Science, Travel

Ask Dr. Babooner

35 Comments

We are ALL Dr. Babooner.

Dear Dr. Babooner,

Taking a cue from the government-funded activities of NASA, several years ago I purchased a powerful telescope and began looking around my immediate neighborhood for other homes that showed signs they could support life as comfortably as the home I live in now.

I’ve been studying the area very carefully and for the most part the places I see all have something terribly wrong – they’re way too big or far too small, they’re too close to a busy street or too far from the local park, they have aluminum or vinyl siding (which I hate), or smokers live there and the air inside the home is simply not breathable.

That last bit is something it took quite a while to learn, but now that I’ve had time to practice with the telescope I’ve become quite good at training it on windows and getting a clear sense of what goes on inside by measuring shadows as they pass in front of the interior lights.

Just the other day I found a house that is quite far from my own but it seems to have all the
elements I love about the place where I already live. The size and temperature are nearly perfect and I think there’s even liquid water inside. I’m pretty sure on that count because I saw someone taking a bath!

You can imagine how excited I was!

But just this afternoon the police came to my door and told me if I don’t start pointing my telescope at the sky rather than the other houses up and down the street, they will try to move me to a new home that is cold and desolate most of the time and has food water only at certain times which are not under my control.

Dr. Babooner, I thought scientific exploration was a pathway to a better life, but in this case it feels like all my work is taking me in the wrong direction. Should I stop, or keep pressing onward, hoping for a breakthrough?

Sincerely,
Curious K

I told “Curious K” that he (she?) should definitely stop peeping into other people’s homes and calling it research. The sad truth is that even if you found a place that could support your life as nicely as the place where you already live, the chances are slim that you could get there and even slimmer that you would be welcomed by the current inhabitants. It would be much better to take care of and learn to cherish the place you call home.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

35 thoughts on “Ask Dr. Babooner”

  1. Dear Curious K,
    I have to agree with Dale on this one, as I really love my current home and don’t really want to leave, so I would appreciate it if people didn’t toss trash on the yard and otherwise mess up the neighborhood.

    That said, I’m all for other people moving on if they want to, and I’ll gladly read their posts and look at their pictures, which is why we are planning to go to the Go Boldly Expo at the St Paul airport to meet Buzz Aldrin and other astronauts next Saturday.

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  2. The, um, “research” is a question of privacy. NASA has been good enough to keep the detail of what they view and pass along minimal. They aren’t peeking into windows and passing along photos of the neighbor’s cat or the view of your messy dining room table through the window. Think of it as the difference between Google Earth and Google Street View in its early days.

    And yeah, the inhabitants of the house may be friendly and welcoming of an additional member of the household (or at least someone to live in the mother-in-law apartment that is sitting empty), or they may see you as an invader of their Goldilocks world and will feel a need to vanquish you. And being vanquished is one sure way to ruin a day.

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  3. Good morning. Curious K, if you want to continue your research, you should try to avoid doing in ways that could result in another visit by the police. I think almost everybody likes to do research that is somewhat like the research you are doing.

    Most of us make an effort to avoid doing our investigations in ways that are illegal or offensive. Starring into windows should be avoid. A quick glance might be okay. Make sure those glances are really quick so no one thinks you are acting like a peeping Tom.

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  4. Pardon me if I seem distracted these days. I’m showing my home. Do you know what that means? It means I got a phone call at 6:45 last night. Someone wanted to tour the home. Cool! When? At 7!

    All I can say about this Peeping Tom business is that there’s nothing like home. Dream of distant places is you will, but let’s all take care of the home planet.

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    2. A pain, but it takes action to sell. More action means better realtor means sells sooner and sooner means better price. So Westward, ho, Steve.

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    3. Gosh, Steve, I just looked at the “slide show” for your house. It looks amazing. I might have liked some of it better when it was decorated more personally, but on the whole, it looks fantastic. The kitchen blew my mind – I didn’t know that you had gotten the kitchen remodeled. Well done.

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  5. If you lived here you’d be home by now.

    Going back to yesterday I asked my mom about planting potatoes on Good Friday. ‘Yep, that’s what they have always said’ she said. And then she tarnished my memories by saying ‘I wasn’t a very good gardener’ and she laughed. I was shocked! My childhood crashed down around me! I asked what she meant and she said ‘Oh I just planted when I got around to it…’ Huh.

    She didn’t think this would be a good year to plant *in the dirt* on Good Friday but then, ever the optimist, she says ‘I guess you’d have to try a few’.
    Well, if I get my butt moving and get my straw bales in place I may stick a few down in there.

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    1. Ben, during my days of checking potato fields in Hollandale I saw young potato plants that suffered fairly heavy frost damage because they were planted early and had large sprouts at a time when a hard freeze was still possible. Some of those damaged potatoes recovered because the seed was still good and could put up new sprouts. In my opinion Good Friday could be a little too early for planting potatoes unless you want an early crop and don’t mind the risk that they might be damaged by frost.

