Cremation of the Big Oaks at White Rock

It is sad to report that another of the big old oaks at White Rock came down in a storm this past week.  This one was about 31-inches in circumference. There were three others that sustained severe damage to large limbs in the same area in an around Preservation Grove. Ironically, last fall, there had been a planting of many new trees by Friends of the Lake in the Grove area.

This past winter, I had started to photograph the old and mighty trees that have so much character and grow around the nine miles that circumnavigate White Rock's shores via  roads and accompanying trails. There are about thirty of particular interest that have received many lightening strikes over the years; lost limbs during storms or were felled by some type of disease or infestation. It has long been my opinion that the big old oaks that have so much character are part of the overall character of the lake itself.  Many lake-goers simply see them as trees and nothing more. I hear all the time," it is where I go to bike" or "I run there".  I'd like to say, "no you only pass through, you don't notice anything else about the jewel of the Dallas Park System" but I don't. I keep quiet. For me that's difficult!!

The past couple of years, there has been some new home construction at the lake. One modern with solar power, one classic revival , one country-style, one mixture of modern and old. There is one that jumped out at me on a rather steep hillside  blends into the trees so well that had not the glass picked up a reflection, I wound not have know it was there. On the east side of the lake last year, several homes were gutted and remodeled  in this type of architecture. I counted four new homes under construction that are at the completed foundation level of building.  So, while the planting of the new trees at Preservation Grove will grow and age with these new homes, it is difficult to see the mighty trees that grow at White Rock go away one-by-one; being cremated in someone's fire place.

Note the thickness of the bark covering.

Two more big oaks are seen in the background along with the new plantings from last fall.

Still Time to Whip Up That Invite for July 4th BBQ

USA Independence Day Design

Still time to get that invite ready for that backyard BBQ or picnic. But, you gotta hurry. The link will help you choose your design.

Click on the link above to see more designs and ordering information.

Bad Feelings About The Landing

Oh, Dear!

Manhattan

I have been reading a lot of history lately. Old History. Big Bang history. Cosmic dust old. Universe old. The most interesting of late has been one of  the many space telescopes view of the back side of a black hole never before seen. For years articles have appeared about the planetary nursery of planets blah blah blah. Of late, the increased space rock watch that is now more of a concern than in the past makes me wonder what scientist have discovered that they are not telling  Now that really worries me. But, the article about black holes where  matter flowing into them is  being called food gets even more frightening  since the discovery of the back side of one actually showing that food being spewed out as it begins to forms new stars is really quite amazing.

 At the same time, I have been reading a lot of futuristic stuff. Like Saturn's moon, Titan is the only other rock that we know about that has flowing liquids. Or, the black hole of our galaxy, The Milky Way, that is 100 times the size of our sun. Or, that there is another galaxy that will collide with our own galaxy in a few million years or so (don't want to be around for that).  You though that  when I said futuristic, I was talking about some action figure of comic books fame.

All this got me to thinking. Serious thinking. How my views of life and goals made, achieved, readjusted or missed have once again changed from the days of my youth, early adulthood, mid-life and currently. When the space race began, going to the moon was a three day trip. Now, the talk of Mars is a three year trip. I'm sorry, but travel time needs to be more speedy.

In the grand scheme of things --and seeing what we see overall as the big picture, most likely is just a view of a pin-head size world that we are aware of-- that does not frighten me as much as I though it might. What really frightens me is the degree of arrogance  display for our 400 years on this side of the Atlantic. When you stop to think that the weekend home of Queen Elizabeth II, Windsor Castle, was first viewed and laid out by her distant relative, William the Conqueror of 1066 fame and that every King and a few Queens since have made significant contributions to that 13 acres of Perpendicular Gothic style buildings, or its parks or twin farms. Windsor Castle will not stand forever. It almost ended with the fire in 1992. The point being is that we will all come and be long gone after what we build and accomplish on this earth. Really, 13,000 years from now, who is really going to care unless they are an anthropologist or archaeologist.  The second point is that life can change in the blink of an eye but only a small (and I mean small) sample of anyone in the future is really going to give a rats ass.

So while be build great architectures on the island or a show house in the Hamptons on yet another island and write and perform the humanities we love and enjoy on an Ivy League Green or an English campus cloister our only hope is somewhere out there in this amazing cosmos, there really is our creator.
 

Mom and Gretzky Were Much Alike In Their Thinking

Mom has been gone 10 years this August. She would have been 90 this month.  She and George H W Bush had birthdays only a few  days apart and George W and I share the same birthday. That's where the comparisons stop although there are a few more that are rather interesting.

