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Geminids, Geminids, Geminids!

December 15, 2025
MThomas

It’s been several months since I last posted…too much work and no play!

Until this past Sunday. Whew.

After a morning lecture about ancient Japanese myths and “deliberately forgotten” kings (maybe), I was grateful to be able to take a quick power nap…

…so that the family could go up a nearby mountain and watch the Geminid meteor shower. (By “mountain,” I mean about 640m/2100ft.)

After a brief lecture/quiz by a staff member at our local culture center, we stayed outside, lying flat on the ground, for over an hour. And, yes, it was cold, despite the sleeping bag and thermal underwear. I saw three shooting stars. Not nearly as many as I’d hoped.

After we got home and took evening baths, the kids went out on our second-floor balcony and found out that the night view was even better at home than on top of a mountain! At least they knew what to look for, thanks to the culture center event.

Although the peak is Sunday night between midnight and 2 a.m., the meteors are still visible to some degree the rest of this week.

And by “meteor,” I mean the size of grains of rice. Look to the eastern sky, just a bit to the northwest of Orion, to find the Twins (Castor and Pollux in Greco-Roman mythology).

For more on the origins of the Geminids, check out the JAXA mission to Phaeton, the parent body asteroid. It’s DESTINY!

Ghosts in the family tree — Abigail West

September 8, 2025
MThomas

I wrote some time ago that there was a ghost in the family.

I guess it’s finally time to write about it. Sorry for the wait! Maybe I should hold off on this until Hallowe’en…

Today’s quote

April 13, 2024
MThomas

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed. And when you’re older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
Charlie “Casey” Stengel

Um

March 31, 2024
MThomas

If you could have something named after you, what would it be?

Hey, I came first.

I’m not the “doubting one,” but…

March 9, 2024
MThomas

Daily writing prompt

What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?

View all responses

My middle name is actually Thomas. I chose to use “M Thomas” as a pen name out of respect for my father, who taught me how to write. As a professional communications writer, he was responsible for lots of public documents for the NYS DMV, including traffic safety reports, driver manuals, press releases from the Governor, all sorts of “my boss will feel the need to edit this, so I will deliberately leave behind something for him to do so as he doesn’t screw up the entire thing” document.

I may or may not have adopted this strategy in my own professional work (I certainly adopted the attitude…)

Another reason is because I had a baby brother named Thomas. He passed away before reaching five months old when I was not quite 11. It had a major impact on me as a child (and indeed as the adult and as the father I am).

I have no sons. It bothers me that I may be the last Thomas in our family. For a while, anyway.

What I am still not used to is…

March 6, 2024
MThomas

What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.

“Where are you from?”

I never understood why this question might rankle some people…until I moved to Japan.

I’ve been in Japan since 1999. “Where are you from?” was one of the first questions people asked me at the time, when I was teaching in junior and senior high schools.

No problem, I thought. I’m from Upstate.

“I’m from New York.”

Nods of understanding. “Ohhh, the Big Apple.”

Uh, no. Upstate.

“New York is a state?”

🤦‍♂️

Today’s quote

February 22, 2024
MThomas

Never attempt to reason with people who know they are right!
Lord Leto

This is the prompt that never ends…

February 13, 2024
MThomas

Daily writing prompt

What were your parents doing at your age?

View all responses

“I’ll take ‘Barely Surviving’ for $100, Alec.”

A writing prompt that almost answers itself

February 4, 2024
MThomas

How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

I would say “yes.”

How?

Failure influences my perspective on life.

Successes influence my perspective on life.

Deaths influence my perspective on life.

Births influence my perspective on life.

Travel influences my perspective on life.

I would list the above five as “significant events” in life. But “the passage of time” is a little more vague.

Four years doesn’t seem like a long time to me now, but it sure did when I was 18.

Even six years doesn’t seem all that long now. But to my daughter who graduates from elementary school this March, six years is half her life.

My perspective on this question is that it’s the people in my life that have changed my perspective.

Even my daughter gets this. She wants to visit Australia, Canada, Singapore, and the US again because, as she put it, “a little piece of me is still there.”

But that’s just her perspective. Or is it?

Dear Diary – June 26, 2005

January 4, 2024
MThomas

Last night I had a strange dream…

I was home, arguing at the dinner table. It was as if I were a teenager again. I’ve often dreamed of living in a bedroom with no ceiling over half of it, open to the night sky, with a solid rock wall on one side and sliding doors on another. This seemed to be the same house. Something like the house in Warrensburg, but somehow different. In other dreams, this house has slowly risen upward as if it were a growing tower of stone.

In this dream, I was at the dinner table. Then, suddenly I was on the back porch. It still looked like the “room” that had been set up for me when I was sleeping on the back porch between my freshman and sophomore years. Except in the dream, there was little furniture, no freezer, no old TV from my grandparents, just an old bed and some curtains. I was able to look through the kitchen wall and see the insides of the house, decrepit and broken plaster and wood.

I went to the barn to get my bicycle, and somebody came running up behind me just as I was about to leave the back yard. “Where is my bow and arrows?” I asked. He handed me a bow, but no arrows. I sped off down the side path to the street, and suddenly I was bicycling past the triangle park. Only it turned into a much large city-style park with large dumpsters and vending machines. A dump truck charged toward me, and as I veered away, it lurched back toward the park and disappeared.

Then I felt a pain in my mouth. Lifting a hand to my front teeth, I pulled out a large square and knew that my incisors had been removed.

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