Turn the Soil, Water and Spring! But Wait!

 The Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes proclaims that there is a time and a season for everything under  heaven. It's a verse that I learned in early childhood. Each year about this time, I begin to look for the time when life springs forth for another year after a deep winter's sleep. This year, the sleep was a little colder and a little deeper than in the past 40 years. The yippee-dippy weather man said tonight that we would freeze again for the 51st time this season. It will warm up into the mid 70s and then we become cold again where the weatherman will have to count the freezes again. Our typical last freeze here in Dallas is 13th of March. It's like cheering on the ponies at the races....and here they come down the stretch.. Spring is pulling away from the pack......and it's Spring by a length!!

After checking on Fred at the bank today.....

 ( He's the surviving Beta fish. The three previous were Jack and Jill  who died. Then came Fred and his partner. One Monday morning about two months ago, Fred's partner was stung by a big spider and did not survive. Now, the bankers cover Fred's tank at night. It's the only bank that I can remember where a fish was the topic of discussion with almost every transaction. Fred and his partner were a gift from a customer after Jack and Jill departed )

......I set out to check on the progress of spring.  In less than a mile, I found Spring. However, tonight we are going to have a hard freeze again. The good thing is that the winds will be light but moving air, thank goodness.

First: turn a little soil.

Next: Spinkle with a little water

Voila! Spring!

Early Voting is Underway

Saturday, one of the first things that I did was to go vote. Early voting makes it so much easier. Also, this election, not only did I have to produce my voter registration card, I also had to show my driver's license. It's difficult for me to understand why that is now required. Oh, I know, the reason why it was explained in the press, but my driver's license picture doesn't look anything like me. I now look worse!

And, of course, I had to deliver a joke to the precinct workers. They have come to expect that from me. The one that I told this time was about the elderly lady who upon leaving church had said to the pastor at the door that she didn't like the second song that they had sung during the service. The pastor with a smile on his face looked the elderly lady squarely in the eyes and with that broad smile still in place said, "That's okay. It's alright not to like that song. We were not singing it for you."

As I came out of the polling place, I pumped my first and said, "Oh! that felt good". The older I get, the more I understand how much a person can accomplish without spending vast amounts of energy that occurs when you are younger. Saving energy can be done mentally as well as physically. Anyway, I briefly talked to a couple in the parking lot that were staked out 100 feet from the polling door as required by law. They had ask if I had gotten any good pictures. When telling them what my project for the day was, one of the ladies responded that she knew about the HAARP project and she and her husband were very interesting in the same thing. That, to me, was amazingly interesting because very few do know about the project. Yesterdays post was about that subject. Then, today, there was an article about the Great Lakes Freezing over with a view of the ice from the International Space Station. While I do remember the Lakes freezing over years ago, what caught my eye of this article was  cryospheric scientist Nathan Kurtz, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, saying to  the Earth Observatory that,"secondary factors like clouds, snow and wind play a role."

For those of you who do not have the time to read the post, or for any other reason, the HAARP Project is about weather manipulation. Clouds, snow and wind are three parts of the equation for HAARP. I found that dreadful but interesting all the same.

Putting another orr in the water, Dallas Delite had two of their rowing boats that they compete with at the annual Dragon Boat Races and Kite Festival in Las Colinas each May. Last year I photographed them doing the same thing that they were doing yesterday and I had also photographed them during the competition last year.  But, what made it most interesting yesterday was that I got a picture of the "seed" paddle that had been given to the team three years ago by the Austin team.  

Then, I stopped by for a little "FREE ADVISE" from Roddy. Next month, he begins the 19th year at the Lake. Roddy said that some 20,000 people had stopped by over the years. An old friend, Policeman Ray was on his bike. He and his partner where riding the 9.3 mile route around the lake on their bikes.

By the time I headed for home, I was tired and hungry. But, I didn't fail to notice the chem trails and contrails in the grid pattern and the haze that was dimming the sunlight before sunset. Here are a few pictures from the day.

Early Voting Is Underway

Part of the Crew of Dallas Delite

The "seed" paddle given to Dallas Delite team three years ago by the Austin Club.

 

A Read That Raises Both Eyebrows

While I like a good novel as well as the next person, over the years, I have read a collection of some odd things. In college, I read the New Dictionary of the English Language. After that, came the Congressional Record of the 89th Congress. After that, it pretty much cured me for a while. But I couldn't resist reading  The Patriot Act. Then, just when I thought there could not be anything else more scary, along came an article about The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. It was just an article about a very interesting government project. After reading the article, I bookmarked the piece because it had a very interesting list of references. In fact, the list was almost as interesting as the article itself. There has been a lot a talk about the article since it first appeared.

