The Case of the Disappearing Parked Planes

Yes, folks, the economy is opening up as predicted with increased new cases and deaths of Covid19. The world wide protest while long needed to weed out the bad cops in the active ranks is so long over due. I'm afraid that it is a price we pay for not having acted sooner. I have made post about the shaved-head, gym going, somewhat bully-type cops that can be spotted almost instantly, if only for a few turns of observation. There is a "TYPE" that fits that pattern. Thirty years ago, I met a guy who was former member of one of the military elite like, rangers, seals, etc.,etc. He once made the statement that if there was anyone that I didn't like he could take his squad on a training exercise. That was enough to scare me right there, but it also got me to thinking that I had friends that were in Vietnam that talked of friendly fire of soldiers that were holding them back....whatever that meant. Although, I can pretty much form an accurate detail of what they were talking about. In short, here, what I am saying is that this type of bully hatred among the military and eventually police departments that hired these guy in the first place. Take the example of the cop that held his knee on the neck of George Floyd. He had been on the force for 19 years and had some past history of that same type of thug mentality. And, one must consider that these guys with a near-retirement service were hired long before Post Traumatic Distress Syndrome was even fully understood.

Personally, I think that the government was wrong in supplying police departments with all the armor that tactical units use to bust doors down and S.W.A.T. teams that abound in an America that our forefathers never imagined in such a way. Don't get me wrong. There is a long history of law enforcement that has a vein that runs through our family, beginning with my grandfather who served as a U.S. Marshall in the Depression Era. Yes, that's the Elliot Ness Period, too.  Now, don't go getting excited. It was an era in time. Much has been written about it overall. Yet, my mom was also growing up at that time when good cops, baseball players from the major leagues, and others from  the wildcat oil men of Oklahoma around the same time period,  would stop to go quail hunting with my grandfather after he left the Marshall Service. Mom was a life-long Dodgers fan. Baseball star Preacher Row taught my mom how to clean a fresh kill of quail.

One thing that mom had was accurate radar that worked until her death, she could pick out the bad apples almost without fail. It got her a court appointment for Juvenile Offenders. She was like a silent type of fictional Lt. Columbo but using her radar could zero in on target. She had a way to give you "pearls" when she talked that were life-long gifts of knowledge that others could never figure out how does he do that?

Now, with the age of webcams and other things, it has become nearly perfect forecasting or deductions when observing something specific, like the parking of planes by American Airlines at DFW on the SW quad of the line-up-and-wait area of active flights waiting to take off. During the past 6-8 weeks the number has been fairly steady at 22 planes once the storage began. While the terminal D ramp was near empty of planes except for a plane or two that when to Brazil or Singapore Asia area. Qantas has been absent. Emirates has cut back, Korean has cut back and JAL seems to be the only one that still makes a daily effort.British Airways has all but stopped. Although, British Airways, Korean and Emirates have been parking planes one and two at a time in the area used for tour plane parking and athletic team charters or of their own planes. For a while BA was parking a 777 and a 747. They would alternate days that they few them out with crew only, I suppose.

Suddenly, this week, American announced that they had parked a total of 450 planes and that they still planned to retire about 100 aircraft of that number. Then, the line-up-and-wait parked planes began to disappear one or two at a time. While today, the total was at +/- 16-17 still parked. The west side of the airport or the 18/36L and 18/36 R runways are getting a major work over with new lighting, and other lighting that could be part of the ILS (instrument landing system) approaches.

Many of you are unaware of the DFW ideal and plans to increase capacity at DFW by 30-35% with the adding of a new Peripheral Taxi Ways on both side of the airport that end the crossing of active runways, a major safety move. So major in fact, the FAA not only gave DFW $180million to proceed with the final segment but has "somewhat" swiped the ideal and is now pushing it in new airport designs.  Yeah! DFW staff! Way to go guys and gals.

