Golf Ball Size Hail Due Tonight But, Quiet Afternoon At the Lake---

even the birds were asleep or otherwise being quiet about their activities . Saw a three  woodpeckers. A few shovel bills, mallards, gulls, pelicans  were sited here and there. Cormorants looked glued to their tree branch. A great white egret that flew in to fish and then disappeared, and, of course, the mud hens were at the ready for hand outs that were far and few between this afternoon. Finally figured it out---it's spring break beginning today.

The one thing that really made a difference today was the light. The suns angle has moved up just enough that it is casting that perfect light on the down wind side. In fact, this is the kind of light that I love to shoot nature images. The harsh shadows are gone. Well, at least until the sun gets back to the same location on its way back south.

It was also a moment of discovery to find thing that seem so out of place. Someone had pitched a make-shift tent in a thicket near the Filtration Building. The other one was much less threatening and even caused me to think about my dad's military service when the Americans were liberating France at the end of World War II. I even remembered some old pictures taken in Paris with my Dad and his buddy in uniform at the Eiffel Tower and another on the Champ outside a pastry shop. So, the joy of discovery can be delicious at times and tug on heart strings that haven't been pulled in a while. I'd love to find those pictures for my younger brother of our Dad. My brother mentioned to me just a few weeks ago that he  would love to see those pictures. It's been years since I last saw them.

We have three days of rain and clouds coming in tonight with the possibility of golf ball size hail sometime around 2 AM tonight. The front will move on out quickly but then the cooler temps will roll back in. Everyone seems to think that the last freeze we had a couple of days ago is it for the winter. Statistically, March 12 is the average day of our last freeze. It was in the 80s today.

I

I use my old friend, Mr. Sycamore to test my white balance from time to time.

A moment that I never expected to observe all alone at the lake with memories of my Dad.

A woodpecker later was pulling leaves off the tree and dropping them to the ground. I was sitting under the tree at a picnic table.

 

Still Amazed Today

This is not an Air France but it is under the Emirates Paint Scheme an A-380 (same type)

This is also an A-380 operated by Qantas and still not an Air France but again, under the paint scheme of Qantas the air frame is still an A-380 my friend! Big! And. it was certainly not around in mid 1950s when I spent those lazy summer days looking up at air plane's contrails, which I still do today! Thank you very much!

My grandmother's were born at a time when the telegraph  (the electromagnetic one of 1832) invented by Samuel Morse; the telephone of Alexander Graham Bell's doings (1839) were all but 50 years old. At the time of my maternal grandmother's death, she had witnessed men walking on the moon. She saw the first cars made by Henry Ford in 1908 as a young girl and I remember when my paternal grandmother and grandfather got their first Westinghouse refrigerator and both my grandparents had telephones in their houses. Although, my maternal grandparents lived next to their grocery store seperated by a wall and a doorway and had a wall handcrank phone I wished that I had today.  I also remember my mom and dad getting our first television in 1952 and we didn't get a color set until 1962. I can remember using the old Translux teletype and getting a newer one with a CPU monitor. It took a half day to have my first cell phone installed in my car's trunk and the hand held portables were the size of the first walkie talkies. Big! I recall my optomologist encouring me to get contact lens when they first came out. I wore them for a staggering 44 years afterwards! I can still see a hawk or an airplane miles away from the cornea molding.

But, most of all, as a young boy, I remember the long hot summers spent sprawled out on the grassy hilltop up the hill one lot from our recently built brick house watching the contrails of jet aircraft (then, not much older than I was at the time) wondering where they were going. I still look up today at jet contrails and wonder where those jets are going, although I do know a bit more about cross-country vectoring today than I did then.

This morning, while checking the images that I had running on the live news feeds from the weekend, I ran across an image from a photographer in Essex ,England, UK. It was an image of a big Airbus A-380's contrail flying over Essex in Southeast England in one of those infamous vectors that airplanes fly. As was reported, the man knew that the A-380 was from Charles deGaulle/Roissy Airport in Paris going to LA here in the states. The contrails were beautiful against a deep blue sky and it reminded me of those summer days as a kid stretched out on that hilltop looking at contrails and wondering were they were going.

Then, it hit me, that today, with the technology at hand, I could look up that flight and see were it was before it even landed. Which I did. That is absolutely amazing for us mortal humans. Yeah, I know. I am reminded all the time that the government has stuff that would rock your socks off, blah blah blah,blah-blah.

