Scientist (Paleontology, Geochemistry, Geology); Writer (Speculative and Science Fiction, plus technical and non-technical Science); Mom to great boy on the Autism spectrum; possessor of too many hobbies.
Just when you start to think there’s nothing left for science to discover, they discover a new type of volcanic eruption.
There are two commonly-used categories of eruptions, effusive, when the lava flows calmly out of the volcano, and explosive, which is self-explanatory. Geoscientists have now added a new category to eruption types: tangaroan.
Tangaroan eruptions are slow and result in a very frothy lava to be released. When these eruptions happen underwater, the foamy lava (called blebs) floats up to the water’s surface.
How Tangeroan eruptions work
These eruptions are different than those that form the common floating volcanic rock, pumice, in that pumice is usually formed in explosive eruptions. This new rock doesn’t show the characteristic features of an explosive eruption. The new rock, and the new type of eruption, was clearly much slower than an explosive eruption.
Admittedly, I’m not a giant The Clone Wars fan, but I suspect at least a few of you are. And this is just too cool.
Umbraran Starfighters
In the Star Wars universe there are lots of interesting spacecraft. On first looking at the Umbraran Starfighter, Matt Wedel and Mike Taylor and at Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week (SV-POW), they suspected it looked a lot like the neck vertebrae of the long-necked dinosaur Apatosaurus (once incorrectly called Brontosaurus).
As it happens, they were absolutely correct. The concept artist (David Hobbins) took his inspiration from a displayed Apatosaurus neck vertebra back in 2007.
Not everything we learn about Mars needs to come from the fantastical rovers that are crawling over its surface. Some great new bits of information come from satellites orbiting high above the planet.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recently took some photos of the McLaughlin Crater. Close examination of the photos provided evidence that although now the crater is completely dry, it was once full of water.
McLaughlin Crater
In addition to giving detailed images of structures on the ground surface, remote imaging from satellites can also provide information about minerals present on the ground, based upon how the light is absorbed and reflected from the surface. In the case of McLaughlin Crater, there is evidence of carbonate and clay minerals which most likely would form in a lake.
The idea that there might have once been liquid water on Mars leads to the corollary that water must still be present on the planet. Scientists suspect that this water would be deep in the subsurface now. This, and all the other recent discoveries on Mars, leads scientists to believe that there Mars may have been habitable to life and my yet harbor life in it’s rocks.
National Blog Posting Month – January 2013 – Energy
Prompt – What is your favourite thing to do when you lose energy in your home and can’t use electronics?
——
What would I do without electricity and all my little gizmos? Luckily for me, I’ve been in such situations many times. I’m a geologist. I camp. Electricity isn’t always an option. So, what do I do?
If the weather is good, I’ll go outside and do something in the garden. Or go for a run or a long walk. Alas, most power outages happen when the weather is bad (ice, wind, snow), so going outside is not likely a good option. What then?
I crack a book. I don’t read fiction often enough. I need to. I need to desperately, but it seems that I’m always busy doing other things (not least of which is writing!) I would likely take the downtime as an opportunity to read for a while.
Of course, what usually happens when I read is that I get a strong yen to write. Without electricity, computers aren’t an option. That’s OK. I have a special notebook, just for writing longhand. I took it to the Arctic and wrote a ton in my tent, as well as on planes to and from our field sites. I wrote at “Inception Camp” when I was on an elk hunt with my dad in 2011. There’s a good chance I’ll be writing if the power goes out for very long.
There’s one other thing that I’m likely to do if the power goes out. It’s every adult’s favorite: crawl back into bed in sleep until the lights are on again. In fact, that sounds pretty good right now (even though the lights are still on!).
There is a lot of discussion about climate change these days. It’s quite a polarizing topic, actually. It’s astounding to me to see how science – or a scientific result – is suddenly a taboo topic in polite company, just like politics and religion. It upsets me. Why are we not interested in the science? Why can’t I talk about it?
Well, I talk about it anyway, at least to those who are interested in listening. If people want to argue, then I usually shut down. It’s not that I don’t feel that such discussion isn’t worthwhile, and with some people I will try to be engaged, but honestly, most of the arguments stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works and how scientists look at data. It’s frustrating, and it’s not something easily explained. There’s also a certain amount of mistrust of science, which I find disturbing.
