Photos Phor Phriday

I don't have any stories bubbling up in me, and it would sound lame if I forced something, so y'all are gettin' more pictures.

The first true vacation that Lovely Wife and I ever went on after we got married was in the summer of 1985. We were living Bossier City, Louisiana at the time (near Shreveport in northwest LA), and decided to go to Galveston, Texas for a long weekend. Of course, it was overcast and rainy the whole time, but we were young, in love, and Lovely Wife was pregnant with Number One Daughter. In other words, we didn't know any better. Still had a great time though.

I'm a sucker for those cheesy Sea World wanna-be places, and at the time, Galveston had one called Sea Arama. The places themselves might not be impressive, but the critters try just as hard in the little places as they do in the more famous big attractions.

These first three photos were taken at Sea Arama.

This seal wasn't sleeping, he was pretending to be as part of his act.



We also toured this old tall-masted ship, called the Elissa.

And finally, this was the roadside "sign" for Dinosaur Gardens in Moscow, Texas. Seen somewhere in east Texas on our way back to Bossier City.

Thursday Thirteen #27

Thirteen Of My Sunset And Sunrise Photos You May Have Missed 1. Indian River Lagoon, Melbourne Beach, Florida - THE most outrageous sunset I've ever seen. Actually had a camera with me too. December 15, 2002. I remember, because it would have been my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. Taken with Sony DSC S-75. 2. Indian River Lagoon, Melbourne Beach, Florida - From the same sunset as the first photo, above. I thought the tree was interesting as well. This tree has since been cut down for parking space. Taken with Sony DSC S-75. 3. Indian River Lagoon, at Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge in Indian River County, Florida - Pelican Island was America's first National Wildlife Refuge. Taken with Sony DSC S-75. 4. Panama City Beach, Florida in August of 1982. - One of my 35mm slide scans. Although this is the Gulf of Mexico, it was the first trip to the beach for me as an adult. Magical. That trip is still one of the geat memories of my life. Taken with Canon AE-1 on Kodakchrome slide film and scanned with Minolta Dimage Scan II Elite film scanner. 5. Indian River Lagoon, south Brevard County - I was attacked by no-see-ums while taking this and other photos. They are like miniature mosquitos that get you, but you never see them. My legs looked as if I had stood in a fire ant hill. You couldn't see normal skin for all the bug bites for two weeks. I ended up with some good photographs though. Taken with Nikon D70s digital SLR. 6. Sunset over Melbourne, Florida - Number One Daughter had surgery last September, and I was crass enough to bring my camera with me to visit her to take advantage of the fourth floor view from her hospital room. Taken with Nikon D70s digital SLR. 7. Sky over a neighbor's home, Monroe, Louisiana, 1983. - These are the colors on the 35mm slide, not a Photoshop alteration. Taken with Canon AE-1 on Kodakchrome slide film and scanned with Minolta Dimage Scan II Elite film scanner. 8. Sunset over the Ouachita River, from Monroe, looking at West Monroe, Louisiana. - Lest you think the previous slide scan's colors are unreal, here is another slide scan, taken on a different day, in a different part of town. Taken with Canon AE-1 on Kodakchrome slide film and scanned with Minolta Dimage Scan II Elite film scanner. 9. Sunset over Turkey Creek, Palm Bay, Florida. - This was taken at Goode Park in Palm Bay, about three miles from our house. Taken with Nikon D70s digital SLR. 10. From Key Biscayne, Florida, 1984. - This was just one slide I took of this sunset. I could have done this whole 13 list from this one sunset's slides. It was the most intense I had ever seen, and stayed number one in my mind until December 2002, when I observed the sunset I showed y'all in photos #1 and #2. It was magical, especially to this Louisiana boy who hadn't been out of the state much at that time. Taken with Canon AE-1 on Kodakchrome slide film and scanned with Minolta Dimage Scan II Elite film scanner. 11. Indian River Lagoon, Melbourne Beach, Florida. - I used the gaussian blur tool in Photoshop Elements to replicate the Orton process one can do with slides or negatives in a darkroom. It gives the photo a dreamy look and feel. Taken with Nikon D70s digital SLR. How about a couple of SUNRISES? 12. Sunrise over the Indian River Lagoon, Malabar, Florida. - After a night of insomnia which had me cleaning all of my cameras and lenses, I went to take some sunrise photos before work. Taken with Nikon N90s on print film and scanned with Minolta Dimage Scan II Elite film scanner. 13. Sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. - Taken at Ocean Park in Melbourne Beach, Florida on Thanksgiving morning, 2002. Taken with Sony DSC S-75. The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Google Earth Meme #2, Vidalia Lower Elementary School

Chicken Little

It is hard for me to believe, but I was once an extremely skinny kid.

Sainted Mother likes to tell a story of how, when I was TWO years old and she had taken me to the doctor for a checkup, and I officially weighed 25 pounds (11.4kg).

She says that that evening, when we all went over to my paternal grandparent's house to visit, she walked in carrying me and announced, "Well, he finally weighs as much as a sack of flour."

Bless her heart, Big Brother and I were so skinny when we were little, she lived in fear of someone taking us away because we looked malnourished. So she started pumping us full of vitamins when we were little. I still take vitamins to this day like clockwork.

Another fact about me is that I never attended kindergarten. I just went straight to first grade when I was 5.

This is where Vidalia Lower Elementary School comes into the picture. This school is where I went from 1st through 3rd grades.

Unlike the Upper Elementary I talked about HERE, this school wasn't close to the Mississippi River and the playground wasn't fenced in. But I've always been a decent sort who followed the rules, for the most part, and never considered wandering off the school grounds.

I guess kids all over the world play versions of tag, and I found out in the first grade that I was about the fastest kid on the playground. And for some reason, when I was targeted by whomever was IT, I ran as if my life actually depended on not being tagged.

This became quite a challenge for my pals at recess, I almost never had to be IT. This began to concern them, and the normal game of tag morphed from the normal form into one with everyone simply trying run me down and catch me.

This, of course, heightened my sense of self-preservation, and I avoided each and every attempt to catch me with even more diligence than before.

This brought out the competitor in everyone and they thought it was funny to see me run so fast and they were amazed at how hard it was to catch me.

Some girl started calling me Chicken Little, and the name stuck. So, during first and second grade, when tag was THE game of choice at recess, I was known as Chicken Little.

Knowing how big of a person I ended up being makes it even funnier. But I sure remember running like the wind.

Even in junior high and high school as I became a behemoth, I could run just as fast as the 'normal' people, even at 6' and 220 pounds. On the rare occasion when I ran from someone, they would usually stop in wonder that I was so hard to catch for a big guy.

My friends hated trying to tackle me when we played football as teens on a local playground; big AND fast hurt more to tackle than normal sized and fast. (No touch football for us.)

I never told my teen friends about my youthful nickname of Chicken Little, they would have called me that until my dying day.

Not something I wanted to happen. I was like any other teen, I wanted to be accepted, not singled out. A nickname like Chicken Little would have been funny to my teenage friends, who would have relished calling the big guy I had become by that name.