The "future" #8 runway that is being used as parallel taxiway currently, will be hooked into the peripheral taxiways. Well, today, they started pushing dirt to extend the end of that taxiway and tie it into the ones that will connect 18/36 L and 18/36 R to that system. Surprisingly, I still believe that the #8 runway in the plans will one day be that taxiway, giving 3 parallels on the 17/35 R,C,and L and 3 parallels on the 18/36 L and the 18/36 R which would become the center runway and of course the two cross wind 13's one on the east side and one on the west side which are now active 6 and 7 of the master plan. Of course it's all subject to change unless someone goes off the deep end out there and decides to mess up a geometric flow.

Also Terminal "E" is shaping up and American has committed to building Terminal "F". With the peripheral taxiway "invention" that will increase capacity by 30-35% baring another pandemic or something else unseen, I'd say that the next ten years will get shortened quickly with that forecast growth and efficiency. Airlines don't like to waste money on operational matters, remember.

So, the building of the new normal has begun. Disappearing planes isn't all bad.

The new norm for me is also deeply engrained.

Sometimes, you know what you must write, but it just does not fit the time of the moment. That has been the story with this post the past seven days. The delete button has been pushed at various times over the last week, but the time was just not then. Some have even suggested that,"Oh, you have a writer block".  Uh! no, I don't. Thoughts flow from my head like a creek running wild below a mountain bridge. And, for more fact there, that bridge was washed away a day after I had left the Big Thompson River Canyon  area in Colorado. I could have been killed. That story could be written, but there again, it's not it's moment in time. In fact, July of 1976 was it's time. Not mine.

Never-the-less, I keep trying to sort volume numbers from chapter numbers and sometimes, enough falls out that somehow probably makes more sense to me than to my readers, but hey, that's life!. This is a hard time for me without the medical part anyway.

Although, I came to a resolution with myself as to how I would continue to remember my son each year without the grief and pain that I have felt the past twenty-two years. If it had not been for my strong faith, sometimes I wonder were I would be today mentally. Yet, I have been able to work my way though this to a point that I think my son would be very pleased and I can accept that the good Lord gave my son to me for 26 years. Trying to imagine those 26 years with out him would not be possible.

The thing that has sifted though the nets of time is the fact that I have begun to realize just how many men that I know that have lost their first born or other station of birth of their son. It absolutely blows my mind to read a list of names that I have jotted down as it came to mind that I have worked with so many men and women that have lost a son. It's not an easy thing to be able to recall those  names, including two of my best friends and dozens of others that I have known over the years.

Sometimes, I  have felt that I should reach out and start a support group, but there are plenty of those already. What I'm searching for is a far deeper purpose.Not only why my son was taken at such a prime time in his life,but the things that I don't know. I'd love to know where he went in Germany when he made a trip there before he graduated from college. He had ask me if he could take a year off. Asking my permission was something I never expected him to do, although he did everything right by the book.  

Last year was the final year of mourning. I took on a 20-year mourning when I learned of his death.So, frankly, my mind has been occupied with how to unhitch from that mourning period and still remember the time of his death and burial. I'm making my way to that point in time when I will finally find out if I can get through that period and still feel that loss. The pain will never go away. I know this already. But, at the same time, I want to remember him from some of the things that he wrote to me from trips to Put-In-Bay Island he made with friends while he was working toward his degree.I still read some of his letters and I can hear his voice as if he were telling me what he had written on the pages that I was holding. In the separation, the first year and the last year of the deep mourn period were not counted.

In all fairness to my two remaining children. I love you both in the same degree that I loved your brother. I have discussed this before in that each of you were equal to me in some special way, from my daughter being my first girl, your younger brother being the only one that I witnessed his birth besides being the baby of the family. I could never pick a favorite. I love you all equally. Always remember that. 

A Sign In A Yard Today Said:

Hope 

Has Not Been Cancelled.

The High Meadows Are in Full Bloom After Early May Rains.

One of the last trips to the high meadows of North Texas saw the cutting of  last seasons stubs from a very pretty season. Ironically, one of the first trips there this spring after my hospital stay during the month of May was somewhat of a shocker to see the blooms and colors going across the meadows like a paint brush of color on a fresh canvas.