Rather than trying to explain the entire body of climate science, perhaps I’ll take a moment to talk about one aspect of the climate debate. One thing that some argue is completely bunk.
The Hockey Stick.
Most everyone has heard of this. I’m not talking about the game of Hockey, here. I’m talking about the Hockey Stick. Considered by some to be the smoking gun proving global warming and by others as manipulated data. The gist of it is that if we can look at average annual temperatures over the last several hundred years, we see that there’s some fluctuations around an average, but that the last few decades have been getting warmer and warmer, more so than at any other time on record. This, then, is the rapid global warming that everybody is arguing about (but that you don’t talk about with your family at Christmas).
Well, where does this come from? When you see images of the Hockey Stick, you see time along the bottom and you expect to see temperature on the vertical axis, so that when the lines go up, you’re looking at warmer temperatures. What the vertical axis shows, however, is what’s called the “temperature anomaly” (although it is, at least, labeled in degrees). What the heck is that?
The temperature anomaly is the difference between any given year’s average annual temperature and the average of all the annual temperatures over a specified period of time (sometimes from 1951-1980, sometimes from 1902-1980, sometimes something else, always defined). During that span of time, temperatures were relatively constant. The decision to use this period of time as a baseline by which to compare everything else was arbitrary. (Or I assume, so. I wasn’t there when this decision was made!) The fact is, they just needed a ‘zero’ point against which to compare everything else. Presumably, records during that period of time were precise and accurate enough for the researchers to be confident in them.
PRECISION and ACCURACY: These are two terms that are sometimes confused for one another, but in science have very specific meanings. Accuracy is getting the right answer. It’s hitting the bullseye. In the case of temperature, it reflects how correct the temperature reading on any given thermometer is. Precision describes how well the same answer can be found. If you shoot ten arrows at a target, precision is about how close together those ten arrows are. In science, it’s about putting the same thermometer in the same freezer on different days and getting the same temperature reading, or perhaps putting ten seemingly identical thermometers in the freezer at once and seeing how similar all the readings are. Precision is shown on graphs (like the Hockey Stick) with error bars or confidence envelopes.
What’s important is to realize that something can be precise and not accurate and vice versa. I can shoot ten arrows at a target and they can all clump to the upper right of the bullseye, which I was aiming for. That’s precise, but not accurate. Or I can shoot ten arrows and have them spread out, surrounding the bullseye. In this case, they’re accurate, but not precise.
Precision and accuracy is a big deal in science, and particularly in climate science. Both of these are called into question when the legitimacy of the interpretation of the Hockey Stick is discussed.
In order to calculate a temperature anomaly, of course, one must first come up with a value for average annual temperature. For more recent years, this comes from instrumental records, aka, thermometers. One of the difficulties faced, however, is how to calculate a global average annual temperature, especially when temperatures vary all over the world, from day to day and season to season. And really, how can you compare annual temperatures in the arctic with annual temperatures on the equator? And then, throw on top of that precision issues with the thermometers themselves. Geez! How do you handle all those data?
Well, it’s complicated. The first thing you have to do is normalize everything. Normalizing means to set everything up onto the same scale so that they can be compared easily. This is where the temperature anomaly comes in. By using an average of a particular set of years and then showing all your annual weather data relative to that, it becomes possible to compare Arctic temperatures with equatorial temperatures. In the Arctic, a temperature anomaly of 1 degree might mean a change from -5 to -4 degrees, whereas on the Equator, it’s a change from 72 to 73 degrees. By normalizing using the temperature anomaly, we can easily see that the temperature went up one degree in both places.
The normalized anomalies can be averaged for specific regions (to help even out the differences between regions that have tons of thermometers and regions that don’t), and then for the whole world to get at a global temperature change. That’s what we’re really interested in.
