Things I learned about the solar system today

I decided for absolutely no reason at all to research the solar system today.

I think it occurred to me while reading a story about Mars -- the fourth planet from the sun (apparently) -- that I couldn't actually name the other two planets between earth and the sun.

Besides being embarrassing, this also makes it sort of hard to get a mental picture of the space in which our planet exists.

As I find it very hard to pay attention to anything that I cannot immediately picture, I did a very brief google search, and ended up on this incredibly useful website, clearly intended for people who had not yet taken 5th grade science class. (So, me, basically).

While reading the entry on Venus, I discovered this:

"On June 8 2004, Venus passed directly between the Earth and the Sun, appearing as a large black dot travelling across the Sun's disk. This event is known as a "transit of Venus" and is very rare: the last one was in 1882, the next one is in 2012 but after than you'll have to wait until 2117. While no longer of great scientific importance as it was in the past, this event was the impetus for a major journey for many amateur astronomers."

I tried to remember what I was doing in June 2004 when this happened, but nothing immediately came to mind. Thus, I consulted my voluminous library of journals, which detail fairly accurately day-to-day mood since I was about 13.

Shockingly, there seems to be a complete lack of entries from May to August 2004, which I can assume was due entirely to the fact that I alternately spent most of that time in a park somewhere making out with a loafing Strandite and then crying about him while on public transportation. That, or I just lost that journal, which is entirely possible.

But, good news. It turns out that I will get a spectacularly clear view of the next transit of Venus, if, for example, in 2012 I happen to be living on an island in the Pacific ocean, just south of Japan and east of the Philippines.

Also, on a side note, I was assured by this very rational and down-to-earth website that the occurrence of this rare astronomical phenomenon has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the world maybe possibly ending in 2012.

Totally, totally reassured.

Above and below

The view of Apra Harbor and the (oil-burning) Piti power plant, from the sky and sea.

Pictures of flowers

I found this spot the other day along the corner of a World War II memorial site in Asan.

Someone had propped up a wicker bench against a lone palm tree, presumably to facilitate gazing into the blue horizon while writing pensive thoughts in one's journal.

I took an immediate liking to the place, if for no other reason than the surrounding low bushes and tall reeds made the whole place seem like it had been transplanted from a New England coastline.

It sort of made me want to reenact scenes from Anne of Green Gables -- but since was lacking an early 20th century dress with puffed sleeves, I instead decided to take pictures of flowers.

in the company of journalists

I have spent a long time in my life trying to be this thing called a journalist.

But I don't think I really felt like one -- really -- until I found myself sitting in the back of a windowless Navy plane, wearing a "VIP" helmet and ear muffs to protect against the roaring of the engine, surrounded by a dozen members of the local press corps (and some guys from Al Jazeera who made us all look hopelessly amateurish) on our way to dutifully take notes on a guided tour of an impressively managed press tour of an aircraft carrier.

During the whirlwind 5-hour trip, I was herded about by bemused shipmen -- who made a point of addressing me (the only chick on the tour) as "ma'am" -- was pushed ever so gently out of the way of the hot exhaust of jets taking off on the flight deck, might have walked into the wing of a (parked) airplane while taking pictures in the hanger bay, asked ponderous questions of conveniently knowledgeable and on-message crew members who happened to be hanging out in all the places where we were doing interviews, and was not-so-gently chastised by an annoyed PAO for asking impertinent questions of the admiral.

I'm not really sure why this particularly experience solidified my identification with a profession I have technically been doing for a while.

Maybe it's because it represents everything I swore I would never do -- as a young, idealistic (and most importantly, unemployed) aspiring journalist so many years ago.

Maybe it was because by the end, after all the oohing an ahhing and running around to ask questions and take pictures while frantically wondering what the story was, all I wanted to do was run back to my office to meet my deadline.

Or maybe it was the fact that after it was over, I yawned through a split-second take-off that launched our airplane into the air at hundreds of miles an hour, slept most of the ride home, and noted that most of my colleagues were less concerned about their stories than the fact that they hadn't gotten a chance to eat lunch.

Ha. This is the worst journalism story ever.

A thousand little sarahs

It has been a while since I last saw Sarah, my favorite maverick spider.

Her tenure as matron of my light pole seems to have ended a few weeks ago.

I began to suspect something was awry when I saw her curled in her web, no longer repairing it diligently like she had been.

Every day she had rewoven the web exactly as it had been before wind and rain had blown large holes in it almost nightly.

She also caught things, and, as far as I could tell, wrapped them up in little pouches for safe keeping.

And then a funny thing happened. One of them burst open, and out came thousands of little Sarahs, attached to long strings that caught the wind.

With the spiders no more than glowing specs under the light of lamp, the sight was almost beautiful.

Soon after the first batch hatched, however, Sarah seemed to lose interest in her web. And then the second batch came, and she seemed to do nothing more than hang out all day.

And then she stopped moving.

That was sort of when I became concerned. She didn't curl up, exactly, she just sort of laid there, if spiders can lay, listlessly.

And then one day she was gone.

