Had a great day at Rainbow today. Started a new cheese sample (Beemster Classic, an 18 month aged gouda) and spent the morning cutting up hundreds of tiny cheese cubes. In addition, Beemster had sent us a promotional crate of 75 inflatable cows. So I also spent the morning blowing up little dutch cows. For the kids!
Also spent the morning playing a game of "tether-cow" with my co-worker Kate.
The finished Beemster display: (Note my co-worker Mariah in the background. She is gathering cheese for a polenta she is cooking us all for lunch.)
Finished out the day by packing up some Scamorza, an Italian smoked cheese very similar to Mozzarella, except that it is shaped like a little piggie. No one knows why.
This is a picture of a picture of me from the front page of the July 26th, 1986 issue of the Watertown Daily Times. I am 10 years old. It was taken at Nashotah Park during Cub Scout Day Camp. I am learning archery.
During the first manned mission to the surface of the moon nothing came as a surprise. From gathering and testing soil samples to experimenting with moving around in lunar gravity everything confirmed what was already posited in labs back on Earth. Sure Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin gathered moon rocks and snapped pictures and called Richard Nixon and bounded around like antelopes but everything they did only confirmed what they already knew.
Except one thing.
The only surprise to come out of Apollo 11 happened when the two astronauts returned to the command module. They had rejoined Michael Collins in orbit around the moon and had just taken off their space suits when they noticed a strange smell in the compartment. One of the astronauts said it smelled like a musty basement. The other said it smelled like a creek bed. Michael Collins thought it smelled like mothballs.
They eventually realized that what they were smelling was the dirt on the bottom of their boots, the dirt from the surface of the moon. Obviously the moon does not have an atmosphere, so nothing on it's surface gives off any kind of odor. It was only by unknowingly tracking the dirt into the command module and repressurizing (effectively crating a faux atmosphere) that they were able to smell it. It was the only genuine discovery of Apollo 11.
My meditation teacher brought this story up because he found it interesting that the sense of smell, the most subjective of all the senses (really, think of the last time something was objectively proven using one's sense of smell), granted the only real surprise of the entirety of the Apollo 11 mission. He related it to the practice of meditation by saying that it means nothing if all one does is meditate for a short while and then leave it behind on the cushion to go on with one's day or one's life. "You must bring the practice with you, into your everyday world, into every part of your life," he said. "Meditate while standing in line, while fixing a flat tire, while making love. Only then will it surprise you, will you discover something, will it matter. Only then will you smell the dust of the moon."
The world's first colored bubble that doesn't stain.
It took Tim Kehoe 14 years to develop Zubbles. Along the way he has had many failed experiments involving Jell-o and ink and has spent many thousands of dollars in chemistry and dye research.
They have yet to hit the market.
The following is an excerpt from an interview conduced by The Believer in the fall of 2006.
"Ten years into it, we came up with a washable bubble formula. We thought, This is it. We decided to run a focus group test, so we brought out twenty-four of my nieces and nephews and my kids. I went down to the local magic shop and rented one of these huge theatre quality bubble machines. They're great big bubble machines that are controlled by computers.
I remember that morning I was mixing them - I was mixing them in my garage, all this stuff had always been done in my kitchen, and now we were trying to make big batches of it - so I'm out in my garage and a whole bunch of chemicals splash up in my face and I end up throwing up and I stain my eyes blue and my skin was all blue. I wish I had taken a picture.
So we dumped this stuff into these bubble machines and we fired it up and one of the mothers starts crying. She says it's the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen; all these bubbles are filling the air like little balloons going up into the sky. The kids are standing in front of the bubble machine, and even though it's washable - it'd wash off your skin - there was a bunch of stuff it wouldn't wash off of. It wouldn't wash off concrete; it wasn't coming off of leather shoes. The mothers were just horrified so we realized we couldn't go to market with the product. . .
Along the way I invented all kinds of bubbles and lost a lot of them because I didn't know what I did. I blew ten thousand bubbles over the years; I'd blow them in the bathtub to see if they were colored. One day I blew these bubbles and they bounced, like super-balls, in the bathtub. I could never re-create them. I never took notes. I'm really bad at that. I was just, a little more of this, a little more of that. They were bouncing, but I couldn't repeat it."
Other inventions Tim has invented include the Flatball, which is basically a frisbee that pops into a ball, and the Aquaradio, a device that allows children to talk underwater. He has also invented sand that when heated would harden (so kids could make sand sculptures) and footballs that instead of being caught would bite onto you (called "Bitin' Balls"). He has also developed a glow-in-the-dark bubble that he is planning on releasing in a few years, after an interfering patent expires.
Ever since I read about Tim and his many marvelous inventions I've been wanting to write a play about him. . .
The only people I talked to were crazy. One guy kept shouting "USA! USA! USA" and told me I was an optical illusion and the other was a lady who said a bunch of unrepeatable things and then told me that she can't be around little kids because she feels compelled to hit them. I guess when you're strolling around a magical forest in an alley in the tenderloin you are still strolling around a magical forest in an alley in the tenderloin. Reminded me of a modern Grimm fairy tale, though I have no idea what the moral of the story is. I did, however, find my way home.
One of my very favorite days of the year. Reminded me how much I miss the annual In the Heart of the Beast celebration at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis.
Had the day off. Didn't do much, as I was hampered by a slight cold contracted from kissing a microphone last night at Jack's singing "Glory Days" at the DJ Purple Karaoke Experience and following that up with a boiled chicken torta and a half hour infomercial on the Topsy Turvy Upside Down Tomato Planter. Here's what I did:
Stepped outside and immediately witnessed a lady across the street from me smashing out the windows of a Cadillac with a hammer.
Met my old friend Katharine for a smoked salmon sandwich at the Atlas Cafe.
Enjoyed the balmy rain.
Read the first 85 pages of The Left Hand of Darkness. Best 85 pages I've read in years. Seriously. Why did it take me so long to discover Ursula K. Le Guin?
Watched Something Wild and fell in love with Melanie Griffith 23 years ago.
