Red Headed Stepchild
(The Barrett family memoir of Navy Life)
by Sophie Ruth Meranski with photos
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Theme of 1984 West Roxbury Transcript article was that small clues often lead to discovery of much family history and many cousins. Jack Barrett's aunt Minnie Buckley around 1903-4 corresponded with her uncle Michael Buckley on ancestral farm at Moskeigh in old Templemartin parish now part of Newcestown six miles north of Bandon county Cork. John Barrett junior visited the farm in 1970s when it was operated by Anne Loretto Buckley, granddaughter who remembered Michael Buckley. She is a second cousin of Commander Barrett---- You are correct that the optimal long term mass for stabilization of solar radiation is very large, but precise figures are not known to anyone at the present time. If Dr. Baliunas is still at Harvard, she may be relatively well informed on the subjects - Princeton is one center for the type of astrophysics involved. Hans Bethe was in top intellectual form when I heard his historical talk 1995- if by some miracle he still has has full powers, he is an authority. I do not have Nature magazine file here, but there was a basic article 1972 by Carl Sagan et. al. Caldeira and Kasting are primarily life scientists who set out to determine how long life generally lasts in the universe when it arises on a planet - and how large a zone around a star will have hospitable environments, but their late 1992 Nature article has bibliographical references. Observation of other stars may give clues. Rotation speed can be a factor in stellar evolution and metallicity. You wouldn't like to organize a research group and seek funding? I will continue to do all I can, but I am sixty-four years old- like this rural area where I have many friends - don't mind occasional travel but after 1996 uprooting not eager to move again soon, and I can't see myself administering a complex funded operation even if support was offered. Could you take the lead or find someone? So that is "m". Now "v squared" or is it "DELTA-V Squared"? I heard Egil Leer of U. Oslo speak in 1995. I don't want to embarass him but publicizing an offhand opinion he was kind enough to offer in conversation, but he suggested that at the present rate of solar wind, it would take on the order of a hundred trillion years for sun to lose all its mass. Suppose we set a target that we would remove eighty per cent of present solar mass in four billion years. That is just a first approximation to stimulate somebody else to argue. In the 1930s a French physiologist was reported to have proved that bumblebees cannot fly, but they do anyway. There is a solar wind, and other stars have stellar winds - observation is fundamental in science. Not all particles in a gas travel at the same speed. A temperature is an average - observations are always approximate. But there are molecules traveling at escape speed, and we just need give them a little help. There are areas of the lower temperature where temperatures are MILLIONS OF DEGREES, and experts don't completely understand why. A variety of structures are observed in the outer CHROMOSPHERE, and these can be targets, where there must be fast moving particles. Study of hotter stars will give us ideas. Look at STARS! Some stars have gaseous envelopes- are these transitory or long lasting? ANTIMATTER is great stuff if you can handle it properly. If you could beam antimatter at the solar surface, you would annihilate some of the sun's mass and generate a great deal of heat. This was a new idea last night. Of course, it may be like the mice trying to bell the cat- where do we get the antimatter- could it be contained and directed magnetically? Would antimatter be easier to handled if cooled to superconducting temperatures- though it would annihilate ordinary matter, it might be relatively inert near absolute zero? There is more than one way to skin a cat - a sentiment that may originally have referred to catFISH, someone has suggested. I won't elaborate other exotic ideas jusy now as molecules with mesons, being tested in fusion at Oxfordshire. I shall save for another E mail the possibility of disrupting the solar chromosphere [magnetically perhaps] and exposing hotter matter beneath. In some respects the escape of solar wind is comparable to evaporation - the hottest molecules escape, leaving a cooler residue. Get the resideue out of the way and let more inner heat escape. Your brother Nick was a wrestler -- I forget [or never knew, having graduated 1953] whether you were also. Wrestlers and ju-jitsu practitioners let the opponent's own momentum work in their favor. The sun will be both friend and foe. We hope mostly to apply the sun's own energy to our purposes. I find new ideas coming rapidly - I want no monopoly - team back -huddle- get other people thinking!-John Barrett --- Dave Latham wrote: David - At 5500 degrees C. many particles in the > solar surface are already just below escape velicity and need just a little boost to escape into the solar wind. My impression is that the typical speed for atoms in the solar atmosphere > is a few km/s, which is much less than the escape velocity, which is more than 500 km/s. To first order you will need to supply all the energy implied by the escape velocity to remove mass from the sun to infinity. |
