Sunday, September 13, 2015

Duplicate universes and so on.

Things I don't know about.  In most cases, the internet could explain.

1.  Duplicate bridge.  I could look it up.  But first, let's think about it.  Does everyone, at different tables get the same hand?  I get why that would be an interesting way to compare skills, like playing golf on the same course or something (to throw in something else I know nothing about), but my questions are more practical.  Do you create decks that are in the same order, and then deal?  Or does someone set it all up ahead?  Okay, I'm going in for answers.   


Real field work!  In a pretty place!
The answer:  you deal, and then after the game, hand your intact hand to the next table. Now that's brilliant, and so much easier than my vision of some lady sorting decks of cards to match each other.  Duplicate bridge, it turns out, is a low stakes version of the twins separated at birth experiement.  (The twins turn out the same, I think.  It's mostly nature.  But you knew that.)

2.  How to animate well enough to make a short film of the refugee situation out of chanterelles and paper boats.  Do you ever wake up with a vision of something, and you get super excited, and it takes a while for you to remember that you don't have any of the necessary skills? I hate that.  I just tried to make a paper boat, and even that was challenging.  But I've got all winter...

3.  The Berenstain Bears Conspiracy.  Here's the deal:  Everyone seems to remember that it was called "The Berenstein Bears", but it's really "Berenstain."  This is used as one more piece of evidence that parallel universii exist.  


The symptoms of parallel universes include ghosts, deja vu, dreams, and people waking up one day to find things are just ever-so-slightly off. (Doesn't that happen every day?  Or is that just me again?)  Back in the old universe, where we grew up, it was spelled and pronounced "stein", but in this new world, it's "stain".  When did it change? Or, did something supernatural happen?!! (Insert scary music.)

I have the same concern about the color "chartreuse", which I thought (as did everyone else I knew, come on, fess up) was in the magenta family until about a week ago.  Ok, maybe 10 years ago, but still, well into adulthood.  It's lime green in this universe.  


Do you like the quarter, for scale?  That's a
whole lot of muskox.
Things that are making me happy today:
1.  This poem, sent to me by my daughter.  
2. This book, which is charming stories about insects written by my new obsession, Jean Henri Fabre.  Painter, writer, scientist, he loved  bugs and mushrooms.
3.  A gorgeous pile of qiviat, which is the soft inner hair of a musk-ox that was hand-collected in the
arctic by Ms. Pasta, and given to me this week.  I'm pretty sure it's one of the softest things I've touched, and spinning it is sort of like being on drugs.
4.  that exciting new find in South Africa, Homo naledi.  Oh to be a young, skinny, brilliant, non-claustrophobic paleontologist

And this just in!


22 comments:

  1. Just in case you didn't know... I always really enjoy these. You're such a good writer/observer.

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  2. Omg, I am so glad I found you! I love everything about this post! I love your engagement with life and its mysteries, and yes, I remember "stein" too, from the hundreds of nights reading that book to my children, and only discovered last month (for real) that is was in fact "stain." But maybe it really was "stein" back then. Thank you for that! In a parallel universe, we are the best of friends, contemplating this things endlessly.

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    1. Oh, thank you! Yes, in that parallel life we're about to go out for a walk and look for stuff and discuss the world at large. :-)

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  3. Chartreuse has always been lime green in my universe. I know this because I had a chartreuse dress in Jr. High. It was hideous.
    I love your mind. In a parallel universe I am having babies with your mind. Look it up. It's possible.

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    1. Jeez, everyone always wants me for my mind. Dammit.

      I think we would have beautiful mind babies, Ms. Moon.

      And, I think there may have been a batch of mis-labeled crayolas in my town or something, where chartreuse was not a hideous dress, but more a pretty glass of wine.

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  5. Hah! I always thought chartreuse was a kind of sickly dark yellow! And never had occasion to think I was wrong, so I never looked it up! It is true that what we don't know that we don't know can get us in trouble, yes?

    As further proof: parallel universes. I thought that was just something made up. I see I was wrong. Again. Sheesh. Very interesting, Betsy. You make me a smarter bear.

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  6. I am pleased to think that perhaps you had the "WHAT? Yellow-green?" realization about chartreuse because you read the story about glaciers in the Seattle Times and pouring chartreuse dye into the runoff water. Am I right? Because it makes the universe feel like a dot-to-dot game when you realize somebody noticed the same tiny thing you did even though you're in different (sorta) universes.

    Loved the lanyard poem. I never made a lanyard but it immediately sent me back to camp days making ashtrays for my parents out of tiny tiles. Ashtrays! Imagine a school having kids make such things for their folks nowadays.

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    1. Aha, no, I hadn't read that article. But I will hunt it down now. I love that too, sort of like when you get a new FB friend and they turn out to know someone you know.

      I know, ashtrays. That's crazy!

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  7. I'm back again to follow more links, because you are just so good at choosing them, and - oh! the lanyard poem! I think the lanyard poem could make a child "even with" the mom, even if the lanyard itself could not :) Lucky you, to receive this from your girl.

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    1. Yes, the lanyard poem. And we all know what a lanyard is, and yet, what is it? Thanks for reading!

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  8. I get visions of me flying, but I don't have wings. In the parallel universe I never lose my socks.

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    1. Ok then. You won't need socks when in flight either. :-)

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  9. I remember a time when a study showed that chartreuse was more visible than red, so they painted all the fire engines chartreuse. That didn't last long because nobody expected that chartreuse thing to be an emergency vehicle -- did that happen in this universe or a different one?

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    1. I think that was the other universe. Or at least, I wasnt in that one....

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  10. A parallel universe. Some days I think it a multi-just-a-little off collision of universes. Nice collection as we float through time though.

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    1. Multi-just-a-little off. . . Now there's something to ponder....

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  11. Berenstain bears=parallel universe. Exactly. I'm so glad you made that crucial distinction. Now I can sleep at night.

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  12. Love this! Tracked you down because of your Feb 2015 NYT article on poems, which a friend pushed my way. Glad she did, glad I did :)

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    1. Aww, thank you so much! Your comment made my day! :-)

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