winning teams all rotated, and the second game began. Just as time was running out, we were down one point. I was dealer, and I gave myself9 the ace, queen, and jack of spades, along with the jack of clubs. I also had the nine of clubs, but that doesn’t matter as much. What’s most important is that the card that declared suit was the king of spades.

Obviously, no one else wanted spades to be trump10 When the choice came to me, I, obviously, took it, and immediately declared that we had taken all five tricks as time was called for the game. That lucky streak remained in our next game, and we ended up winning 2/3 games, which put us in second place.11 It was a really fun time, and then the hosts took us to their back yard for a fire.

The fire was incredible, especially because they had some fancy fire pit with holes in the bottom, which means that the fire both never suffocated and also burned incredibly hot and fast. The fact that the wood was incredibly dry probably helped that, but it was mesmerizing to watch the flames.

  1. how was that only a few days ago? It feels like so much time has passed since then↩

  2. and I’m almost certain that there are variants for fewer, though I haven’t noticed any for more (or fewer, I suppose)↩

  3. they do not reveal to the rest of the players what card they replaced.↩

  4. you and the person sitting opposite you↩

  5. three or more↩

  6. which is the benefit of leading↩

  7. so if trump is spades, the Jack of Clubs, etc↩

  8. oh, that does also mean that the jack is now a part of the trump suit, not the other suit, interestingly enough↩

  9. somehow↩

  10. because I held basically all of it, so they didn’t.↩

  11. behind one of the two teams with absolutely no experience with the game, which is kind of funny.↩

  12. or both I suppose↩

Talk Planning (Eclipse)

First Published: 2023 September 12

Draft 1

First, sorry about the sudden radio silence. If I had to blame anything, I would blame the combination of:

Without further ado, though, I do have another talk in3 just over three weeks. With twenty something days to go, it feels like an appropriate time to shift my planning from completely analog to something with a bit more structure. I’ll be giving a talk on the eclipses that are coming up. I think I’ve mentioned on here before4, but there are four upcoming eclipses on the continental US.5 In order, these are a partial solar eclipse on October 14, a partial lunar eclipse on October 28, a penumbral lunar eclipse on March 25, and a total solar eclipse on April 8 (the first since 2017, and the last until6 2044).7

There are a lot of ways that I could frame an eclipse talk. Having now talked to a number of people who have materials prepared, I realize that I don’t love most of the ways that they do. Being, as I am8, myself, the way that I’m choosing to frame the talk is by answering the following questions9

So, really, only one of those questions actually requires any effort from me. My “What is an eclipse” slide15 will just be a picture of a pretty eclipse with the text definition of one. My “How many kinds” slides or section will be a picture of each kind with a description of how they work.16 My “Why do they happen” slide will just be “wow we’re truly blessed.” My “How do we know” is also pretty easy. Like, the answer is really just pattern matching,17 and the hardest part will be not going off on a rant about harmonics (see footnote).

Now, of course, you’ll notice that I did not talk about “Why don’t they happen?”. And that’s because the answer is really hard.

Ok, so, without graphics. The sun exists. That feels like a good place to start. Since we live in a vaguely heliocentric world18, everything we care about exists in reference to the sun.

Now, we also know that there is an earth. The Earth, in fact.19 The Earth moves around the sun.

Now, there are some fun things about that. Imagine if the Earth didn’t rotate at all.20 We would have one day every year. That would be really bad, I think.21 Even worse, though, the Earth could be tidally locked, which would mean that, at least in respect to the sun, the earth never rotated. Ope, actually, since we’re saying that the sun is the point of reference, we can thankfully ignore the Earth being stationary from an above inertial reference frame.22

Ok so we have the sun. The sun is orbited by the Earth. If the Earth was tidally locked23 we would have half the earth bathed in flame and half bathed in ice.24 Instead, we are lucky that the Earth rotates about four hundred times per rotation around the sun.25

Now, if the Earth rotated around the sun without a tilt, there would be no seasons.26 Of course, as we know, we have seasons, which means that we orbit at a tilt. That does then raise the question of what a day is. After all, if you’re on either of the poles, there would be entire calendar days with no apparent change in the location of the sun in the sky.27 Also, anywhere you are, a fun thing to do is to find that the sun sets later on the days following the longest day of the year than it did on that day. That’s because the day is more than 24 hours during that point. Oh cool, the length of a day can vary by as much as 8 seconds during the course of the earth’s orbit. Hmm, that doesn’t explain why sun sets later.