If the article's formal name does not ring a bell, maybe its acronym, H.A.A.R.P., might chime a bit more in recognition. The story does not stop there. The article within itself would not make the reading list of or within itself. But, reading US Patent 4,686,605 of 08/11/1987 would. Yes, you might have guessed, I read the full patent application, Method and apparatus for altering a region in the earth's atmosphere, ionosphere, and/or magnetosphere.

Now, let me tell you this. If you ever wondered what came after President Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program, this would certainly make the short list. After reading the patent, it became very clear that the device and all the support structures not only were working, they had meet with success of some type.

In short, the project, using a Ionosphereic Research Instrument (IRI) using High Frequency range high power transmitters to excite a limited area of the ionosphere. In case you didn't know, the ionosphere is where most of the orbiting satellites, communication or otherwise, are parked.

 Already, the ionosphere has been heated (in certain areas) to several hundred degrees. So what does that do? It can change the jet stream. What does that do? It causes weather systems to relocate. Why is that so important? Warfare. You control the weather, you control the enemy.

Of course, every thing written tries to lead the reader to the fact that this is just research. Of course, the research is one, already outdated and two, total BS. The patent application is so detailed that one can only conclude that not only is it capable to do what it claims, it has been done. Third, the original location in Alaska still exist but a "branch" has been created at an Air Force Base in Alaska.  Did I mention that the patent states that it is completely possible to create a mobile unit of the IRI.

Oh, not only can the IRI change the pattern of the Jetstream, it is associated with earth quakes, underwater HF which has long been associated with whales and  dolphins beaching themselves or being found dead at sea washing up on shore later. Certain space craft malfunctions of which one article goes as far as to say it caused the breakup of the Challenger Space Shuttle. And yes, there is also the hint that HAARP is being or has been looked at to redirect asteroids.

Here is a list of references. From these, you will have reading material for a decade or more.
 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Eastlund, Bernard J. (Spring,Texas) filed 01-10-1985
                                   APTI,Inc Los Angles, California
                                   US Patent   4,686,605  08-11-1987

www.wanttoknow.info/war.haarp_weather_modification_eletromagnetic_warfare_weapon.shtml
 Technical questions can be submitted to:
 infohaarp@haarp.alaska.edu

chemtrails            http://youtu.be/ymF6YkVJ-RY

Additional Photos from Fireman Tanksley's Funeral Tribute

Station 12 Engine carries casket of Scott Tanksley. It was his home station.

The flag is being taken down after the funeral. It was on the Greenville Avenue Gate Entrance

The grave site is surrounded with hundreds of family, friends and firefighters.

Firemen Pay Tribute

The funeral for Dallas firefighter, William Scott Tanksley, was held yesterday in Terrell. The procession stretched for more than 5-miles up LBJ 635 to Greenville Avenue at the entrance of Restland Cemetery. It was an amazing site. I shot over 190 images, but could never list them all here on this blog.

Here are just a few of the stunning tribute to fireman Tanksley.

Wichita Falls Fire Department

New Braunfels Fire Department



This is the line up outside the cemetery. There were as many inside around the grave site and as many again around other sections.

Austin Fire Department

Good Signs After A Hard Winter, Thus Far

A few days ago, I went to check on the hive of bees that had swarmed in late fall along a trail were I do my cardiac walks. I was somewhat concerned that the coldest winter in 40 years might had taken a toll on the hive.  At first, I grew more concerned as there were not any bees coming and going from the hive. In the fall the bees had covered the entire knot-hole on the tree trunk. Soon, I began to see bees coming out of and going into the hive. In total there were not that many bees, but the hive was alive and well and the bees had survived the winter thus far. There are pictures in the archive if any of you  missed the initial post.

My second concern of winter's wear on wildlife were the Monk parrots that have an established colony of 70 to 80 birds. Today, I saw four. They looked very healthy and somewhat less noisy than in the past, but the missing birds of the colony were every evident. Most likely, more did survive but several people were telling me today that they had been looking for the Monks, too, but had only seen the same four that I had seen. In the past, I have read reports from New York and San Francisco that  had large colonies thinned out by mother nature but the strong had survived hard winters in the most unusual of places. I'm hoping that the WRL colony of Monks will venture back to the lake as the weather becomes more favorable toward Spring. While the little parrots are noisy, they are part of the character of the lake and missing them completely would be a loss no one wants to see.

The early part of the this coming week, it's time to see the cardiologist again. Last week, because of the ice and sleet and snow, the day before, I had cancelled my appointment because driving was not going to be worth the head aces. As it turned out, the weather was right on target and it was a nightmare avoided. This coming week it is going to be in the 70s. Spring is barking for the calendar to turn March!

Monk Parrots

Last falls colony numbered in the 70-80s. Today, there were only 4 sported.

 16/02/2014. Corrected for displacements.