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      1. It seems to me that it all depends on what date Good Friday is on any given year and the weather that particular day/week/year. I’ve seen some Easter weekends when we still have lots of snow on the ground (usually, but not always, when Easter/Good Friday is in March and not late April). Other years, it is warm and balmy, and has been for a while. And, as VS pointed out, if you plant ins straw bales, you can plant earlier – assuming your bales are prepared and not buried too deeply in snow. My sister in Duluth has a very large garden and since they got a bunch of snow a couple days ago, I’m pretty sure that they won’t be planting potatoes or anything else today.

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    2. Well OK then, I got my straw bales out… except the three that are still frozen to the ground down by the barn. (Straw is a good insulator you know. This is on the south side of the barn even. I set 12 outside last fall to prep them for spring. Three of those are still froze down) And I got the rest in place but there’s still ice on the bottom of two of them and I decided it wasn’t time to plant potatoes.

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  6. I should have seen this topic coming, having read the story in the news yesterday.
    A very hard time of the year for me, what with all of the earth and the plants awakening. Then I got a very bad pinched nerve in my back, which means I cannot life my left leg. Odd and not a happy sign I do not think that now it is on my left side when all my issues before have been on the right. Somehow or other still taking care of Sandy and the apartment. Got some not bad news but personally cutting news, which also proves my rapid aging. Everything triggers everything else in my body. Having trouble not falling back into depression from all of this. So no one spy on my house, here on pain street; it would be dull and dark, even when we leave the lights on.
    My mother was an excellent gardener who used to make fun of all the old things about planting. She used to tell me things her aunts would believe, such as always planting certain things under a full moon. She used to say even in the 1960’s that people were following folkways that may have applied for the cultivars of that era when so much about garden plants had changed.

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  7. I am trying to spy on my neighbors, the birds and the various rodents. but my yard is lifeless. Last year I could have a couple hundred birds at a time but now I only rarely see a single bird. The late winter the cause?

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  8. Yikes! – I don’t think I’ve ever before come on the Trail and found a grid of six pictures of Dr. Babooner – MORE than a little disturbing.

    The only neighbors I want to see more closely are in nests, and for the most part I don’t know where. I did watch what was either a very big mouse or a small rat scurry across the snow to a neighbor’s basement window well… might notify him when I get the chance. Ummm. what was the question?

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      1. If you go into my web page you’ll see the three different album covers. Click on the album cover and it will take you right to iTunes. Now if you can’t use iTunes you can google swo8 Blues Jazz and there are a number of places such as Amazon.com where you can do a search for the albums. Once you see the album cover click on that again and all the songs for that album will come up. Click on the indicator on the left of each song and you should be able to listen to a sample for free.
        Let me know, Jane if you are still having problems.
        Leslie

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        4. Espionage Blues -You listen to me and I listen to you,
          Our wires are tapped, so what else can we do?
          They filter through the crap to see what we’re up to.
          Secrets are secrets no more, we are watched like ants and privacy is gone.
          They take our ideas, they rape our souls. They rip us off and steal our goals.
          What’s our future to be? Empty of purpose, far from free.
          I sit here in my booth and I listen to you. You know I am there so you speak in code that I don’t understand.
          They listen to me as I babble on.
          It’s all a fruitless game, that no one can win.
          That’s it in a nut shell.
          Leslie

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  10. i love window peeping. dont get around to it often these days. i used to love going for walks around the neighborhood in the summer when it was getting dark around 9 or 930 still lots of life and lots of rooms with the lights turned on with the decorating tastes showing through. i used to paint my rooms based on the interiors i saw on those walks,
    i had a hotel room in chicago on printers row tha tlooked across the street at the other hotel on printers row that lookd back across at me. i wa in the room fairly early 12ish i think and the hotel across the way was alive with action. what a great night. reminded me of rear window.
    i think if the people on the other end of the telescope want to keep the privacy of their open windows inside they always have the right to close the windoews. i was at disney one time and the family across the way was stopping to rest and the mother was obviously warm form pushing her kid around in the stroller. she unzipped her sweater and started taking it off until she realized she had nothing on underneath. she looked around to see if anyone had gotten a free show and i had to smile as she saw that i had been looking her way. but as i always say. if youve seen one youve seen em both.
    dale the new identity of the blog is getting more intersting daily. we are rooting for you to graduate to the blogmaster with the greatest ability to give it a go. we know your out ther and its a fun challange to find the entry to the daily dose. i love that you are trying new things. dont let all those other blogmeisters making fun of you get to you one little bit.

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  12. In my teens, I recall sitting on a city bus heading home from an evening of baby sitting. The parents returned later than expected, but I couldn’t very well leave the kids alone, and so the entire bus ride home was anticipating my mother’s rage at my being late. I recall passing houses with lights on and looking into their living rooms, and fantasizing about the calm and pleasant goings on within them, all the while knowing the scene awaiting me when I got home. I vowed that someday I’d have that kind of safe home. Of all of my dreams, this one has come true. I love my house and have always felt safe since I left my parents’ house.

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