But for those two brief years in 1st and 2nd grade, when the game of tag was king, I was Chicken Little, and hard to catch.

In 3rd grade, our final year at Vidalia Lower Elementary School, we became enamored of kickball, and the recess games of tag, as well as my nickname, came to an end.

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Ok, yeah, I know I should have a better picture for this post, but apparently Vidalia is low on the priority list of detailed shots for satellites, so that's the best I can get.

Am I Equal To A Holocaust Denier?!

According to Ellen Goodman, in The Boston Globe, folks like me who question whether or not man is killing the earth by causing global warming, are no different than a holocaust denier. I quote, "I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future."

Impossible to deny? She's dumber than a box of rocks if she really believes that.

To me, Americans seem to be such a fickle bunch.

We point fingers at, say, the British, and wonder how they can stomach still having a monarchy. Their Prime Minister and Parliament determine and make laws and the monarchy is largely a symbolic one.

But right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. we worship the George Clooneys and the Sean Penns of the world, simply because they are pretty good at pretending to be other people.

No kidding; I'd rather have a symbolic monarchy to capture our attention than to worship the movie actors and popular musicians in America like we do.

Al Gore is making the rounds of the entire world, hawking his film about how man is killing the earth. He will not debate the points in his film, and even has cancelled a recent debate in Denmark with a scientist who was to discuss with his problems that he and fellow scientists there have with many points in Mr. Gore's film. Not to mention that Mr. Gore doesn't even live up to the points that he thinks the world should live by to stop global warming.

Mr. Gore was even at the Grammys the other night, and remarked that all of those stars were an important part of the environmental movement. Yeah, with their multiple mansions and private jets. Sure Al, they're SO environmentally conscious. Carbon neutral, my big corn-fed rear end!

But many Americans are swallowing it, hook, line, and sinker, and I've read more than a few blog posts over the past year about how "An Inconvenient Truth" has scared the writers into taking action of one sort or another.

I just think that, although many Americans are well educated, we're still very susceptible to what famous people say. Movie stars are the gods of modern America.

We will laugh at "Bat Boy" headlines in the Weekly World News, yet blindly swallow what Al Gore says in his movie.

I don't get too upset at this, well, not much. I remember the famous Carl Sagan, who, every time he was given a chance to speak, telling everyone to "only trust things that can be proven by the five senses." But for me, each and every one of us CHOOSES what we believe. We are all responsible for whose voice we follow. Most of the most important things in our lives, the very things that make life worth living, are beyond the realm of the five senses; love, friendship, happiness, joy, peace, kindnes. Just to name a few.

The scientific method, which only uses empirical data (knowledge gained through the five senses), is undergoing a sea change.

(Don't get me wrong; I'm a big fan of the scientific method, I make my living with it.)

But the politicizing of science is at an all-time high. It seems as if there are lines being drawn, and those scientists who think man caused global warming, and those scientists who disagree are starting to fight a public battle that will probably only get more fierce. Science has moved out of the facts business, and started also telling us which idealogical side of this issue we should be on.

I read comments recently, by Václav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic about the modern global warming folks: "Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me." AND "Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.". (read on Harvard physicist Lubos Motl's blog The Reference Frame, found via Norma's blog Collecting My Thoughts)

I think Czech president Klaus said exactly what I could not put into words. Basically that the old environmental movement, based on the "earth is a living organism and man is just a parasite trying to kill her" frame of reference has become the modern day global warming crowd, led by the Al Gore's of the world.

I know this post is just a mish-mash of stuff, but I think that, in the same way many scientists discount religious beliefs due to empiricism, the man-is-causing-global-warming crowd is using the same tactics on those who do not believe that man has that much impact on global climate.

Any and all voices to the contrary are to be shouted down and to become targets of ridicule. If the man-is-causing-global-warming crowd repeats it's mantra enough times, and shouts down dissenting scientists as owned by the oil companies, then they'll "win" the hearts and minds of the masses.

I don't doubt that the earth is warming. A whole 0.7C in the past 100 years.

But I DO question whether man is the cause of this; there are unanswered points that bother me.

First, science has supposedly proven that the earth has undergone climate changes, back and forth, cold and hot, for thousands of years. So why all the hullabaloo about the cycle of climate change we are in now? The earth went through repeated cycles, from way before the industrial revolution, how did man cause the past cycles, because to me, if we're causing this one, we must have caused the past ones, right? In the 90s, when Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines, scientists claimed that the eruption sent more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere than man has produced since the beginning of the industrial revolution. If that is true, how can man be blamed for global warming? Pinatubo's eruption isn't the only major volcanic eruption of the past 300 years!

The sun undergoes periodic changes, and cycles through periods when it burns hotter and not-quite-as-hot. In fact, science has shown that Mars is going through a cycle of heating and increased CO2 in it's atmosphere, and man isn't there to cause Mars's CO2 rise. To see this, and to still claim that man is the cause of the rise in CO2 on the earth, but the same thing is happening the same way, and at the same time, on Mars, seems a bit outrageous to me. Yet the man-is-causing-global-warming types dismiss this kind of dissent. Why? I'd like to know why Mars is seeing similar CO2 increases in it's atmosphere. Could it be that the sun is in a hot period and causing this similar CO2 rise IN BOTH PLANETS? I've yet to see a man-is-causing-global-warming adherent give a plausible response to this.


Al Gore's (and his believers) call to make changes in the world's industries only includes America and Europe. India and China, BY FAR the largest industrial polluters in the world, are curiously not being required to make any changes. I read recently that China plans to build 2,200 coal-fired power plants in the next 20 years or so.

Yes. Two Thousand Two Hundred coal-fired power plants.

I would suspect the Indian's will do something on a similar scale. Both economies are seeing explosive growth. Why do the Al Gore's of the world want to put controls on America's and Europe's industrial output and let China and India, which already pollute more than we ever will, get a free pass? These prohibitions, put on the west's economies, can ONLY destroy theses economies, while allowing India and China to grow and pollute uncontrollably. What kind of nonsense is that? Idiocy!

So that's my little rant about the notion that man is causing global warming. I make no claim that man doesn't have some impact, but if we haven't even done the damage equal to one of the many volcanic eruptions of the past 300 years, how can we be blamed for the earth's median temperature rising less than one degree C?

Finally, climate IS change by it's nature. Just as local weather changes day by day, the cycles in the overall weather patterns in the earth change. Always have, always will. Just because things are changing, doesn't mean man is the primary cause. When I was in high school in the late 70s we were warned that the earth had already begun the slide into the next ice age, and 30 years later, the earth is warming, billions will die, and it's all man's fault? I just don't buy it. I just don't.

I've said on this blog many times, I know I'm not the sharpest pencil in the cup, but until someone can lay these concerns of mine to rest, I'm not buying the notion that global warming period we're entering is harmful in the first place, and that man is causing it!

That is all, carry on.