Suffice it to say, the meadows are off to a spectacular start this season. The only thing left now is to cross the fingers and toes that the fall season will be far better to view and enjoy than the Spring of 2020.

Thistle Blooms

Major color display over several high meadows have got a good start.

I Must Be Pushing 6 or 7 of My Nine Lives.

Well,---boy is that a misnomer!--- It's been another 20-day stay in the hospital again. This one was not a pretty site either. Surprisingly, I had a pretty restful night back in my own bed last night and halfway felt human this morning. That might be stretching it a bit, but hey! I'm walking, talking, and even had a little breakfast. It seems that the anesthesiology works well but is a bit of a demon as it leaves your body.

I've have a lot of chances to observe this process since the Monday before Thanksgiving last. Each time, it reveals a few more details about it's devilish departure from my system. Generally, a weeks time is about normal for me, but of course, I've had way to many overlapping episodes (i.e. another new pacemaker plus an Ablation procedure on top of that). Heck yes, I'm sore!!.

The kicker in all of this is that the surgery the Monday before Thanksgiving that was finished on the part one side is still  not finished thanks to the worse Governor the State of Texas has had in years. He was a terrible Attorney General, and is following that lead as a terrible Governor. Generally, I don't get political, but I'm Scottish and I speak my mind. Lets go back a step. I'm Gaelic in the full Scottish tradition!!! That's pretty entrenched, friends.

A Thistle along a railroad track 

One of my last adventures

I've missed a lot of the springtime blooms

Got A Peak At The New Rangers Organ Yesterday.

And now,  for the young first responder that will be playing it, "don't be discouraged. I learned on a church's Hammond." There are places for it, I suppose. I'm not an electronic organ guy.By my second year, my teacher said to my dad," Next week, we are going to the Big Baptist Church so he can move on to the real King of Instruments".Of course, I hadn't formed any opinions at that point What did I know? I just followed my dad's  lead Life just got exciting! The new organ was a three manual pipe with 42 ranks.

Now, I will say in the defense  of the Rangers.Purchasing a three manual was not a mistake. Over time, as the young man becomes  familiar and more familiar with what it can do from pre set stops and draw bars. He will be as happy a as bee in a working bee hive.

Now, there are some arena's that have fantastic pipe organs. I was hoping that the Rangers would go the extra mile.Maybe in time, they might still revisit that thought. I am sill just happy that three manual sits in the crow's nest.It must be that Rangers didn't get to enough Hockey Games. Hockey loved the sound of pipe organs over ice!

Take Me Out To The Ball Game....

Spring Wild Flowers

Earth Day Turns 50 and the Cuyahoga River Is Not Even On Fire!

That little photo from the crew of Apollo 17 that is called the "Blue Marble" was a shocker for the humans down below (it could also be up above) on that blue marble. It still is, for that matter. But somehow, we have made some progress. Everyone is talking about seeing things that have not been visible in years and yet, the scientist are telling us, it's not those kinds of emissions that is turning the blue marble warmer and warmer. Now, that's the big shocker! My mother would always tell us boys that you need to be looking in the opposite direction when you see astonishing headlines. She was more right than she was wrong.

It has come out now (Mother, are you looking down on us for this?) that the bigger wealth guys of Silicon Valley are in multi-million dollar luxury bunkers 11-feet below grown in New Zealand. Some made it there just in time before New Zealand closed its borders to foreigners (fresh off their private jet). As it turns out further, it appears that Bill Gates has been stashing food in his basement for a pandemic for years. Now, somehow, this all must be some kind of new "insider trading" (of information, that is). It seems kind of weird, but applying mom's old adage, diversion technique tactics are still at play here. Give $100 million to help the pandemic and stash another 20 thou of green beans and corn and fruit cocktail, peaches and pears. The old boys in Silicon Valley were dealing in real estate before the contractor with a privacy seal on his list of names that had been ordering up these bunkers. The numbers were a bit higher than what you can count on both hands (and feet). There also appeared to be a rather long waiting list,too.


