Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!

What Do You Give Up When.......

What do you give up when you rent a video? There is one key factor that is missing. It is a simple thing, mostly, but its effect is monumental. Over the years, as technology becomes and makes us  more anti-social, that effect starts to turn up in strange and odd behavioral patterns. I must admit that even I have become more mindful of my surroundings when I walk, when  I am on a photo-shoot or just going to the doctor's office.

Yesterday, while doing my health walk, I also do the brain clean when I try to replace all the garbage that has built up and filter out the negatives. Today, I have to do that more often than ever before because there is so much more negatives today than in the past. Having a plan and a routine to do that is different for people. Some like to run. Some like to walk. Some like to bike. Some do photography and some just walk and think. I try to combine the photography with the walk at times while at other times, I like to do the photography and think and walk. Multi-tasking your health, I like to think.

While doing that yesterday, it came to me that I had not been to a movie in quiet some time. It's easier to rent  a video than ever before. Go to the pharmacy or grocery store, rent a movie and then watch it when you can block out the time to watch. What's wrong with that? Plenty as I discovered later on after really thinking about going to a movie verses renting one. It also came to me that the anti-social behavior that people have today is partly because they are in their own little  i-world and don't have the people skills that I grew up with.

That's right, Mr. Boxer, this labs need more new social skills.

What it really boils down to is that people don't care about anyone but themselves. It's a self-centered world we live in today. Oh, I know, there are those that will argue that point, but they would argue with a rattlesnake, too. It's about people watching a movie and hearing others laugh at a funny scene or a funny line by an actor. And even though you didn't laugh, at least you knew that several dozen people around you found, what ever it was that caused the laugh, funny to others. You don't get that when you rent a video. You don't have the mixture of attitudes of people around you. It helps you to absorb that others laughed--why didn't I? What was so funny? I didn't find that to be funny but gees, the whole theater roared, you conclude. Don't you see....it just might be you that has no sense of humor.

Ralph Turns 81 Later This Month

When in my late teens and early twenties, Ralph Nader was in the news a lot. He was about the only political activist that made any clear sense. Today, his many organizations continue his career work. There is a lot of research that the Nader organizations do.

Later this month, Ralph Nader turns 81. The attorney (1958), the author, the activist, the lecturer, the four-time third party candidate is still in the news for consumer rights,humanitarianism and environmentalism, not to mention his democratic government stance. His many organizations helped to create the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration).

The Atlantic Monthly's list of "100 most influential Americans" ranked Nader 96, which brings to mind the fact that I have long reached the conclusion that Ralph Nader has done more good for the consumer American than any one else.

Today, I listened to a YouTube video of Ralph Nader given a couple of years ago at the Green Festival in Washington before a packed crowd. The clip runs about 54 minutes and is not boring by any means.  The man isn't the radical that some think him to be. Then, take the time to read the comments on the video. 

 Watch, "The Road to Corporate Fascism" on YouTube.com






Ref:
The ''Atlantic Monthly'', in its list of the "100 most influential Americans," ranked Nader 96: "He made the cars we drive safer; thirty years later, he made [[George W. Bush]] the president;"http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200612/influentials others discount his role in the 2000 presidential election.

This image is available by clicking on the image. It will open to the authors page on Featurepics.com

links:http://www.tamethecorporation.org
        : http://www.Corporatepolicy.org
        : GreenFestival.org

Cupid On A Topic of the HAARP

With one-twelth of the new year gone already, the year is already beginning to reveal that most of what surrounds me is like a bunch of little marionette stages with various facets of life being acted out on those stages. It cannot be the great Western Civilization that took up hours sitting behind a desk in school listening to a teacher reveal all the greatness that has been created by man. For that description was just to awesome to actually be true.

I have basically, more or less, spent the last two days inside the house, out of the cold, reading and answering emails, making my middle brother grow a bit testy reminding him that he was turning 60 day before yesterday. He was born during a hail storm so he should be case hardened at this point, but he has managed to be Grisly Adams, and yet, an independent and sometimes big old teddy bear emerges at times. At the time mom passed, he was up in the Yukon at Watson Lake near the Northwest Territory border having spend a month in Alaska and was on his way home when he called to check in.

The other part of the time was getting emerged into a product of the U.S. Commerce Department, NOAA, Space Weather Prediction Center. The product has been around for 50 years this year. In fact, they are celebrating their 50th Anniversary this year at NOAA. The web site is awesome in many ways. As technical as it is, the more you research it, the site is not as hard to understand as it first looks. I know one thing... flying between London and the US isn't as free from risk as it would seem just flying from point to point. The radiation in the higher Latitudes at high altitude does carry risk from radiation exposure. There are scales that report that daily on the site. I can see why people would rather go to Europe via the Canary Islands rather than the great arc over the Canadian Provinces, Greenland and Iceland routes. Of course, one must admit that this point in time is at the 11-year cycle for the suns solar activity. It also alerts you to problems with radio transmissions and satellite transmission problems from those solar flares. But, most of all, I did discover that NOAA confirmed that Cosmic Rays interact with chemicals in the atmosphere like NO, or Nitrous Oxide and can have long lasting effects in the upper and middle layers of the atmosphere.

The site gets into what they describe as solar minimums. In common terms, that's cloud cover. And, they did confirm that solar minimums do have  an impact on the planets climate.

There is also a theory: cosmic rays can create nucleation sites in the atmosphere which seed cloud formations and create cloudier conditions. "If this were true, then there would be a significant impact on climate, which would be modulated by the 11-year solar cycle", it concludes.

