Haiku of the Day: Pear petal shower

2008-03-20 by judielaine

Pear petal shower
wind blows them across my path.
Cares washed with delight.

Haiku of the Day: Envy green mustang

2008-02-26 by judielaine

Envy green mustang,
blonde driver, leopard-spot coat.
I feel camoflauged.

Haiku of the Day: Doomed spy satellite

2008-02-17 by judielaine

Doomed spy satellite
flashes through the twighlit sky.
I dream of travel.

Haiku of the Day: Windshield wipers bow

2008-01-28 by judielaine

Windshield wipers bow,
playing a strange violin.
Rain improvises.

Haiku of the Day: After days of storms

2008-01-7 by judielaine

After days of storms
the high clouds have one last dance:
ring around the sun.

Potential Woolman Journal Site

2007-11-11 by judielaine

I am quite fond of reading Samuel Pepys’ journal as entries in my blog feed. It struck me that I might read Woolman’s journal in a similar fashion. There is something about experiencing entries in the actual time scale that adds even more meaning to the content. In particular, as Woolman’s work is often held up as an example of Friendly process, experiencing the story unfold over time may be a meaningful study journey. However, unlike Samuel Pepys’ journals, the book known as Woolman’s journal is more of an autobiography.

Skimming this evening, i note John Woolman’s life was from 1720 to 1772. It seems the bulk of the journal is perhaps, 1757 to 1762, a six year period. (Chapters 4 to 8). It’s not exactly a full year in each section, but travel narratives.

Still, it seems like it could be crafted into a paced narrative, filling in with other dated works. A very interesting contrast might be provided by the Earl of Chesterfield’s “Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman.” This has political content, may put the European War in context. John Wesley has a journal with more journal-like entries from this period as well. I note Wikipedia can assist a bit with period events.

I will think on this project some more.

Some rough notes about contemporary references….
Read the rest of this entry »

She Was Refined

2007-03-24 by judielaine


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
(Someday, when the tools are available, I’ll post this to the Internet Archive….)

I went looking for this poem and found it here and here.

Refining is a practice
done precisely
     and methodically
to ensure the full recovery of gold,
as well as
an end
free of impurities
(which can lead to quality problems…. See Cracking Up.)

Fire assay is
most reliable
accurately determining the content of gold.
Melting a gold-bearing sample in a clay crucible
with
a mixture of fluxes (such as silica and borax),
lead oxide (called litharge), and
a reducing agent (frequently flour).
The drops of lead dissolve
the gold,
     the silver,
          the platinum.
Then they coalesce,
gradually descend through the sample
form a metallic layer at the bottom of the crucible.

After cooling,

the lead “button”
is separated

           from the slag layer

heated under oxidizing conditions
eliminating the lead.

The shiny metallic bead is left
containing
the precious metals.

The bead is boiled in nitric acid to dissolve the silver
(a process called parting),
and the gold residue is weighed.
If platinum metals are present,
they will alter the appearance of the bead,
and their concentration can sometimes be determined
by use of an arc spectrograph.

Draft poemlet from the air

2007-03-16 by judielaine

A river red winding widening and thickening
color changing

Flying through layer of clouds
thin coverlet above
cotton batting stretched thin below
tiles of fields peak through

In the distance the sun bleaches the whites
stronger than promised
by the bottles advertised at 3:15 pm.

Oxbow dancing
river winding twisting…
A land alive, but not like butte & canyon

Haiku of the Day: Starry sycamores

2007-01-5 by judielaine

Starry sycamores:
A galactic orrery
rooted in the earth.

Physics Writing

2006-04-28 by judielaine

I used to work at the Franklin Institute as a sysadmin for the web site server(s). We would get “ask the expert” type questions from teachers and students that i often answered (as the member of the web staff with a science rather than writing background). For a while I answered questions on the “Mad Scientist Network” — i enjoyed the research and writing quite a bit.

http://www.madsci.org/cgi-bin/search?query=Judith+E.+Bush

I suppose once i go through and collect all my poetry in this blog, i might be able to find those science questions to re-post here as well.