Here, it's the time to also mention again ( been doing this quite a bit lately) what the TxDot guy said to me while we talked on the I-635 project job site  when he said, "The People in Dallas are asleep at the wheel".) The point being:it isn't just Dallas, it's the whole dang country. The rest of the world has been running up to speed for years it seems.



In the 1969 edition of the Cuyahoga River burn, I'm old enough to remember that. At the time it was rather funny. The fires have been put out where it burned. The Flats have turned into brewing companies attached to restaurants and the mouth of the river still meets Lake Erie is free of debit and oil without a fire. The steel mills have long gone away, especially J&L then Bethlehem. It was the time when the Mini--Mills were appearing. They produced only one product and ran the mill on  270 workers vs, U.S. Steel or the other two big integrated mills that produced many products and many sizes of those products, employed 2,000 workers or more and ran around the clock on three full shifts. Times have certainly changed but human greed continues in our wealthy brothers and sisters.

So,  as we celebrate the 50th anniversary/birthday of Earth Day, April 22, 1970-2020 around the world, Life is sweet, but it's not going to be unless we all awake and start pitching in to save the world that has a shelf life of about another 4 Billion years for us to find out how we can take a world population with us to that exoplanet don't you see.

Ansel Adams and my mother would have been good friends because he and John Muir would have enjoyed her biscuits around those camp fires. I miss her biscuits.

This 747-200 (heavily modified, I might add.)

I've Learned From Nature Over The Years.

Talk to a math Ph.D, a physicist, or a modern day John Muir and all three will tell you the same thing: the universe is made of a math equation and from the smallest molecule we know, to the largest expanse of the universe fits together like a puzzle of numbers. We put the puzzle pieces together only to find out that it all is the first piece of a larger puzzle etc.,etc. It's endless!

I have been home-bound for the last two weeks except for one quick trip to the grocer. Today, I was hoping to be able to pick up a Rx at the drugstore today before the storms tomorrow, but it was back ordered so I ventured farther out and decided to make a circle of the lake that opened back up yesterday. I run into a photographer that I chat with at the lake now and then. He once ask me about my route that I'm ruled by when it comes to photography.

Part of capturing a specific shot is knowing what tree a hawk comes to each day. They are more creatures of habit than we are, just barely. In other words, you have to think like the bird. And, I know some are going to laugh, but over time you learn that plants think too. They are much more complicated that just a green leaf on a twig on a tree. I had said to my photographer guy that you have to keep up on what is going on around you and that means every thing from a yellow or orange flag and paint in grass along a street to new construction to what's happening with the city's capital improvement projects. It's like that darn puzzle thing---it just keeps fitting together and gets bigger and bigger. It's rather errie how it works in reality but it does and you got to be in step with it to get the shot.

It allows what it wants to allow, it consumes what it wants to consume and it spits out what it doesn't like. In all fairness, watching it grow is the same as watching a child grow up. Or, that birds habit in motion. If you ever noticed the Wright's Tree Service truck crew trimming branches through out the country, then you know it's like the city getting a manicure. Just like the humans that do. In fact, when I lived in the Great Lakes, Wright's Tree Service was one of the city's biggest contractors. Today, before going out, I went on the Lake Tahoe Web Cam and what's sitting in the parking lot of the Food Shop in downtown Truckee on Donner Pass Road but a Wright's truck crew taking their first break of the day, I suppose. Truckee is two hours behind us in time. Then, when I got to the lake, what did I run into again but a Wright's Tree Service work crew of several trucks.

Peonies Poppy Flower

Lost the seed that I saved from last year.

The new water tower is finished and the old is being disassembled by cutting torches. There are two men in the cage suspended from the crane and one man on the catwalk below.