Photos of My Parents

One good thing about working with all the different photos that I work with is that when I get tired of doing one kind of work I can work on another, which takes a different process and holds my interest.

Flatbed scans, slide scans, negative scans; they all require a different work approach.

Digital photographers love to use the term term "work flow" to describe their individual way of working with photos in Photoshop, or in my case, Photoshop Elements.

Lately I've been working with my digital photos from my Nikon D70s, like the ones I posted yesterday, and I'm pretty tired of it.

Yesterday evening, I sat to do some more and was bored in about 20 seconds. I decided to take a couple of the flatbed scans of my family's old photos that I scanned when Lovely Wife and I were in Louisiana after Christmas, and work on those.

Some are in bad shape, and it was fun to get lost in the details of trying to make them better. Some of these are left pretty much as is, like the one of my mother as a child, where the image is obviously beat up around the edges. I tried to work on repairing it, but I think I need a digital pen and pad to be able to do that type of detailed work with any great success.

The others were in decent shape physically, so the worst thing about them was getting rid of spots and stains and bringing them back from being so faded.

These are all photos of my parents as children and young adults.

Picture Post, Sunday February 11, 2007

The city I live in, Palm Bay, doesn't have a distinct old downtown area. It's grown so big in so few years that it's just spread all over the place.

But Melbourne, Florida, which is just north of us, has been around a long, long time. There is a classic downtown area, with old buildings and strange shops and stuff that is just a real pleasure to walk around.

Melbourne has about 60,000 people, and Palm Bay has grown from 10,000 to over 105,000 people since 1980. Crazy fast growth.

Unless you know where the boundary is between the two cities though, you wouldn't know that you left one city and are in the other.

Brevard county is growing fast, from the creep northward from south Florida, as well as the traditional out-of-staters like us who moved here for work.

Anyway, here's a few shots of a walk around downtown Melbourne. It's pretty, and there are lots of interesting shops in which to browse around.



The flags were at half-mast due to the death of former President Gerald Ford.


I waved and tried to get those kids inside to look at the camera, but only the one in the back/middle looked right at the camera. The one in the front/middle appears to be turned right at the camera, but since he doesn't have a head, I'm not quite sure if he's looking at the camera.

This shop had the most amazing mish-mash of stuff. Lovely Wife was quite taken with all of the poodle stuff she had in there, but most of it was kinda pricey. I'd love to go back with a little extra jingle in my pocket and buy some stuff though.

Google Earth Meme #1, Vidalia Upper Elementary School

I originally wrote this post, planning just to present the text to y'all, but I remembered the times I've seen on other blogs I read, like Hammer's, who find a place on Google Earth, capture the picture of that place, and tell about it in the post.

So I'm adding a Google Earth picture of the town I speak of in this post. I think this is one of the better memes going around BlogLand. (Though my approach to this was backward.)

Also, Google Earth doesn't have detailed photos of Vidalia, Louisiana, so I could only put an overview of the whole area. It's kinda cool looking at the Mississippi River there anyway.

You'll definitely need to enlarge the photo. The school I talk about in this post would be right below the letters "i" and "d" in Vidalia.

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When I was a kid in Vidalia, Louisiana, I attended Vidalia Upper Elementary from fourth through sixth grades.

I remember having a pretty good time there. I was a decent student. I had some decent friends. They had a gi-normous playground. The worst thing was P.E. (phys. ed.) and the dreaded rope climb. But I survived even that humiliation.

In my earlier years there I was a monkey-bars kinda guy. That's what we called the big, hump-shaped connected set of climbing bars. I loved racing out there when the bell would ring to mark the beginning of one of our precious recesses, trying to be the first to the bars and climb to the top and sit there, master of all I surveyed.

We played games on the bars, like tag where you couldn't touch the ground and other stuff we would make up on the spot. It was a blast.

There were also several empty 55 gallon drums on the playground, and we would try to stand on them and "walk" them. The best I could ever do on these were to get up there on one, and hold my balance for a bit, but as soon as I would start to try to walk the barrel, I would lose it and have to jump to safety.

I also liked the bars we always called the "cat walk", which was our name for the one that was essentially a horizontal ladder about six feet off the ground. And I was actually pretty good at that when I was a kid, and after we had warmed up on them for a while, we would try to see who could do the length of the bars by skipping as many rungs as we could on each swing and grab. Similar in nature to taking the stairs either two at a time or three at a time.

Those of us with long arms could stretch, if we got our rhythm right, and skip two bars, grabbing every third rung. That would get us from one end to another in only three grabs.

But there were days when even the long armed among us were tired, or the sun made the bars almost too hot to grab, where we would go from one to the next as they were designed, each grab and release done as quick as we could to keep from scalding our hands.

And then there were the daring ones. They might not be able to skip two bars at a time naturally, but they would do it anyway, having enough physical skill and courage to make up for having shorter arms by letting the first bar go and, for the briefest bit of time, be air born before catching the next bar.

I could reach past two to the third bar, but never had the courage to try to let completely go and grab the fourth bar. I just didn't have that innate physical courage.

The other thing I remember doing there was jumping off one of the 55 gallon drums and catching hold of the big main side bar of the "cat walk", swinging hugely while trying to hang on from the jump across the void, and when our swinging died enough, to simply drop down onto our feet on the ground. We would immediately get out of the way of the next person jumping and get back in line to climb atop the barrel for another jump.

Why I could do this, and not the skipping three rungs thing I mentioned earlier, I cannot say. I have no good reason. One just scared me but the other didn't. Go figure.

I do remember though, a miserable failure that eventually happened to all of us who did the barrel leap thing to the bar several feet away.

When you least expected it, after your leap and attempt to grab the cat walk's bar, you would grab on, your feet would swing forward with the momentum of your jump, but you would lose your grip on the bar.

Maybe it was sweaty hands, maybe just a lack of concentration, but that first realization that something was amiss occurred when your body was pretty much horizontal, about 5.5 feet above the ground and your hands had let go.

Ker-plunk! A fall flat on your back from 5 feet up will knock the breath out of anyone.

There's the shock of the pain of hitting your back and the back of your head on the hard-packed dirt, and then followed immediately by the panic of not being able to breathe exactly when you most need to so that you can scream, cry, or both.

After that, you might sit out a few turns while you got yourself back together, but before long, you would climb back on that barrel for another jump.

It's been a long time in my life, since I've had the courage, physically or mentally, to jump out and test myself.

I'm kind of in a place right now wherein I don't even know what I'm capable of any more; mentally, physically, or spiritually.

Also on that same school's playground, at the very back, where almost no one went, was an abandoned swimming pool.

Our school's playground was completely fenced in, and along the farthest back edge of the playground, on the other side of the fence, was the swimming pool. (The school was literally along side a levee separating us from the Mississippi River. I reckon the fence was to keep us from going over the levee and to the river.)

I remember standing there, this would have been around 1973, and looking through the cyclone (chain link) fence and into the old, empty pool. There was a derelict building adjacent to it. I guess that once upon a time they trucked in enough dirt to build a pretty good hill and then dug a hole in the hill and made a nice swimming pool and building. I don't know about other parts of the country, but in Louisiana, there are swimming pools in neighborhoods that one can pay and join for the swimming season. This was probably an old one from the 50s or 60s that had been abandoned.