Mom was also a Rosie Riveter  at Willow Run Airport 's bomber assembly plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a community west of Detroit and former home to the Flying Tiger's Airline who flew freight for many years after the war. The theme of Rosie Riveter was a young woman with a red and white bandanna wrapped around her head, blue shirt and a arm in a 90-degree pump action proclaiming, "We Can Do It!"  Mom put two bolts into the underside of the plane's wing.

Some fifteen years ago while visiting some friends outside of Columbus, Ohio, one of the bombers were on display at a nearby county airport that is west of Columbus. Mom said to me later when asking her about why she went to see the plane, " I wanted to see if I could remember those bolts after 50 years." she said.  She continued to say that," instantly, I recognized those bolts  just as soon as I walked under the wing and looked up. My eyes fell on those bolts. There they were after all those years in the air!"

Mom was really ahead of her time in many ways. She thought ahead that way too! She knew how to cut down on risk even if it was from a thunderstorm. She only had one accident driving here entire driving lifetime. It wasn't her fault, but the lady that caused the accident did pass. The lady came across 6 lanes of traffic, hitting mom then crossing two more lanes into a ditch.

 As a young girl, of 17, she avoided a boating accident on a popular lake  by having that sense of danger and backing out as one of the passengers at the last minute. That day, three of the four girls died when the boat capsized. Two years late, she was in Detroit putting rivets in bombers used in Europe during World War II.


Mom was an interesting person,too. Few people were ever able to enter into her inter circle. Mom was a very modest person. She got that from my grandfather. She was the youngest of four, growing up in the depression years of the south. But her father (my grandfather) was a very successful business man in Arkansas. As I have mentioned in post before, he was a grocer and had also served with the US Marshall's Office for several years. At the time of his death, he and my grandmother were running their largest grocery to date. The Spear Lake Grocery was at the edge of a large cotton field where John Grisham based one of his novels growing up in Arkansas, publishing, "The Painted House".  At my grandfather's funeral, in a still segregated south, white and black came together filling the Methodist Church and the grounds outside the church in Lepanto.   Previous post displays a picture of him with my mom and one of her older sisters sitting on the counter in the restaurant portion of his boarding house with the start of his grocery business in 1928 already beginning to appear on the wall. My grandfather had many friends. Word of mouth networking sent many interesting people to my grandfather's store who later would befriend him. One of those to do so was none other than Brooklyn Dodger pitcher, Elwin Charles (Preacher ) Roe. Roe went quail hunting with my grandfather and uncle who was a Methodist preacher. Mom would say later about Preacher Roe that," he's from Ash Flat and played for the Cardinals (St.Louis) but he was meant to be a Dodger (Brooklyn)". Mom remained a Dodger fan all her life. Preacher ran a family grocery business just over the Missouri line in West Plains after he retired.

Mom was bright, intelligent and learned how to spin a story listening to the boarders talking at dinner or customers coming into the store talking to my grandfather after getting off the train. The boarding house was across the street from the train station and a block from the entry to the Singer Sewing Machine Cabinet Plant. The workers at the Singer Plant were boarders and they were customers for grocery items but they could get breakfast and dinner in the restaurant also. Mom had a business sense from her earliest recollections. My grandfather was a very good teacher to mom but he also inspired me from a very early age. My father was a prince, but my grandfather was king.

Mom would also sing on the radio on Saturday nights. My great uncle, William (Willie) Beard owned and operated KBTM-AM radio for many years. There was a local Saturday night show much like the Grand Ole Opery on WMC. KBTM signal would sometimes overlap and skip sometimes with the Grand Ole Opery and the Louisiana Hayride shows. So to sing on KBTM you had to have a good voice and have some good material. Mom had both. KBTM is now outside the family but still operating today.

Mom was also a surprise more often than not. Just when you thought that you knew who she was, she would spring a surprise on you that generally would blow you away  more than knock you off your feet! She really did learn from guys like Preacher Roe and my  uncle  (the Methodist preacher) and
others that pampered her growing up. She would use that later to pull rabbits out of the hat at any time.

My last big surprise before she passed was a bed-side talk in the rehab facility after her first stroke. When we talked before her stroke, sometime we would both be laughing so hard the tears were dropping on the floor and my side would hurt for days afterwards. She had a rather dry sense of humor at times and it would just draw you in even when you were prepared for her to stare you down.

