bubbleblower | Silicon Soapware #226

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                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #226
                         New Moon of May 9, 2013


Contents copyright 2013 by Thomas G. Digby, and licensed under a Creative 
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.  See the Creative 
Commons site at http://creativecommons.org/ for details.

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.


                          *********************

We just recently had an anniversary of the birth of author James Matthew 
Barrie, creator of Peter Pan.

The novel version, published around 1911, was originally titled PETER AND 
WENDY.  Since it's available on the Web I read it.  I had previously only 
known the animated Disney version.

At one point the narrator says that different people can have their own 
versions of Neverland.  That got me to thinking about what my version of 
the place would have been like had I been thinking in terms of creating a 
specific place to set my fantasies in when I was that age.

Aside from the Lost Boys and the Fairies, the Neverland in the story 
seems to be populated mainly by bad guys, enemy combatants, and other 
menaces: Indians on the warpath, bloodthirsty pirates, a hungry 
crocodile, and mermaids bent on luring people to their doom.

I don't think my personal Neverland would have emphasized enemies and 
menaces the way Peter Pan's version did.  Instead of the traditional 
pirates and Indians or maybe the more contemporary Nazis and Communists 
and Mafia hit men it would have been full of fairies and dragons and 
various magic-workers and such, most of them friendly.  It would have 
also had Martians and other beings from various planets and dimensions.  
Again, many of these would have been friendly.

The Martians might have had to keep far away from the fairies and dragons 
and other magical beings lest the various magical and non-magical forces 
they worked with interfere with one another, but they would have been 
there somewhere, along with quite a few scientists, mad and otherwise.

With that in mind I don't think the place would have been just one island 
that you could walk around in a day.  It probably would have been a 
planet, or maybe a whole solar system.  Or was I not thinking that big 
when I was that age?  One planet might have been enough at the time, as 
long as creatures from more exotic realms could now and then have come 
visiting.  I'm pretty sure the place would have been well equipped with 
dimensional portals and magical gateways and such, not to mention a few 
spaceports here and there.  It probably would have been at least a 
planet.

So what was your Neverland like?


                          *********************

Could Peter Pan come today?  He would face obstacles now, at least in 
developed countries, that didn't exist a hundred years ago.

First, could he get into a modern child's bedroom?  The bedroom windows 
in the story didn't seem to have screens or security grills or safety 
barriers or anything like that.  Nowadays there would be all sorts of 
safety stuff to keep the kids on the inside from falling out, and those 
would probably also be obstacles to anyone wishing to enter.  But they 
didn't seem to worry about that kind of thing back then.

I suppose Peter could land in the yard and knock on the front door and 
hope someone favorably disposed answers, but what with all the hoopla 
today about child molesters that doesn't seem too likely either, 
especially if it's late at night and he's wearing clothing made of 
leaves.

But let's assume that obstacle is overcome.  Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, and 
several children (along with their vitamins and medications and such) are 
flying off to Never-Never Land.  Although this next thing isn't really a 
barrier, I suspect they would be the subjects of quite a few UFO reports, 
many with smartphone video as supposed proof.  This may cause the parents 
some consternation when the media pick it up.

Also, the first reaction of parents upon finding that their children have 
apparently left by way of an upper-floor window is likely to be to panic 
and call the cops.  This could turn into a rather bizarre 
missing-children case.  This wouldn't in itself keep the kids from 
getting to Never-Never land, but it could complicate their eventual 
return.

So the children do eventually return.  Assume they manage to get the 
window open (if it isn't open already) and that the parents are at home 
(rather than in jail or whatever) to receive them.  What do they tell the 
cops and the neighbors and the media?  What version of events will the 
authorities believe?

I don't think any of this will be as simple as it would have been back in 
Barrie's time.


                          *********************

"Once my parakeet has learned to say 'Nevermore' I'm going to dye it 
black and start taking it to poetry readings."


