Email from the Moon, Where Moon Rats Work, Fiction

Words

Laura:

So what do the Moon Rats do?

Well, you’re right. The Moon Rats don’t just work in toilets and life support. Be hard to maintain an aura of mystery if that’s all they did. Yes, yes, dignity of work and all that, but you have to admit not many of our cultural icons spend the day inspecting bowel movements. It’s just that’s where most of us interact with them. [Since You Asked]

The other place you see the dudes in black is as drivers. The are the best EVA drivers on the moon. Name it, they can drive it. Delivery vans. Exploration trucks. Tourist buses. Partly of it is practice. Also, they seem to have an more intuitive understanding of how to handle mass in 1/6 G.

You can drive locally. Most people don’t. The Moon Rat system is pretty efficient. Plus there’s the whole not-dying issue. That’s the thing about living on the moon. There are few minor accidents. Definitely no do-overs. Failure is generally fatal the first time.

So, the other place most of us encounter Moon Rats initially is as tour guides on the sight-seeing trips we all take to gawk at BEING ON THE FREAKING MOON. I say encounter rather than meet, because they make terrible tour guides.

They speak softly. They say as little as possible. They do not answer stupid tourist questions. Oooh, What’s that? Where are we? Why does the earth look so big/small/whatever. You are expected to shut up and look up the answer yourself. They just sit there, silent and impassive, watching you. We call it the Moon Rat stare.

Why do they do it if they dislike it so much? Partly for the hard currency. I think partly b/c they don’t want us noobs to go out, die, and clutter up their nice clean moon. Incidentally, if you are not a Moon Rat, you are always a noob.

I’m told it is different when you go to the smaller, off-site habitats and science stations. Every project is supervised by Moon Rats. Hard not to get to know people when you are living on top of each other in a goldfish bowl.

Every so often, some company gets a wild hair and insists they don’t need to pay the Moon Rat rates for supervisors. So they go off and start their own habitats. We have a saying up here:

There are old Loonies.
There are bold Loonies.
There are no old, bold Loonies.

Yeah, Loonies. apparently that’s what non-Moon Rat residents call themselves. Tourists, Loonies, and Moon Rats. I’m not sure when you go from tourist to Loonie. Probably have to stop using caps about BEING ON THE FREAKING MOON.

Oh, Moon Rats also make a ton of money in mining and piloting. That is dark side industry. Haven’t found out much about that so far.

Next time, Moon Rat art.

Speaking of art, I finally read Hail Mary by Andy Weir. He’s pretty much required reading up here. Back when Sheila Voss was stuck here at the beginning of the colony, people referred to her as a real-life Mark Watney. There’s a wing of the hotel named after Artemis.

I know you’re not a fan of old books. You have a point. Since it was published back in 2021, the social codes alternate between comical and cringeworthy. Still, I think you’d find it fun.

You could say that Hail Mary reads as The Martian in a rocketship. Protagonist in isolation, undergoing a life and death struggle, punctuated by catastrophic accidents. Since it starts that way, I’m not really giving away much of the plot. The underlying premise is vastly different.

Finally, I don’t want to lose these letters to a system purge of my work email. So I’m saving them down in the cloud. [Archive]

Yours from another heavenly body,
Liz

~~~ curtain ~~~

Sounds of Spring

Horsekeeping

Awareness of the outside world. Tomorrow. “I am leading a free virtual walk thru the Audubon Mural Project in Hamilton Heights on Saturday May 8th at 11AM.” Leigh Hallingby, @Harlemwalksnyc. Register at The Audubon Bird Murals Project: A Virtual Tour. If link doesn’t work: https://www.mas.org/events/the-audubon-bird-murals-project-a-virtual-tour-2/
~~~

It really does sound like that.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

If It’s Pink, It Must Be Spring

Horsekeeping

Awareness of the outside world. NYT: Do You Live in a Political Bubble?, Wezerek, Enos and Brown, April 30, 2021. Enter your address to see the political party of the thousand voters closest to you. My address? “You live in a Republican bubble. Only 7 percent of your neighbors are Democrats.” This is my surprised face. If you click over, once you get the map, scroll down for the commentary. For the assist, Balloon Juice: Odds and Ends (Open Thread), Cracker, May 4, 2021.
~~~

SWAT(R). What the cool kids are wearing for ears, eyes, and zippers.

Given how hard it is to find the original pink, I assume most people prefer the clear version. Can’t understand why. I want to know when to reapply and where it is so that I don’t run my hand through it.

Horses are about equal for fly bites in their ears. Rodney gets way more bites on his belly. Weird.

Milton was so not into the photo shoot. This was the best of 13 while I ran out of hands to hold the phone, focus on his ear, and keep him from nosediving to the grass.

SWAT Posts
I said the same thing back in 2012. What can I tell you, I’m consistent.
[Foto Friday: A Tell-Tale?]
[Foto Friday: Face Painting with Swat (R)]

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

Clinic Prep

Riding Journal

Awareness of the outside world. May the Fourth Be With You! Beware the Revenge Of The Fifth!
~~~

Gratuitous shadow photo for visual interest.