She would tell me things about the days in Detroit during the war. Things, I would ask her about many times but only got answers when she was ready to release them. But when she did, it was usually like the blast from a jet engine. I was helping her clean out her closets a few years before she passed. I came across a picture of her in her late teens or very early 20s. Later, I ask her about that picture. She would not admit that it existed. When I ask her about it again, she became a bit irritated with me and that was not her normal self. I looked for that picture until she passed and afterwards, I closely watched everything. To this day, I do not know what happened to that picture. That picture was as good as any young movie star glossy. I think it came about from her days singing on KBTM. That picture was a talent scout image.

During the picture hunt, I  came across a court document that she had tucked away in a file in her closet. This time, I brought it out and ask her what was going on. She ask me if I had read it? When I said that," I have glanced at it," and that," no, I have not read it yet," she replied, "Read it."
I said,"Mother, this makes you an officer of the court and that you have been appointed to serve as juvenile probation officer." She said, "I know." She never discussed it further.

But for me, since I have been a Detroit Red Wings hockey fan for eons, maybe longer, we were talking about sports one afternoon. She had long talked about baseball but having discovered earlier the bifurcated whys of her lifetime Dodger fan hood, I had ask her about other sports. She didn't like basketball. She liked football. When I ask her about Hockey, she said, " the Red Wings have been my inspiration in life". That blew me away but I ask if she had any favorite player, thinking she would say Gordie Howe, because she was but a couple years older. Once again, she blew my socks off with, "You know, the Great Gretzky once said, ' I skate to where the puck will be, not where it is.' "  That was all I needed to hear. My Mom and the Great Gretzky thought alike!

We all miss you mom. Happy Birthday.


edited for clarity

DG&NO 146

Short lines have long been the workhorse for Class 1 railroads. Without them, life as we know it on the rail would be one big mess. They are the interurban lines that move by switching out full and empty rail cars to the end user, bringing them to a central yard and separating cars to and from the Class 1 railroads. It's like a big wagon wheel hub with the Class 1 railroads on the outer rim and the short line(s) at the hub. In transportation, the railroads use it. The trucking industry uses it. The airlines use it (both passengers and cargo). Fed Ex and UPS and the USPS and DHL use it. Ocean-going and Great Lakes ships use it. The military use it.

Years ago, one of the large paper companies, as it applies to shipping and routing, would load a rail car on the west coast and simply route it to the east coast with no other destination. Their logic was that one, they didn't have to pay warehouse charges; two, it saved tons of time; three, before the rail car got to the east coast, one of their locations nation wide would need the material on that car. If they did not, then the dispatcher would simply route the car again to west coast. The transportation cost via rail was still lower than paying warehouse charges and in and out fees.  This, of course, fell under the general definition of logistics, or the management of the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet some requirements. The above example is about as classic  of an example as it gets.

 

One of the new generation diesel-electric RP20BD that is being used by Dallas short line DG&NO. It is also being ordered by BNSF, Kansas City Southern Railway and Union Pacific. The engines are controlled by computers and are capable of remote operations. Let's just say it is more environmental friendly and cost efficient.

Dallas' Continental Bridge Pedestrian Park

c.1930 Continental Bridge Converted to Pedestrian Park

On Sunday, June 15,2014, the city of Dallas will open officially a new pedestrian park on what was for some 80-odd years, a vehicle passage into West Dallas. Now, with the Margaret Hunt Hill
Bridge open and successful re-development happening like a patch of Texas wildflowers, from the new bridge all along Singleton Blvd., the success of the park will follow quickly. The new Skyline Trail that is  below the bridges and the pedestrian and bike park running  the full length of the old Continental Bridge, the success of the pedestrian park will be much like the highly successful Klyde Warren Deck Park that was constructed over the Woodall Rodgers Expressway a mile or so east of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.

The past few weeks the bike trail has been drawing a large flow of bikers and hikers. Add to that, the new parking area and the draw will be hikers, bikers and runners. Trinity Groves, one block west is a  highly successful transformation of a double-sided truck terminal into many fares of taste-bud favored restaurants with outdoor seating and patios. Three Sundays each month, vendors line up their Easy-Up tents to sell produce, crafts, honey, and other organic items and wares. A micro-brewery has set up across the side street from Trinity Groves.    


 

The Magnificant Young Man and His Flying Machine

N367HP has just crossed the coastline of the south of France with two hours and five minutes to go before his landing in Rome.

Matt, left Biggin Hill Airport in London this morning after a flight plan change because Biggin Hill closes early on Sundays. He had to fly a modified flight plan from the Azores to South London Sunday, then ferry over to Biggin Hill later in the day on Monday. He is, however, back on this planned itinerary and will be in Italy early evening.