When I got to the stop sign to go down under the Santa Fe Trail trail head, when I came up on the Filtration Building Guard Shack, the discovery that I made there last year was twice as big, twice a beautiful, twice as large blooms as before, that I gasp in excitement. The whole area was planted in peonies-poppy flowers standing  three feet tall.Two weeks ago I was there looking to see if any had sprouted and were coming up for last year or to see that there was some evidence that the service landscaper had been there and planted for this year to no avail. It is one of those lessons I learned a very long time ago. You have to make a route and stick to it to see the heart beat of what is in that area you have blocked out that fits your Mission Statement ( it's printed in the head banner of this blog).

This was the first blooming when they were just totally radiant! With severe storms tomorrow with hail, damaging winds and heavy rain, they, most likely will be beat down like pulp. They may come back but not like I was able to capture them today. It was a gift to be able to see that beauty in this time when every one seems to be depressed. It seems that people today are more interested in how their body looks, the cloths they wear or the car they drive than the "simple" beauty of such a flower.

When I go to bed tonight, I'll make a prayer for those poor souls and thank God for His Grace that He gives me each day to see the beauty of the earth. 

De Rigueue Face Mask

It seems that some are already beginning to wrap their brains around the fact that we, as humans, most likely will be wearing face mask for a much longer period than some think. The loaded catch phrase is: "until we have a vaccine". That is also reported to be about 18-months away.

Face Mask for Corona-19

by Glendine's Fashion  Design Works

A Little Bird Paid Me A Visit Today.

There comes a time in each day when I reflect back on the day. Mine started with a call from one of the assistant managers at a Walmart where I shop. Yesterday was my necessity run to the grocer. Almost immediately, I have the day started to go south but I wasn't going to let that happen. The store had the max number of people allowed with the new guidelines. That, however, didn't mean much as those that were in the store were still grabbing everything that they could cram into their carts. While reaching for a pack of bacon, and still keep my distance in the bacon isle, I reached in from the side to get a couple of packs from the middle since the woman that didn't seen to care about the 6-foot rule, just declared the whole of the cool unit as her own. Any way, as I pulled the bacon out it caught on a inch-high bar on the bottom of the unit and I lifted my hand up to free the bacon from the bar. As I did, the back of my hand caught the underside of the shelving and there it was---that feel of cut skin and then came the blood. With that, I ask at the deli counter if they had a first aid kit. "No", came the reply. "Go to customer service". So, I headed from the back of the store to the front of the store.I kind of thought that the extra exercise of walking that lap wasn't that bad of a deal. Shortly, came the store manager who I kid with most of the time, if only a one-liner jab. Then came the assistant manager with the iPad to take an incident report.

The phone rang this morning while I was still in bed. It was the assistant manager checking on how I was doing. Laughingly, I said to her that, "I'm alive!". She ask me a question and I said, "no, I'm fine" and we parted ways. That was nice to check in on me, I though. It's wasn't that "The Legal Beagle Made Me Call", attitude. That's the difference between the young managers an that seasoned manager of 30 years. I noticed her pin yesterday as she was talking the info on her i-Pad. She was a 3 decader!

I face the northwest so the strong winds that come from the NW are the only time I feel the chill inside. Even my heat came on and I had the thermostat set much lower than normal. Still, I could feel the difference in what it was doing outside. When I got up to go pull the drapes over the door, there was a baby sparrow that had just fledged from the area below the downspout where sparrows have built nest for as long a I can remember. He had managed to fly--or glide--down onto my porch. I think he might have been aiming for one of my towering trees, but he didn't make it. He was cherping for mom. The sun had just begun to come onto my porch at the gate and it was hitting just about a half foot from the baby bird. I knew that if he got into the sun he would warm up and he would be wanting to try out those wings from the grown up. In about a half hour he was stretching each wing and then he would do it again.  The next time I looked, he was gone. I saw mom sitting on the gutter and had been calling to him. I haven't been able to get to the birds  at the lake so I guess, something in the world of Karma had the bird come to me. Thank goodness I didn't get mad yesterday at Walmart. Seeing the baby bird on the porch was a good token come my way.

Sunshine Is A Mood Lifter at any age. The shade of a couple of leaves from the trees can be seen.

Not much movement, but the head is responding when my lens clicked the glass in the door.