Olives ripening on a tree near my hotel room door.
The International Conference on Engineering Against Failure VIII took place at the end of June, 2025 in the beautiful resort town of Kalamata, Greece. You know, where they grow a lot of olives. Kalamata is at the tip of the middle “finger” of the southern Peloponnesian Peninsula, which intrudes into the Mediterranean Sea. I was invited to present some failure analysis topics to the “Industrial Failure Analysis” session at the 3 day conference. As far as I could tell, I was one of three (3) Americans attending. One of the others was from an organization I belong to, and a fellow mover and shaker for international friendship through professional associations. The other was a sophomore engineering student from a Christian university, presenting on behalf of his professor, whose wife reportedly would not let him change the family vacation plans in order to attend the conference.
Overall, the conference, and visiting Greece, was a good experience.
My one disappointment was that the taxi company that I had arranged a trip to Sparta with, so I could brag to my neighbors that I had visited the “Real Sparta,” said it was going to be too hot. 43 Celcius. That’s like 99 F. They had a new model Mercedes, but the route involved going over a small mountain range. I still do not know if they were more worried about the vehicle overheating, or the customers having heat stroke, but they took us to the closer Messinia instead. That too was very hot, even though we got back to the hotel before the hottest point of the day.
Remains of a steam bath from the glory days of Messinia.
Here’s a little writing that I did early in the trip, before the conference itself.
I did not go to Greece to see the Parthenon.
That was the subject of the 1977 trip.
This time, an engineering conference, held at a seaside resort. At poolside, American Hip Hop is Hot. A lovelorn man feels like he’s enduring “Katrina, with no FEMA.”
Imagine those words being written today. Grounds for deportation. No simple exhortation.
In Kalamata, olives and lemons grow, not giving a fig that the fig does too.
Too bad for you if you love the sea view with hip hop. Here the sound track is seagull squawks, waves, and traffic noise.No, I don’t know who that person is.
In Greece, “Daily Necessities” at the resort shop do not include hats, or sunscreen. A trip to a pharmacy is in order for the latter. I bought the Greek brand.
A few buildings cling to low, green sloped mountains to the north. The slopes to the south are steeper, some overhanging, and claim no soil. Arid, white rock sparkles.
This is the land of wine and olives. They have cheese and honey too. And fish. Lots of fish. And squid. And octopus on menus.
The birds sould cheery at 7 pm. Not exotic as in farther lands. Although the swallows don’t chitter like the ones I heard at home. They squeal.
Have you been told that critical thinking means suppressing your emotions?
That’s ridiculous, and my new book sets out to let you prove that to yourself!
I hope you will give it a look. It’s available on Lulu, as Amazon is not getting a dime more of my money than absolutely required.
Do you want to leave a legacy to your kids? Your grandkids? Mentor younger members of your profession? The keys lie in this book. I renounced admonishing anyone to “Think Critically.” It’s a myth that it’s easy to do. We have to learn how. Step by step. This book sets you on that path.
Here is my Goodreads review of a new book that will be of interest to those interested in life after death, old science fiction, or Spiritualism. I cyberly met the editor, whose PhD project this was, through a weird orchestration of events last winter, and, being a fellow writer, offered to review the book. It’s now available on Barnes and Nobel, but here is the text of my review:
The heading, “Fake News from Futures Past,” is from the Foreword. The Acknowledgements of all that it took to compile the stories of Robert Duncan Milne, and the detailed Introduction to the collection of stories themselves, this massive treasury of stories from the time of the first blossoming of genre science fiction fifty years before it was called that, gives us a window back into a time when science and spirituality were not at such odds as they are for most people today.
I was a participant for two decades in a USA based Spiritualist church, and even briefly a member. Having had a series of mystical experiences in 1996, including a materialization event that was pretty scary, the Independent Spiritualist Church, combining belief in science and spirit, became a welcoming community for me. Yet nobody mentioned science fiction. We knew about the Fox sisters, but not Robert Duncan Milne. By the time I was attending, the attention paid to science was mostly perfunctory and declaratory, claiming that Spiritualist seances offered irrefutable scientific proof of the world of spirit. The actual members of the congregations had little to no interest in actually gaining any understanding of scientific facts or reasoning. This was disappointing to me, as a working engineering consultant. But reading the introduction to the book provides lots of historical context to what was happening in the American culture as technology started battering older ways of life.
