~seventeen~ supersingular

Posted on February 23, 2024 by marybethrew

Happy seventeenth to Quinn.

In keeping with tradition, here is the grid of birthdays:

We will celebrate Quinn’s seventeenth birthday next weekend when he is home, but I could not let the day pass without marking it in my usual way, wandering through random tidbits of science and math and literature while reminiscing about this young man I have had the privilege of raising.

My photos of Quinn as he approaches seventeen are of him playing in band, and of him holding kittens. These seem to be the two moments he doesn’t mind having his photos taken, so I will take what I can get. Luckily, others were holding cameras at Quinn’s winter band concert, and I have another band parent and Quinn’s English teacher to credit with some of those images.

Seventeen is the seventh prime number. It is the only prime number which is the sum of four consecutive primes (2 + 3 + 5 + 7) because any other set of four primes results in an even number. It’s a lucky number of Euler, which is different from the way 13 was lucky, but still quull. In abstract algebra, seventeen is a supersingular prime, the explanation of which I had no comprehension of, which is probably a sign I never took abstract algebra, but I still think supersingular sounds intriguing.

Quullest photo. This was taken by Q’s English teacher.

Quinn is not taking math this year as a junior, but he would still be the only person I know who will find some of these tidbits quull, like the fact that the Pythagoreans abominated the number seventeen (I imagine he will giggle at this). I think he will be tickled that Carl Gauss chose mathematics as his profession because of his proof that heptadecagons (polygons with seventeen sides) can be constructed with a compass and unmarked ruler, and that this is because seventeen is a Fermat prime, whatever that is. Quinn likes Carl Gauss as much or more than the next seventeen-year-old. I think Quinn would like that there are seventeen fully supported stellations in an icosahedron. And I also think he will find it interesting that seventeen is the minimum number of givens needed in a Sudoku with a single solution.

According to MIT, seventeen is “the least random number,” which is because it is the most commonly chosen number when someone is asked to choose a random number from 1 to 20, according to several experiments.

Quinn is taking chemistry this year, and the element with the atomic number 17 is chlorine (which rhymes). Also, it reminds me of swim lessons. The element with a molecular weight of seventeen is ammonia. Which reminds me of diapers. Doesn’t time fly?

But the subject Quinn has been the most excited about this year (possibly with the exception of band) is English. So it will bring me great joy to remind him that the Haiku form has seventeen syllables (5 + 7 + 5). In other literary greatness, seventeen is when a wizard comes of age, and is the number of sickles in a galleon in wizard currency.

There are the same longings as ever. I wish I had more time with him. I wish I had his birthday with him. I wish I could fully support his stellations.

When we left off at sixteen, NASA was getting ready to launch a mission to space object 16-Psyche, an asteroid made of iron and other metals. The launch was successful in October, and in December, the spacecraft turned on its cameras successfully, the moment on a space mission called “first light.” The craft will fly by Mars in 2026, receiving a gravity assist from the planet named after the god of war, and then will continue on to Psyche, arriving in 2029. This asteroid may be a planetesimal, the building block of a planet, or in other words, an opportunity to look at what our own planet looks like on the inside. Our own earth is a hunk of metal at its inaccessible center, and this is our chance to learn more about our own core. Maybe. Or find out something else.

Messier space object 17 is the swan nebula. What is a nebula, you might ask? So might I.

A nebula is

Luminescent star-forming

Interstellar stuff

From my vantage point crowd controlling the middle school band at the winter concert, I got this back-of-the-band shot of my tall drummer.

Nebulae are those colorful, foggy space places whose images would make good Trapper Keeper covers, and they are full of cosmic dust. They are the places where the particles of cosmic dust clump together and attract tumbleweeds of more material until they give birth to a star. I picture a grain of sand in the mushy mantle of an oyster gathering ocean bits to form a pearl, only space. After the stars get born, the remaining material leftover is thought to be the makings of planets and their rings, their moons, their comets and asteroids. A nebula is like a solar system womb, then. And the swan nebula is one of the largest star-wombs in our Milky Way.