And dead center, growing out of the swimming pool was a willow tree. I think it was what is usually referred to as a weeping willow. (The principal, Mr. Lindley, used to make himself a "fresh" switch every morning from one of the willows in front of the school to use for that day's necessary corrective measures and attitude adjustments among the students. Ah, the good old days of corporal punishment...) The same kind of tree grew all over the school grounds, but I remember standing there and looking at this mature tree in this old empty pool and trying to figure out how old the pool and building were.

Abandoned and decaying buildings and things have always frightened and intrigued me. Looking at this old pool and building and the tree gave me the same sensation as watching a scary movie; I knew I was safe on the school side of the fence, but I was spooked nonetheless. Plus, I would imagine what it must have been like new, with people enjoying the pool.

This is yet another post without much of a point, but I was just remembering the monkey bars, getting my breath knocked out in daredevil stunts, and that creepy pool with the tree growing in it.

I guess I've been trying to dredge up some of the zest for life and the courage I had back then. I could use some of that pep in my life right now.

Gold! Gold, I Tell Ya! And Diamonds!

I read a story at When Your Only Tool Is A Hammer... about a New York cab driver who returned a bag of diamond rings to the jeweler who lost them.

It reminded me of something that happened to me once.

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In the late 1980s I was working for Delta Airlines at DFW Airport.

The part of the company I was in, is called Cabin Service.

At the time, Delta only hired temporary part-time employees. We might work 60 hours per week, but we were officially TPT, so Delta didn't have to fork out for any benefits.

Not complaining, I was a big boy, and went into the job with both eyes open. And at the time, Delta was a super great company to work for.

All TPTs lived for, and worked hard for, the day when we would finally become "permanent."

The length of time spent as a TPT varied based on company needs. I finally became a "permanent" employee, with all rights and benefits heretofore paid for out of my pocket, now paid by the company. I became a permanent employee around March of 1988.

The entry level position for newly Permanent Delta employees was in Cabin Service.

Delta's Cabin Service personnel are the ones who clean the plane's insides when they are staying overnight, and also do quick cleanups when the plane is at the gate, before the next batch of passengers is loaded.

Cabin Service also cleans the restrooms, cleans up vomit, recovers soiled seat cushions and seat backs, empties and re-lines the trash cans, and restocks the galleys with soft drinks, liquor, cups, etc. that flight attendants need for the in flight service.

Cabin Service was a little better pay for us, but the benefits were nice, and we felt like we were with a good company with good future prospects for advancement and so forth.

As the newest of the new in Cabin Service, myself and those who became Permanent at the same time as me, ended up on the graveyard shift, 11pm to 7:30am.

Our job was to thoroughly clean the innards of the empty planes that stayed overnight. Windows, vacuuming, emptying ashtrays and washing the ashtrays, restocking the magazines and all kinds of other details were added to the list.

We did this all night, but at the end of our shift, early the next morning, we would have to work on "live" flights. We would only have the few minutes between the plane emptying out and the gate personnel letting the new passengers on to clean as fast and as much as we could. We divided up the tasks and one person cleaned the bathrooms, one person on each galley restocked drinks and such, and the rest of us put all the seat arms down, picked up trash, reorganized the magazines and in general did quickie cleanup work to make the plane as nice as possible in 10 minutes or so.

One of these end of shift morning flights was and old MacDonald-Douglas "stretch" DC-8. They were late 50's / early 60's relics that Delta was still flying. They had four of these planes left, and had been bought by UPS to fly cargo, but Delta was flying them on routes right up until they had to take them off line to reconfigure the plane's insides for UPS's use.

The particular flight my crew had to work every morning came from Las Vegas to DFW. The "red eye" flight.

The plane was always a complete and total wreck on the inside, as if the passengers were still in Vegas mode and there were decks of cards strewn everywhere, everything that could be in disarray was in disarray.

Another thing I need to mention, is that people ALWAYS left stuff on planes.

Things that were actually worth something, we were required to turn in. People left coats and watches and paperback books, kid's books, and the list goes on.

On the particular morning I'm trying to get to here, I was working on the seating and magazines and picking up left behind items.

In the crack between two seats in coach, I saw something glimmer with light.

I dug it out, and it turned out to be a large, men's gold and diamond ring.

I know very little about jewelry, but everything about this ring screamed "high priced."

I stood up and turned on one of the lights over the seats and paused to take a good look at it.

Several of my crew noticed it, and came up and wanted to see it. There was almost complete silence as everyone thought about how much this ring must have been worth.

I'm no jewelry person, but I would have been petrified to wear this ring, in fear of someone cutting off my finger to get it from me.

Anyway, this all happened pretty quickly, and I said, "Well, I'm gonna go run this up to the gate agent real quick. Maybe they can page the passenger before he leaves on his next flight." Because if I tell them which seat it was found in, they can look at the passenger manifest and eventually return lost items like this one.

It stopped me in my tracks when one of MY crew, a person I LOVED to work with, looked at me with bug eyes and said, "You're not going to keep it? Man, ain't no way I'd turn that ring in.

Several others of the crew mumbled, "I wouldn't either."

I have a pretty long fuse, I don't get mad quickly despite a real problem with a flash paper temper as a kid.

But I saw red in about a nanosecond, and said, "Well, lucky for the owner of this ring that I'm the one person on this crew who found it."

I gave them all my best evil eye, trying, probably in vain, to give them "The Look" like Moms and Wives the world over give their children and husbands to denote disappointment or to get them to shut up in church.

I stomped up the aisle of the plane and up the jetway and to the gate agent who filled out a sheet about the ring right in front of me. (I didn't want him to steal it either, and apparently he wanted me to be sure to watch him fill out the description and what seat on the plane it was found in.)

Having done my duty, I ran back into the plane to help finish our work, they were waiting on us to leave and were ready to load the plane back up with the next leg's passengers.

When I got back on the plane, my crew was still mumbling about what I had done, and mentally and verbally spending the money they'd have gotten from selling or pawning the ring, had they been the one who found it.

I'll never forget how I felt at that point. I have always been pretty naive, and expect that the people I'm around are doing and thinking the best thing.

But I learned a hard lesson, that even the folks you call friends, and who otherwise are good, hardworking people, have the potential to turn into deceitful thieves if the provocation is valuable enough.

---

Side Note: During my time in Cabin Service at DFW, I brought home dozens of children's books, popular paperback novels, cheap toys, and the like, because the gate agents didn't want to be bothered with five dollar items.

My daughters, who were pretty little at the time got spoiled. It was always a disappointing morning when I would come home empty handed.

When I transferred to Hartsfield in Atlanta to get back onto the ramp as baggage handler again, they were totally bummed. No more books and toys from me when I got home from work!