I have been a lifelong lover of science fiction, and especially older science fiction. As Scottish sci fi writer Ken MacLeod writes in the Foreword, the writing practice of the time, which continued in full strength up through John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968), was to include “fake news” and other “fake” (fantasy, fictional) references to provide the background for the stories. I miss this style of storytelling, and was happy to get a drink of it in the stories I read for this review. Nowadays, writers of all genres are told to “show, not tell” what is going on. That’s annoying for me. If I wanted them to show me everything, I would watch a movie, not read a book.
Here are some thoughts on a few of the stories, written in a time of skeptics, but not a dogmatically skeptical population at large. Science was new, science was interesting, science seemed to provide credibility to Spiritualism, when compared to the old “revealed truth” faiths.
The Silent Witness: What a great story. Anyone working as an expert witness over the last 30 years will be familiar with the arguments about whether digitally captured photos, rather than film, could be presented as evidence. AI is reopening those arguments again. Here we have the latest scientific gadget of the 19th century, an experimental recording and playing phonograph, that becomes the silent witness and saves the innocent accused.
The Eidoloscope: The editors note that this story is considered one of Milne’s greatest works. While he was not the only speculative writer describing the possibility of travel to the past, they conclude that he likely picked the idea up from what we now might call “the thought field,” rather than from any of the other writers exploring this idea. In the story, we learn that the walls really do have eyes, or at least the ability to see and record, even if they need the help of Milne’s character’s invention to let them retell what they’ve seen. Milne is absolutely not giving mere lip-service to science. He explains in clear prose that any willing lay-person may readily understand, the concepts of how his character’s time machine works. It’s simple cause and effect, like any other science, even if it appears to bring us recordings of ghosts rather than embodied beings. The timing is such that the embodied beings whose likenesses are brought before the witnesses are still remembered and recognized by current living humans, when they have the chance to see the walls emit their memories.
The editors show what a visionary Milne was, in addition to being a literary and scientific genius. He understood, brought to life, and warned us about the ethical issues that are usually only revealed after extensive use and reliance on new technologies.
It’s also interesting that Milne, likely in line with the word usage of the day, calls out the new technological gadgets as “art.” The sci-fi gadgets were made by individuals using concepts and tinkering skills, rather than a methodological scientific process. Of course, as the Rosicrucians and modern physicists alike tell us today, it’s all about harmonization of vibrations. Who needs a team and a big budget? Besides, the inventor meets the skepticism of the other character with irrefutable 18th century thermodynamics: Energy is neither created nor destroyed! It is merely changed from one form to another. Thus any energy thing that has ever experienced energy in its neighborhood, sits ready, in proper circumstances, to disgorge that energy in form identical to that in which it was absorbed. The local “Akashic Record” is held in every solid object. Anything that happened once is eternal. We don’t even need the mysterium of quantum physics!
A New Palingenesis: Milne starts out by noting that the ideals of Spiritualism are pure, and uplifting to those who live according to a belief in an afterlife, a point also made by the founder of another modern religion, the Bahai. Yet, he acknowledges the dogmatic blocks that many will have in following his tale. This is obviously still a problem today for many different “occult” phenomena.
This story is particularly beautifully written. The paragraph describing the caring doctor’s action to comfort his dying wife lets us imagine being present in the room with the narrator, the doctor and his wife. It covers all the things open minded people wonder about. “While noting the tender care and consideration with which the doctor arranged the cushions and performed those hundred little nameless offices, which only affection dictates, for his invalid wife, I could not help wondering, as so many more have fruitlessly done, at the mysterious provision which does not permit us to know whether the emotions and affections are merely the chance mechanism of a moment, or enduring and imperishable entities which have an infinitely more lasting existence than the forms of matter with which they are now associated.”
Is love forever, even if the body is not? Read the story and come to your own conclusion!