NASA, H. Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (UCSC/LO), M. Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), the ACS Science Team and ESA

Wombs. Milky ways. Quick subject change before I get too weepy.

Cicadas! Some species of cicada have a seventeen-year life cycle. Probably a lot of people already know this, but every time I hear it, I still think it’s miraculous. Between mating seasons, they are buried underground for seventeen years. This seems excessive and impossible and also has very cool ecological reason and rhyme. Also there are fossil cicadas dating back to the Triassic in Australia. Automatically quull.

Also, the periodical cicadas (including the 17-year varieties) are part of the genus Magicicada. I just learned this and I think it’s magical.

Magicicada

Underground for seventeen

That seems excessive

Cicadas are of course known most for their music, and as musicians, they are basically percussionists. I can keep going.

Did you know that the different stages of nymphs that develop during the 99.5% of their life that takes place underground are known as instars? There are few words I love as much as “instar.” See star-womb nebula discussion above.

There are a hypothetical thirty broods in the Magicicada genus, which are exclusive to North America. Many of the hypothetical broods have not been observed. I try to wrap my head around this and picture the type of nerd whose job it was to hypothesize mathematically occurring cicada broods, and I am picturing someone not that different from Quinn. (They numbered the broods with Roman Numerals. Am I wrong?)

We will not be enjoying roasted cicadas for Quinn’s birthday, though this is a culturally important delicacy to the Onondaga people.

Despite the hypothetical brood abundance, only fifteen of the broods are known to survive today, and their timelines are mapped out for our entomology ecotouring convenience. Brood XIII, the Northern Illinois brood from the Midwest, is a seventeen-year cicada expected to emerge in 2024. The next time they do, Quinn will be turning 34.

Least random number

Happy Birthday Quinnigan

You’re Interstellar

edited to add belated celebratory photo epilogue…

encouragement from crab

Posted on April 1, 2019 by marybethrew

i was tagged in a facebook post by a woman whose friend is having surgery for breast cancer, with a request for sending love and encouragement from one woman to another, so her friend would arrive home to a pile of cards and well wishes. it is easy to ignore such a post, because i think it makes us face our own fears, and what do you even say anyway, and then there is the fact that i don’t even know this woman.

but i do know her on some level, don’t i?

aside from the fact that she is a friend of a friend, we’re all one, when it comes right down to it. so i decided to snail mail it up, sent her a mix cd, a buoy quote in a card that i printed, and some beach sand in a film canister. it felt nice to share, and it prompted me to do a teensy amount of writing as well, which i will also share here, in case anyone else can use some encouragement today.

this crab jumped out of the card pile to come to you and i figured out why. cancer and crab are written together in the stars, but i see another layer of meaning. crab wears protective armor on the outside, and follows the moons and tides just the way all of us women do in the salt water cycle of our blood and tears. what’s inside is vulnerable and soft, but crab is tenacious, knowing how to hold on, clinging to rocks as challenging waves wash over, knowing when the best way forward is sideways. crab intuits what needs to be shed, and though it can be extremely vulnerable when it is exposed, it replaces its armor, a little bit stronger each time, taking what it needs to rebuild it from the healing waters of the ocean surrounding it.

i wanted to send you a little beach sand and ocean healing magic, from one woman to another.

~rainbow mondays~ farm, fair, fun!

Posted on July 25, 2016 by marybethrew

rainbow farm fresh goodness! i’ve become a bit of a compulsive rainbow-maker….

there were so many rainbows at oregon country fair… just sharing a few, and of course, most of the individual colors in this week’s rainbow are courtesy of fair as well.

rich told me that the rainbow unicorn lights up a night… i’ve never been that motivated to be at fair for the duration, but the way things light up at night does sound mighty intriguing! maybe one of these years…

red: always amazed at how much attention is paid to detail in every corner of fair…

orange: again with the details… layers upon layers of sumptuous fabrics, woven into the tree branches and moss…

orange: yes yes yes!!!!!!!!!!!!

yellow: we visited the buddha statue down by the ritz sauna who ended up wearing my flower crown at the end of last year’s fair.

yellow: vibrant fairy wings!

green: i just love the way the fair has grown in harmony with the forest around it, and is built in such a way that the forest absorbs it back into itself over the decades.

green: dragon eggs!

blue: somehow even an old blue tarp can look amazing, under the right circumstances.

blue: traditional kite train launch at the end of fair, backed by blue sky.

purple: the purple couple, on their way out the gate. headed for happily ever after.

purple: may your week be magical!

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday morning

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

~rainbow mondays~

Posted on July 13, 2015 by marybethrew

it’s an oregon country rainbow today… i am really having fun with bubbles these days. this was taken as i was leaving fair yesterday, as the sun was starting to set.

white: dragon that kept visiting rich and i during the rising appalachia concert, perched on the hat of a guy in front of us to listen to the music. when the band asked us to identify the riff they were playing, and i heard the opening to ani difranco’s anticipate, note for note, but the band claimed it was a tune by alia, i realized i was a decade older than the band. we all borrow from bob dylan, who borrowed from woody guthrie, it’s the way it goes, just keep dancing and stay young at heart, right? “i was so much older then, i’m younger than that now.”

red: quinn gets to have sleepovers with mama when rich is away at country fair. he looks forward to it all year.

orange: the view looking up from where rich and i ate souvlaki for lunch on a beautiful bench. one of my favorite things about the day i go to fair each year is that for one day, there is no effort and no decision-making required of me in the food department.

yellow: i did not edit this photo, this is just the way it turned out! again, as i was leaving fair, with that magical setting sun making everything glow like angels are descending on earth. which maybe they were.

green: trees everywhere, the canopy of the wonderful fairy forest fair grounds. with a couple of people who were really happy to see each other in the foreground.

blue: one of hundreds of amazing sculptures decorating absolutely everything at the fair. hummingbird with iridescent blue wings

blue: more end of the fair sky/sun magic, with dream catchers and prayer flags

purple: back home, my black raspberry bush is finally producing, after 3 years… time to dig it up and bring it with me to our new home. these berries taste like “home” to me, no matter where i eat them, because they are such a wild food staple back in new york on the farm where i grew up. these are not quite as tasty (must be the soil) but still wonderful, and made my heart feel good to actually get them to grow here. back to work and packing now after a peaceful, relaxing day of sun, fun, music, and walking around hand in hand with my love.

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday morning

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

~this moment~

Posted on August 9, 2013 by marybethrew

~a friday ritual~

a photo capturing a moment from the week.

a simple, special moment.

a moment i want to pause, savor and remember

magic and wonder

Posted on December 5, 2012 by marybethrew

you get to me like old time religion did

in my heart when i was a kid

you’re sweet gospel music to my ears

know how to ease all my fears

from my heart to yours all i can say is

hey baby hey baby hey baby hey

~greg brown

i was reading an article on yoga therapy by sandra anderson who was interviewing gary kraftsow in the may 2002 issue of yoga international i found when i decided to clean out under rich’s coffee table this weekend. (do you love that he has yoga magazines from before i ever practiced yoga? i do.) this part struck me:

in the tradition in which i was trained, the foundation for practice for most adults is to create stability at every level – structural stability, physiological stability (which could be equated to immunity, perhaps), and psycho-emotional stability, which is essential given the volatile nature of the external world. the next goal is to help them to awaken slowly and appropriately to a deeper dimension in life – the spiritual dimension – and then help them find a way of linking to that dimension through their heart in a way that’s not counterfeit. you must find an authentic link, something that inspires them. for example, i might ask somebody, “do you remember what inspired you when you were five or six? did you go to church? do you remember the joy?” the point is to reconnect to something they felt in childhood, and to go back to that. help them return to something deeper inside themselves that gave meaning to their life. (gary kraftsow was speaking here.)

first, it brought to mind the greg brown song, and i have always loved that particular line about his honey getting to him “like old time religion did in my heart when i was a kid,” a sentiment i can relate to from both the adult and child perspectives. secondly, it was of interest to me because i have always considered the early part of my yoga practice to have been a crucial part of my recovery from depression, and therefore, it was therapy. this is all making a lot of sense to me as i have sort of come around after a decade or so of being unsure what to make of the old time religion of my childhood, to a place of holding onto the baby while being able to part with what, for me, is the bathwater. which all seems seasonally appropriate as well, as we are approaching the holidays, which i notice often bring up issues for those of us who may have diverged a bit from the religious traditions we were brought up in.

it’s no mistake that quinn’s advent calendar is predominantly made up of woodland animals and plants, hidden behind doors number 1 through 24. and we routinely switch between calling our tree a “solstice tree” and a “christmas tree” each year. finding our own path to being able to embrace this time of year has been important. it’s a great time of year, and i have always been rather elfish, planning projects and decorating and baking and generally loving up on my people. i love to just revel in the feeling of magic, as we helped friends today decorating their mom’s house, and the three of us mamas sang harmony to oh holy night and silent night while we thumb tacked garland around the living room. it brought back a flood of love and giddiness as i recalled last year hanging the same garland around the same living room, and chatting about a certain gentleman i was planning to ask out on a date with these same sister-friends.

he gets to me like old time religion did in my heart when i was a kid.

one of the artifacts of sharing custody of quinn with his dad is that rich and i now have every other weekend to ourselves, and while i will never be able to say i appreciate the time away from quinn, i do love having one on one time with my man. we got to go out both friday and saturday and catch up on some local theater performances, and then sunday took a nice hike around the property line, getting cold and soaking wet along the way. as we approached one very large spruce tree, i could feel a palpable mischief absolutely emanating from him, and knew as soon as he walked around the tree ahead of me that he was planning on seeing how long i’d follow him around in a circle. i doubled back and caught him with a grin on his face, and made him stand still and have his picture taken. then we drank hot cocoa (with a little bit of kahlua to be festive) and played uno while we thawed out. popcorn, a movie, and a quiet night together.

it is that dark part of the year when all photos come out with that blurry, dreamlike quality. and the days seem to take on some of that hazy dreaminess as well.

i taught my yoga class last night, and lately when i teach and it’s a day i have quinn, i have been bringing quinn for the ride and then sending him back home with rich, who attends the class before the one i teach. as quinn and i sat in the entryway listening to the class do their final relaxation (“what’s shanti, mama?” was one of the many whispered questions as he sat and loudly cleared his throat…) he lit up when i explained that shanti means “peace” and he also enjoyed practicing bowing and saying “namaste” with me while we waited for rich. i think quinn will have a very different experience from mine as he grows up, and sometimes i wonder if he will have an equivalent to the “old time religion” feeling to look back upon. but i realize that our lives are very richly spiritual. as with everything else in his unschooling journey, i think quinn will be exposed to quite a range of beliefs and traditions and faiths, and be able to absorb what works for him along the way, and leave behind what doesn’t. i see him having no trouble picking up the baby along the way, while not troubling himself hauling any of the bathwater around. there is divinity in everyone we know, in every story that is told, and being able to recognize that magic all around us is what, i think, this season is all about. that sense of awe and wonder, whether it is found in a candlelit church or in a candlelit household or outside in a moonlit forest, is what awakens in us all this time of year.

when i got home i found them like this, deeply engrossed in a pretend scenario in which they were golden knights. “actually no, mama, we’re not golden knights, but we are knights and all the stuff we wear is made of gold.” all i know is, i have two of the most amazing knights in shining golden armor to love, and feel like i am the luckiest lady in the land.

bursting with joy

Posted on September 27, 2010 by marybethrew

loving where i am in my life….

helping quinn with his first embroidery stitches

the feeling we're always on our way to something wonderful

that includes my drive to work in the morning...

(every other day or so i still stop and gasp… “i live here?! i live HERE!!!!”)

magic in my life... like a chance happening upon a mass migration of dragonflies

and all those other things that can’t be photographed… the hum of slow, sustainable growth in myself and many of the projects in my life i have taken on, including the parenting project. the slow waking up to the fact that i actually like who i am. the realization of a certain integrity in myself that i couldn’t have learned or obtained any other way, other than the way i’ve traveled to get here.

mb

magic & bioluminescence

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