Here is the scoop if anyone wants to go look at the live news feed image then get on flightawares or flight radar and  follow what's left of the flight before it lands. I just think it is stunning to see that image and sit down at the computer and find where in the world it is withing a 7-minute delay and where it is going. After all, it is an A-380 and that within and of itself is astonishing.

The images (there are 2) GNF9JX-RM and GNF9kl-RM by Timothy Smith on Alamy.com, click on the live news feed in the search box (images) and scroll down to the live news feed.Sorry, they will roll off the cycle in 48-hours. You can purchase the image while there if you so desire. Mr. Smith would be happy, I'm sure. I would be if my image was purchased from a blog post like this. ☺♪☺♪♫

The flight is that of Air France #66 that left Charles de Gaulle/Roissy at 10:30a.m. CEST en route to Los Angeles International/LAX with arrival due at 12:06pmPDT 30th August 2016. It is a daily flight. That is why they call it scheduled airlines ♪☺☺♪.

The flight was at 40,000 feet at 490kts air speed or just call it .85mock. Anything over 600 MPH is pegged as mock speed anyway. Or so, I am told by those who know such things and remind me that MPH is a thing of the past. AARGH!!!!

So, not only is it amazing that one can figure out these things....it is most amazing that now, I have proven that a dream of a child's wondering of where that contrail is going can know be known thanks to a guy totally unknown to me on a different continent than myself, taking a picture of an airplanes contrail and having the know how to post it on a live news feed that I use myself. And where now I can this 30th August 2016 finally answer that question and dream of my childhood many years ago.

I must say, however, that not knowing where that plane I watched as a child was going 60 years ago was awesome then, as it still is today, but knowing today is still a childhood dream as it was then.That will never change and I am glad of that fact.

 

Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel

At one time on this planet, there was a golden age of glamor. Today, we have none of it left. I've been reading a lot about those days and it always amazes me how there is always a common connection somehow. Such is with another one from that great generation of glamor. Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel.

I was stunned at her humanity. A couple of sources seem to verify her generous moods. In Coco & Igor, Chris Greenhalgh  and Karen Karbo in The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World's Most Elegant Woman, the stories of her are amazing and yet, being human during a time of war almost cost her everything.

Igor Stravinsky, with his family, stayed with Coco. He was in the early stages of his "The Rite of 
Spring". It was Coco, who guaranteed financially the success of his production.  Later, she took care of yet another family and payed for the husband's funeral following his death. It just so happened that he was the head of the German SS which almost cost her everything. Coco, had had an earlier affair with the German.

Coco was once ask why she did not marry the Duke of Westminster. She had also had an affair with him. Her reply came, " There have been several Duchesses of Westminster. There is only one Chanel." This original account was first published in her Biography.

When she left Paris, she moved to Switzerland and remained there for years. She had designed and built her villa, La Pausa, on the French Riviera. It looks toward the Italian and French border on one side and overlooks Monaco on the other. It sits high above the village of Roquebrune. It was built in the 1930s during that golden era and of her own design.

In 1953 Coco sold her villa, La Pausa, to the Hungarian publisher and translator Emery Reves. He purchased the villa from Coco with his translations royalties of foreign languages for Winston Churchill's

Not the French Riviera but still a pretty awesome place.

books. Churchill lived there four months of each of the years 1956,1957 and 1958 while he worked on his book. After Emery's death, his wife Wendy continued to live there until her death, but in the early days after her husband's death, the Dallas Museum of Art approached Wendy about the master collection of fine art that was displayed in the house from both Coco Chanel and from the Reves. Fearing that she would sell the collection as a whole, the museum agreed to terms set down by Wendy. She wanted five (5) rooms replicated from La Pausa and to include pieces of furniture belonging to Chanel. The museum built  a 16,000 square foot addition to house Wendy's collection. Today, the Emery and Wendy Reves collection can be visited at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Chanel No. 5 has always had class. It was the woman who developed the concept as a fashion designer that lifted Chanel No. 5 to the top shelf. Coco Chanel is buried in Switzerland following her death in Paris. She had lived in Switzerland for 30 years after leaving Paris the first time.

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!