Oh gosh, it has to do with incident tilt of the earth and therefore apparent amounts of sunlight, along with the fact that the amount of sunshine we get is shifted slightly later, I guess. That is way more than I ever wanted to know and learn, at least for this talk, so I guess I have to leave out the fun fact about how the sun sets later.

Diversions aside, we now have the sun and the earth, which rotates at its tilt across the sun. It’s at this point I want to use blender to animate, because I do not want to hand animate this, and also my ability to animate in python is very limited.28 But, more importantly, we then add in the moon.

So, first of all, if the moon was the wrong angular size in the sky, we would have much different numbers of eclipses. Shoot, I’ll have to discuss angular size here. Actually, is that the first place to go? I think that the first place I should do it is by going “ok so the moon is actually bound to the earth, rather than the sun, which feels weird.”

The moon is tidally locked to the earth, so we only see one face. If you think of it like a mirror, we can see a full moon when it’s opposite the earth from the sun, and we see a new moon when the moon is between the earth and the sun. This is where the question of why not all eclipses becomes relevant.

So first, we have size on sky. If moon big, more solar eclipses. If moon very big, no chance for total lunar.

But, of course, assumption will start with everything in the same plane, because of course it will. Instead, moon orbits earth at an angle. Because of that, we can only have the intersection at certain times of year. This is really what I want the animation for, because the two dimensional static drawings aren’t totally helpful.

Anyways, a friend also said that if I’m interested in public outreach generally, I should start a youtube channel and post my talks there. It’s not a bad idea, for all that I know it would make me incredibly neurotic.

  1. I went home for jury duty, served (technically), drove back to school, went to my first day of choir for the year, had first group meeting of the year, went to an event with friends, went to a baby shower, went to a euchre tournament, went to intro catechesis, and went to a thank you dinner to donors (I was part of the thanking not the giving). On the bright side, I now have a lot of content I can blog about for the next while, assuming that I find the energy↩︎

  2. running? I feel like I only ever think of running out of, not getting out of, but I suppose that either works in this case? maybe↩︎

  3. oh gosh that’s soon↩︎

  4. maybe↩︎

  5. I guess this is technically doxxing myself, but I don’t think anyone will be surprised to learn that’s where I am, especially since I’ve made comments about living here before, I’m almost positive.↩︎

  6. I think↩︎

  7. why yes, this last sentence was directly copied from one of the abstracts I submitted. How could you tell?↩︎

  8. by need, growth, and choice↩︎

  9. probably in this order, but I haven’t decided if that’s true for certain. Thankfully, in order of how much time I feel the need to spend, making figures is an order of magnitude more than making slides is an order of magnitude more than editing slides is an order of magnitude more than preparation. Since I have no intention of spending the rest of my waking hours on preparing figures, I don’t really need to worry about anything else↩︎

  10. that’s something I feel like I should be able to readily define. Right now I just have “when heavenly bodies get in each other’s way”↩︎

  11. ok so there’s solar and lunar, which is two. There’s partial and total, which applies to both, so four. But then there’s also the fact that the interaction of the sun’s light and the earth and moon results in the earth casting not just an umbral shadow but a penumbral shadow. I don’t know if a partial penumbral eclipse is a meaningful kind, but I still see at least five kinds of eclipse when I quickly google (partial and total solar, partial, total, and penumbral lunar.↩︎

  12. lunar eclipses: Earth gets in the way of the sun’s light to the moon. Solar: oh gosh, so many lucky pieces of orbital dynamics that resulted in the moon being the same orbital size as the sun! wild.↩︎