                          *********************

Imagine a musical ensemble touring a space colony.  The place consists of 
a bunch of domes and such, all with artificially maintained atmospheres.  
They're all breathable by humans, but beyond that there's little attempt 
at standardization.  Specifically, while they all have about the same 
partial pressure of oxygen, the inert filler gases differ.

Some use nitrogen, giving a mixture similar to Earth's atmosphere.  
Others use helium, which happens to be easy to get from a nearby gas 
giant and is therefore cheap.  In addition to these extremes, some may 
use mixtures of the two.

What this means is that the speed of sound in Dome A may not be the same 
as in Dome B.  If the difference is great enough it will make people's 
voices sound different.  In that case someone is likely to notice it and 
bring the problem to the attention of the appropriate tech people in time 
to either work out a solution or abandon the whole idea of a concert 
tour.

What's more likely to be a problem is if the difference is relatively 
small, say around a five or ten percent difference in the speed of sound, 
and nobody notices before the tour starts.  A five to ten percent 
difference in the speed of sound may not change people's normal speaking 
voices enough for the casual listener to notice, but it would throw an 
orchestra into chaos.

Part of the problem is that not all instruments would be equally 
affected.  To a first approximation strings, bells, and so-called 
free-reed instruments like the accordion would be pretty much unchanged, 
while those depending on the length of an air column to define their 
pitch (brass and woodwinds) would have their pitch shifted up or down in 
proportion to the speed of sound in that atmosphere.  A ten percent 
difference is a little less than two semitones.  That's definitely a 
problem for musicians, even if ordinary people don't notice it in 
everyday speech.

As narrators of blurbs for comedy movies and such are stereotyped as 
saying, hilarity would ensue, especially if the people involved have no 
idea what's causing the problem.


                          *********************

I remember grade-school teachers saying that the snail carries his house 
on his back.

Does that mean that slugs are homeless?


                          *********************

Speaking of stories written and set roughly a century ago, I also 
recently read one by Lovecraft: "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn 
and His Family".  The complete text is available online.  Wikipedia also 
has a synopsis.  Just search on the title.

It was written in 1920, with the events described taking place between 
about the 1750's and 1913.

I noticed a couple of things in the story that do not fit our current 
culture.

First, when the story was published much of Africa was still pretty much 
a land of mystery, so that an ancient ruined city of ape-men was not 
outside the realm of possibility.  The modern equivalent might be an 
alien installation on the back side of the Moon or possibly on Mars, 
mostly underground so that it has so far escaped notice even though the 
general area has been photographed.

Another difference is that apparently immigration and other documentation 
formalities were simpler back in seventeen-whatever than they are now, so 
this explorer was able to bring back from Africa a woman who was 
supposedly of Portuguese ancestry but who later turns out to be some sort 
of not-quite-human ape.  They also bring an infant son, who carries on 
the family line.  Everybody apparently just takes the man's word for all 
this: No databases, no birth certificates, no nothing.

Then there's the rather extreme reaction of later generations of the 
family when they discover that one of their ancestors was not a European 
woman, or even a native African, but one of the half-ape creatures.  One 
goes on a murderous rampage, ending up in prison or maybe an insane 
asylum while never divulging the secret to anyone else.  Another a couple 
of generations later commits suicide.  Some of this might be explained by 
some sort of genetic tendency toward mental instability that appears to 
have arisen from the original union of the family patriarch with the 
ape-woman, but that doesn't seem to be the whole explanation.

As an indication of how scandalous this all was, after Arthur Jermyn's 
suicide by fire out in the English countryside his remains are never 
collected and buried or otherwise disposed of.  They are not even 
gathered up as potentially hazardous material.  The whole matter is 
simply hushed up.

This seems rather extreme, at least from a 21st Century American 
viewpoint, although it may have been plausible for a member of the 
British nobility (or even for status-conscious upper-class Americans) of 
a century ago.  From what I've read such things were taken more seriously 
back then than they are now.