A Labor Day Image of Joy From The Heart

Yesterday afternoon, I sat along the western shores of White Rock Lake in triple digit heat drinking lots of water and would wipe sweat from my forehead on a frequent basis. The group at the "Free Advise Forum" that has been there for 16-years was interesting as it usually is for goers. It was sunset as I helped Roddie load up the folding chairs, the teddy bears from the tree, the all-familiar sign "Free Advise" and , of course, the American Flags. When home, even though I was in the shade and under my fedora, there was a deeper red glow to my face than the bronze tan that was there earlier. It came from the reflection of the water most likely.

In the course of the discussion, it came up about music from the heart. My best example was to relate an earlier statement that has been made in the past. That statement was in answer to a question proposed to me about what makes me happiest. My original statement was that what makes me the most happy is sitting at the bench of a 100-rank pipe organ playing Widor.People don't expect to hear that coming from me. So, when it comes up from time-to-time, it requires some explaining.

Yesterdays discussion created some interest as to how or what can you relate that to visually. Just so happens, several months ago, I discovered on You Tube  a video that completely adheres to the cliche: A picture is worth a thousand words. Plus, in this case, you get to hear some pretty good music performed on the instrument that it was written for. But most importantly, it also show a visual of how a human being feels from within the 'joy that comes from the heart'.

The video is of a young man, Laplacae, performing The Widor Toccata on the Cavaille-Coll Grand Organ  at Saint Sulpice Church, Paris. The instrument was where Charles-Marie Widor served as organist and composed his Toccata from Symphony Number 5. The organ is a tracker-action and in short, playing a tracker is total work because of the mechanical actions. Organs today operated by pneumatics and it is like power steering on a car. Tracker action is like no power steering. So, from the discussion yesterday and again by popular request, watch and listen but pay close attention to Msgr.Laplacae as he releases the keys after the final chord in his performance of  Charles-Marie Widor's Toccata from Symphony Number 5 on the Saint Sulpice Cavaille-Coll Grand Organ, in Paris.You will see Joy from the Heart. The link is below left.


http://youtu.be/TQaXh28tzyo

People from Nepal

A couple of weeks ago, I meet four extended family members that are living here in Dallas area. They are from Nepal. The beauty of the country, the culture of the country are two things that I like about their country. While the Democratic Republic of Nepal has only been formally proclaimed since the early 1950s it is difficult to remember that this former kingdom / realm is in a part of the world that has history dating back nearly 5000 years. It is pointed out in history that when Columbus was announcing that he took credit for founding the new world in 1492, the realm in Nepal had been split into three kingdoms some 10 years earlier in 1482. Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur were created in that 1482 political move. So the nation that contains the world's highest point, Mt. Everest, stately noted by so many that scale the 29,029 foot peak from the Nepali side, The Great Himalaya Range is still growing upward on the Euro-Asia plate as the Indo-Gangetic Plain which is on the India sub-continent slides below the Euro-Asian pushing up the mountain higher and higher. Lasers and GPS measurements give the geologist the best and most accurate readings ever taken.

A Nepali Extended Family that now live here in Dallas.

One thing that I didn't know about the region is that  the Kathmandu Valley celebrates the four major seasons  plus the monsoon season which is stopped by the mountain range from going any farther North. The nation, which is a tad bigger than the US state of Arkansas, measures 490 plus by 125 plus miles and the high plain in the Arctic circle starts at a bit more that  the 14,210 feet of Pike's Peak in US Colorado. So there are some unique statistics about the country.

For me, when I was in fourth grade, my teacher gave the class an assignment to tell the class where would be the one place in the world that we would like to visit someday. I had always remembered that lesson more than any other.

In 1985, as my flights departure and climb-out in one of the last departures from Rio de Janiero's old airport,I looked down over the beautiful bay and Sugar loaf, the beaches  of Ipo and Coco, it came to me what the point made in that lesson had been in fourth grade and realizing that at that moment, I had been to my dream place.Then,  my thoughts turned immediately to where I would want to go next. The years have made it more difficult to pinpoint one place specifically. Still-- not having zeroed in any closer on what would be my bucket list now----I came up with (a) Nepal and Kathmandu  (b) Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa before the snow caps completely melt  (c) China or Australia. However, as in anything the list grows to St. Petersburg/Kiev, sunset from the Atlas Mountains, an as strange as it may seem, Paris. My father,a 20 year-old farm boy, was in Paris during the liberation in WWII. I also remember the old song. "How you gonna  keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen P-A-R-E-E". The song came from WW I in 1919 from W.Donaldson,Victor sung by Baritone, Arthur Field.