  13. ok so that’s not really the question, but it like why don’t we have them constantly? Especially once you learn that solar eclipses can only happen during new moons and how new moons form, it is more than a little strange to think about.↩︎

  14. because we, like ancient mesopetamia (babylonia? I forget and should absolutely learn by then) are able to track patterns↩︎

  15. section?↩︎

  16. oof that means I’ll have to explain the penumbra/umbra difference in earth shadow. That’s probably fine though? I mean it’s a pretty easy thing to demonstrate/explain I hope↩︎

  17. had to delete the next line, which did absolutely read “which will be a fun diversion into harmonics. It’s true, and I do still actively believe in the harmony of the spheres and think more people need to,” but this is not the place (something I’ll need to repeat to myself over and over as I prepare these slides)↩︎

  18. I refuse to get into the fact that the sun is moving, because I don’t want it to/don’t think that it should affect eclipses↩︎

  19. hmmm capitalization is going to be an issue for anything written. I’m so grateful that my talks are almost exclusively oral and that I don’t live in a fantasy world where capital and lower case letters are actually audible (also I hate remembering the fact that lower case letters are so named because in early typesetting they existed in the physically lower cases.)↩︎

  20. from an observer staring down on the solar system↩︎

  21. I should probably find an actual citation for that. My imagining that each part of the Earth would boil then freeze may not be entirely accurate.↩︎

  22. a phrase I did, in fact, say to a four year old↩︎

  23. spoiler, like the moon to the Earth↩︎

  24. ok realistically not really, but it’s at least poetically evocative, which is my goal for right now. Facts can always follow from a story, the reverse is not always true.↩︎

  25. the fact that it isn’t totally in line with the orbit around the sun used to mystify me. Now the fact that it lines up so close to nicely and so nicely with the moon shocks me more↩︎

  26. Strictly speaking, the earth’s orbit is not a circle, and so maybe we still would. Then again, the Earth is closest to the sun during northern winter, and I don’t think that the equatorial regions really have any temperature swings, though, again, that’s something I should consider. Ughhhhhh I don’t want to get into the fact that planets have elliptical orbits, but that’s at least something that I should consider for the future video series (which I’ll talk about at the end of this post, because it’s a great idea that a friend had, especially since more and more it looks like that’s where I want my job to end up↩︎

  27. at least during the winter months. Less sure what the sun does in the sky over summer↩︎

  28. shockingly, the programming language is not the best tool for making pictures↩︎

Universe in the Park Part 5

First Published: 2023 September 4

Draft 1

Well, first off, sorry for anyone who tried to read my last post. I apparently completely forgot how to do formatting. I don’t have the spoons1 to fix it right now, but I will try my hardest to remember to do so in the future.

Unlike my last post, this reflection is only on a single Universe in the Park2, rather than five. I think I said this yesterday, but it was not only my final talk of the summer, it was also the final talk of this program for the summer. It had good attendance, for all that the crowd wasn’t as great as I would’ve loved. Most of the first few questions were just polite ways of asking “right, but like, what’s the point?” Thankfully, there were three children there.3 I can always rely on children to ask many and interesting4 questions.

Some highlights from last night include:

As always, after the formal talk portion of the night, I tried to set up my telescope. It was looking cloudy beforehand, so I did not have any of the prep work done, but I thankfully was able to make quick work of it.7 The moon was large and beautiful8, so I started pointing at it. Someone told me that Saturn was apparently visible, so I hesitantly pointed the telescope there next.

Despite the fact that Saturn was partially hidden behind a cloud, I think it was the coolest thing I’ve pointed at this summer. The moon is great, but it mostly just looks like a higher definition image of the moon. Most stars just look like brighter dots on the sky. The occasional double is cool, but it’s just two close by dots. Saturn, on the other hand, had resolvable disks!9

After that, I used my trusty star finding app to point me to a nice double given what part of the sky I could see.10 There was a nice double, and people seemed very11 excited to see it. After that, there were just a few stragglers, so I showed them Polaris12 and then not so subtly suggested that they should go home.

