This couple I know have an anniversary coming up. They live close by, and for the occasion, as a gift, I would like to give them something I made. 

I have a lot of ideas. None of them any good. Ideas present themselves, like suitors with pink roses, and each one seems so right until it doesn’t. 

It’s easy to fall in love, even with an idea. Johannes Kepler fell in love with the idea that planets travel in a perfect, circular path.

The planetary path is an ellipsis; truth prevailed, but Kepler's heart was broken.

Andrew Wyeth fell in love with an idea he could paint the wind, and he did; “Wind from the Sea” depicts the inside view of an open attic window, as the wind blows a tattered lace curtain into the room. 

Wyeth said it was a portrait of Christina Olsen, a friend who lived close by. Stricken with polio as a child, Christina lost the use of her legs. “Wind from the…

Spacecraft on longer-duration missions, in order to conserve fuel, are designed to use reaction control systems to control their attitude as little as possible, in order to avoid burning irreplaceable (or difficult to replace) fuel. Control moment gyroscopes and reaction control wheels are the most common systems in use for spacecraft that have arbitrary pointing requirements. Satellites in orbit, designed to maintain a constant attitude with respect to the body they are orbiting, will…

Outside the seasons change,

but the walls of the hospital are always grey

The music playing overhead changes

depending on which nurse controls the speakers

They tell me that the medicine changes

but the doctors don't,  so I don't notice it  

The channels switch,

…