Watching A Plan Come Together

As most of my readers already know, I fully support the growth and expansion of the nation's largest light rail system, DART (Dallas Area Regional Transportation) .  Not only is it well planned in its stops and connection points, it is a clean and efficient way to move people en mass.

Yesterday, it happened again. While in search of one thing, one finds something else that is much more interesting from a photo shoot standpoint than what one has shot already. It seems that some of my most interesting images have come from just such situations. 

Several months ago, DART opened a new station beyond where the blue line ended in Garland. The distance isn't that far being right at the four mile range, but it opens up a growth area with half of it still in Dallas County. The other half is in Rockwall County on the other side of Lake Ray Hubbard.

I  headed toward Rowlett to check out the new DART station location before going to the grocery store. I had a vision of the station ending in a parking lot somehow.  That vision came from the Orange Line's Belt Line Station on the DFW Airport property. Ironically, the other end of the George Bush Turnpike  is within a mile of both the Beltline Station and the Rowlett Station with about 40 miles in between. So, DART has the metroplex well covered.

Come December,  a person can board in downtown Rowlett and ride DART with one change at either the Mockingbird Station or the West End Station downtown to DFW Airport's Terminal A. There are only a handful of cities in the US where one can do that. Dallas joins the ranks in December.

Surprise was a treasure hunt find. It brought back a flood of memories from my childhood that had stirred my emotional well. My mom, for years, pointed out to me, her view of what made a place or a thing a good picture or didn't. To this day, I still feel my mom's presence when I can't get my head wrapped around an image that makes it stand out above the competition. Even when I list images, I check out like images with other stock agencies and since I never re-touch an image, ever, sometimes, mine stand out in  a "plain Jane" kind of way. In the end, however, my images sell for the reason that I had in mind when that image was shot. That is all that I care about. Someone else spotted that one item or one thought or one uniqueness that separated it from all the glitz and glamor of all the others.

Having said all that, the connection is that my paternal grandfather grew acres and acres of cotton on his farm. As a kid, I bugged my grandfather time and time again to let me pick cotton along with his workers. One summer, he handed me a 14 foot sack and said, "are you sure you want to do this?" I can now say that I probably bit off more than I could chew, but overall, I did surprise my grandfather by hanging in there and filling more cotton in that sack than he had thought that I would.

Part of that experience also won me a trip with my grandfather  when it was time to take the raw cotton from all those bags to the cotton gin. It was my second industrial tour. The first was to the dairy farm where we got milk in those big thick glass bottles with the cardboard stopper!

It was the cotton gin in Rowlett that grabbed my focus. Somehow, I got the train leaving the station which sits behind the cotton gin.

Historic Cotton Gin  with DART's new Rowlett Station behind.

 

Aristide Cavaille-Coll

For some reason, the name Cavaille-Coll always invoked the Grand Organ at Paris' Saint Sulpice Church. Or that Daniel Roth was the titular organist there, having his name added to the long list of famous organist who have been organist at St. Sulpice; Paris' second largest church out side of Notre Dame .

It's only been the last year that I have researched Aristide Cavaille-Coll, (1811-1899) the builder of that famous organ and the importance of the systems designed by Aristide, an engineer as grand as the organs he built. There were some 600.

He came from a family of French organ builders. His father, Dominique of the French city of Languedoc and his grandfather, Jean-Pierre Cavaille of Barcelona. The family's legacy is traceable to before 1700.

French organs placed importance on color and contrast. The two things that I have always liked about French organs. In the states, I choose a Casavant Frères,  a prominent Canadian company in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, which has been building fine pipe organs since 1879. The sound is as close to a Cavaille-Coll as it gets.

Aristide invented many of the systems that took the old-world tracker action organs and allowed them to do things that had never been able for organist to accomplish because of pneumatic wind pressures that made pipes speak instantly when the keys were pressed. In the old tracker actions, you pressed the keys and waited for the sound to catch up. Needless to say, the delay between key press and sound was not only hard work manually, but mentally as the timing generally had  you pressing keys to play when the keys released were just producing sound. In other words, you were playing ahead of the sound that you were hearing. Add the echo factor in a great cathedral and you became an expert in delay management. Pneumatic motors and wind chest redesigns brought the organ into a more constant ratio of key press to sound hearing.

I laugh at the Lay Family Organ at the Meyerson Symphony Center here in Dallas. First, the organ is a muddy sounding Fisk and second, it appears to be a tracker yet it has all the modern features of pneumatic. The Meyerson would have been better served and the Lay Family's grateful donation, as well, had the organ been of French design with," a whole blossoming of wonderful colors ,a rich pallet of the most diverse shades, harmonic flutes, gambas, bassoons, English horns, trumpets, celestes, flute stops and reed stops of a quality and variety  unknown before," wrote Charles-Marie Widor about his Symphonie V, written especially for the Cavaille-Coll at Saint Sulpice.

