Rain

It rained last night. Thank you for that, weather god.

Today we are helping Ben to pack, and as for anyone who travels anywhere, there is more going back than arrived.

Check-in is harsh, peculiar, each time something happens, some new disease, a terrorist threat, the rules change, this latest one particularly irksome, no water to be taken on board.
On board, as though it were a ship. Last night, I took Brady for a walk at night, watched the planes coming in to land, their port and starboard lights blinking red and green. The way our parents taught us to remember which is which - red for port because it is the colour of port and port is on the left because the port is passed to the left. How bizarre, it was assumed we knew about the etiquette surrounding an alcoholic drink so that we could be taught some rule of the sea, but we did.
And we must never refer to a ship as a boat or a boat as a ship.
But a plane is a ship, it has a captain and a crew, it has port and starboard, you go on board. And a starship is a ship. It also has a captain and a crew and a bridge from which everything is controlled.

Reading Sleepy's reference to Bill Shatner yesterday, Kevin reminded me of a documentary he'd seen, 'How William Shatner changed the World'. It was presented by Captain Kirk himself, but it was about how the ideas in Star Trek had prompted scientists to researching or developing some of the technologies or ideas in the show. I suppose that's why we have replicators and transporters in every room, and who hasn't heard of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle because of watching Star Trek?

This morning we watched a TV programme about the science of psychic phenomena, it showed experiments in remote viewing. It seems it doesn't matter how far away the subject is. We wondered why they don't have people remote view distant planets. They also looked at experiments in psychic healing. We should be training this part of our brain, we could be more tuned in to each other, to our world, to other worlds. It could help us listen. To God.

Ships, planes, starships, little modules for travel. They bring people to you and they take them away again. Except in our heads.