It did not feel like a good talk, but I got tons of compliments afterwards. In retrospect, I was in a really bad head space, and while I don’t think it negatively affected my talk too terribly much, I think it absolutely crushed my idea of how well the talk went. It was my tenth of the season and my I think twelfth overall.13 There are, as it turns out, sixty eight state parks in this state. Given the overlap and the fact that my first talk of the summer wasn’t at a state park14, I have slim hopes of making it to all of them for a talk before I leave graduate school. Still, I can try my hardest I suppose.

The park as a whole was pretty beautiful. It was on one of the nice lakes15, and it had dunes. I didn’t get in until lateish, and so I didn’t want to go swimming.16 I then left early in the morning because I had a fairly packed schedule that day.

Anyways, I had a lovely season of these talks, and I’m grateful for the chance to have done them.17

  1. i wrote a blog about this concept at some point, but I’m not going to look for it now (funnily enough)↩︎

  2. ok so I did use the explicit name of the program. Good to know (re: yesterday’s footnotes↩︎

  3. ok, realistically, there were probably much more than three children, but only three are relevant because they did what children should do↩︎

  4. if sometimes really difficult and philosophical↩︎

  5. yes, and also we move which makes them look like they’re moving, both over the course of a night and over the course of a year and over the course of millennia↩︎

  6. yes? technically the moon isn’t a planet, though I do think (I didn’t say this, of course, correcting children needlessly in their questions is mean) it is large enough to be considered one if it wasn’t, you know, orbiting the earth instead of the sun directly↩︎

  7. shocking how setting up a telescope repeatedly will make you faster at it.↩︎

  8. and incredibly red, which I said was due to dust in the atmosphere, since it was at the horizon. Even if that wasn’t true, it feels emotionally true↩︎

  9. it was absolutely tiny on the scope, but people could still see them. It was wild to me↩︎

  10. we were behind the nature center, and so big dipper (Mizar I want to say is the double in Ursa Major) was invisible. Sadly, that does mean that I was unable to make my dumb bear joke (if you want to know, just ask)↩︎

  11. reasonably↩︎

  12. at their request↩︎

  13. thirteenth? I should check through my notes.↩︎

  14. and it doesn’t show up anywhere in the parks and etc booklet I was given↩︎

  15. some might even call them great↩︎

  16. that’s a lie, of course. I always want to go swimming. I just didn’t want the consequences of swimming, and that was enough to stop me↩︎

  17. as it turns out, the program is so grateful to me that I’ve now been placed on the steering committee. I guess that’s what they say happens. Rewards for a job well done and all↩︎

  18. loosely. There are one sentence descriptions for about half the chapters, so I make sure that i hit every plot point I want to. There are also thirty chapter gaps where I’ll just write where the muse takes me↩︎

  19. because accidentally did at end of day not beginning↩︎

Monthly Reflection

First Published: 2023 September 3

Draft 1

And, like sand through an hourglass, my own hours have passed silently by. Whoops, that’s a little maudlin. Let’s try opening again.

Like the moon which rises and falls each day, waxing and waning over the course of a month, my own month was filled with intermediate highs and lows.1

August, like a summer’s day, felt so long in the moment and yet so short upon reflection.2 I gave my last few3 talks for the summer! I went to a concert!4 I went to a play!

I turned twenty five! I gave my accordion away to be repaired. I competed in a pinball tournament! I went to a friend’s thesis defense!

I wrote a few letters. I swam in a Great Lake!5 I visited my family!

Ok, so in retrospect, I suppose that I did actually do a lot. It still doesn’t feel like it, but as they6 say, c’est la vie.

Let’s see how that list compares with what I said I was excited for.

Looking at last month’s goals:10

Things that I’m excited for this month:13

Using last month’s goals, things I am excited about,18, and my goals for this year of life as inspiration, this month’s goals:19

Given these goals, the questions that I will need to answer each day:

And, as a day in September30, today’s responses:

Oof, that was a bit of a marathon post. Sorry.