When you calculate all these averages, you can also calculate the variation of the values. For example, in the Arctic, the anomaly could be 2 degrees, whereas on the Equator it could be 1 degree. You can calculate the average (1.5) but also calculate some statistics to represent the variation. This is where error bars come in. Your average is 1.5, but the range is from 1 to 2 degrees, so you draw a little bar on the graph representing that. (This example is not real, of course. Standard deviation or standard error would be used in a real scientific study, but you get the idea.) The error bars can also be extended (or shortened) depending upon the known precision of the thermometer used.
What you wind up with is a lovely graph of squiggly lines representing the global temperature anomaly over time. A positive anomaly means warmer temperatures than in times past. A negative anomaly means colder temperatures. The Hockey Stick shows warmer temperatures than in the past, and things seem to be getting warmer.
One of the problems with the typical image of the Hockey Stick, when it’s flashed up in the news is that it almost always lacks the error bars. The error bars are important. When looking at instrumental records (thermometers), for which we have data going back into the late 19th century, we can see that the error bars get smaller and smaller over time. This is due to improvements in the technology of temperature measurement. But the errors are still there.
Average global temperature anomalies.
Error bars give you a possible range within which the actual ‘real’ measurement might be. That is to say, that even though there’s a point on the plot, it might not be in exactly the right spot. The error bars give you a measure of how inaccurate the data point might be. It’s possible for data points to show a nice complex pattern, but to have error bars so big, that the pattern might not be real.
I like to think of error bars as bumpers. Imagine that you put a string into the plot between the error bars and pull it tight. If it can make a flat line between the error bars, then the data don’t show any pattern. If you pull the string tight and it still has bends and peaks in it, then those features probably represent true variations.
In the case of the Hockey Stick, the upturn of the temperature anomalies in the last few decades is pretty compelling. With error bars, the increase in temperature anomalies might be a little smaller, but it is still there.
Average global temperature from instrumental records. Colored lines show different possible rates of warming.
But what does this mean? We see an increase in the temperature anomaly over the last few decades, but really, this plot doesn’t look so much like the Hockey Stick you’ve seen elsewhere. The full-blown Hockey Stick goes back about 600 years, but we didn’t have thermometers way back then. How can we measure mean annual global temperatures from that far back.
Day 24: Write, in second person, a dream your character is having. Whether it be a nightmare or something happier, describe the dream in it’s entirety.
——
It’s dark. You’re soaked to the bone because it’s raining. And you’re lost.
Where were you? How did you get here? It wasn’t raining when last you remembered. It was still cold. It should be snowing. But you’re not shivering, yet. This is a late summer rain.
A familiar smell comes into your nose. You know it. That smell when the lightning lashes out.
Then a brilliant green flash blinds you, driving you to the ground. You flatten yourself, shrinking away from the flash, burying your face in the mud. The flash reminds you of something, but what that is you don’t know. You grip the ground, trying to hold fast, but the mud oozes between your fingers.
The only thing you feel is the rain pelting on your back. You peek over your arm into the darkness.
A fire burns some distance away, and a strange white light shines up into the sky. Something beyond the fire is glowing. Suddenly, a dazzling green fireball erupts, momentarily illuminating towers and wires before you are forced to shut your eyes again in its brilliance. You hide your face again.
You realize you’re crying. You expect to be torn away from the ground and hurtled elsewhere. You dig around with your hands, desperately trying to find something solid to hole onto. There is nothing there but mud.
The rain continues to beat down. You look up again. There is a human figure moving near the fire. A man.
He speaks: “Protect her.”
You get up and walk to him. The glow beyond the fires begins again. You point at it. “Look out!”
Another green fireball alights behind the man. By his silhouette you see he is malformed. You duck and cover your eyes. You examine the burned shadow of his silhouette behind your eyelids. He’s not malformed. He’s injured. Mangled.
You look up again. He still stands there, back-lit by the fires. “Protect her,” he says again.
You rise and stumble toward him. “Who are you?”
“I love her,” he said. “I will miss her.”
“I don’t understand,” you say.
“Love her, please.”
“Who?”
As you’ve gotten closer, you see that his arm is dangling at his side. Ribs jut out of his chest. His leg is bent and broken, yet somehow he still stands.
You can’t see his face. It’s obscured in the darkness. But you are certain he is hideously disfigured.
