Monthly Archives: May 2010

Atomic Oaks

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

We were somewhere in the neighborhood of Carlsbad, New Mexico, at the end of several miles of rough gravel roads. The scenic view consisted of potash mines and oil wells on the horizons and a lot of mesquite in the foreground.

Mixed in with the mesquite were what our guide told us were oak trees. I had trouble believing this, even after he got out of the car and brought back what was unmistakably an oak leaf. These were nothing like any oak trees I had ever seen. Even the bush-sized scrub oaks at least look like trees. These were only knee high.

The supposed oak trees were dwarfed by the four-foot-high concrete marker that we had driven all the way out here to see. It contained a metal plaque commemorating "Project Gnome."

We were standing directly above the site of a nuclear explosion. On December 10, 1961, 1200 feet beneath this spot, scientists detonated a nuclear device at the end of a tunnel that had been excavated from a vertical shaft some 1100 feet away.

This was part of the Plowshare program, an effort in the 1960's to try to find industrial and scientific applications for nuclear power. Several underground explosions were set off in New Mexico and Colorado before the project was ended in the early 1970's, apparently without finding any practical uses for nuclear explosions.

One goal of the Gnome blast was to generate steam. Steam was generated, all right, but some of it got through the seals in the tunnel and leaked out through the shaft. The difficulty in controlling nuclear explosions may have been one of the reasons for ending the Plowshare program.

At the site of the blast nearly 50 years later, there wasn't much to see besides the marker, the mesquite, and the miniature oak trees. Were they some mutant life form, an unforeseen side effect of experimenting with nuclear blasts?

Nope. Not at all. They are Quercus havardii, or shin oak, described to us as part of the largest oak forest in North America. That's "largest" in the sense of geographic area, rather than "largest" in the sense of mighty oaks from little acorns growing. Their size is presumably a result of adapting to a dry, hot climate, and they were midgets long before anyone ever heard of nuclear power.

And the dangers of strolling through the site of an atomic explosion? Well, in May of 1962, scientists visited the cavity created by the Gnome blast and found it "hot" only in temperature. It was 140 degrees down there, but it wasn't radioactive. This site has been tested regularly over the past 50 years, and it doesn't have any more radiation than your average back yard. (If you'd like more information, check out atomictourist.com.)

The only real health risk in visiting Project Gnome today is losing your broad-brimmed hat in the wind and getting sunburned. Unless, of course, you happen to trip over an oak tree.

Categories: Travel | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

High Jacking

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

There's just no disobeying the law of gravity. As we get a little older, every time we look in a mirror we can't help but notice gravity's effects in various places. As the years go by, things just start to settle a bit.

The same, of course, is true for houses. And whether you are human or habitat, there is only so much that can be done with plaster, paint, and patching. Sometimes it becomes necessary to do something more fundamental to shore up the foundations.

I mean the house's foundations, of course. It has been settling over the 30-something years since it was moved here, sliding ever so slowly, millimeter by millimeter, downhill toward the septic tank. It has made some progress over the years, as evidenced by the cracked drywall in the basement stairway, the gap between the kitchen counter and the wall, a couple of noticeable cracks in the concrete in front of the garage door, and a definite tilt in the sidewalk behind the house.

This must be a bit embarrassing for a geologist, who presumably would like to think his house had been built on a foundation of solid rock. Of course, it would take a hundred years or so before anything drastic happened, but in geological time that is the merest blink of an eyelash.

All this is by way of explaining why the mudjacking guys were at our house this week, jackhammering, caulking, and doing whatever mudjacking is, exactly. They drilled several holes in the concrete, including one inside the garage that was uncomfortably close to the water line that comes in from the well. As the crew leader admitted after they were done, "Yeah, I was a little nervous about that."

But they missed the water line, so we were spared the excitement and drama of our very own flood. They pumped goop into a hole under the sidewalk where water from the eaves had washed out a bunch of dirt, they filled in the cracks in the concrete, and they leveled things out as much as possible. Then they tidied up after themselves and headed off to the next project.

The garage is safe from gravity for a few more years. Right now we're all square with the world, at least that one particular corner of it. It feels so—uplifting.

Categories: Just For Fun | Leave a comment

Nose Job

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

She seemed like a perfectly nice woman until she came at me with a knife.

First she grabbed my nose with one hand and held it firmly while she stuck a needle into it with the other hand. "This will sting a little," she said. "A deep breath helps."

Easy for her to say, from the non-pointed end of the syringe. My relief when she removed the needle only lasted for a minute.

Then she came back with a sharp little knife and started to scoop a divot out of the end of my newly-numbed nose. Even having my eyes squeezed shut didn't help much. It didn't hurt, exactly, but despite the shot I could feel the blade slicing across my face in a very personal manner. Even worse, I could hear it, not through my ears really, but somehow directly inside my brain. It made me feel about three years old and left me wishing that someone, preferably my mother, had come along to the dermatologist's office to defend me.

