63

a less boring attempt to describe my day is below, if you do not want to learn a little history, skip the following 2 paragraphs.

It has been 63 years since the world awoke to the atomic age. On the Morning of August 6, 1945, after almost four years of war, a lone B-29, or B-san as the residents of Japan called them, flew over the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Residents looked up and then went back to their business; they had just come back from an air-raid drill, and a single B-29 bomber did not an air-raid make. It was probably a recon flight, they probably thought. It was not. Many had wondered why their city had been comparatively spared the horror that other cities had suffered. That morning at about 8:16 AM, local time, the cordite charge in the bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" fired and drove a heavy uranium bullet into the corresponding set of uranium rings at the end of a barrel. It was called a gun-type bomb for a reason. The bullet travelled down the barrel and when it got to the rings, the enriched Uranium, U-235, went critical and the chain reaction began. The following explosion was comparable to 12,500 TONS of TNT. That morning, it became apparent that Hiroshima had been saved from other bombings only to be gutted by the atomic bomb.

The people below either began a nightmarish saga or the last milleseconds of life. The description is unnecessary. People below were simply vaporized if they were within a small circle near ground zero, but did not fair much better further away. Everyone has heard about the odd things left behind: the shadow of a ladder on a wall, the shadows of people on sidewalks burned in permenantly, the printed flowers on a school girl's blouse soaking up the heat more than the lighter shades and burning their pattern into her skin, and many other instances of the unimaginable horror that an atomic bomb brings to its target. There are other more eloquent and poignant descriptions and I see no reason to depress the reader more than necessary. It was a sad day. It was the second to the last blow to Japan that would force it to surrender. I believe it is important to remember what happened that day. You can find out more if you are interested simply by googling the following words: Atomic Bomb, Nuclear Bomb, Nuclear testing, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or Enola Gay. If you are still interested, I'd like to suggest some readings: The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes, and Dark Sun also by Richard Rhodes. There are plenty of others, but these books offer a very well written account of the entire nuclear program in language that non-science types can understand.

I had planned a longer post and will eventually manage one on my other site. Thanks to Cora's reaction, though, I decided to shorten my planned essay.

Today was my day off and I was successful at reading very little. I made an attempt to create a feng shui feel in the living room by re-rearranging the furniture. this was in response to Cora's whining. I think it turned out well--or I did before Cora came home. She said she will have to try it out for a few days before she decides whether she likes it. Cross your manipulative digits.

I began the day by doing some laundy, then I switched to dishes. After that I had some corn on the cob...boiled and then buttered and salted. Not the most filling of lunches, but, by gum, it tasted wonderful. The I decided to go to town and got the mail to boot. I received one of my books. Then I went to town and got a furniture mover glider for moving the TV stand. I also got some tv cable so I could move the TV further. After that I took Cora some coffee at work.

On the way back i used my GPS to locate a cache my father had left for me. He was up yesterday and created a geocache for me. It was a piece of genius and more than a little entertaining. I went to the location indicated by my GPS and found, just like my dad's instructions had described, a man and a tree...the man was exceedingly small, MAYBE 1/2 inch in height. Below him was a note directing me to the next point. There I found four sheep...each about 1/2 inch long. and the next clue. The last point was marked by a crashed aircraft...rather a gobot that I had gotten when I was in seventh grade...some 21 years ago...it is an antique, I suppose. There I found another note in a pill bottle, this one was a note from the combined intellects of my father, my mother and my favorite neice! It was fun!

I made stir fry for dinner and Cora is finishing the changing table...slowly. I will post video later. I hope you enjoyed this installment.