  1. still too needlessly poetic, but I suppose it’s good enough. No, on second thought, let’s try a third time.↩︎

  2. Yeah, that’s great.↩︎

  3. final reflection to come!↩︎

  4. which I don’t think that I’ve reviewed. I may or may not.↩︎

  5. and was beside a different one last night↩︎

  6. I, every month, at least once↩︎

  7. to my face at least↩︎

  8. wow!↩︎

  9. for those not in academia, don’t ask. For those in academia, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.↩︎

  10. commentary removed↩︎

  11. so 11 instead of 8. The actual goal was more words, but I did end up another 12 percent less on word count. (it occurs to me that a motivated reader could, in theory, use the word counts and percent decreases I’ve given in my musings to figure out how many words I wrote last month. If you’re the first one to do so and tell me, I’ll get you an ice cream, or something of equivalent value↩︎

  12. read: I recorded a voicemail while driving↩︎

  13. assume that this was written on the first, so I’ll talk about things that have happened since.↩︎

  14. I did it on the first! I think I pr’d↩︎

  15. did that this morning/early afternoon. (it was a long swim time↩︎

  16. I am ninety percent sure I’ve used the program name in this blog before, but if I haven’t, this will not be the first time. I did it, in fact, last night! It went really well. Without (many) spoilers, there were like seventy people again!↩︎

  17. depending on bureaucracy↩︎

  18. which I retroactively added above this sentence↩︎

  19. excluding things I’ve already done↩︎

  20. to say nothing of my mental health.↩︎

  21. taking a nap↩︎

  22. from now on, at least↩︎

  23. which as of now, I have seventy two (I think, off by one errors are quintessential to my experience as a counter) chapters left, and I’m falling behind on the (completely minimal) plot that I’ve meant to write↩︎

  24. which feels like a reasonable number↩︎

  25. since I, you know, didn’t record any last month↩︎

  26. original arrangements of folk songs are maybe allowed. I’m also going to need to decide how I feel about an instrumental song with CGS (Computer generated sound). I think positive, as long as I actually put some effort into mixing, especially since that’s where almost all of the sounds are going to have to come from, since I don’t own/know how to play many of the instruments that I would like to include on the album↩︎

  27. I initially wrote ten, but that’s insane. I’m not going to generate 280 (since it’s the third) things I like about myself. That feels a little too much. 190 seems much more reasonable.↩︎

  28. starting now↩︎

  29. honestly such a fun question because I can really only answer it in the positive↩︎

  30. how is it already -ber months??↩︎

  31. I still have no idea what the right term for this is↩︎

  32. see: camping↩︎

  33. and, importantly, actually follow that plotting, rather than this last chapter where I added fifteen hundred (maybe only a thousand) words about the MC’s family because of a review.↩︎

  34. like straight 8ths, parsimonious voice leading through the chords I’m going to use in the song↩︎

Family Board Games

First Published: 2023 August 30

Draft 1

Last night my family had our first1 board game night. It was a really fun time, for all that it was much shorter than our historic marathon nights. We checked that we were able to play two games,2 and we played through one of them.

Playing Ticket to Ride virtually is a much different experience than playing it live. Thankfully, it is not a game that has significant intrigue, and so the fact that I was playing with the rest of my family from behind a screen didn’t make too much of a difference. It was also really nice to not have to carefully place each of the incredibly small plastic trains on the page. The game layout also makes it incredibly clear how much of the game is left.3

One interesting feature that the game offered is that, like some variations of chess, each player only has so much time to make every choice they will over the course of the game. I chose forty4 five minutes per player, because that was the default for the game, and I didn’t know what changing it would do. I am now curious what would happen if you ran out of time, though. Would it skip your turn? Make you queue your move? I should try it sometime.

  1. virtual↩

  2. we were↩

  3. for those who’ve never played, Ticket to Ride ends when someone (almost) runs out of trains. In the digital version, there’s a constant tracker of how many trains everyone has.↩

  4. it bothers me every time that I write the word that it doesn’t have a u↩

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