The band-aid she put on afterward wasn't the little round one I had expected. Instead, it was a regular one, about the size you might use for a toddler's scraped knee. It draped across my nose far enough to stick on my cheeks on either side. It itched. Plus, I could see it out of the inner corners of both eyes, which made me feel cross-eyed and gave me a headache.

I kept thinking of the metal prosthetic nose worn by Patrick Stewart as the villain in a movie I saw years ago. "Conspiracy Theory," maybe? I'm not sure—the only thing I really remember about it is the little tent over his nose.

All this drama was due to a little bump on my nose that appeared a couple of months ago and didn't seem inclined to go away. The doctor said it might be a sebaceous something-or-other, or it might be a basal cell carcinoma. She assured me that it wasn't serious either way and said the biopsy results would be back in about 10 days.

She sent me home with my giant band-aid, a reminder about using sunscreen, and a strong suggestion to wear a broad-brimmed hat. Which I will be happy to do, if I can ever find one that fits my child-sized head. One that didn't make me look like a dork would be nice, too.

The morning after the procedure, I took the band-aid off. At my first glance in the mirror, the spot was hardly even visible. That was reassuring for about 17 seconds—until I put my reading glasses on and could actually see the thing.

As a woman of mature years and perspective, going out in public with a pinky-fingernail-sized spot on the end of your nose shouldn't be a big deal. Especially when you are exceedingly grateful that, medically, it truly isn't a big deal.

Unfortunately, being a lady of a certain age with a dermatologist-inflicted gouge on your nose doesn't feel any different from being a teenager with what feels like the world's most conspicuous zit. You're sure it's the only thing about your face that anyone can even see.

The only saving grace is knowing that all my friends are also people of mature years. They know enough to regard a spot on someone else's nose with compassion and understanding. Even better, without their reading glasses, they can hardly see it in the first place.

Categories: Just For Fun, Living Consciously | Tags: , , , , , , | 3 Comments

A Simple 12-Step Program

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

As they all do at first, it seemed like a simple project. All I wanted to do was move the wardrobe in my office into the bedroom as a replacement for my dresser. (The wardrobe is antique; the dresser is merely old. Trust me, there is a difference.)

I'd been intending to get this done for weeks. Finally, Saturday was the day. We set to work.

Step One: Take all nine drawers out of the dresser and set them out across the bed in the guest room. Move the dresser into the guest room.

Step Two: Sweep up the large family of dust bunnies that had been living under the dresser.

Step Three: Take all the office supplies, art supplies, notebooks, software CDs and manuals, file folders, etc., etc., off of the wardrobe's five shelves. Stack them on my two office chairs, under my desk, behind my desk, on top of my desk, and in the middle of the floor.

Step Four: Move the wardrobe (80 inches tall by 40 inches wide by 18 inches deep) through a doorway (79½ inches tall by 28 inches wide) into a hallway (42 inches wide), turn it, and haul it down the hall to the bedroom. This, remarkably, was accomplished without scratching either the wardrobe or the woodwork, breaking the light fixture that was hanging in precisely the wrong place, smashing any fingers, yelling at one another, or resorting to profanity.

Step Five: Sweep up the small family of dust bunnies that had been living under the wardrobe.

Step Six: Start to put the shelves back in the wardrobe. Decide that, since they were originally built to hold office supplies instead of cashmere sweaters, they needed to be sanded first.

Step Seven: Make a trip to the hardware store for sandpaper and wood filler.

Step Eight: Apply wood filler to shelves. Lots of wood filler. Decide they are rougher than first thought and need to be painted.

Step Nine: While wood filler is drying, start rearranging office. Move file cabinet out of closet. Empty small bookshelf in closet, adding its contents to the piles already on the chairs, on the floor, and under, behind, and on top of the desk.

Step Ten: Sweep up community of dust bunnies in the closet.

Step Eleven: Take bookshelf downstairs to exchange it for larger bookshelf that is in the closet under the stairs. Empty big bookshelf of Christmas decorations and old geology magazines. Drag it out of closet. Vacuum up mixed community of dust bunnies, dead moths, and spiders. Move small bookshelf into closet. Replace geology magazines and Christmas ornaments.

Step Twelve: Haul large bookshelf upstairs, put it into office closet. Look at stuff piled all over office. Decide to take a break and have some chocolate in order to gain strength before starting to put it away.

Fast forward, mercifully, to Monday morning.

The office furniture is rearranged. The bookshelf in the closet is full. The computer and both chairs are uncovered, but most of the available surfaces, including my desk, are still cluttered with miscellaneous small objects waiting to be put away.

The wardrobe—empty—is in the bedroom. The shelves are downstairs in the workshop waiting to be sanded and given their first coat of paint. My clothes are still in the dresser drawers, which are still arrayed across the bed in the guest room. It's kind of handy, really, to be able to see exactly what's in each one.

But the closet under the stairs is clean, organized, and looking great. If I need any old geology magazines or have an urge to put up Christmas decorations in May, I know exactly where to find them.

Categories: Just For Fun | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

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