Strange things come to mind when you're reading blogs

A blogger I read frequently just bought a new car with GPS. It reminded me of a radio program I heard on NPR about people relying on GPS for navigation that ended badly.  Myself, I have seen routes proposed by a GPS that truly go "round the barn" when  straighter line routes or easier roads are available.  GPS  proposed to send my doctor onto a two lane toll road trip through eastern  Kentucky on his way from Tennessee to Charleston WV hauling a huge trailer, because that way was a few miles shorter than staying on the interstate.  Not smart.  I'm from there, so I hastened to convince him to stay on  I-75 and I-64, and forget the distance saved.  Maneuvering a trailer through the southern Appalachians wasn't for the novice.   

In the worst case, people have gone out for day trips in the Mohave desert using their GPS to navigate on old mining roads and gotten very lost because the roads are not maintained anymore and some of them on the GPS maps don't even exist. (Why, oh why?  I went through the Mohave once and saw all I will ever need to see of that place!)  Some of these people have DIED.  The radio told a heartbreaking story of a mom and her small son who got lost and were out in the desert for days before being found.  She survived but the little boy died.

My only brush with the desert happened when we drove from Phoenix into Nevada in the mid 1990's.  We had maps but I decided I should check with the hotel concierge before we left to determine the best way to go.  She very sternly lectured me, an Eastern tenderfoot, about driving in the desert.  Be sure there was a full tank of gasoline before you left. Check your car over, even the rental car.  Take water with you, even if you were never planning to get off four lane paved roads.  You never know what the rental car might do and you have to have water with you, either for an overheated car or an overheated person.  If you don't know where you're going, don't drive at night.  Get an early start.  She made me know that this was serious business.  It doesn't sound like the place for day trippers.

We didn't have any problems except for a monumental traffic jam at construction on the Boulder Dam road, which left us sitting in excruciating heat for hours without moving.  Brutal.  And, when we were on the move we were afraid to use the air conditioning too much because the  rental car ran very hot.  So we rolled down the windows and "enjoyed" the 110 degree breeze. 

On the way back to Arizona we saw a tour bus broken down on the side of the road in the Mohave, the driver talking on his radio (probably begging for a replacement bus to be delivered, pronto) and the poor passengers huddled in the shade at the side of the bus, sweating in the heat.  Poor travelers.

On another subject, a Japanese blogger wrote about her school system having a geiger counter to survey the playgrounds for radiation contamination.  The kindergarten wanted to buy a geiger counter of its own to use more frequently.  My, my.  This led me on a search for geiger counters online, where I found a site that sells them exclusively (a sign of the times, indeed).  The big boxy ones I was used to seeing at the nuclear plant where I worked cost $1200.  I thought they would have been much more expensive.  And they were selling like hotcakes, to normal people, not businesses or institutions.   Imagine a situation where having a household geiger counter is normal.  My heart goes out to you, people of Japan, still wrestling with these terrible occurences.

Trying to think normally in a not-normal world

The situation in Japan is bearing on my thoughts this morning. Beyond the horrific damage and suffering that the population is facing due to the earthquake and tsunami, there are the dangers from the malfunctioning nuclear plants in Fukushima prefecture. I worked in the nuclear power industry before retirement; I am well aware of the possible consequences of these malfunctions.

The news is frustratingly non-technical. I know how these plants operate and am trying to piece together from the press releases the actual state of the plants, but what we are told is not complete or exact, so I have to guess. Why didn't the backup power diesel generators start at the plant? What happened to the equipment so that cooling is difficult to reestablish? We can't be sure of anything from what we have been told.

Meanwhile, I think about bloggers I have met online who live in Japan. I don't know enough about the country to know if they live very close to the nuclear plants. I think some are nearby, at least in neighboring prefectures, but how far away is that? For people that I have never met face to face, I am very concerned about their welfare and safety, and am grateful that they continue to blog when possible to keep us apprised.

But what to do? It would be easy to sit and brood and worry. When that is the option, I find it best to keep my hands busy, at least. And what better way than to piece quilt blocks? So I downloaded the next block of Barbara Brackman's Civil War sampler and got to work. Now that it is complete, I have added it to the design wall with the others and need to post a picture of my progress:
Not a great picture, mind you, a little crooked, but a picture nonetheless. Here are her ten blocks plus her alternate block for the seven sisters stars, and my pieced star that might also be a substitute. Twelve blocks using mostly fat quarters of the "Arnold's Attic" collection plus a few Brackman Civil War repros. The kind of colors I love.

I'm still looking for an eagle and shield applique pattern for the center block in the layout. Any ideas?