Brown Motion

 Over millenia and cultures there have been many situations where the consensus could not decide or agree on the once written definition of what was what. What is god? What is marriage? What is a recession? What is a leader? What is work life balance? What is love? What is truth? What is a lie? What is safe? Are Skittles safe? What is the point?

A Census is a bizarre and abstract science.  Counting living beings in a given area.  The US census puts its population by latest counts somewhere near 331.4M.  Somewhere near is about as accurate as one gets given the complexity of this process. Some people do not want to be found. I should know since I briefly worked for the US Census in part to understand the process.  Now the blog is about a different count. That of those that died. In some tragedy or another, man made or natural. Recent devastating news out of eastern Kentucky tells the story. Three major news outlets reported varying number of dead - anywhere from 15 to 20. Why is that? It is the same when a plane goes down or some other accident occurs.  Why the urge to definitively go for a number when you are not sure about it?  I think it is mostly for ratings. Translation = more money.  More eyeballs and more subs.  There is also an undying desire to guess the cause of any mishap. Bring...

 I might have let loose my thinking on this topic in an erstwhile essay or rant but I cannot remember as always.  Thence we are presented with a fresh(er) perspective of what yours truly means by this title. Growing up in India the paucity of choice was apparent.  If we had to travel we were really left with one option in the form of state run trains.  They were amidst the dirty laundry of vehicles the most clean shirt or relevant to topic the most logical option.  Trains went to more places than other forms of transport and were affordable. Hygiene and crowds were expected to be a problem but did not fare in the calculus absent - choices.  Same went for basic school supplies like shoes (we had uniforms and thus needed black leather uppers) and bags to carry our supplies.  Something akin to army BDU we had these khaki'ish colored canvas book carriers that eventually got holes in them; shoes that lasted a year till the feet grew in size and pain.  ...

 Not far from our new home in the Carolinas we visited a hamlet called McConnells, SC.  Nothing much was known to us until we stumbled on someone posting pictures of sunflowers.  Lots of them.  Like a whole farm full. It was enticing enough to drive out to see for ourselves armed with the knowledge that these yellow beauties are a fleeting phenomenon. Shining tall and bright in the summer sunshine they tend to be around in July then fade. So we went and got ourselves ogling at nature's creation - all awash in yellow interspersed with green rows of corn stalks that someone had planted to harvest soon. Setting looked like a cross between an M. Night Shyamalan film set and Vincent Van Gogh's inspiration. Good time was had by all..  Short drive east from this spot is the town of Rock Hill, SC where we enjoyed mists of water drench us after that hot walk.   Courtesy the town's relatively newish water fountain that does its thing 24x7. Quite an outing that.

 July 4th weekend was a road trip to the Smoky Mountains National Park and Asheville NC on the return leg home. 3 days and 2 nights. A counterclockwise loop that took us west - NW to the towns of Cherokee and Maggie Valley, NC before heading north toward Gatlinburg TN.    hidden gem - two waterfalls merge to form Soco Falls Maggie Valley was so named for the daughter of a local post master in 1905.  Soco falls and a tower to climb over the valley were local attractions as was checking out Native Indian art at a crafts store with boiled peanuts for snacking. We checked out the southern part of the NP which runs east to west cutting across the state of TN and NC border. Rapids and waterfalls and sights of the Little River gurgling alongside the road through the park kept us occupied with oohs and aahs. Then finished that day 1 with sightseeing more waterfalls on the eastern portion of the park. Day 2 dawned bright with a drive to the western part of the park to see Cad...