4 I The Lovell Chronicle I August 28, 2014
CHRONICLE
IOHS
Parents, students
and drivers must
pay extra attention
next week
Patience and planning. Both will be required for all students and
parents of students returning to school next week as busy school
traffic comes face to face with the Lovell Main Street Project.
Supt. Rick Woodford wisely has attended each of the last two
weekly progress meetings at the Lovell Fire Hall to discuss the
best way to get students from the north side'of town to the ele-
mentary and middle schools with construction likely to disrupt the
walking route for kids in a two- to three-block area.
Of special interest is the route to the Lovell Elementary School
on Shoshone Avenue. When school begins next Tuesday, traffic will
be detoured to the north at Montana Avenue (the detour began
Tuesday night), with an area from Shoshone to Jersey and soon
on down to Idaho undergoing water and sewer replacement and
street repair work, resulting in open trenches and gaps in concrete
pavement.
Project officials are setting up a designated crossing area
across Main Street on Shoshone and will have crossing guards
in place before and after school on Third Street. With points west
torn up, parents on the north side of town are urged to direct their
children to Shoshone for crossing.
Parents are also encouraged to tell their kids to keep off dirt
piles and out of construction holes, both of which can be danger-
ous.
By the end of next week, or early the following week, the detour
could shiE one more block west to Shoshone, but that would bring
large trucks and other vehicles side by side with students crossing
Third and also Main, many of whom like to cut to the east to cross
Main on the other side of the Shoshone intersection from the
crosswalk to get to Red Apple quicker.
Business owners have been amazingly patient, despite suf-
feting at the hands of detours and diverted traffic flow, so it's a
shame,the:ideuruld remain in place, longer at Montana Ave-
nue. on the other hand, student safety is paramount.
Things are going to be crazy on th first day of school Tues-
day with construction reaching well down West Main, so we urge
parents to take the time over the Labor Day holiday to plan and
drive their route to school and/or walk with kids to the designated
crossing route, while observing the nature of the construction proj-
ect and its impact on pedestrians.
Likewise, while we always urge drivers to be alert when school
begins, extra attention must be paid this year with confusion ex-
isting among drivers and pedestrians alike, altered traffic flow and
distractions along familiar routes. We urge drivers to slow down,
focus, pay attention and watch for kids.
School is here, delayed though it may be, and the Main Street
Project is in full swing. Here's hoping parents will educate their
kids and drivers will watch for students like a hawk while we get
through the final stages of the Main Street Project.
--David Peck
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234 E. Main, Lovell, Wyoming 82431
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Editor and Publisher: David Peck
Reporter: Patti Carpenter
Staff: Pat Parmer, Dorothy
Nelson, Marwyn Layne, Teressa
Ennis, John Lafk0, Ana Baird,
Leonora Barton.
www.LovellChronicle.com
PICNIC: SEASON ""
Trying to figure out Ted
and the Tea Party
It has been an interesting month.
I went to the Tea Party and was sadly
disappointed. There was no tea, for one.
Ted Nugent was hurting from knee sur-
gery, so I'll forgive him for his F Bomb
about being a member/not a member of
the NRA. Most public speakers know you
lose half your audience when you curse.
The review in the Chronicle a few
weeks back was way different then I
heard things. Must be my half heimers
or the pain from sitting so long, but all I
heard was, "We need to change things."
Hmm. Wasn't that the same message we
heard six years ago and now we don't
even have any change left?
But I like to educate people because obvious-
ly neither Ted nor the General did their Wyoming
homework. When I heard Ted tell us men that we
needed to get. our hOdsein order aka put our wom-
en:in:rtheil: ple[ce, I ;atized he doesn't know any::
thing about Wyoming because if he did, he would
know that our women can shoot, ride and kick tail
as well as if not better sometimes than us men.
The Big Horn County Sheriffs were there to pro-
tect Ted and the General, even though they were
outgunned, and when he said the above, I expect-
ed the women to pop a few rounds over his head to
wake him up to reality, But then, they came from
back east, aka flatlanders, and their message was
more for those back east.
My dad always told me to remember the say-
ing: K.I.S.S. So, I would lock myself in my room,
put on some KISS records and wonder what I was
suppose to remember. When my dad got
home, he kicked down the door, smacked
me alongside the head and told me -
K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Stupid. Maybe
I should have listened to more Ted and
less Gene Simmons. But the biggest dis-
appointment was the opportunity they
had. And no, I'm not going to say any-
thing that would cause Obama to send
his goons after me.
Think about it. They are coming to
Wyoming. The home state of the Cheneys.
Yep, Ted's a hunter, yet they didn't invite
Obama, Clinton, Harry Reid, etc. to come
to Wyoming with them and go hunting
with Ted and Dick Cheney. Problem solved. What's
that? Dick doesn't hunt anymore? No problem. His
daughter moved to Wyoming and lied on an ap-
plication, basically shooting herself in the foot for
public office. It runs in the family, Ted! You were
coming to Wyoming, Ted! I hope he enjoys my book
while lying on his couch recovering. I'm working on
book number two, and I do have one more thing to
say.
The voters shot down the money for the Lovell-
Kane Museum. I hope this doesn't discourage you
from continuing to make it happen. It wasn't that
we don't want a museum, we just could not see vot-
ing to give you $200,000 every year for life or how-
ever long. There are many places that offer grants
and money for projects such as museum. Do some
Internet searching and you might be surprised at
what you find. The NEA, Gates Foundation, etc.
Keep It Simple Stupid.
Northern Rockies Skies for September
Lyra, the musical
instrument oj 't Heavens
A monthly look at the night skies of iiii.,, stars in the galaxy but so far
.... . !
the northern Rocky Mountains, written
by astronomers Ron Canterna, Univer-
sity of Wyoming; Jay Norris, Challis,
Idaho Observatory; and Daryl Macomb,
Boise State University.
Right after sunset, located directly overhead as
part of the summer triangle, lies the constellation
Lyra. Its brightest star is Vega, the fifth brightest
star in the night sky.
Lyra represents the lyre of Orpheus, the mythi-
cal Greek poet and musician. It is a very small con-
stellation and difficult to outline due to its faint stars.
Sirius was the first star, other than the sun, ever
to be photographed and to have its visible spectru.m
taken. Due to the Earth's recession, Sirius will be
the pole star around 13,750 A.D.
Lyra's second brightest star is Gamma Lyra, or
Sulafat. It is a blue-white giant star, a very close
double star system that varies in brightness in about
13 days. Epsilon Lyra is called the Double Double
star. Each of the two stars that one can see is an ac-
tual close binary double star.
The two most important deep sky objects are M
57, the Ring Nebula, the most photographed plane-
tary nebula. It is a shell of ionized gas that was eject-
ed in its past during its red giant star phase. The sec-
ond object is M 56, a globular star cluster located to
the southeast of gamma Lyra.
Planetary Watch: Early this month, on the south-
west horizon right after sunset, you will see Saturn
in Libra and Mars in Scorpio. Jupiter rises about 4
a.m., and Venus can be seen right before sunrise. It
is on a journey to become the evening star.
September 2014 Interest: Interstellar Travel:
Fundamentals
(Best URL: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/
physics/Relativity/SR/rocket .html)
The vast distances between stars are the first
thing astrophysicists consider when discussing
space travel. The distances from our star, the sun, to
our nearest stellar neighbors are several light years.
The distance to the center of our Milky Way galaxy
is about 27,000 light years.
The difficulties of making even the shortest in-
terstellar trip may provide one explanation for Fer-
mi's Paradox: Why there are roughly 500 billion
we have seen no clear evidence
of interstellar travelers. Even
before addressing the techni-
cal challenges -- development
of efficient propulsion, shield-
ing from radiation and matter
impinging on a spaceship at extreme velocities, and
a robust life support system -- we must consider the
fundamentals for such a journey, namely the time
and energy that will be expended.
The "Relativistic Rocket" site (best URL, above)
gives correct formulas for calculating the relevant
quantities, discussing how speeds close to the speed
of light may be attained by traveling for just a few
years with a mere constant acceleration of "1 G"
-- the acceleration we feel toward the center of the
Earth due to gravity. However, some interesting ef-
fects ensue with near speed-of-light travel.
Einstein's special relativity tells us that the
times and distances experienced by the spaceship
travelers compared to those experienced back on
Earth will be very different. For the travelers, time
slows down (time dilation) and distance traversed
decreases (length contraction). These effects occur
because spacetime is "hyperbolic" -- time intervals
and space intervals effectively subtract from each
other for travelers speeding by the nearly stationary
surroundings. The benefit to the traveler is that the
time expended during the journey is shortened, more
so as the spaceship gets closer to the speed of light.
In a well-executed journey to the Galactic Cen-
ter, accelerating at 1 G halfway and then similarly
decelerating so to arrive at zero velocity, the trav-
eler would age only about 20 years. However, back
home, the Earth and everyone on it would age about
27,000 years -- the time that the relativistic space-
ship traveling near the speed of light would take for
the journey as observed by earthlings. The ratio of
required fuel mass to space capsule mass for this
journey to the Galactic Center would be roughly 1
billion, assuming that a 100 percent efficient propul-
sion system (matter/anti-matter annihilation?) could
be developed.
Next time we will consider ramifications for
a less arduous trip to the nearest stars, including
spaceship requirements and what would be encoun-
tered along the way.