And in the beginning, there was nothing. And in the nothing, was the potential for everything.
And then suddenly the nothing became Everything, which included the memory of nothing.
And so Everything knew Nothing. And Everything feared Nothing. But Nothing knew not fear.
And Everything knew not what to do about its fear of Nothing.
But then Everything had an idea. The idea was to forget about Nothing,
This should not have been difficult. Everything was a veritable kaleidoscope of moving matter and energy. And so, Everything forgot Nothing, by experiencing every thing. And tried to know itself.
But Nothing never stayed away for long. And so Everything understood Time, as the recurrent memory of Nothing, and how it became Everything. And how everything changes.
In its attempts to forget Nothing, Everything tried many diversions. Metamorphosis into more and more complicated forms, spread further and further apart.
And Every Thing became lonely. And sought other Things. And so part of Everything became Gravity.
And so things gathered together. And eventually, particles became stars and stars attracted planets and planets sprouted life forms and it was very interesting. Everything was surprised.
And Everything almost forgot the mystery of how nothing became Everything.
Watching the life forms emerge and diverge was very surprising. Even delightful. But then again, the sparkle dulled. It was routine. A beautiful routine, but a routine.
And so Everything decided to renew exploration. The frog was experiment 1.0. It was a good experiment.
And dinosaurs and birds and shrews and mice and wolves and elephants walked the earth.
And Time passed. And things settled down. And Everything noticed that nothing new was happening. And was reminded of Nothing. And decided to spice things up.
The photo at the top is of the ball joint that lets a bumblebee move its antenna around. Image obtained using a scanning electron microscope.
Yesterday, I finally got back to my Mid Michigan Word Gatherers Writing Group after quite a while. It was great to see old friends and meet a new person. It was interesting to write creatively, after my long stretch of non-fiction. Here’s goes!
Gravity’s arrow points downward.
While Motion’s follows a forward push.
Entropy’s arrow flies away, always away.
But Mystery shrouds the arrow of time.
Outer and Inner
Apple paints itself red outside.
Meat bleeds red from within.
Leaf makes its own green, which
Caterpillars ingest and excrete,
eventually the Monarchs color their chrysalis with the green tint.
AnonymousUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The anonymous author is of the photo. The original artist for the engraving was French astronomer and writer Camille Flammarion. It is from his “L’atmosphère : météorologie populaire,” published in 1888 by the . Wikipedia
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA: This has to be one of the ugliest things Mother Nature ever made. Seriously. Why hairy protrusions on the shell of the transformation chamber!
In July of 2022, I found this hard segmented shell stuck to the bricks that framed the door to my workplace. Hanging from it was the outer skin of a hairy caterpillar. The whole assemblage was lightly covered in a ragged group of silk fibers, attached to the anodized aluminum door frame. I’m not sure why so many insects find this north facing door so attractive. Two days later, it was out. After hours of internet searching, I determined that it was a female Gypsy Moth, now renamed in politically corectness to “Spongy Moth.” Note that she has crawled up the brick approximately ONE BODY LENGTH from her original position. This, sadly, is as far as she will ever go in this form.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA: She herself is not so bad looking.
One hour and four minutes after the above photo was taken, an unknown time after she emerged, she has attracted a mate.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA: Either is he.
Note the beautiful feathery antennae on the male, half her size. Note also how her face is completely covered by fuzzy stuff. She doesn’t need to see, because she is going to die here in place. Hence, my title. So here below, we see the tan colored egg mass. The “Spongy” stuff.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Well, I don’t really know what’s spongy about it. After a few days, I transferred some of the material to my microscope stage. And the view was remarkable. Tiny transparent balls, held in short strands of silk. The pairs of bright spots on most of the individual eggs are reflections from my microscope lights. Why is one pink? Is it dead? Did some other insect parasitize her egg mass?
These kindof look like tiny bearing balls.
The green arrow shows the developing baby caterpillar, and the beat rolls on. However, I euthanized the entire batch, but not before taking this photo of two of the early hatchlings. Or maybe there are something else. They don’t really seem to be the same shape as the forms inside the eggs.