Thursday Thirteen #26

Thirteen Ways Lovely Wife And I Are Different 1. Lovely Wife's a girl, I'm a boy. - Yeah. This one is a big Duh-huh, but since we are both heterosexual, it's an important point. 2. Lovely wife loves raisins, I hate them. - Lovely Wife sure loves her some oatmeal raisin cookies, but I have to just smell them and be satisfied with that. 3. Lovely Wife's a little bit country, I'm a whole lot rock 'n roll. - I'm the life time president of the I Hate Country Music Society Of America. Lovely Wife loves the nasal twang and goofy double-meaning country lyrics and everything. But that's OK, she's listened to a lot of my stuff over the years, me having to listen to the occasional country song is doable. I do love to hear gigantic Les-Paul-through-a-Marshall-stack crunch, with a screaming wah-pedal lead for topping. 4. Lovely Wife is usually cold, I'm usually hot. - Lovely Wife had lap-band surgery a couple of years ago and lost a lot of weight, now she's become a true Floridian and puts on a coat when the temperature gets below 65F. When I'm comfortable, everyone else is putting on sweatshirts and jackets at work. 5. Lovely Wife loves pork chops, I don't like 'em. - I like pork products like sausage and pepperoni, but that's pretty much it. Lovely Wife could eat pork chops every day of the week. 6. Lovely Wife is a "right side of the bed" person, and I the left - This is judged from laying on your back on the bed. It is a happy co-inkidink for a couple to be different on this matter. 7. Lovely Wife digs network TV shows, me, not so much. - Don't get me wrong, I've watched a lot of TV in my time, but I have already stopped watching Lost, House, etc., because I just lost interest. I'd rather work on digitizing slides and reading. When I have the TV to myself, I tend to watch the Hitler Channel (History Channel actually, but they show lots of Nazi Germany stuff), Discovery Science, etc. (Groucho Marx said, "I think TV is very educational; every time someone turns it on, I go read a book.) 8. Lovely Wife will use the self checkout at Wally World for a whole shopping buggy full of groceries, I don't use it unless I can carry everything I want to buy in my hands. - This one freaks me out, that self checkout lane always screws up something no matter how few items I have so I can't imagine using it for a couple of weeks worth of groceries. I'll wait in line for an hour before using the self checkout lane for anything over 4 items. I'm wimpy like that. 9. Lovely Wife goes to sleep in under 10 minutes, every time. I wish I had a dollar for every hour I spent laying in the dark wishing I could sleep. - No kidding, I could pay off our mortgage. Lovely Wife will lay there for a minute, flip over, lay there, flip over, lay there, sigh, and I'll ask what's the matter and she says, "I can't get to sleep." I say, "You've only been in bed 94 seconds, I've been timing you." A few minutes later I hear her in the regular breathing of sleep. I feel like yelling and waking her up sometimes. Not really, but she has only rarely known the pain of insomnia. 10. Lovely Wife is GREAT with directions and finding her way around any town. Me, not so much. - Seriously, I totally have to fake it with reasoning to find my way (hmmm, it's 4pm, so that means the sun is in the west, and I know I started out north of the house, so...), and she remembers street names and if she's been a certain way once, she can do it again a year later. For example, when we go to Tampa, she knows a shortcut off the main highways that begins in Kissimmee and cuts off a lot of miles. I've been this way several times, but if you put a gun to my head and told me to do it today, I would just tell you to save us both some time and go ahead and shoot me. I find me a path to where I want to go, and I drive that puppy every. single. day. She likes to mix things up and find new ways. Consequently, she can take me less than a mile from my home while blindfolded and leave me, and I'd never be seen again. 11. The Three Stooges. - This one is self explanatory. 12. Lovely Wife can swim very well, like the swimmers on TV. I can juuuust barely keep from drowning. - No lie. She can do laps in a pool as long as she wants. She does that smooth freestyle stroke and can tilt her head where her face comes out of the water for a breath and everything; just like the Olympic swimmers. I have always envied this. She tried to teach me to do this early on, but I flunked out and gave up after swallowing about 100 gallons of water. So, unless I'm in rough seas, I can swim good enough to get from point A to point B, or to the side of the pool. 13. Lovely Wife really, really likes coffee. I really, really DISlike coffee. - She's always trying to trick me into tasting something with coffee flavor in it to watch my reaction, or to give me a big smooch with coffee breath when I'm unaware. Yuck, too bad coffee doesn't taste like it smells. I love the smell of it brewing though. The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Oh, Oh, Oh, JAM Is Cry-in'

Either You Have "It" Or You Don't

I have always been interested in creative and artistic people. Couple that with a pretty seriously conservative outlook on life, and the mixture results in a real love-hate relationship with musicians and artists whose work I admire. I can love the output of a seriously gifted musician or artist, yet despise the complete lack of moral compass that many of them suffer from. (Yeah, I know, I shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition.)

Eddie Van Halen recently celebrated his 50th birthday.

Now, I can remember the very first time I heard Van Halen.

My Big Brother's first car was a 1972 Plymouth Barracuda. Brown with the wide white stripe down the upper portion of each side. 340 cubes. Positive traction, which for Big Brother meant that he wore out BOTH back tires in dramatic fashion when showing off at school. The car had automatic transmission, it's only downfall in his mind, but he got around that by shifting it as if it were a standard transmission anyway. All in all, a seriously cool first car.

I felt so awesome to ride around with my Big Brother in that thing. Much of the music from the late 70's that I love reminds me of cruising with him in the Barracuda.

Back to Van Halen.

One day Big Brother and I were headed somewhere, or maybe nowhere, when he holds up a new 8-track tape and says, "You HAVE to hear these guys. They have the best guitar player I've ever heard."

That caught my interest because I have always been drawn to guitar music like moths to a porch light. (You might still say, moths to a flame, but down here in Flurrida, we have these newfangled contraptions called 'lectricity and light bulbs.)

He pokes the 8-track tape into the factory, in-dash tape player and out of the speakers comes the massively low, distorted, opening bass line of Van Halens first album's opener, "Runnin' With The Devil." Hey, I was pretty much a heathen back then, and the song rocked, despite the title and subject matter of the lyrics.

Then shortly, some of the most killer guitar chords/playing I'd ever heard commences to add to the song, and I got chill bumps.

The second song on the tape, the instrumental guitar of "Eruption," sounds as good and awe inspiring today as it did in 1978. And Mr. Van Halen was only about 20 when that album and "Eruption" was recorded.

It still amazes me today.

I have since learned to play the guitar myself, but I can't play leads. And since I hurt my back a few years ago, I have practiced very little. I'm a decent strummer though. Mostly I play sitting on the side of my bed, like tens of thousands of 14 year olds have over the years.

But I love it.

Mind you, I have no illusions that I have great talent. But, I've become convinced that anyone can learn to play a musical instrument to some degree, with dedication and persistence.

The folks that have always intrigued me greatly, like Mr. Van Halen, are the ones who have "IT."

Eddie and his brother, Van Halen's drummer Alex, were born and spent their childhoods in Holland. Eddie, excuse me, I think he prefers Edward these days, Edward, played piano as a child.

He was so good that his father made him join in some big yearly national piano competition in Holland. Eddie was made to take lessons, but later as an adult, revealed that he never actually learned to read the music he would play on the piano. If he heard the piece he was supposed to practice all year for that competition, just once, then he could sit down and play it.

Kind of makes me sick to think about being born with that much innate musical talent. I remember reading an interview in a guitar magazine where he stated he won one of these national competitions too. Couldn't read a note of music, just perfect pitch and recall for music.

When they moved to America, California I think, the brothers bought themselves instruments; the older brother Alex a guitar, and the younger Edward a set of drums.

Each ended up hating their instrument, and coveted the other's instead. So they traded, and the rest is musical history.

But I want to say a couple of things about what it takes to go from naturally talented to becoming insanely famous and rich and influential in the music world.

Practice.

In another interview of Mr. Van Halen, interviewed by Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame in an old Guitar World Magazine, Billy Corgan asked Edward, "So, how does one go from learning to make and play their first open G chord on guitar, to playing "Eruption?"

Edward's reply, "Practice."

Mr. Van Halen said that in his early teens, when the older Alex would head out at 6 or 7pm to party and hang with his friends, he, Edward, would be sitting on the side of his bed, practicing his guitar.

Later, when Alex came home, and we're talking on the order of 2am here, Edward would still be sitting in the same place on his bed, practicing. Seven hours later! How good would any of us get at playing an instrument if we loved it enough to practice that much, each and every day?

Edward also said that by the time he was 15, he could play ANYTHING on the guitar that he wanted to play.

Over the years, I've attended guitar shows and heard and watched some of the most amazing players play. Not just guitar either, bass and drums too.

But I've never lost that sense of awe when I hear someone who has "it." It's easily recognizable to me, and never fails to stop me in my tracks to listen or watch.

I don't really have a clever point to this post. It's just one of those things that I was thinking about, how people have gifts that seem almost miraculous.

I rarely read guitar magazines any more. Today's music has pretty much passed me by. While I love the style of certain types of music, most of what is out there is stuff that, as a Christian, I seem to be incapable of listening to on a regular basis. As profound as that first hearing of Van Halen's "Running With The Devil" was to me, and I still love the music of the song, I don't listen to it because the subject matter of the lyrics brings me down.

I know that may sound hokey to many, but that's just the way I am. I've found bands over the years, like Disciple, Stavesacre, Living Sacrifice, Tourniquet, Kutless, 12 Stones and many more, who play a hard style of music that I'm drawn to. Yet their lyrics more closely reflect the pain and hope I have as a Christian living in this goofy world, and this mixed up country.

Most of these bands will probably never hit the big time, there are few Christian bands that do, the music companies dislike the blatant Christianity in their lyrics too much music to be willing to put serious money behind promoting them, but I'm glad I live in the day I do, where I can find plenty of music, thanks mostly to the internet and indie companies that put out CDs by great Christian bands.

Again, there's not much point to all of this, it's mostly a ramble, but the other night, when the Superbowl went to half-time, with me being a life long hater of all forms of half-time entertainment, I picked up a book beside me and started reading.

Prince came on, and before long, I stopped reading to watch the rest of his show.


Because, you know what? Prince can play the snot out of a guitar, and though I've never bought a prince album, 45, CD, or CD single, I thoroughly enjoyed watching and listening to him totally rock out on that telecaster, that stratocaster, and finally that "symbol" shaped guitar.

However I may feel about Prince as a person, or not really like his music that much, the guy proved that he is one of those rare musicians blessed with "IT." That little something extra that separates those of us who can play guitar, from those who are truly gifted.

Prince rocked. (At least he did up until near the end when he did the shadow cast on the billowing cloth thing, which made it look like he was... playing with himself. Then I muted the TV and went back to reading. How did he get away with that after the Janet Jackson "costume malfunction" of a couple of years ago?)

That, Edward's recent birthday, and also that I heard on the news that Van Halen is gearing up for a tour this summer with none other than David Lee Roth singing on stage with them for the first time since 1985...

...those things just got me thinking.

---

The opinions expressed in this blog post are the opinions of the writer of this blog post and not necessarily those of his loyal readers; either one of them.

I also know how to practice proper grammar, but choose to write more like I speak.

The Media and Christianity

After the American Football Conference Championship game two and a half weeks ago, in which the Indianapolis Colts beat the New England Patriots to get into the Super Bowl for the first time since 1971, both the Colts's team owner, Jim Irsay, and it's coach, Tony Dungy, gave glory and credit and thanks to God.

Much ado was made about Lovee Smith and Tony Dungy being the first black NFL head coaches to coach a team in the Super Bowl, not to mention the first two black head coaches to coach against one another in the Super Bowl.

Rightly so. It's a whole new level they've opened up for minorities.

I have no problem with that, we live in a country where people still believe that black quarterbacks can't be great, much less great head coaches. I can see the appeal of harping on the first black Super Bowl coaches angle, but it's also easy to talk about two black NFL head coaches in the Super Bowl, because it's politically correct to do so, so the media were all over it.

The main stream media LOVES them some political correctness.

Christianity is not socially acceptable.

Christianity is the antithesis of political correctness.

Christianity is the source of all evil and wars in the world in the minds of some.

The media was quite silent about person after person after person getting ahold of the microphone after the AFC Championship game and after the Super Bowl, and giving thanks and credit to God.

I've seen mention of it on Christian media outlets, and we've talked about it at work among those of us who are Christians, but the silence of the main stream media on the subject was pretty loud.

I do not expect non-Christians to see such open displays of faith as Jim Irsay (Colts owner) and Tony Dungy after the Super Bowl, then drop to their knees and repent and turn to Jesus.

I'm not the sharpest pencil in the cup, but even I don't expect that.

It was just very noticeable to me, that all of the press was on the black coach and Peyton Manning finally winning a big game angles.

Jim Irsay and the Colts organization, EVERYONE, players, coaches, hot dog vendors, janitors were brought to the Super Bowl and given tickets to the game.

Jim Irsay and Tony Dungy want the whole Colts organization to be a family, and they all go to great lengths to treat one another as family. I heard one mention of that on Sunday evening.

As I get older, I continue to lose more and more respect for the main stream media.

Yeah, they still wield huge power, but their power has been lessened somewhat by the new media of the internet.

But the main stream media is still in the driver's seat of what we talk and think about on a daily basis.

They are losing power all the time though; thank goodness.

Their trumpeting of the "first black coaches in the Super Bowl" angle was ok, up to a point. I just feel that the media totally ignored another story that kept smacking them in the face.

MY POINT is that the Christianity that BOTH coaches and the Colts owner live in front of their players, and everyone that work for or with them, has helped to create two great teams with two whole organizations that treat EVERYBODY concerned as family.

And the main stream media said nothing about it.

Congratulations to the Bears and Colts for making it to the Super Bowl, and to the Colts for winning.

But those guys who had the courage to, on national TV, give thanks to God as the first thing out of their mouths when the microphones were shoved in their faces, really blessed me.

It's hard to be forthright and fearlessly live what you believe in this country sometimes, and they were great examples in the course of this season.

I can't find the exact quote, but I remember seeing a tape where Tony Dungy said something like, "These aren't the greatest players I've ever worked with, but they are the best group of people I've ever worked with."

The emphasis on quality, on and off the field, has paid off for them.

Nobody's perfect, and these men certainly aren't but they have the courage to say what they believe in their hearts, and I admire that.

That's my $0.02, carry on.

All I Needed Was To Have Some X-Rays

Have you ever sat down to write a blog post and your mind is as devoid of new things to write about as it could possibly be?

That's me today.

We had to take my Mother-In-Law's van in to the mechanic because the brakes sound as if they're operating metal on metal. Not good. It gives you the creeps just to be in it and hear them and feel them.

So I know that's gonna cost a pretty penny to get fixed.

Then I went to my back surgeon's office. My back has been hurting me on a very high level lately. Quite distracting and depressing. I feel like I whine about it too much, but I really try not to say anything.

Anyway, the Doc has opened a second office in Merritt Island, Florida, and spends a couple of days up there (20 miles or so from Melbourne/Palm Bay) and a couple of days a week in Melbourne at the office where I have always seen him.

When I tried to get an appointment, he can't see me until sometime in March in Melbourne, but I can see him at the new Merritt Island office on February 12th. Not a problem, sign me up to see him in Merritt Island. I don't think I can wait until March, February 12th seems like a lifetime away as it is.

"We need you to go to the Melbourne office sometime in the week before your Merritt Island appointment," they tell me, "and have x-rays of your back done. They will send the x-rays ahead of your appointment in Merritt Island."

So this morning I go to The Back Center in Melbourne and tell the receptionist what I just told you in the last few paragraphs.

She looks at me like I have lobsters crawling out of my ears. Then she tells me to just go over to the x-ray area and they'll take care of me. I look at her dubiously, thinking to myself that they probably won't do anything without something, a call or note from "up front" before they will x-ray my back. But I say, OK, and go back to the x-ray tech guy.

I'm nothing if not a good little sheep, going where the nice sheep doggie herds me.

I explain to the x-ray tech guy what I just explained to y'all in the preceeding paragraphs, and he looks at me like either he's frustrated with me, or frustrated with the people "up front" (or both of us) and tells me that I need "to go back and get a written order from them 'up front'" before he can x-ray me.

Now I knew going into the office, that this was probably a request that would throw them off their routine, and doctor's offices are pretty inefficient operations to begin with; just too much to deal with with too few personnel. Especially on a Monday morning. So my big plan is to help them out and ease the friction before it even begins. The whole time I'm in there, I'm as sweet as a 6'2", 300pound man can look and act.

My size throws people off to begin with, and if I act aggressive or mad, then things go downhill really quick for me.

So I'm acting so sweet that sugar wouldn't melt in my mouth as my Mamaw Eunice used to say, and smiling, which hurts my face, because I only smile ,like, once a year or so, and it's keeping everyone on a busy Monday morning in the doctor's office from blowing a fuse. I tell the x-ray tech guy, "OK, I'll be right back."

He looks at me like he's thinking, "I hope not," but I ignore the look.

I go back up to the receptionist lady and tell her the x-ray tech guy needed a request or something to do the x-ray. She looks at me with the tell-tale look of someone not sure what to do. She gets up and goes over to another lady, who then comes over and I have to explain to the new lady everything I have explained here, in the above paragraphs.

She asks me, "this is for an appointment NEXT WEEK in MERRITT ISLAND?", as if I was asking for something that was outside their proverbial "job description."

"Yes Ma'am," I reply, and smile. "That's what I was instructed to do, to come here and get the x-ray this week, for my appointment up there next week."

The second lady reaches over the original lady's shoulder and taps in a bunch of stuff into the original lady's computer. The printer spits out a page, new lady looks at it, and hands it to me and says to take it back to the x-ray techs.

I thanked them both again as if they had just willingly handed me the next winning lottery ticket and headed back to the x-ray area.

Now there's a x-ray tech gal working with the original x-ray tech guy. When I walk up, she smiles and asks if she can help me. Refreshing.

I smiled and handed her my winning lottery ticket new printout. She just glances at it and says, "Oh, you need x-rays of your back and then your appointment with the doctor is up in Merritt Island. Ok, no problem."

Cool. I didn't have to go through all the stuff again that I talked about it the above paragraphs. She got all of that from information on the page I handed to her. This is a sharp employee, she's destined for greatness, I'm sure. This girl didn't go to Louisiana public schools.

"Have a seat, we'll be with you in just a minute," she says. "Thanks," I says. "No hurry," I added.

So I sit and start to look at a Field And Stream magazine. Well, it was either that or the local newspaper for senior citizens.

I hadn't quite finished the letters to the editor when she called me back to take my x-rays. I hadn't even gotten started on one fishing article! (There was a pretty picture of some deer rifles with scopes on the cover though, that was nice to look at.)

So I get my x-rays taken, lay on the table for a while longer while she develops and checks them to make sure they're ok, or that I didn't move and blur them or something, and finally tells me I can go. She gives me a paper to give the checkout lady.

I go to the checkout lady and hand her the paper and she glances over it and says, "oh, you're just here for x-rays before your appointment in Merritt Island on the 12th?" (Another 'on the ball' employee!)

"Yes Ma'am," I

"Well then, you're all taken care of. The x-rays will be sent up to that office a day or two before the 12th, alright?"

"Sounds good to me," I say in my best aw shucks, ma'am voice.

"Well, thank you and have a good day."

I smile and thank her and wish her a good day too, and head on into work.

So that's why y'all are getting a lunchtime blog post instead of my usual diligent morning posting.

Epilogue: I took two things away from my morning experience:

1. I'm surprised at how many people wrote in who were seriously mad at Field And Stream magazine because the Virginia coast didn't make their list of the top 50 places in the U.S. to fish.

and

2. I'm not due to smile again until at least 2013AD.

"They" say that it takes something like 15 muscles to smile, well, mine smile muscles got a workout today. But I got my x-rays done.

But my face hurts from smiling so many times in such a short period.

Picture Post, Sunday February 4, 2007

Proof that it is beneficial to have your camera with you as much as possible, even at WalMart. This was taken on the way out to the car after shopping for a while. I had the camera with me in the store, and on the way to the car I stopped, turned around, and took this photo.

Good thing no alligators were present. Any one of these boys would have been a tasty morsel for a decent sized gator.

Having your camera on trips to the library can be cause for celebration as well. These next three shots are from behind the Melbourne (Fee Avenue) branch of the Brevard County Public Library System. Do you have a library card?



This last one was taken at Goode Park in Palm Bay, Florida, a couple of miles from our home. It's in the back of a neighborhood and is well hidden. But, it has a boat ramp, so it gets plenty of use. I took some great manatee shots here one evening.