“I give her to you,” he says.
“Who?” you repeat.
“My Hanna,” he says. “Love her.”
“I do, but—.” Suddenly you understand, as a green fireball lights the sky once more. You fall backwards into the mud. You lay there for a long time, looking up into the rain. It hurts your eyes, so you shut them.
The rain is gone.
A hand strokes your cheek. It is warm. And you are dry.
You try to open your eyes, but the hand covers them. “Sh-sh,” a woman whispers in your ear. You know that shush. You smile.
“I love you, but you can’t see me yet,” she said.
“I want to,” you say.
“No. Not yet, love. Stay. Be at peace. I am at peace.”
“There is peace here,” you say.
“But one who needs you most is there.”
“No. Let me stay.”
“I love you. So does she. Your nation needs you. And her. Together.” The woman was suddenly stern, though she still strokes your hair.
“I have betrayed you.”
“No. You honor me.” She kisses you softly on the mouth. “Go home. I will see thee soon enough.”
You gasp. Coldness floods over your body. And you awake.
Once again, the whim to write fiction has struck me. Here is more of the Stink Bug story which started with this post. Where do you think it will go next?
**********
The bug was just floating there in front of me. It was all I could see. It filled my vision from edge to edge. And it was laughing.
How do bugs even laugh?
I tried to swat at it. My arms felt leaden. My hand passed through the bug as though it was only vapor. It flickered, then became solid again. It still laughed.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded.
The bug fell quiet and dissipated. I was left in dark silence. The silence hurt. It pressed on my ear drums. I tried to cover my ears, but my heavy arms wouldn’t budge. I tried to cry out, but I hadn’t the strength. Only a tiny moan escaped my lips. “Help,” I squeaked.
The bug reappeared. “Do you need something?” it said.
“Help,” I whispered again.
“We all need a bit of that.”
“Sorry—,” I started. I didn’t mean to squish you.
“We don’t like being crushed.”
“Sorry,” I exhaled.
“You can help us,” it said.
“I can’t—.”
“I can let you move.”
“Breathe,” I mumbled.
The bug came close. “You don’t like where you are?”
“It hurts.”
“That place. Where you were. Is it better?”
I didn’t answer. My life was dull. There was a faint glimmer of interest in the back of my mind. But I was paralyzed and afraid. “Can’t move.”
“If you could move.” Suddenly breathing came easier. I rubbed my face with my hands. “Is that better?”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“We need to talk,” said the stink bug.
I looked at it and it stared back. “We need your help.”
“My help?”
“Yes. You can help us.”
“Do what? How?”
“We are prisoner.”
I shut my eyes. A vision of bugs in tiny prison cells danced through my mind.
The bug laughed. “Not like that. We are not like this.”
I looked at it again. “What—. I don’t understand.”
“Will you help us?”
“Do what?”
“Come with us. We will show you,” it said.
“I can’t just leave.”
“You already have.” The bug chuckled.
“Where will we go?”
I saw a light out of the corner of my eye. I looked directly at it. It grew brighter. “We go there,” said the bug.
“What is it?”
“A path.”
I looked at the bug. “I can’t.”
The bug looked sad. Somehow. “Please,” it said. “We are prisoner. You can help us.”
“I’m just a middle-aged, overweight, accountant. How can I possibly—.”
The bug cut me off. “You can. Please. Come.” The stink bug began to crawl toward the light. It waved me to follow. And I did.
The Beware of Movies! series is meant to point out some of the scientific inaccuracies of popular movies, specifically in points related to the geological sciences.
This post will point out the major inaccuracies portrayed in movies about the science of paleontology. I’m a paleontologist. This oughtta be good…
Commonly, about two seconds after I tell someone I’m a vertebrate paleontologist, they ask me what I think of Jurassic Park. Then I laugh. It’s either that or they ask me if I carry a whip like Indiana Jones. Then I snarl something about how 1) Dr. Jones was an archaeologist and 2) Indiana was the dog!
Misconceptions about paleontology: 1) Paleontologists only study dinosaurs. 2) Paleontologists study arrowheads and ancient pottery.
