Part of a bookshelf in my dining room

 

From the American Journal of Physics, to Venomous Snakes, to The Story of the W and the Z. 

Blurry scenes from Main St Pine Bluff

Trip's birthday again, number 72. Here's a video, very blurry, that I shot last week from my truck, driving up Main Street in Pine Bluff, from 2nd Avenue to 8th. There are new plazas at 3rd and Main and 6th and Main, but the video doesn't show them. Doesn't show much but what the hell, I'll post it for Trip's birthday.

Relative motion next to a freight train

On U.S. Highway 65 recently somewhere near Dumas, Arkansas, goin' south. In case you can't understand the last part of my little diatribe on relativity, I'm saying that the essential thing about  relativity is whether you can do an experiment to detect whether you're at rest or you're moving. The answer in almost every situation (see below for exception) is no, you can't. Whether you're in straight line motion, or going around a curve, or accelerating upward in an elevator, or freely falling, you are in a rest frame. Remove the visual cues, and the Newtonian frame of mind that says there's an absolute rest frame, and the experiments you do to try to detect your motion will fail. For the speed of light to be constant for everybody, no matter how they are moving relative to each other, the sensory information you have is only interpretable as something or somebody moving at constant speed relative to you, or for your apparent accelerated motion, as you being at rest and acted on by a gravitational field. We should, but so far don't, describe relativity in terms of rest frames moving with respect to each other rather than using the more general term reference frames moving with respect to each other.

The one situation in which you can detect that you are moving is the earth's motion on its axis* which can be detected by setting up a giant pendulum suspended by frictionless pivots so that the pendulum swings in a single unchanging plane of motion as the earth turns (was that the name of a soap opera?) beneath it.  However, the earth is so big it's like an unmoving flat surface as far as the relative motion of my car and the train (and the trees and highway attached to the earth) are concerned. Try imagining just me in my car and the train in empty space moving relative to each other. Then you can understand how they're both rest frames as far as the people in them are concerned.

*Well, okay, yeah, Earth's motion on its axis is just one example of general "motion in rotating frame," which is a somewhat controversial subject. Try to think of other situations where you might be able to experimentally determine you are moving.

Pine Bluff downtown March 3, 2026

Strolling around downtown Pine Bluff after voting on March 3, I took some photos with my phone, a cheap ($15 per month T-Mobile) flip phone that's not great at taking pictures, since a lot of times in full daylight I can't even see an image on the little screen, and sometimes the image is blurred. A few photos turned out all right yesterday.

In the foreground are my 2008 GMC Canyon truck and the decorated former bus stop bench area next to the Southeast Arkansas Arts and Science Center at 8th and Main. In the background, starting on the left are the Pine Bluff library, the Chamber of Commerce building (where the Malco Theater once was), a glass wall covering the south side of an old brick building that once housed the Henry Marx Men's Store at 6th and Main, the as yet unrestored Hotel Pines (built in 1913), and close up on the right side the Arts and Science Center's satellite buildings (restored old brick buildings) housing, among other things, the Art Space on Main. An upper corner of the 11-story Simmons Bank Building (still the headquarters) can be seen farther back. 

This is the old S. H. Kress building, what's left of it, still standing I'm glad to say, at 4th and Main, where the 4th Avenue railroad tracks are. Other buildings in this area are in decent shape and are usable but not currently being used. Just across the railroad tracks is the still-being-remodeled Baim's Department Store building where the new location of Pop's Barbershop, currently at 3rd and Main, will be.

Below is the entrance, on the right, to the former Cohen's Department Store, now vacant, and further down a vintage car parked next to a bar/poolhall at 2nd and Main.

The vintage car is a Buick LeSabre or Centurion convertible, 1972 or 1973. This is 2nd an Main, where Reed's Drugstore was. There's a "pool hall" (my name for it) there now. It hasn't been open in recent years but apparently is now. It was open about 15 years ago, and Mark Townsend, Dennis Burnette and I played some pool and drank a few beers in there. Diagonally across from it (where I took the photo from) is a more active bar and restaurant, RJ's Sports Grill, where live music is played at least once a week. I haven't yet been there except for a brief visit when no band was playing.