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Feb 14, 1946 phto by Douglas Davidson of his mother's fifth grade class Thomas Jefferson School, Waikiki. From row Mary Lou Gilares, John Barrett cub scout, Nancy Kawamura, Edwina Yee Second Row Melvin..., Walter Akita, Charles ---,Audrey...., Floyd [cub] Third Row Jerome ---, Milford Chong, Maxine ---, Janet Ikeda [Shitabata] , Ursula ---. Fourth Row Rose Lee, Edward---, Joseph Kinoshita, John ---, Fred Curtice, Paul Dalton. Fifth row ----- -----, ---- ----, Marcia Meyer, Rachel? ---, Sam ---- [part-Hawaiian],Nicholas Vaksvik. Sixth row John Wilkerson, Don Ferreira, ----, Wilma ---. |
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Beth is daughter of Deborah Meranski Sonnenstrahl, granddaughter of Dr. Israel Peter Meranski 1903-1962 and Jen Goldberg Meranski 1904-1991 of Baltimore. Beth and her husband Dwight are on faculty of Galllaudet Unieversity 800 florida Ave, Washington DC. Dwight is an instructor in Deaf Sports Program |
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Beth Benedict is daughter of Sophie Barrett's niece Deborah Meranski Sonnenstrahl. She is a counsellor and dean at Gallaudet University, 800 Florida Avenue, NE, Washington DC, which specializes in education of hearing impaired.About 1982 Beth was aid to Minnesota Senator Boschwitz. Her husband Dwight Benedict a native of Cincinnati is in Deaf Sports program.This photo appeared in 1999 Gallaudet catalog and accompanied article on advantages or disadvantages of cochlear implants for young deaf children. |
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Lactoris fernandeziana was discovered 1860s, feared extinct in 1955 by Swedish Skottsberg, specialist on Pacific Island floras.In October 1988 Harvard conservation biologist Edward O. Wilson suggested John Barrett write Ghillean Prance, then new as Director of Royal Botanic Gardens, Richmond, Surrey England about the systematic importance of Lactoris in "paleoherbs." Prance turned the letter over to Delbert Wiens of University of Utah, who went to Juan Fernandez January 1990 with Tod Stuessy and Dan Crawford of Ohio State, who suspected the principal population might be on an inaccessible cliff "El Yunque" where several hundred plants were found. Wiens did considerable work propagating the Lactoris shrubs from difficult tiny seeds.He made these photos and took one plant to Kew, where it bloomed 1999 in Alpine Plant Collection. Dan Crawford did molecular studies that indicated the closest relative of Lactoris is family Aristolochiacae - wild ginger, Dutchman's breeches - genera Aristolochia, Asarum.Wiens also took these photos and gave a set to John Barrett |
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Lactoris has a trimerous three-parted flower- one of the simplest known flowers morphologically. William Burger of Field Museum, specialist on Piperales black pepper family raised question whether these flowers are primitive or reduced. Molecular data now indicate that Amborella of New Caledonia is probably the oldest living branch of flowering plants - it is insect pollinated, with fragrances and large tepals as are Calycanthus, Idiospermum, Austrobaileya -which also appear to be very ancient lines, with complex shikimate-pathway chemicals as suggested by phytochemists Kubitzki and Gottlieb in August 1984 paper in journal Taxon. Lactoris is old but not as old as these - its pollen and seed are spread by wind, and features designed to attract insects have been lost- the flower is reduced, and the tiny seeds designed for wind dispersal. Petunia, Salpiglossis, Orchid also have found very small seed advantageous. |
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photo by professor Delbert Wiens, University of Utah January-February 1990. He accompanied Tod Stuessy and Dan Crawford of Ohio State to Juan Fernandez island - helped explore inaccessible steep clifff which is principal site of extremely rare genus and species wind pollinated and seed -dispersed. Wiens grew several plants from the difficult tiny seed, and molecular tests showed relation to Aristolochia and Asarum "Dutchmans breeches and 'wild ginger" HE TOOK ONE LACTORIS PLANT TO KEW ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, RICHMOND, SURREY, ENGLAND, WHERE CURATOR TONY HALL 1999 REPORTS PLANT IS BLOOMING IN ALPINE PLANTS COLLECTION. |
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Football fall 1947 left to right, back row-coach J Leo Foley John Rooney Line Coach Albert Kelsey |
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