I’ve written a few blog posts about what can be done with isotopes from precipitation, and how that might assist us in understanding how to interpret isotopic data collected from ancient rocks and fossils. (Look here and here.) As I live here in western New York state, close to Lake Ontario, I frequently have opportunities to further study how the isotopes from precipitation (in this case Lake Effect snow) are related to the isotopes of the water that originally evaporated to make the clouds that do all the snowing.
Right now, we’re looking at a Lake Effect snow event that’s due to start sometime tomorrow, so I’m throwing together is quick and fun isotopic study that I’ll share with you when the data come in. I’ll describe it here.
As review, let’s think about isotopes in water. First, what do I mean by isotopes? The term worries people, because they immediately think of radioactive isotopes and OMG, we’re gonna die! No, it’s not like that. The word isotope just refers to the fact that some atoms of the same element are heavier or lighter than the others.
Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen (H2O). Hydrogen comes in two types. Most of it has a mass (think of it as weight) of 1. Some of it has a mass of 2. (The hydrogen with a mass of 2 is called deuterium. It’s one of the few isotopes that has its own name.) So water is mostly made with hydrogen atoms of mass 1, but some water has hydrogen of mass 2. The water with the mass 2 hydrogen is heavier than the water with the mass 1 hydrogen.
Similarly, oxygen comes in two important isotopes. The most common form of oxygen has a mass of 16. A more rare (but not radioactive) form of oxygen has a mass of 18. Either type of oxygen can be in a water molecule, but the water with the mass 18 oxygen is heavier.
With mass spectrometry, we can measure water to see how much of it has the heavier hydrogen and the heavier oxygen. This is what I do for a living.
To get any kind of precipitation (rain or snow), water must first evaporate to make a vapor mass in the atmosphere. You can think of this as just making a cloud or a storm. In the case of Lake Effect precipitation, the water that’s evaporating is the lake itself. When the water evaporates, the lighter water evaporates more than the heavier water because, well, it’s lighter. So the cloud that you get from evaporation is isotopically lighter than the lake it evaporated from.
We measure ‘lighter’ or ‘heavier’ with isotopes using what we call ‘delta notation.’ The numbers we get are given in ‘permil’ (‰) even though they’re not a concentration. What’s important is that more positive delta values means that there’s more of the ‘heavy’ element. More negative values means there’s more of the ‘light’ element. So, if the lake has a delta value of -1‰, then the cloud should have a more negative value, like -3‰. When a cloud rains or snows, the heavier elements fall out first, because they’re heavier. If the cloud has an isotopic value of -3‰, the snow should have a more positive value, like -2‰.
The change between lake and cloud, or between cloud and snow, is called fractionation, and is controlled in part by temperature. (This means that the numbers I just gave you are completely made up.) The fractionation is also different for hydrogen and oxygen, and we measure these separately. (Hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in water do tend to vary together, but it can get pretty complex.)
As a cloud rains, it loses its heavy isotopes. If we take a cloud or storm (or say a hurricane) and take it from its water source (a lake or the ocean) and move it over land, this fractionation will go on. If no more water vapor is added, then the cloud gradually gets isotopically lighter. This means that the precipitation will also get lighter (but will always be heavier than the cloud). This process is called ‘Rayleigh Distillation,’ and is an important assumption in isotope geochemistry. Luckily, it has been shown to be a good model.
All right, let’s get back to Lake Effect snow. We’re looking at a Lake Effect event that is expected to start sometime tomorrow. We can get snow bands off of the lake that make great stripes of snow across the landscape.
What Lake Effect snow from Lake Ontario teach us?
We know that the snow will be forming from water evaporated off of Lake Ontario, so it will be useful to know the isotopic values of that water as a baseline. We have no way of measuring it isotopic values of the water vapor (the cloud) but we can find out the air temperature close to the lake surface and calculate the the isotopic value should be.
Then, we can measure the isotopic value of the snow that falls. We can collect snow that falls right at the lake (that which first forms from the freshly evaporated water) and we can look at snow that falls some distance away. We can make predictions about what patterns we might see.