The thing about Casavants in Dallas is this: They are generally found in large Methodist and Large Presbyterian Churches! I understand that characteristic very, very well. With the exception of SMU who in a weird way has many Fisk instalations that sound like a little Meyerson. Ironically, two blocks from the Meyerson in a Methodist church you will find a Casavant. If only Aristide were alive today and living in Dallas!

Homemade English Muffins

Since I was a kid, I have always liked the smell of yeast and dough whisking around in the kitchen, My grandmother made some of the best rolls,
ever. I've only had one in all those years that had that same taste as my grandmother's rolls. So when I got to wondering in the pantry this afternoon and I came across my guarded stash of yeast packets, I knew that baking was going to be the task of the afternoon, I just didn't know what I wanted to make.

When I got down the ole cookbook and started thumbing through the yeast bread pages I came across
something I had always wondered about but never thought to investigate further. That was: English Muffins. Within seconds the yeast was out of the packet and dissolving in my little yeast cup. Flour was going into the big mixing bowl and salt and cornmeal and warm milk and three tablespoons of vegetable oil were going in on top of the flour. Then, looking at the yeast cup, it was time to add the yeast. When the dough was molded into  a ball, it went back into the bowl and was covered with a towel. In an hour, it had doubled  itself and was ready to be pushed out into a quarter of an inch thickness on the  sheet and cut with a three inch cutter. Never mind the cut tuna can rings and that distraction. Cover a cookie sheet with cornmeal and flatten out the dough. Cut and leave on the cookie sheet.

Here is the most amazing thing. Take a cast iron griddle and lightly film with oil. Cook the cut-outs 10 minutes on one side and then 5 minutes on the other. Cool on a cooling rack. I couldn't wait more than a half hour before I took my bread knife, sliced one in half and popped it in the toaster. When it came out, I loaded it with butter and when it was all over, I had done that four times! I'll never buy another tray of English Muffins ever again.

Home made English Muffins

Big Game Sunday Here and There

The weather in Dallas is not the best today. It makes for a good Sunday to stay in and enjoy the big game with a bowl of  home-made chili, too, with low and grey clouds hanging ever lower as the day went on.
The sidewalks are wet and drive is wet from the storm system that has dropped about an inch and one-half over the southern portion of Oklahoma and northern Arkansas. The temps are right at 34 *F.

An old friend sent me a picture of her snow. She has about one and a half inches on the ground. She lives in the boot hills of the Ozarks in northeastern Arkansas' Randolph County. I don't think that we will see that here in Dallas, but sometimes, mother nature has other plans; counting on it is not in my cards anyway. She's north and east by about 500 miles.

Credit photo: Jean Carter-White

 

A Strange Sign is Finally Gonna Be Removed

This is both a follow-up and a new post all rolled into one. Since yesterday, I have been trying to decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Some of you may remember that in the Archive, there is a post about a strange park sign that was a one-of-a-kind made for the Valley View Trail that runs at the end of the White Rock Trail going north three-quarters of a mile to Hillcrest Park. It read: "Beware of Wild Animals".

In summary of that post, I had called the Director of Parks and Recreation  asking about the reasoning behind such a sign. He had explained that when 121 was being made into the Sam Rayburn Tollway, it had actually cut off a fairly large habitat for bobcats and some had gone north in search of better habitat and some had come south for the same reason. The problem being is that coming south put them right in the mix of Plano and North Dallas. Sure enough. About that same time, people in Plano started sending in pictures of bobcats in their yard. Some even had pictures of several bobcats in their yard.

The nature trail in reference here was a dirty path that ran on the west side of Hillcrest Avenue along side the woods that run by the golf course farther west going toward Preston Road. It was also along the path that the bobcats were using to  migrate further south into North Dallas. Because of that, the sign was put up by the Dallas Recreation and Parks Department; with good reasoning.

Yesterday, I got the word that the contractor will be removing that sign as they expand the White Rock Creek Trail Northern Extension project over that nature trail path. It is scheduled to be complete by July according  to one of the contractors that I spoke with. He also, when queried, stated that he had seen bobcats in the area but they should move on after the work is complete since they are rather solitude in their natural habitat. Runners and bikers will keep them on edge enough to cause their migration to continue, but a displaced bobcat in the city won't be happy until its in deeper woods. Hello, Trinity River Bottoms!

Here are some images of the area as of yesterday.

Capital Improvement Info Board

Let the trail continue north This is the new path that will be concrete and ties in at the 7 mile marker of the White Rock Creek Trail presently.

Looking under Hillcrest Avenue, the original trail is to the right of the orange barriers.