Five weeks until the clinic with Stephanie Mosely. [Horizon]

Horse training is about teaching the horse to carry a load.
Riding is about learning to be a better load.

Unrecorded Internet Source

A biomechanic riding clinic is more about the latter than the former. I expect to spend more time on the position of my shoulders rather than on the position of Rodney’s haunches. Obviously, the more we can do, the more we will get out of the clinic. If all we can do is walk and a bit of trotting, we can still benefit.

Even walking and mild trotting has not always been a given with this horse. Recently, we have our basics under control to the extent that I am … reasonably … confident of being able to WTC in a ring that Rodney knows.

We are good to go.

However, my groom made an excellent point.

If I want to do three, hour-long lessons in three days. there needs to be some fitness put on horse and rider. Not trot-sets-to-go-Prelim level of fitness. More, ride for an hour at a time level of fitness.

We did long rides last summer with the Virtual Tevis. Mostly waking, but still long. When we trailer to another barn, we ride for a while, since we’ve gone to the effort of getting there.

At home we tend to walk around the field, do a bit of ring work, declare victory, and go back to the barn. Little and often works well for Rodney. He needs time to come alongside new ideas.

So I need to build up his ability/tolerance to carry my ass for an hour and my ass’s ability/tolerance to sit in the saddle for an hour. Not more work. Not more intensive. Just chronologically longer.

Is it just me, or is that a cosmic cue for five weeks of soggy weather, bad footing, and missing shoes?

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

Clinic on the Horizon, Introducing Myself To Strangers

Riding Journal

Awareness of the outside world. There has been a spate of pearl clutching in the USEF ranks. One of the clutchers declared that if USEF insists on joining the 21st century, they will take their toys and go home. My response is, Okay, don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out.

Social values are changing. Some of us think, changing for the better. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Which is why no one puts me in charge of consensus building.

Update: more on this in comments.
~~~
Signed up for a clinic with Stephanie Mosely, The Empowered Rider.

Well, saying that out loud doesn’t make me all kinds of nervous. Not at all. I mean, it’s such a normal thing to do with your horse. It’ll be a first for Rodney and me. (Sits down hard on tangential grammar rant.)

Mosely teaches rider biomechanics, in the tradition of Mary Wanless. I have not done any Wanless IRL, but am a huge admirer of her books & videos (yeah, I’m that old). I shall report back. Given three rides and two lectures in the clinic, I’ll probably report back a lot. Coming in June. Above, screenshot of homepage.

So, I got to thinking about the elevator speech that you to give while standing in the middle of the ring introducing yourself. I ended up using it in my introductory email, figuring she’d want to schedule horse/rider pairs at similar experience levels.

Horse & rider experience. Sigh. It’s complicated. Assume a beginner level. This month we did our first WTC dressage test & a jumped course of crossrails. He’s 22. I’ve had him for 11 years. He was supposed to be my mid-life crisis horse. It has taken us this long to get that far. But I digress.

I should’ve said my FANCY mid-life crisis horse. After all, it wasn’t about getting “a” horse it was about getting “the” horse. The if-not-now-when horse. The horse who would Go Places.

Anyway.

In drafting the email, I wondered about how much to say and what tone to take. Decided to go full me and let the chips fall. In case you hadn’t guessed, “full me” is information overload.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

Anniversary Hearts

Images

Awareness of the outside world. Brick Bending, Geometric art in LEGO® brick. Considered an “illegal” technique because it will damage your bricks. And explode, BB: Safety Lecture by the artist. “It’s my unofficial understanding that within the confines of official LEGO® set design guidelines, many of the building techniques I use are not allowed. Essentially, any building technique that puts the bricks under stress beyond the official tolerances that the LEGO® Group has specified are forbidden among official LEGO® designers. From their perspective–as a business–this makes a lot of sense. From my perspective–as an artist–I can’t think of anything more interesting than pushing these bricks to their absolute limits. For me, that’s where the magic lies. BB: FAQ

The link was supposed to be showing you the artistry, not discussing the “legality”, but I thought his summary was a fascinating contrast of business vs art. I wonder what the LEGO group thinks of him. On one hand, he’s doing unmentionable things to harmless bricks. OTOH, he’s bringing LEGO designs into spaces were you don’t usually see them, PMG: Sherwood Center for the Arts ‘Brickbending’ exhibit, by Urenda, 2020. Plus it’s pretty.

Pulls self out of rabbit hole with effort.
~~~
Yesterday was our 33rd wedding anniversary. I know, I can’t believe it either.

33 hearts.
~~~

To prove it you, and to myself, I shaded the rings to count the hearts. 16+4+8+4+1=33

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine