Daily Update: October 29, 2011

We have no Saints for a few days, so we note that on this date in 1792 Mount Hood in Oregon was first observed by a non-Native American.

Lt. William Broughton, a member of Captain George Vancouver’s 1792 discovery expedition, observed a mountain peak while at Belle Vue Point of what is now called Sauvie Island during his travels up the Columbia River, writing “A very high, snowy mountain now appeared rising beautifully conspicuous in the midst of an extensive tract of low or moderately elevated land lying S 67 E., and seemed to announce a termination to the river.” Lt. Broughton named the mountain after a British admiral, Samuel Hood. Lewis and Clark saw Mount Hood in 1805. But the Multnomah, a tribe of Chinookan people, had first named the mountain Wy’east. Long after the Multnomah, Broughton, or Lewis and Clark, Richard and I beheld the mountain in January of 1984, when we spent our honeymoon at the Timberline Lodge after flying to Portland, Oregon. (It is not a commentary on our marriage that aerial exterior shots of the Timberline Lodge were used in the opening scenes of The Shining to depict the Overlook Hotel.)

Last night we ate pizza for dinner, and I read the pamphlet Revised Roman Missal: Understanding the Revised Mass Texts (Second Edition) by Father Paul Turner while we watched the World Series until the St. Louis Cardinals had achieved a lead over the Texas Rangers: then I went to bed. (The Cards won the Series while I slept.)

After I woke up and got ready for work, I did my Devotional Reading before we left the house. Upon arriving at the casino, I spent my eight hours being the relief dealer for Mini-Baccarat and Pai-Gow, while Richard spent most of our eight hours dealing blackjack. On our way home from work I read the October 31, 2011 issue of Sports Illustrated.

Upon arriving home I set up my medications for next week (I have one to renew next week), ate my lunch salad while reading the paper while Richard paid our bills, then headed out to deliver the payment on our water bill before going to the Adoration Chapel for my Weekly Hour of Eucharistic Adoration. While at the Chapel I read the October 10, 2011 issue and the October 24, 2011 issue of my Jesuit America magazine (the October 17, 2011 issue never showed up in my mail). On my way home I pulled off the road for a very long funeral procession; I found later that it was for a 32 year old local Marine Corps veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, who was killed Wednesday when his motorcycle hit a truck which had run a stop sign at an intersection just east of our house. Once home, I plugged the bills Richard had paid into my financial software, then went to the church at 3:00 pm. I went to Confession, then attended the 4:00 pm Saturday Anticipation Mass.

When I got home from Mass, I found that Richard had gone to Dollar General for some garlic bread and some more Halloween candy (we both have been eating it out of the plastic witch’s cauldron), so we had the last of the spaghetti with garlic bread for supper. I then set myself to doing tonight’s Daily Update.

In the Tropics the system of showers and thunderstorms over the southwestern Caribbean Sea has a 10 percent chance of developing into a Tropical Cyclone over the next 48 hours, and the system of showers and thunderstorms over the eastern Atlantic about 1,075 miles west-northwest of the Cape Verde Islands has a 20 percent chance of developing into a Tropical Cyclone over the next 48 hours.

Tomorrow is the midpoint of our work week. After work I will fix lunch salads for Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, and do whatever else I need to do (including doing the Weekly Computer Maintenance) while watching the New Orleans Saints play the St. Louis Rams in the 12:00 pm game on Fox.

This Saturday afternoon brings us a Parting Quote from Hal Clement, American science fiction writer. Born as Harry Clement Stubbs in 1922 in Somerville, Massachusetts, upon graduation from high school he went to Harvard, graduating with a B.S. in astronomy in 1943. While there he published his first story, “Proof”, in the June 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. During World War II Clement was a pilot and copilot of a B-24 Liberator and flew 35 combat missions over Europe with the 8th Air Force. After the war he served in the United States Air Force Reserve and retired with the rank of colonel. He received an M. Ed. from Boston University in 1946. His best-known novel, Mission of Gravity (1954), was the account of a land and sea expedition across the superjovian planet Mesklin to recover a stranded scientific probe. He earned his M. S. in chemistry from Simmons College in Massachusetts in 1963, and taught chemistry and astronomy for many years at Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts. In 1996 he retroactively received a 1946 Hugo Award for his short story “Uncommon Sense”. Clement received the 1998 recognition as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). He also painted astronomically oriented artworks under the name George Richard. Clement was a frequent guest at science fiction conventions, especially in the eastern United States, where he usually presented talks and slide shows about writing and astronomy. The Hal Clement Award for Young Adults for Excellence in Children’s Science Fiction Literature is presented in his memory at Worldcon each year (died 2003): “Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you’ve only founded a superstition. If you test it, you’ve started a science.”