Something Sad, (to me at least)

I have been laboring over photographs for many years. Taking photographs. Trying to keep up with photographs. Organizing photographs.

On the one occasion where we actually loaded up and got out of Dodge because of a hurricane (Floyd in 1999), we grabbed the people, the important papers, and the photographs and slides. That's how I feel about photographs. They're priceless to me.

Lovely Wife is our church's secretary, and spends part of each day there taking care of things. There are always people stopping by the church to drop off things that can be taken to the people of Haiti (our Pastor spends one week per month in Haiti as part of the Love A Child organization). Clothes, shoes and so forth are welcome, because there are people there who would otherwise be barefooted and naked.

Anyhoo, for some reason, people also drop off the STRANGEST stuff.

Yesterday, Lovely Wife brought home to me three large boxes of meticulously organized and labeled (for the most part) 35mm slides from the late 1950's to around 1970. Although I'm not sure of the dates, I've just glanced at them and there are as many or more slides in these three boxes as I have of my own. Well, maybe not, but there's a bunch of 'em.

Point is, someone brought these and dropped them off at the church without telling anyone. We can't find out who brought them. The people we've asked don't have a clue. The Pastor didn't want them. So Lovely Wife brought them home to me, or else they would have gone to the dumpster behind the church for lack of interest.

Here's the thing. These are a family's photographs from years of trips all up and down the eastern U.S. It appears this family lived in or near Wilmington, N.C.

Some of the slide boxes are labeled: 7th Florida Trip 1959, 8th Florida Trip 1960, etc., with a description of each slide hand-written on little lines on the sides of each roll of slide's box.

As I said, there's so much here, it's mind boggling.

But sad too. This guy, whoever the family's photographer was, was really good with his exposures using 35mm slides. If you have never used 35mm slides, just know that they have almost no margin of error on your exposure. Either the slide is properly exposed, almost white or clear from overexposure, or black from underexposure. Print film is MUCH more forgiving and hand handle a "bad" exposure while still giving you some detail. 35mm slide photography isn't for the lazy photographer; half of his or her pics will turn out terrible without care and experience.

So here's this family's treasure, in my opinion anyway, sitting on our computer room floor this morning, for lack of a better keeping place.

I scanned a few to show y'all.





All of these shots were from a couple of random boxes marked "Florida 1964". No details other than that.

The name Loveday is on some of the stuff with the boxes, and addresses in Southampton, N.Y.

Do Overs

Last night I played with a few of the very first images I took with my Nikon D70s in Photoshop Elements.

Since June, I have used Elements on thousands of photographs and I wanted to go back and revisit some of my early efforts and see if I could do better.

I'm putting a few photos here from my work that I hope I haven't already posted on the blog. I guess it doesn't really matter, even if I have posted one or more already, nobody would know unless they've gone back through my posts from this past summer.

All were taken in either Palm Bay, or Melobourne, Florida, in June or July of 2006. Well, except for the last one, of the bridge, it was in Wabasso near Vero Beach.

I know y'all don't know any different, but I can see now that I'm better at getting the "look" I want with Photoshop Elements than I was when I first bought the camera.





Give 'em a click to see them in all of their glory.

Later 'Gator.

Thursday Thirteen #25

Thirteen Unique Things Said In My Family 1. Cosmerosmerous - My paternal grandfather was a nut. Really funny. One time when we arrived for a visit, he asked me, "How's your cosmerosmerous?" It was a word he made up on the spot, and mean either nothing or whatever I wanted it to mean. For all the years as I grew up and until he died, we would ask each other "How's your cosmerosmerous?" as an inside joke between the two of us. 2. Y'all be particular, now. - Same grandfather, different saying. Whenever we would get in the car to leave, he would always say, "Y'all be particular, now." It was his way of telling us to be careful. We still say it to one another in the family. A while back, I said it to one of Number Two Daughter's friends, and then had to explain it. She later reported that she says that to people now, and it confuses them. But it seemed fitting that this old saying of my grandfather's has found new life in Florida. 3. Scrumptafee-magnocious - My Uncle Al would say this when something tasted particularly good and he was asked how it tasted. I still say this sometimes, but it has to be something really worthy of such a magnificent word. 4. Hair over - This is a momism that Sainted Mother coined. She was describing to us an interminable wait in a doctor's office one time and said, "I sat there until I thought I was going to hair over." It doesn't make sense, but it was funny. I got the mental picture of her, in time lapse photography, of sitting in a chair and growing hair all over her. 5. Clintwood Eastwood - Years ago, one of Big Brother's girlfriends was at our house and was trying to come up with Clint Eastwood's name, and when she remembered it, it came out Clintwood Eastwood. Mr. Eastwood has been Clintwood to me ever since. 6. Rubbed him off - Same girlfriend of Big Brother's as in #5 above. We were watching a movie in which one guy tracked down and killed another man. "Oooh, he rubbed him off!" was what came out instead of "rubbed him out." Murder victims have been "rubbed off" to me ever since. 7. You be hushed - Another of Sainted Mother's momisms. She was trying to get a smart alec Younger Brother to shut up. "You hush!" came out as "You be hushed!" So of course Younger Brother and I tell one another to "be hushed" at times. 8. Pa-Jo-Mark - Another momism. It's a wonder Younger Brother even knows his name. When Sainted Mother was upset or excited and tried to call him, she would start Big Brother's name, then my name, and finally Younger Brother's name. When he was a kid he probably thought his name was Pa-Jo-Mark instead of just Mark. 9. Spartacle - Big Brother had visited Younger Brother back when Younger Brother lived in North Carolina. They were flipping channels, trying to find something on TV to watch. The Kirk Douglas classic, Spartacus was on one station, and Big Brother exclaimed, "Let's watch Spartacle!" From then until Big Brother's death, we would ask him if he wanted to watch Spartacle. 10. Earthquink - When Younger Brother was a little kid, he pronounced the word earthquake as "earthquink." Some of us joined him and within the family, these natural disasters were "earthquinks." 11. Bum - For some reason, I never got a good explanation, Don C. (my Dad) pronounced the word "bomb" as "bum." During the Gulf War in the early 90s Don C. might mention all the "bumming" that the U.S. was doing in Iraq. We would then say something like, "That's terrible, that they would load all these poor men who lived on the streets into planes and drop them on foreign cities." He was not amused, but took our ribbing in stride. These last two will take a little more explaining since they are actually sign language. 12. Picture this: right hand in a fist, held up by her right ear, and making a rotating motion like using the throttle on a motorcycle. - In American Sign Language this actually means something. To Lovely Wife, it means, "I need a q-tip. My ear itches." 13. Picture this: right hand held up in front of you, wrist bent such that the fingers are pointed away from you, and opening and closing the fingers and thumb like you would if your hand was inside a puppet. - This is Lovely Wife's sign for "Where's a pot holder, I need to get these cookies out of the oven." I think this actually means something in ASL too, but around our house, Lovely Wife just wants a pot holder so she doesn't burn her fingers getting something out of the oven. The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!