Predictions:
1) Snow collected near the lake will be isotopically heavier than snow collected further away. Even though it’s only a few miles, Rayleigh Distillation should have some effect.
2) Over time, the snow collected at one location should not change in isotopic value, unless air temperature at the lake varies significantly. Because the cloud will be continuously replenished from Lake Ontario, I don’t expect to see any variability over time. The isotopic value of the lake water should not change consequentially. What can change is the air temperature, which will alter the fractionation of the isotopes (when it’s colder, less of the heavy water will evaporate). Also, colder temperatures could result in freezing of the lake surface, effectively moving the shoreline further into the lake.
It’s a pretty simple thing to test these predictions. I just need to collect some snow samples (and recruit other people to do the same). Specifically, I’ll be collecting every six hours, since I’ll be measuring snow depth at that time interval anyway. Collecting every twelve hours would probably be sufficient. I run a laboratory that has a liquid water isotope analyzer, so analysis will be easy. Once I’ve got the results, then it’ll be a quick write-up that everyone can benefit from here. It’ll be interesting to see how well my predictions hold.
Our water analyzer, Norm, analyzing waters from hurricane Sandy.
If you live nearby and think you might be interested in helping out with this little project, let me know in the comments below. The more the merrier!
UPDATE 1-21-13
After waiting for 24 hours, there has not yet been any snow. But I’m assured it’s on the way!
@paleololigo It’s coming; 1 week from tonight I think you’ll have 1-2′ on ground.Tues PM you will get a foot, Wed, Thu, Fri will see more!
On May 20th of last year, a Tarbosaurusskeleton went up for auction in New York City. Paleontologists familiar with Tarbosaurus (sometimes called Tyrannosaurus, as they are closely related) immediately realized that this specimen, a complete skeleton, could not have come from anywhere but Mongolia. Mongolia does not permit the export of its fossils, and it was clear that this specimen had been removed relatively recently.
Mounted skeleton on exhibit in Cosmo Caixa, Barcelona – by FunkMonk
There was a great deal of argument, and the auction still went ahead, with the Tarbosaurus being sold for $1,052,500. The check was never cashed, luckily, as the case was under investigation.
The result of the investigation was that, in fact, the skeleton was illegally poached. Now the commercial collector, Eric Prokopi, faces up to 17 years in prison for his acts. This particular Tarbosaurus skeleton isn’t the only one out there that Prokopi had a hand in smuggling out of Mongolia. Hopefully the rest will be found.
Underneath the massive ice sheets in Antarctica, isolated from the atmosphere for 100,000 years or more exists a lake of liquid water called Lake Vostok. Scientists have drilled through nearly 4000 meters of ice (more than two miles) to reach this remote lake. They wish to study it and see if there is anything living in there, as a potential analogue for the harsh environments of distant planets. On January 10th, the first sample was collected. Research can now commence.
Cross-sectional map of Lake Vostok situation (before drilling was complete) (Credt: National Science Foundation)
Not quite geology, but close to paleontology, so it counts…
Storms reveal iron age skeleton
These sorts of things happen a lot in paleontology, actually. A storm causes a stream bank or cliff to collapse, and suddenly there are bones sticking out of the fresh surface. Given that these were human remains, the police were called initially. Archaeologists later said they thought the bones were as much as 2000 years old. Sadly a second storm caused to bones to be lost.
18 Things is a book written by Jamie Ayres, to be released on January 24th. In celebration, Jamie is hosting a one-week blogfest in which everyone is encouraged to blog (or otherwise post) their own bucket list of 18 things (or fewer). It seemed like fun, so I decided to join in.
What are your 18 things?
I do have a bucket list, tucked away in my brain somewhere. There are items that have been on it for as long as I can remember, and other things that have been added recently. Occasionally, something gets removed. For whatever reason, I have abandoned some things on the list. It’s never been a long list, so I’m not sure I can make it to 18, but I’ll try.
Firstly, there are the things that have always been on my bucket list:
1) Own an equid. I don’t care if it’s a horse, mule, or donkey (or a zebra, for that matter!), I just want an equid. I can trace my being where I am today all the way back to when I was four years old, and my mother told me about her horse. (Read about that here.) I love the beasts, and I want to own one (and hug it and love it, but not necessarily call it George).
