Scorching Sunspots

There’s an enlightening episode of the Simpson’s, where Bart and Homer are having a heated discussion about the Sun and Bart suddenly asks, “Dad is the sun, God?” Homer says, “Yes son” and leaves it at that.

With global warming spinning from both sides, I often think about our good friend Sol. If you hold him up next to an SUV, he makes the rig look rather infinitesimal.

Sometimes I find myself worrying that our orbit is not magically tethered to Mister Soul. How does his baking oven even work? The scientist with the longest beard pretends to know about who esoterically controls our sundials. And now we’ve isolated temperatures in the lab that are even hotter than Our Father’s Son (and off the charts like John Lennon). How much do we pay the sentries who guard those hellish gates?

When I worked a meter reader, there was plenty of time to contemplate the heat. But when I found myself thinking about it too deeply, I felt like I was getting burned. Five leap years ago, over on Highland Avenue, I found myself lost in dark thought. I had a strong compulsion that we were blindly heading for disaster by not watching our sun close enough and the lazy dogs in our government had become jaded, thoughtlessly basking in their cushy sun too long.

As I screamed about our insanity, I thrust my tools down into Highland Avenue’s shadowy gutter, next to where a sunspot had scorched the earth. It was an intense panic episode, as they label it; but still a large part of me thought it was called for. After this episode, I slowly returned to normal, and went on to finish my meter route that afternoon. Fortunately, nobody called in on me by reporting my sunny badge number to city authorities. They were inside their soul kitchens gazing at the sunset channel.

Little kids around the world ceaselessly paint smiles on the sun. I yearn for the day when I can eclipse these revolving bad feelings. A day when my beard grows out long again and I follow their lead by simply pretending to kiss the nutritious sun and display a sunnier smile.

Keep it simple stupid. Kiss the sun, to lick the dark, before you kick the can.

Philo Farnsworth on the moon

Submitted by JBanholzer on Mon, 08/18/2008 - 6:33pm.

Soonafter Philo Farnsworth invented TV, he saw the mostly trivial purposes we were using it for and recommended to his children that they not invest much time watching it.

However, he did become happy along with his kids when they first watched the Apollo astronauts land on the moon, via his powerful invention.

I wonder what Mr. Farnsworth would think of TIVO, considering how it insidiously hooks watchers in, sometimes for long unhealthy spells.

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The Sunset Channel

There’s an autistic kid who remembers 

Every sundown he’s experienced.

Tries to see one every dusk

Then invests them in his memory bank

It’s quite remarkable this ability he’s honed

Cherry-picking shade and spectrum details

He can tell you –if you want to know- how the landscape shifted

Anywhere in the world on November 22, 1963 - for instants.

To better see nightfall, he’ll go on hayrides 

Sit on top of stacks and find poetry up there

Sways back his hip head through covered bridges

Just fell off the rear of a spud wagon the other day

From an early age he realized Sunsets would become something 

So important that he would make his mark on the world with them

Sometimes his kinfolk laugh –splash puddle remarks behind his back

Hardly realizing that it is they who are more crippled then he. 

One evening it was too stormy to see much of the sky

So he went down to the Zenith TV factory

Gazed in the window to see if they

Might be featuring a sunset on TV

Nothing was on, so he begin to kindly query passerby

“Have you seen a hole in the sky

where some Sol might squeeze through?”

Burgess Meredith handed him a remote control to part the stratosphere