Here's an example of a blurred image, in this  case because of my hurry to snap the photo without being seen. The car was parked in the Pine Bluff library parking lot (I parked next to it when I got there), and the sticker says "Good Without a God, humanist.org." Unusual to see in Pine Bluff! At least now that most people like June and Ed Freeman are no longer there (they likely would not have had a bumper sticker of any sort, however).  The former Shrine Temple where I voted is only a couple of blocks north on Main Street from the library, and I did spend some time in the library after voting and before going on my stroll down and up Main Street.

Henry homestead farmhouse photos Fall 2025

Spider web on the back part of Frank Henry family homestead house north of Monticello, Arkansas. Fall 2025.

Two fawns at the front of the Henry homestead house, as photographed by the game camera on a fencepost near the cypress tree. The date-and-time stamp doesn't work anymore (can't be reset).  The photo was taken in the fall of 2025. Other photos from this time period are shown below.

Front gate taken from steps shown in game cam photos 

or from breezeway, shown below.

The farmhouse is on a county road near Arkansas state highway 425 

north of Monticello. The historic Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church above is at the 

intersection of Hwy 425 and Mt. Zion Road, about five miles 

from the farmhouse. This is a January 2026 photo.

Little Rock and Dermott photos spring 2025

 

From the Knoop Park overlook (called "The Point" by local residents),

7:08 a.m. April 22.

The walking path in Knoop Park, 7:20 a.m. April 22.

Deck on Arkansas River at Riverbend condos with cottonwood trees.

Rita and Woody (Shih Tzu) are on the deck.

Old cigarette display case at Delta Drug, 111 E. Peddicord St, Dermott, Arkansas.

Note the word "Stop" on the left, and the timeless clock face on the right.

February 6, 4:33 p.m.

Joe's (former) Garage, 700 block of  E. Speedway St., Dermott.

May 17, 6:15 p.m.

Molly (beagle), Lake Wallace fog, '67 Chevelle Malibu

Molly, Rita's 12-year-old beagle, in Rita's living room. This blanket-covered wicker

 rocker isn't Molly's usual chair, but she liked being in it for a little while. December 6, 2024.

 

Lake Wallace near Dermott on a foggy day (December 15, 2024).

 At least one big alligator lives in this lake.

This '67 Chevelle Malibu was parked near the entrance to the Brookshire's Super 1 grocery store at 28th and Hazel in Pine Bluff when I came out into the parking lot on January 20, 2025. It was in bad shape inside, too, with upholstery worn down to the seat springs on driver's side. The front seats were bucket seats, so this is likely a Chevelle Malibu SS, which was probably my favorite model car in 1967, when I was in the 7th and 8th grades. Pat Calkins became my best friend at about that time, and he really liked the Malibu SS, too. But he was lucky in that his dad had, in addition to the Impala station wagon family car, a white '66 Mustang Fastback, another of my (and Pat's) favorite cars. He got to use it after he turned 16 on January 20, 1970. I got to drive it occasionally, and was even stopped for speeding by an Arkansas state trooper when Pat let me drive back after we took a girl (Pam Hankins?) from Pine Bluff to Helena (she needed or wanted a ride there)  one weekend night in September 1970, soon after I turned 16. I recall from that night: "Tears of a Clown" playing on the car radio as we were leaving Pine Bluff driving on Harding Blvd; saying to Pat on our way back on Hwy 79, north of the Free Bridge and near my grandparents' farm, "There's a blue light ahead of us (pause), and one behind us too"; that I had a "lid" of marijuana stuffed in one of my square-toed boots (and Pat was also holding, LSD probably) when were were stopped; the state trooper had me sit in the backseat of his car while he wrote the ticket, and I could see the radar unit Nixie tube display showing I'd been driving 78 miles an hour. (Speed limit on major two-lane highways like U. S. 79 was at the time 65, if I remember correctly. This state trooper must have been a decent guy to not to give Pat and me a hard time, since we were hippies, or at least wannabe hippies, which means I was wearing bell bottoms and probably a tie-died t-shirt along with my newly purchased square-toed boots, and I had semi-long hair, though not long enough to be parted in the middle.)