After that, one more batch of spider babies came forth. And presumably most of them caught a wind and left. I thought perhaps one or two would hang out in the light pole, to reweave Sarahs web. But none have yet.

There's just one remnant stuck in the corner now. But, every day I check it to see if there are any repairs.

And maybe when someone new takes it up I will be equally touched and creeped out, once again. At any rate, I will probably still be fascinated.

Perhaps this explains why Charlotte's Web was my favorite book when I was younger. I don't know.

the unfixable house

There are some places we go knowing that we do not belong there -- and even in doing so, expect that our presence will be enlightening in some way.

There's a house, on a hill, overlooking a would-be-ritzy condominium complex inhabited by military families with a monthly stipend to kill on a good view, a deeply scarred bay that will someday be the site of an upscale gated community, and a tumbling cliffside facing east across the expanse of deep, unending blue ocean.

The house supposedly belonged to the late former governor of Guam, who killed himself amid a dramatic corruption scandal by shooting himself in the middle of downtown traffic, chained to a statue with a note plied to his chest.

Sometime before or after the former governor's untimely end -- it's not clear to me which -- construction on the hilltop mansion stopped.

Local lore claims, as it often does, that the house is haunted.

So, like many a wayward high schooler before me, I decided that visiting the place would be a really good idea.
















I started thinking that it was less of a good idea when I had to tramp defenseless through the overgrown jungle brush, up a winding cement path, past heaps of seemingly still usable construction materials abandoned in the wilderness, to face a half-finished and prolifically tagged two-story residence, that looked more like it housed very real, and possibly unfriendly, squatters.

















Everything about the place -- from the feeling that multiple generations of teenagers must have used this as a creepy/romantic place to make out, to the pervading sense of decay -- was unnerving.























With an impressive number of wasps nests dappling the ceiling, trees roots and branches invading every open space, and a strange, unidentifiable white gnat-like fly, almost as imperceptible as the air, hanging about the myriad puddles and pools of standing water, the natural world seemed to know it was in charge here -- and relish it almost sadistically.
































The masterful ambitions of the architect, however, could be seen in the design. Beautiful bay windows opened on three sides out to the west, giving as clear a view the setting sun dropping below the green horizon as could be imagined.

















The open-air staircases were often built directly into the coral bedrock, and led around sharp corners to reveal and almost Gothic quality to the architecture.

For a moment as I hastily navigated my way out I was sure I would be lost amid the graffitied walls, and wondered if the maze-like quality of the staircases and sharp right angles would prove to be the secret death trap lurking in the place.


Details like columns designed in the shape of Latte stones -- hinting at the of the former governor's recently finished pet project -- underscored the pathos of the place.




At the top, the roof become a second, perfectly flat patio from which a 360-degree view of the island could be seen.



Despite the views and the architectural detail, the place did have a bit of haunted quality to it. The aggressive quality of some of the spray-painted images -- for example, a naked woman with bloody hand prints on them -- seemed to hint at something darker than just teenage angst.






Malevolence isn't really the right word -- although there was plenty of scary-enough graffiti to assert, if one was inclined, that the place hosted a kind of bad vibe that brought out the worst in adolescent taggers.

But with it came the feeling of disappointment from things left unfinished -- and from the feeling crushed hope that can interrupt even the most ostentatious of plans.

This house, designed as the centerpiece of a familial dynasty, etched into the very stone of the island, now lays rusting, breaking apart -- not rotting as much as dissolving.

Here on Guam the elements have a particularly dramatic power to dismantle from the inside -- and even the most hardy of building materials. Stone crumbles to reveal the rebar skeleton, already rusting and disintegrating.

Walking around I got a sense not of ghosts and evil spirits, but of irreconcilable disappointment, and a hurried abandonment that can only come with the impulse to forget.

There was clearly no intention to rebuild -- and no way really, to make the thing that someone once had envisioned sitting on top the hill.

I suspect this house will forever be unfinished.

Someday someone may replace it, or wrangle with the ghosts of the past to rebuild, but I cannot see that task being taken on lightly. And it seems like even the most brazen-hearted, on an island so small, and so prone to remembering everything, would shudder at the thought of building on top of this place.

There are things that cannot be repaired, the place seemed to be saying.

And I agreed. And then left, quickly.

Oh spider, my spider

This totally terrifying spider has decided to take up residence on the light pole right outside my apartment complex (right above my car) -- which puts her at about eye level when I make it to the third level of my stairwell.

It's about 30 feet up -- and every time I walk up and down the stairs I can see her clinging precariously to her web as it waves back and forth in the wind and rain -- or using her really long spider claw things to catch bugs and wrap them up in, you know, webs of evil.

I don't know quite what to make of the whole thing -- as I certainly am not used to rooting for mosquitos (if anything is spider food, it's mosquitos). I can't help feeling like she's quietly preparing for some kind of full-on invasion. Which, I guess, now that I'm thinking about it, is pretty much what all insects (and other creatures) do -- they just make more of themselves.

At any rate, because of her maverick decision to make her home 30 feet in the air, below the omnipresent glow of a yellow beam, I named her Sarah.