So the real world has shifted out from under yet another fantasy story.


                          *********************

Speaking of stories and Never-Never Land ...


                       Realities?


                I

Honey Child 
And Mom and Dad and Older Brother
Had come all the way 
To Grandma's House. 

Restless from a day of travel, 
The children wanted to explore
While the adults talked
Of boring grown-up stuff.  

"The woods out back are safe enough
As long as the kids stay together
And don't wander away from the path 
And come back when I ring the dinner bell."

Mom and Dad reluctantly agreed.  
While Older Brother would have preferred to go alone, 
Exploring the woods with Honey Child was still better
Than not exploring the woods at all.  
So off they went. 

They never agreed on what it was
That Honey Child found 
Beside the path 
Deep in the woods
Just before the dinner bell rang.  

For her it was a dead fairy 
With wings that glittered rainbow colors
When the sunlight hit them just so. 

He saw only a lump 
Of formless forest mould
With a piece of aluminum foil or something
Stuck in it.  

It couldn't be a fairy
Because he was too old to believe in fairies
And besides, 
Fairies were sissy girl-type stuff.  

He tried to dissuade her,
But she insisted on bringing it back. 


                II

When Honey Child showed her find to Grandma
Grandma couldn't really see it.  
She started to say so, but then remembered 
A trip to the seashore 
When she was Honey Child's age. 

She had found a baby mermaid
Washed up on the sand. 
But then the withering scorn 
Of all those grown-up uncles and aunts and cousins 
Had turned her mermaid into a pile of smelly old seaweed.  

Ever since then she had been afraid 
To look too closely
At anything that might be magical.  

She gave a noncommittal "That's nice"
And advised Honey Child 
Not to show it around 
To the other grown-ups
Lest their scorn and disbelief
Turn it to formless forest mould
With aluminum foil stuck in it.  


               III

Maybe Older Brother told Mom and Dad, 
Or maybe they found out some other way. 
They ordered Honey Child 
To throw that dirty stinky mess in the garbage.  
Honey Child refused. 

Grandma proposed a compromise: 
Honey Child could keep her treasure 
For the rest of their stay at Grandma's House
But was not to try to bring it home.  

She put it on the table by the children's bedroom window.  


                IV

That night when Grandma helped put Honey Child to bed
She turned out the light 
And noticed the moonlight 
Shining in the window
On Honey Child's clump of formless forest mould
With aluminum foil stuck in it.  
Had she been hoping to see something different?  

The next night 
When Grandma turned out the bedroom light
And glanced over toward the clump
Of formless forest mould
She wasn't really sure what she saw there. 
Mermaid memories 
More than half a century old 
Filled her eyes
Too full of tears. 

The night after that she was certain:
While it was still formless forest mould by day
Or in the harsh glare of the table lamp, 
In the moonlight it was indeed a fairy with rainbow wings,
The colors barely visible when the light hit them just so.  


                V

The next night was to be their last 
Before returning home. 
Mom and Dad asked Honey Child
"Should we throw that mess of yours in the garbage tonight
Or do you want to do it in the morning?"

Grandma answered for her: 
"It isn't going into the garbage at all.  
Instead we will have a Fairy Funeral.

Tonight by moonlight Honey Child and I 
Will lay the corpse to rest 
In this little cardboard box I found.  
Then by the first light of dawn 
We will dig the grave
By the edge of the woods 
Where the lawn mower never goes.  
Then we will mark the spot 
With bricks left over from that patio project.  

It won't take long,
And won't disrupt your travel plans. 

Those who do not wish to attend
Do not have to.  
But if you do, please show respect."


                VI

Once again Grandma remembered her mermaid
But this time it didn't hurt like before
And she somehow knew
That she would no longer be afraid 
To look at things that might be magical.  


                                    -- Tom Digby
                                    Written     22:39  Thu March 5 2009
                                    Title Added 19:58  Sun March 29 2009


                          *********************

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