Remembering Squanto or Not Remembering Squat-o.

I'm blaming the wine. I saying that because I'm hoping it's nothing else. You know, like the early onset of dotage. It's going to difficult enough to find a job in this economy without having to use a damaged brain. It's was probably nothing.

There we were the four of us, having just had a really nice dinner up on the roof and somehow the subject got around to genealogy, one of my favorites. I was related how, even after ten years of research, neither I nor my cousin has been able to find the "crossing ancestor". That would be the first member of a family to set foot in the New World. I said we knew we were from Virginia and that we were here before the Pilgrims packed their bags. I went on to say that even though things were bad in Virginia, all the books contain a chapter entitled "The Starving Time", things were worse for the Pilgrims "until one of the weirdest coincidences of history happened."

The other leaned forward to hear the tale. I related how the Pilgrims had met an Indian smack in the middle of their little outpost territory who could, amongst other things, speak English. Seems the guy had been taken prisoner by English explorers around ten years before the Pilgrims landed. He had been taken to Spain, sold into slavery, then oddly was bought back by an Englishman, taken to England for several years and THEN brought back to New England via Nova Scotia just in time to act as interpreter and guide for the men and women in the black suits and dresses. I said they all must remember the part about him showing the Pilgrims how to put a fish in with the corn seed to make it grow. (Ah, Thanksgiving pageants!) Well, I said, that wasn't an Indian technique, the man had learned it from the farmers up in Nova Scotia.

"Hey" said one of the guests,"What was this guy's name?"

One of the more famous tape erasures of all time is the eighteen minute gap in the Nixon tapes. The gap in my brain's ability to recall the NAME of the Indian who saved the Pilgrims of New England from starvation is not as famous yet, but it felt like it. I was stunned. My mind had failed in remembering, after remembering all of the other pertinent facts, the fellow's name.

"Uh...." I said, "Holy cow, I don't remember. I want to say Sequoia, but I know that that's wrong."

There was a pause and we, thankfully moved on to other subjects. Cheesecake. Florida vacations. Dentist visits. I kept waiting for this mush inside my head to cough up the answer, but no, nothing, Nada, zilch.

They all left. I cleaned the kitchen, packed my bag for the 18 mile run coming up early next morning and I went to bed.

I didn't think about the situation at all.

About 2:18 AM, I woke up. My eyes opened. It was raining hard and I thought about setting the clock to go off too late to go run the run in the rain.
"Squanto" My brain said." Now go back to sleep."

Transitional Species 9/26 - The Two Party System

The books on this subject could fill a section of Barnes and Noble and, in fact, do. The one book I have, besides the one in my head, says that to start off on your transition you should catch up on your sleep. True.
So, despite having a lovely time last night at party number one of the weekend with some of the nicest people on the planet, I went home early and crawled into bed.

The people I mention save cats. More about them tomorrow.

I got up this morning completely in a fog and then remembered that I have people coming over to visit me tonight, so there was some frantic wastebasket emptying and counter clearing. The people coming tonight do not save cats, but they do support cats like me. We shall have party number two and watch the quarter moon float over Washington Heights.

On Sunday, I run the 18 Mile Tune-up for the Marathon which will be just what I need after ravioli, salad and red wine.

Joe(not caught up yet)Nation

What the Hell is a Transitional Species?

I think it was 60 Minutes or 48 Hours, some network news magazine, which had interviews with people who were out of work, unemployed, had lost their jobs, been laid off or, as most of them put it, "in transition". It does sound better than "I was put out on my ass." In transition implies some kind of movement from one thing to another, from one place to another. It's a positive euphemism, but like so many euphemisms, it rings hollow after some time. Some of job seekers had been 'in transition' for three years or more. That's a lot of time without a lot of movement.

Darwinism and Evolution have become a couple of my favorite subjects lately, along with Physics, Cosmology* and the building of stone buildings in the Middle Ages. I just finished reading Born to Run, on ultra-marathons, the kind of race where the participants run a 100 miles or more, in it the author asks (and answers) the question: Why would we as a species trade moving around on four limbs for running on two? (See also this article in Men's Health.) Pretty fascinating stuff about opening your chest for better air flow, losing all our hair so that we sweat, rather than pant, to cool off and the development of a ligament or two in our necks to enable us to hold our heads steady while we run. Chimps don't have those ligaments, we do. Chimps can't run down their prey, we can. Evolution says we and the chimps had a common ancestor who probably did not have those ligaments either, but that there would have been some Transitional Species between us (Steady Heads) and that common ancestor, probably a whole series of generations of ape-like creatures, each getting less hairy and taller, each getting faster afoot and gaining in endurance.

There will always be a Transitional Species (or many several) between the ancient creature of old and the present form. That's who I am now. A creature in transition, that is to say, I am like everyone else.

The latest news on my present job is that there isn't any latest news. We should know more in a week or three days or by Monday or on Saturday or real soon, depending upon who you talk to up in the office and how many minutes it's been since you talked to them last.

Meanwhile, my survival training has kicked in again. I have begun to take stock of what I have. That will be the subject of tomorrow's post, but so far I have found two containers of chicken stock in the freezer.

Joe(They were behind the bags of blanched green beans.) Nation

 - *Did you know there is a black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy? That there is a black hole at the center of just about every galaxy they've looked at? Think about that for a moment -

Darwin was right

So, nothing is set yet, but sometime in the next two to six months I will not have a job or at least not have the job I have now. What you will see here is what is going on in this small life over that period and beyond. I welcome your comments.

Joe(more and better things tomorrow)Nation