2) Drive a race car. Even though I no longer keep up with NASCAR (mostly because very few of the races are on the non-cable networks anymore), I have always loved racing. I was raised around cars and the smell of garages. There’s a local track here that I can go to and just sit with my eyes closed taking in the sounds and scents. I’ve always wanted the experience of going full-throttle at Daytona. One day I will.
3) Write a book. I mean fiction. Well hey! I need to change this to ‘publish’ a book, because I have actually written a book now. Two, to be exact, with two more in progress. So, OK, publish a book.
4) Get a Ph.D. Oh, wait. I did that. This is an item that was on my life-goals list when I was a kid. Sometimes it’s nice to include things like this to remember your successes, especially when things start feeling overwhelming and impossible. Happily, not only have I gotten my Ph.D., I’ve also managed to earn the respect of my colleagues in my (albeit narrow) areas of specialty. That’s pretty cool.
Now, if this is a proper bucket list, it oughtta have items on it such as things to try (bungee jumping, anyone?) or places to visit (the pyramids, maybe?), but I never seem to think about these things. I’ve gotten to do some pretty amazing things already, and I’m sure I’ll do more (but probably not bungee jumping). I’ve been places where most people will never go and will probably have opportunities to do that again. But there still are a few things:
5) Learn the longsword. I’ve always had a deep and abiding interest in the Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA), and finally decided that I really want to learn how to sword fight like a knight. Only last November, I finally found an instructor who can help me do this.
6) Write a screenplay and have it get optioned. Seriously, how cool would that be? I took a screenwriting class way back in graduate school, and last year I actually wrote a complete screenplay (which now needs to go in the recycle bin so I can start over – my first drafts of anything are always pretty bad!). There’s some big screen writing festivals (like the Great American PitchFest) that I’d like to go to eventually, once I’m convinced I have a ‘optionable’ script.
Geez. 18 things is really hard!
I could, I suppose, add a list of people I’d really like to meet. It would be best, of course, if I had cause to meet them because of who I am, not just because I’m a drooling fan. But I’d accept a random meeting in a hotel lobby.
7) ‘Weird’ Al Yankovic – musician. I’ve always loved his music. As a kid, they were just funny parodies. As an adult, I really appreciate his musical talent and the original songs that he’s written. Seriously any song that can incorporate the phrase ‘Islets of Langerhans’ deserves a Grammy. I listen to Pancreas and Hardware Store whenever my mood needs a boost.
8) James Purefoy – actor. I’ve only recent become a fan (in the last two years). The first time I knew I was watching him in a movie, it was the movie Ironclad, where he played the lead of Thomas Marshal, a Templar Knight. Then I saw him in another movie, and realized I was seeing him everywhere in all manner of roles. He’s an incredible actor, and (or so it seems from anecdotal evidence and various interviews) a genuinely nice, caring human being. The admiration goes a bit deeper, however. Something clicked in me after seeing Ironclad. It reminded me of my wish to learn the longsword and was what motivated me off the couch and into the gym. Since seeing that movie, I’ve dropped on the order of 30 pounds and am easily in the best shape I’ve been in since I graduated high school. I started taking sword lessons (yay!) and started writing my first novel then, too. He doesn’t know it, but his work has been very inspirational to me. I’d like to meet him and thank him.
Well, ten shy of 18. Still, it’ll take some doing to accomplish these things, especially in addition to all the other things I have going on, like maintaining a marriage, keeping a job, and raising a special-needs child. This will work. For now.
Because today I’m fresh out of blogging juice, I thought I’d post an excerpt from my novel in progress: Prince of Herongarde. This chapter, for the moment anyway, is called Immediate Care.
—–
Trey felt himself being lifted from Garnog. Familiar voices comforted him and he relaxed. He opened his eyes again and stared at the wood slatted ceiling over his head. They had carried him into the castle, but he didn’t remember the move. The bed was comfortable. He drifted off again.
“Trey?” A rough hand stroked his cheek. “Trey. Please wake.” Trey opened his eyes and met the gaze of his father, King Anthony. “Thank God you yet live,” breathed Anthony.
