Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
N C L R ONLINE
105
the room. Next to the couch where his granddaughter, Crystal, mock-reads her physics text and all the while can’t keep her hands off her young beau, Rosen. Old Everett smiles, remembering back in the day, and returns to his seat to reopen the article about a concept called quantum entanglement. Still thirty minutes until visiting hours begin, Everett dozes softly. On the page before him: It’s a connection between quantum particles, the building blocks of the universe. Once two particles are entangled, a change to one of them Dimensional Wisdom (incorporating sculpture Gyre, 1999, by Thomas Sayre), is reflected – instantly – in the 2011 (pigment on paper) by Jon Kolkin other, be they in the same lab or light-years apart. So counThe word “quantum” needs a little demystifying. terintuitive is this phenomenon and its implicaA quantum is usually a very small speck of something, tions that Einstein himself called it “spooky” and a uniform building block normally found in vast thought that it would lead to the downfall of numbers, whether it’s a photon of light, an atom quantum theory. of matter, or a subatomic particle like an electron. Everett is surprised to suddenly understand a term that he has avoided as ever beyond his comprehension capabilities. He shakes his large, mottled head, smiling. Like Faulkner, he thinks, whose works he’d ventured to read only recently as an old man and, remarkably, had found not inscrutable but meaningful and poignant human tales. Then, satisfied that he’s stretched his mind and overcome some fear even, again about to turn the page, Everett has the impulse strike him that he hasn’t taken his beta blocker for his blood pressure or his heart pill, another drug name he can never recall. Yet the reminder comes to him almost audibly – Dogoxin – he can taste the word, the pill suddenly – and he can almost hear Etta’s voice prodding him. He pops the capsules into his mouth, rises, shuffles to the water cooler across
1987–2004 Halley spent only a few months in Norwood, Massachusetts, her birthplace. Her father, who worked in communications, took a transfer with his American company to Taipei, Taiwan. Horace, also, spent little time just down the road in Walpole before his father, in international trade, moved the family to Rio de Janeiro. Strangely, the two babies who had once been only millimeters apart were, before their first birthday in February, 1987, about as far from one another as the earth allowed, some 11,700 miles. The striking little green-blue-eyed Halley was a bright kid and showed remarkable language skills, mastering English and learning passable Mandarin Chinese in the nine years her father worked in Taiwan. From there, in 1996, Halley moved with
Raleigh, NC, resident Jon Kolkin was a practicing hand surgeon for almost thirty years. He travels around the world as a medical volunteer while simultaneously working on photography projects. He serves on the faculty of the Maine Media (Photographic) Workshops. His awardwinning art has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the country and featured in such magazines as B&W and Color and Camera Arts. His works are included in such public collections as the Carter Center for International Peace, Universal Studios, Emory University, the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts, and the Ritz Carlton. His art also appeared in NCLR 2011. See more of his work on his website.