Truck Ride

  The weather was starting to clear up and I could see the ship out in the center of the field.  After putting it to them that It would be better for all of us to tow their ship into the barn, we all piled into my truck.  The body of the average Thurgian doesn't fit well into a human car seat.  They tried but couldn't fit, but were very impressed all the same.  I had to put down the rear seat and they rode in the cargo space.  At first I thought they were leering at me, but I then realized they were in fact ogling the instrumentation.  Seems as though they had never seen such sophisticated display, I wondered just how they had gotten here.  I started up the truck and took off for the field, this apparently was a good time to them and they jiggled and bounced down to the ship.  Of course I had to open the hood once we were down at the landing site.  Oh I was curious about their ship all right, but they were very insistent about taking a look at my engine.  The fuel injectors were a hit, although when we got around to the type of fuel it used and that it was an internal combustion engine they seemed dumbfounded.  That's when I think they knew they could take us.

The Damp

    The Midwest might not be as cold as Siberia, but I'm sure the misery index is much higher. It seems as though the wind never stops and it has the audacity to rain at the temperature of Thirty degree's Fahrenheit,,, most of the time. Fog and drizzle from sun up to sun down, not that you could tell if those celestial events had occurred. It was dark or very near dark until about my third jar of tea and became the same during my afternoon snack, until finally the sun gave up its fight and was extinguished by the dampness of the Middle West. It was a day such as this when the Thurgieans landed

Dancing with the Dust Devil.

       A dust devil used the harvesters heat column and profile as a leverage to gain strength,definition and mass; vacuumed up the dust that had some how settled on the harvester, and took aim for Vogt.  Stopped, astonished, looked up the length of it, looked down the row, then looked back where he had just came from; a conundrum, he walk as fast as he could one way and it seemed as though the thing had changed course to cut him off, he ran back the other way, slowed a bit to look over his shoulder and the damn thing was shadowing him.  In a perfect state helplessness, he sat down and gave up, waiting for it to suck him up and spit him out.  Swirling, and scouring the ground as it approached, the colossal dust devil danced around him in a primitive ceremonial ritual preparing him as the sacrificial offering; he lay down on his stomach, gripping the stalks on either side, digging his toes into the dirt waiting for the end.  The crashing sound moved over him and although he fully expected to be flung up into the sky, he was only pelted with dirt,chaff, and other debris.  No torn limbs, just thoroughly impregnated with grime.  Sat up, and watched it dance off,  doing what only could be described as cross between the Hokey Pokey, and the Twist, he even thought he heard a tune in the crashing wind.

   

A Wall of Bright

 Both sets of eye watched the march of the corn plants to certain doom -- hypnotic, plant after plant, the wind picked up, and blew across the tops of the stalks in a wave, hit the side of the combine and blew the piled up chaff into a swirling cloud; that converged with the sun, at ten in the morning, with not a cloud in the sky, into a massive wall of light to one side and in front of the combine.  Lucky slowed a bit, poor visibility, a strong gust hit, snapped the tops off from just above the ear; roared through the mirrors, antennas, cameras, and other dangles; and blew the amorphous wall of bright away.  Vogt snapped out of it and " do you have the latest survey maps of the subsidence".  blurted out, with out a check.  Lucky slowed even more,"thought I had the latest, but I don't have any survey marks". Just as he said it an external thought germinated, just breaking the through the surface realty, "just watch it kid": It was his neural I.D., so he was not being hacked into, not that such a thing had ever been done.  Was it even possible?  Just watch it kid?  Watch what?  Then it clicked, a bulb went on, a light came from within and illuminated this particular situation, and a thought formed of his own will: this guy is not a soil scientist and I do know him.  Then  the unsettling: the other Lucky faintly chimed in "you got it, now follow the breadcrumbs" 

Witch's disappoint

   Per Oscar Gustav Dahlberg has captured the moment when a rising star in the culinary field had her up and coming show " which witch brews best" canceled.