“Aye, Majesty,” mumbled Trey.
“Gilbert is here. He will care for you,” said Anthony. “And Arin.”
“Aye,” groaned Trey. “Aye!” he said louder. “Aye, your Majesty. Tis Falgarth. Falgarth did this.”
“I know.”
Trey shut his eyes to focus on speaking. “There is… I have in the saddlebags. Garnog.” The effort was exhausting.
“We know, Trey,” came Gilbert’s voice. “Rest yourself, aye?”
“How is it?” asked Anthony.
“It must be cleaned first, your Highness. Then I can tell you,” replied Gilbert.
Anthony patted Trey’s cheek. “Rest you, then.”
A shuffle at the door announced Markus’ entrance, followed closely by Kevin. In his hands were the saddlebags off of Garnog’s saddle. A table was quickly cleared and the contents of the bag were spread out.
Markus immediately picked up piece of fabric which bore the insignia of Falgarth. “There it is,” he muttered.
Anthony took it from Markus and frowned at it. “I have been blind.” His eyes fell upon Kevin, his closest friend since the day he entered training to earn the Mark at the age of six. “Aye, Kevin. I should have listened.”
“None would hear him, your Majesty. How could you know?”
Kevin had returned the previous day with the grim news. He had spent several days patrolling the border with Falgarth and had himself discovered evidence that Falgarth mean to invade Herongarde, validating the claims that Trey had been making for more than a year. Anthony, upon hearing this news, had sent pages to summon the Lords and Mark-bearers of Herongarde to the castle for council and, most likely, to discuss defense.
Anthony looked at Trey lying helpless on the bed. Tessa was bent over him, caressing his face. “I would that I could have known before this happened.” If Trey were to die, there would no longer be an heir from Anthony. The crown would pass to Markus, and then to Balayn, as Trey’s closest relative. Anthony had hoped that Trey would remarry and bear an heir himself. On this day, it did not seem likely.
“Do we know what happened?” asked Kevin.
“Attacked by men of Falgarth,” muttered Markus, “but we know nothing else. He traveled with a woman.”
“Where is she?” asked Anthony.
“I know not, but Balayn—,” started Markus. “Speak of the Devil.”
Balayn walked into the chamber and looked around. He caught Markus’ gaze and approached, wearing a smirk.
“We were just speaking of you, Balayn,” said Anthony. “Know you where the woman is now who traveled with Lord Trey?”
“I put her in the dungeon where she belongs,” Balayn boomed.
“What? This was not my instruction,” said Markus.
“She bore the weapon of a Mark-bearer. She should be put to death.”
“She what?” asked Kevin.
“She had Lord Trey’s sword on her hip,” growled Balayn.
“She also said Trey bid her bear it,” said Markus.
“I think she lies,” muttered Balayn.
Anthony looked back at Trey. Tessa was looking up, listening to the men’s conversation. Anthony walked to Trey’s bedside and leaned close to Trey. “Trey? Remember you a woman with whom you traveled?” Trey moaned in response. “Trey. Do you remember?”
“Aye,” breathed Trey.
“She had you sword, Trey.”
“Aye.”
“You bid her bear it?”
Trey was silent. He couldn’t remember. He didn’t remember much at all. The pain in his leg was a terrible distraction.
“Did you bid her to bear your sword?”
“Aye.” He honestly did not remember, but he did know she had helped him. And she could wield a sword. He might have told her to carry it. “Aye,” he repeated, not sure if he had said anything the first time.
Anthony straightened. “Fetch her to us. I would speak with her.”
“I will go,” volunteered Tessa.
“As will I,” grumbled Balayn, casting Tessa a stern look. They walked together out the door.
Anthony watched them leave. Markus came close and put his hand on Anthony’s shoulder. “Trey is strong, brother,” he said. “And Gilbert is an excellent care-giver. There is little doubt of Trey’s survival.”
A poker was jammed into the fireplace, below the coals. Anthony eyed it sadly. “Aye, he will survive, brother. But with what manner of lasting injury?”
Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist 