Uncle Ned's Purse

Uncle Ned knitted purses for his sisters
ornate and uniquely Celtic in design.
careful work that took some time...
he had the time...
three years to be exact
the time he served in Kilmainham Gaol
for following de Valera one Easter Sunday,
1916.

He was on the run awhile
before they could hunt him down.

The priest refused Grandpa Michael absolution
unless he gave him up.
I'll see you in Hell padre if that's the case.

The Black and Tans took away the seed and tools...
a crop that went unplanted.
Pa wouldn't give him up.
They locked him in the village jail
Pa wouldn't give him up.
I'll see you Brits in Hell as well.

The Dragon Meets Einstein... and Tensor Calculus

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/science/a-century-ago-einsteins-theory-of-relativity-changed-everything.html

What a shame that Dennis Overbye's story about the General Theory of Relativity didn't mention the mathematical foundation for Einstein's work. The General Theory could not have been developed without Tensor Calculus, which makes possible modeling of complex motion in uneven space. Tenor calculus is so difficult even Einstein needed a tutor, his friend mathematician Marcel Grossman, and "Between the years of 1915 to 1919, Einstein held a correspondence with the Italian mathematician Tullio Levi-Civita – who in 1900 published perhaps the most important work on tensor calculus to this very day - who desired to help him [Einstein] fix some mathematical errors he had found in Einstein’s work."

* * * * *

A few years back I was cleaning out some old things my father-in-law had left behind at our house. These included some old engineering workbooks that he worked with out on our back porch to pass the time in his retired years. Hey Julie! Says I, look at this. All that time you thought your dad was doing crossword puzzles in the backyard, he was working on tensor calculus problems for fun. What's tensor calculus, says my loving wife. Says I, math so hard to understand that even Einstein needed a tutor to figure it out so he could invent the Theory of Relativity. Smart guy your dad.

Quack, Quack

Quack, quack. We were on the way to Civil War night at Madison No. 1 Middle School, and my daughter who is dressed up like a transgender Abe Lincoln to do a skit on the North's strategy asks: "How do you do the duck, daddy." This was a tough one. My Uncle Tom used to do the duck to distract and amuse his anxious pediatric patients. So I somehow learned to quack like a duck, too, and have been able to do so for years. I really have a good quack. So we had a quacking lesson all the way to school. It's a lot easier to do than explain. Mary's still got a long way to go before she can quack. Maybe it's a guy thing.  Think Donald Duck.

Uncle Sam Wants You!