Far away on the opposite spiral arm of the Galaxy, five hundred thousand light-years from the star Sol, Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Imperial Galactic Government, sped across the seas of Damogran, his ion drive delta boat winking and flashing in the Damogran sun.
Domagran the hot; Damogran the remote; Damogran the almost totally unheard of.
Damogran, secret home of the Heart of Gold.
The boat sped on across the water. It would be some time before it reached its destination because Damogran is such an inconveniently arranged planet. It consists of nothing but middling to large desert islands separated by very pretty but annoyingly wide stretches of ocean.
The boat sped on.
Because of the topographical awkwardness Damogran has always remained a deserted planet. This is why the Imperial Galactic Government chose Damogran for the Heart of Gold project, because it was so deserted and the Heart of Gold project was so secret.
The boat zipped and skipped across the sea, the sea that lay between the main islands of the only archipelago of any useful size on the whole planet. Zaphod Beeblebrox was on his way from the tiny spaceport on Easter Island (the name was an entirely meaningless coincidence--in Galacticspeke, easter means small, flat and light-brown) to the Heart of Gold island, which by another meaningless coincidence was called France.
One of the side effects of work on the Heart of Gold was a whole string of pretty meaningless coincidences.
But it was not in any way a coincidence that today, the day of culmination of the project, the great day of unveiling, the day that the Heart of Gold was finally to be introduced to a marveling Galaxy, was also a great day of culmination for Zaphod Beeblebrox. It was for the sake of this day that he had first decided to run for the presidency, a decision that had sent shock waves of astonishment throughout the Imperial Galaxy. Zaphod Beeblebrox? Not the President? Many had seen it as clinching proof that the whole of known creation had finally gone bananas.
Zaphod grinned and gave the boat an extra kick of speed.
Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out of touch.
President?
No one had gone bananas, not in that way at least.
Okay, if you read the above passage and immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was somehow going to draw some kind of comparison between Zaphod Beeblebrox and Donald Trump, you would be wrong. I like Zaphod Beeblebrox. I wouldn't sully his good fictional character by conflating him with the current President of the United States. That wouldn't be fair to good literature anywhere.
Sure, there are passing similarities. I still walk around sometimes thinking, "Donald Trump? President of the United States? President?" I am not alone in this bewilderment. But that is not the focus of today's post.
This morning, in my little remote corner of the world (my Damogran, if you will--see how I made that connection?), an ice storm blew in. And it's been blowing in all day long. Schools are closed (the university where I teach canceled both day and evening classes), businesses are shut down, and we are being warned to stay home. I believe one warning actually used the word "hunker," as in "hunker down and wait for the storm to pass."
Therefore, I am at home right now. Left work early. Drove through freezing pellets of ice and snow. Currently, I'm sitting at my kitchen table, hoping that the branches of the trees along the side of my property don't break off and commit some vandalism on my home. Several limbs are hanging very low, almost touching the ground. Up the street, a power line is slicing the street in half. It isn't down, but it's bowed to the point of almost snapping. We haven't lost power, Yet.
As a lifelong resident of the Upper Peninsula, this weather doesn't shock me. I've driven to a movie theater in worse weather (a blizzard, actually) just to see the movie Oh, God! with George Burns and John Denver. That's what Yoopers do. We don't let weather get in the way of living. If we did, we'd all just go inside come December and not come back out until April or May.
Right now, it's slushy and wet outside. In a couple hours, the temperature is supposed to start dropping. That means we will experience what meteorologists are terming a "flash freeze"--everything's just going to go from water to ice in the space of a couple hours. That worries me a little. Of course, the kids in my household are simply thinking about whether or not school will be canceled again tomorrow. (My son is even doing a snow day dance.) Me? I'm hoping I don't end up with a tree on my roof.
All that being said, I'm grateful to be home tonight with my family. Grateful for this little mini-holiday. Christmas in February, if you will. Minus the presents. (I still have my Christmas trees up, so it's not that much of a stretch. Don't judge me!) Of course, there's still work to be done. E-mails to write to students. Poems to get a start on. Campaigning to do. But I'm home, and that makes a huge difference.
Saint Marty is thankful tonight for unexpected vacations.
Please vote for Saint Marty (Marty Achatz) for 2019/2020 Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula at the link below:
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