Louisiana Saturday Night
Reflecting Light in the Image of God
Dearest Reader -
In this entry, I explore the physics of light and how that connects to my experiences with family.
May God bless you and keep you on this day.
-JLH
The temperature gauge in the greenhouse reads 29 degrees. My computer home screen tells me it is 27 degrees.
Not good.
I walk from my greenhouse to the seed starting shed. The ground fabric is dusted with frost. My boots crunch with every step. Daylight peaks over the eastern horizon. Day will be here shortly. The heater in the shed runs and exhausts water through a small rubber nozzle in the rear. The temperature reads 55 degrees. This is a full 15 degrees below the target.
The sun stretches beyond the horizon and begins to melt the frost that formed from the plastic in the greenhouse. Drops of water fall from overhead. I pick up a pot with a plant inside. Frozen. As hard as a rock.
This is day four of freezing temperatures at night. All my plans of heating the greenhouse have proven to be nil. Yesterday I bought two heaters in hopes of raising the temperature. The needle barely moved.
I back the car out of the driveway. The clock on the stove read 7:18am as I headed out the door. Minutes earlier I had started the vehicle in hopes of warming it up. Jillian gets in the back seat.
“What I don’t understand is how the cold gets in the car.”
“It’s not so much as cold getting in, but the warmth getting out.”
“Ohhh.”
I adore my daughter so much. She is inquisitive and willing to learn. Yet she is so sweet and kind. With hardly a rough edge to her personality. The best parts of my mother and father’s personalities so clearly reflected in this young girl.
“It’s about energy. Energy comes from light. And when the light disappears so does the warmth.”
I hope this satisfies her curiosity, because I am not prepared to explain why it is colder at night during December than July.
My father seemed to anticipate cold greenhouses. I did not ask him for advice or insight, but a week ago he shared a video of how the Amish keep their greenhouses warm during the winter months. I reviewed it. But as most things are, trial and error. Implement, evaluate, adjust. Repeat until it works. There are no manuals for starting your own flower farm from scratch in Loganville, Georgia, only fragments of success stories from other people around the world.
The sun is my greatest friend and enemy. It provides the energy needed to grow flowers. And without any row of trees blocking its rays, our one-acre lot gets a full day of sun each day that there are no clouds.
But if it is 3pm in July, the sun will become unbearable. Torturous. It will dry up every drop of moisture. It will turn a green leaf into a brown one. The gardener must be attentive and quick with the water. Unfettered rays of light 93 million miles through the vacuum of space bring life. It can also kill.
A few weekends ago, I took my family to Baton Rouge to watch the LSU Tigers play the Vanderbilt Commodores in Death Valley. That was the excuse I used to get everyone there. But in actuality, I wanted to do something nice for my mother and to see my uncle Larry.
Uncle Larry has always been one of my heroes. I looked up to him at a very early age. He was larger than life. When I was a kid, he carried us to movies and the fitness gym and to ball games. When we were with him, it felt like we were at the center of the world. Larry joked and made us laugh and poked fun at us when he saw a little weakness. Uncles are supposed to do that. But…man…did he love us. And he still does. And I wanted my children to experience that for a weekend.
A he gave us that chance.
I rebuilt two of my greenhouses this fall. The spring and summer storms bent the conduit piping and ripped up some of the plastic. During the summer months, the greenhouses became unusable because of the amount of heat trapped inside. Thinking ahead, and believing that I was clever, I created doors on the side and at the back with latches so air can circulate and cool the plants.
Now, in December, there is no thought of opening a door. In fact, I may regret slitting the plastic and creating these doors. With every opening there is a small gap that allows air to leak out. With my newfound focus to trap as much heat, this innovation has turned into a flaw.
In my office, the sun pierces through an opening in my curtains on my right. It blinds me. Annoyed, I walk over to the window and pull the curtains tight. The sunlight still bleeds through and my office glows. I shut all the lights off, yet the room is still bright.
I look up and to my right and the sun is plate sized behind the curtain. I squint my eyes and hear my PaPa’s voice tell me, “You can’t look directly at the light without a mask on. It will blind you.”
He was a welder. A good one. A professional. He knew about blinding lights. But I do not have a welding mask to wear today. And the sun is still blinding behind these curtains.
The source of all life. Light from the sun. All the energy in the world can be traced back to this moderately sized star in our galaxy. Life giving. And at times, it is a killer. So bright and powerful that if one stared at it for extended periods, your eyesight would be lost for good. Quite the paradox.
Even the reflection of the sun can catch me and warm me. Late in the afternoon as the sun begins to sink to the west, the light will reflect off a second story window of my house and beam right into my eyes. Only the perfect trajectory and at the specific time in the day will this occur. And it will heat me too. I can feel the heat that is transmitted through this refraction. If I stand for longer than a few seconds, the intensity of this light will cause me to sweat.
Saturday morning, Larry was up before the rest of us, and he was ready to get moving just as the sun was coming up. The kids told him that they wanted some pancakes, and we got in the car and drove to Florida Boulevard to eat at McDonalds.
We sat in the restaurant and ate with the kids. And we talked about sports and family and life. And I noticed that the workers knew my uncle by name. And he sat there drinking from his two large cups of sweet teas. Initially, I thought Larry had made a mistake. Does he not know that he can get refills? And then I remembered. Uncle Larry always carried around two large cups.