 

N367HP Just Landed At Vila do Porto

Matt Guthmiller, the 19-year-old MIT student from Aberdeen, South Dakota, has just set his 6-seat, single engine, Beechcraft Bonanza 36 piston, down on Santa Maria Island, Via do Porto, Azores, after the 8-hour and 14 minute flight from St. John's Newfoundland, Canada, on his 42- day solo flight around the world. His aim is to set a new record for the youngest person ever to circumnavigate the globe and holds his commercial pilots license.. The current holder was 21 years old when he captured the record.

Matt has his complete itinerary posted on his facebook account. Since I do not do facebook, you can check it out on your own. Most of the circumnavigate routes are pretty much the same and being an avid aviation geek, I don't want to know his route until he flies it. That's half the fun of following his trip.

Frankly, an 8 hour flight over the Atlantic in a Beechcraft Bonanza solo would be enough to get a big "NO" from me. I've flown in such an aircraft. The ceiling for a craft like that is 11,500 feet. Matt was doing most of the flight at 9,000 feet but did hit the max for a couple of hours of the flight. He had a good tail wind and was right on time landing. Flying over great expanses of water is not my thing. I've meet several who have done so and it's not their favorite part of flying either. Never-the-less, Matt made it to the Azores and gets a big congratulations in his early legs of his trip.

Thus far:

El Cajon, Ca to Aberdeen, S.D. [5-31-14]  9hr.8 min
Aberdeen, to Teterboro, NJ   [6-2-14]  6hr.34 min
Teterboro, NJ to St. John's, Newfoundland, CA [6-4-14] 6hr.28 min
St. John's, Newfoundland, CA to Santa Maria Island, Vila do Porto, Azores  [6-6-14] 8hr. 14 min
Credit photo from Matt's FlightAware post on FlightAware.com

Matt Guthmiller  enroute around the world

Photo Courtesy of FlightAware.com

New Re-Designed Snoopy One

Seldom do I see any of the Goodyear flock of blimps anymore. They are very much out there. It seems to me that the Met Life fleet is seen more these days. In fact, the last three times that I have seen one, it was the Met Life Snoopy, although I don't recall if it was One, Two, or Three. I just know it was not "J".

The Goodyear flock has undergone several name changes with the latest being done by a vote on the Internet. There is the Spirit of Goodyear based  at the old Wingfoot Lake Hanger in Ohio and outside Akron. The "Spirit of America based" in California. "Spirit of Innovation" based in Pompano Beach, Florida and the "Ling Hang Zhe" in China.

Like Goodyear, Met Life has a blimp in China, too. The info pack makes mention of four (4) but does not give much data on Snoopy Three that flew briefly. It may be the one in China as the "J" is for Japan. That leaves "Snoopy One" and "Snoopy Two" here in the states. Snoopy One winters in Florida, Georgia and Texas, while Snoopy Two winters in California, Nevada and Arizona.

With my Nikon down because of technological problems in its soft wear, I'm shooting with the Olympus and the long lens isn't as long as the Nikon by 50 mm. While shooting a new measuring device used by the USGS (United States Geological Survey)  the  Snoopy One was hanging out over the area of the Dallas Farmers Market, but did make its final pass coming closer to where I was and giving a snap shot as it would rise and descent in fairly strong headwinds from the northeast. At one point it looked to be over the Klyde Warren Park and Uptown but because of the winds, it appeared to be holding still for a very long time. It's just one of those things. You can't be every where at the same time, but you can be somewhere and still get a shot for the fun of it. Outside of my stock images and Fine Print images, that's what I like about photography. It affords me an outlet to keep the old ticker ticking with exercise and fresh air and to me, it's just down right fun when you see something like the blimps in town or Solar Impulse at DFW. The next big event will be the  double shot of A-380s on a daily basis landing at DFW in October and seeing a Virgin America landing daily at Love Field. Blimps are still extremely fun because of the ground crew array of vehicles that travel with the blimps. If you have ever seen the full detail in action, it's semi tractor-trailer and tour buses is it's  traveling pit crew more or less. What a sight. On the Met Life site, there is a picture of Snoopy inside a Southwest hanger with the tour bus and crews. Come to think about it, the ground crew for a blimp is very much like the ground chase crew for hot air ballooning. It's just a  larger envelope and more technological staff (i.e., radio crews, etc.,etc.).

Most likely, the blimp was on it's way to the Fed Ex St. Jude Classic in Memphis, Tennessee coming up on it's schedule tour booking.