And this is the sad end of the life of a female Spongy Moth. Even sadder than the life of a barnacle, which has been discussed elsewhere on this page. To end, I will show this beautiful, flaming red bolete mushroom. And below, my giant tomato next to my moderately sized, but very delicious, sweet and fragrant, cantaloupe.
When I was younger, my mother had a bunch of plastic flowers, and some of them looked just like the yellow flower above. I never thought these actually existed, until I saw some at the annual fall Chrysanthemum show at the Fredrik Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan. WOW! Pretty amazing.
I always try to convince any out of town visitors to join me for a tour of the gardens and equally amazing sculpture park.
Merlot Variety of Napa red cabbage, regular green cabbage, carrots, garlic and ginger sauerkraut! YUM!! Good luck finding this at the grocery store!
Last spring, the weather was unsettled, and my seedlings were started late, because I was traveling overseas for all of January. But, I still managed to grow enough tomatoes, peppers, cukes, parsley, garlic and nasturtiums, among other things, to put away around 200 servings of frozen veggies to be Vita-mixed into a private blend V-8, V-9 or V-12!
Note the funny nose on the salad tomato. That’s fairly common with this early variety. I can’t remember if it’s a Sub-Arctic Plenty or an Oregon Spring. The purple onion is a Welsh Bunching variety that I cut the seed head off to allow it to form a larger bulb. I bought a packet probably 20 years ago and still have them. There’s a beefsteak tomato in the back, and a light green Armenian cuke, which grows with fancy scallops. They are delicious and stay tender even when ridiculously big. Like 2-3 feet long and 4 inches in diameter. The striped cukes were new for me last summer. Delicious and tender, but like many of my cukes the last few years, they are getting killed off by a fungus or virus. Along with the garlic, the beets did GREAT. I really liked the first time for me Red Cloud variety. Very uniform and clean.
The cabbage crop, the second most important after all the juice ingredients, was pitiful. The heads were not solid and I ran out of time in the fall. The two year old neighborhood “Kraut Party” was delayed when the usual participants got CoVid and then RSV. But come January, I figured I would make a small batch of kraut with the Chinese (Napa) cabbage that had been quietly reposing in the produce drawer of my fridge. Since this was a solitary effort, I put in more garlic and ginger than my friend would have wanted, along with the Suzuko variety Napa cabbage and carrots. I didn’t get a photo, but it tasted pretty good. I was surprised at how the unique Napa cabbage flavor was brightened, even with the strong overtones of garlic and ginger, delicious all together, with the extra garlic and ginger intended as anti-inflammatory to heal the after effects of the RSV.
After transferring the green / white Napa kraut to a smaller jar, I decided to try, despite my neighbor’s warning not to mix red and white / green cabbage in the same batch, to do just that. I used the Merlot variety Napa cabbage, and a small regular green cabbage head, along with what would probably be considered an excessive amount of garlic and ginger, as well as carrots. I did not know what to expect for a color, but certainly I was not expecting PINK!
Half gallon Ball Canning Jar at Left. A nice serving of fiber and probiotics at right. My arthritic hand was tired after slicing the Napa cabbage, so I chopped the green cabbage in the Vita-mix, as coarse as I could, but that was still pretty fine.
Since I cut out almost all the sugar in my diet after coming home from the hospital, I found myself really enjoying the flavor of the kraut for my bedtime snack. So once this batch was done, I got out the last of my cabbages, both small red heads, and made the last batch from last summer’s harvest. After two weeks, I put this garlic and ginger heavy batch in the fridge yesterday. Yet to be tasted.
The garden is a wonderful place and wonderful activity. I actually had a good year for fruit. First time the tart cherries produced enough / the birds left them for me that I could make juice. It was delicious. The cherries are technically tart, but are pretty sweet. The batch shown was about half of the harvest. Not huge, but it’s just me. So much better than buying the stuff at the grocery store. My Canadice red seedless grapes were also quite productive and I made and canned some juice from them too.
And then, at the end of the summer, there were quite a few Monarch Butterflies that came to get nectar from the Echinacae flowers.
This appears to be a female Monarch.It was a good season for the coleus plants, too.