My wife requested that we bring her back a cappuccino, but the machine at this McDonald’s was broken. We hopped into the car and drove a mile or two down the Boulevard to the next McDonald’s and went through the drive through.
“Good morning, welcome to McDonald’s. Will you be using your rewards app with us today?”
“Yes, hey! Good morning. The code is 2347.”
“Oh hey Mr. Larry, you want two large, sweet teas this morning.”
“Oh no, no, no, not today, we need a medium cappuccino and a hashbrown.”
“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).
Images are only possible with light. Scientifically speaking, what we see in front of us, even these words you are reading, are light waves reflecting off a screen into your eyeball and then reflects upside down at the back of your brain and then reflected again and flipped right side up for your mind to see. Life is (it seems to me) all reflections of light.
Light and the reflecting of light can explain the universe. Materially and experientially.
Experience.
Is light a particle or wave?
Is life material or experience?
It’s both.
Light can be observed as both particle and wave.
Life can be observed as both material and experience.
We reflect the light of God when we do His works. We experience the light of God materially and through experience.
He pulled out some whiffle ball bats that I recognized. There was a brown one that had athletic tape wrapped around the top. I remember using that bat when I was a kid. We were at the same house in the same backyard there in Baton Rouge. The smell of the carpet in that house was the same. It reminded me of my Mimi and PaPa. I can feel the St. Augustine grass in the backyard through my shoes. I can still taste the Delaware Punch that was bought from Albertson’s.
Uncle Larry started pitching to Jillian and Jonah. And more memories came rushing back to me. Standing on that soft grass and seeing the chain-link fence at the back of the property, I remember throwing balls up in the air and swinging and pretending I was Ryne Sandberg with Harry Caray announcing in the background.
Later that day we went to an LSU gift shop just outside of campus. And Larry bought my kids their Christmas presents early. My son got a jersey, and he did not take it off for an entire week afterwards. We finally got that jersey into the laundry the next weekend.
Sunday after church, we went back to the house and packed up our stuff and headed out to Picadilly.
“Will you guys go out I-12 and go through Mobile? Well, let’s go to the Picadilly out there in Denham Springs, that way you can be right on your way.”
Denham Springs was about a 15-minute drive from the house. It was not a far drive, but more than just around the corner for Larry.
We pulled in the parking lot and a line to the door was formed. The restaurant is packed with servers crisscrossing the floor refilling drinks. With my family ahead of me and Larry behind, he is sure to grab everyone’s ticket before they head to the table.
An older lady behind the counter serves the sides.
“Whatchya have?”
“I’ll take some cole slaw.”
She sneers a little, “whaaa?”
I speak louder, clearer, “Cole Slaw please.”
“Cole Slaw? Anything else?”
“No ma’am.”
We turn the corner to grab our deserts, and Larry taps me on the shoulder, “she’s a little hard of hearing. She looks like she’s angry, but she just can’t hear that well.”
We matriculate through the line piling up food on our plates. I think about Hank Stram and the Kansas City Chiefs.
There is more food than we are going to be able to eat.
We sat and my daughter had mac-n-cheese, so I know that she is happy. My mom is on my left and she doesn’t have to say anything, I know she is happy. Two of her sons, two of her grandchildren, and her brother all sitting for lunch in Baton Rouge.
Jonah speaks up, “We forgot the most important thing.”
Everyone looks up puzzled. Kita and I look at each other knowingly.
“We haven’t said the prayer.”
“You’re right, Jonah. Thank you. Let’s say it now.”
“Oh, you’re new here, aren’t you?”
Larry looks up from his chair to the young lady who is our server. And he asks probing, yet polite questions.
The light-skinned woman with curly dark hair responds, “yes, I am. I am her daughter.” Pointing across the restaurant to another server.
“Ohh, ok that makes sense now. I knew you resembled her.”
Our server walks off. A long line is formed at the cashier, which stretches into the dining hall. It is crowded. But the building is big enough to accommodate.
“Yea, I knew she had to be new, because all the other servers will bring me two glasses of sweet tea. She just thought it was for water. You just gotta train ‘em a little and they’ll take care of ya.”
My wife got a water subscription from Culligan last spring. They have been delivering ten 5-gallon bottles for months now. And she has forgotten to cancel this subscription several times. So, the water keeps showing up in front of my garage. And my garage is already filled with stacked water bottles.
No, the water in Loganville is fine. As far as I know. I don’t think there is lead nor do I think it is poisoned. Maybe RFK will tell us otherwise in a few months. Only time will tell. We will be prepared one way or another. But my wife had other motivations when ordering this water.
Interestingly, in that video that my father shared with me weeks ago, it explained how the Amish use large water jugs to heat their greenhouses. When light hits the water jug, it converts into energy within the water jug. Then at night, that energy emits back through the jug into the greenhouse.
So maybe I have a use for all that water after all.
Nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light. Photons, which are particles of light, are massless. Because they do not possess mass, they must travel at the speed of light. When photons slam into an object, electrons bounce off into space. This is known as the photoelectric effect. From this phenomenon, the entire range of human experience is possible.
Energy is created and light creates images.
JL Hemingway is the author of The Righter’s Bloc. He has 29 years of experience in the game of basketball as a coach, camp clinician, and evaluator. He currently evaluates for OntheRadarHoops.com. He and his wife run a flower farm in Loganville, Georgia, and is a dad of four.