Just about a year ago, on 21 February 2014, I published an article entitled, "A Read That Raises Both Eyebrows." In that article, it brings to light on this blog that HAARP, was working on research about climate control in both war and peace. At that time it was just a frightening discovery of how little we know about what our government is working on. The main problem being is that by the time we find out about it...it's old, old news. Which, actually, is a good thing for the country. However, the HAARP project was about the disturbance of the upper atmosphere changing the chemical constituents like NO (Nitrous Oxide) in the upper and middle layers of the atmosphere. Some called them chem trails. Others called them con-trails, which were long streaks of narrow clouds in the sky.
By the late afternoons, the sky was usually under a layer of high clouds from all the criss-crossing that some assumed were caused by jet aircraft while others knew they were rays being generated by the HAARP station in Alaska and its mobil units that were reported to be out and about.

So, when all the talk about HAARP being just something someone made up.....really turned out to be a real puppet stage with real actors and real characters... and all I could say was that Cupid is shooting his arrows but not at the hearts of other humans, but on a stage that we see being acted out and write it off as just another puppet show in the park as I pushed my chair away from the desk and head out to the kitchen coffee pot for a refill. 

Happy Valentines Day 

edited: 04 Feb 2015, typo and spelling error.

Soul Growing

When I am running around in my brain and I hit a stump, it's time to turn to my little book that will be 24-years old this 3rd of May. The pages are underlined, stared and  marginal notes abound. The white space about the chapter titles are filled with comments. Many pages have dog-ears. In short, it is well-worn!

From the Trees with Character Series

It's inspirational. It's common sense. It's wisdom seed already planted that grows in the strangest of places with the strangest of fruit pods, but fruit that feeds the soul from time to time with a dose of seasoned vitamins that have never left me feeling empty or hungry.

Some of you have read of, A Touch of Wonder. You have read about my love for this book, but more of how I am inspired by its author, Arthur Gordon. Gordon, not just doing it, but doing it on purpose. That always reminded me of the guy who just could not wait to get around you in traffic, but later, his rush had stopped him ahead. It might have been a radar cop. It might have been a funeral procession crossing in front, or even worse, a horrible accident itself.  But, for all those years, I had not thought about the other meaning found in the same chapter. That was until today. It is even amazing how Author Gordon viewed both to put into the chapter. Picking up on the one theme was right there. Yet, picking up on the second theme did not reveal itself to me for all those years until today. Perhaps I was not ready to discover it before today, or perhaps, it was purposeful pausing after all.


Originally, Gordon was on one of the classic liners that we all know so well today because of the Titanic movie. The cruise ships today are entirely a different class of service, for sure. But, he came across a portion of Robert Louis Stevenson's writings in the ship's library. Stevenson had written: "Extreme busyness, whether at school, kirk (church) or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality." Robert Stevenson continued to say: "It is no good speaking to such folk: they can not be idle, their nature is not generous enough."

Never, has a man been so correct in his observations and I wonder today, what more he would have written of those people today? One thing is most likely. Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Gordon would have stopped their deficient vitality and fed their Soul. They both, knew the value of the Soul growing.

Ref:
Gordon, Arthur, A Touch of Wonder, 1974 Fleming H Revell Company, pp 210-18

31st Jan 2015 to update text

Encyclopedias, Compendiums, Complete Compendiums and Manuals on Fat Tuesday

Even though it will vary from year-to-year, it still has a way of sneaking up on you. But I have discovered a way to "not be so surprised". It's a lunar thing, basically. Or, at the least, follows a lunar calendar. It's still got that little Pagenistic twang to it, left over from the Romans invading the Celts and tearing down their alters and having the Celts build Roman alters. Of course, the Celts were really smart and built the Roman alters over their old torn down alters and went on like nothing ever happened.The Romans being non-the-wiser. There has been encyclopedias, compendiums, complete compendiums and manuals written about Mardi Gras.

It seems that the church calendar year is really tied to lunar cycles more than we think, but the one that resonates with many throughout the Christian world seems to be the one I can never remember.
That would be, of course, Fat Tuesday, Shove Tuesday or as the French still say today, Mardi Gras, which literally means, "Fat Tuesday".  It is, in fact, a 47 day stretch before Easter Sunday and since Easter is determined by--you got it-- lunar cycles, that is why the date moves forward or backwards from year-to-year.  As another indication of lunar cycles, Epiphany is the earliest that Carnival, Mardi Gras can occur and it must end by midnight on Fat Tuesday as Ash Wednesday begins Lent, the period of fasting before Easter.

Of course, it is highly ordained as a cultural event because Mardi Gras is the period when all the fat things and crazy things are done before confession or Shovetide or Shove Tuesday. Therefore, in various regions, celebrations will vary and the traditional celebrations will most always include a "King's Cake".

A couple of days ago I was in my friendly K-roger store and as I walked past the bakery tables, there were stacks and stacks of big colorful boxes of iced and sparkled King Cakes. The cakes only come out this time of year. The little plastic baby Jesus if usually hidden in the cake, but in today's age of  what ever it is--- the little baby Jesus is on top in plain sight so as not to offend or to cause a chocking hazard. Frankly, it was better when you grew up and you parents talked to you from early on about finding the baby Jesus in the cake and to be careful. Of course, that common sense thing does not exist today in parenting, Which I find to be so sad.

Mardi Gras Beads thrown on February 17th in 2015. 2016 will be on February 9th and 2017 will be on February 28th

Birth of Maggie 2 Has Occured

This is the third day in a row that I have gotten  multi-mile walks done. My strength seems to be coming back as well and I am happy about that. It's been a long journey getting back to as normal as I can remember. My primary care physician and my cardiologist are to thank for most of my good health return.

So, with spring-like temperatures back in north Texas, and two previous days of successful walks, I set out on the longest of the walks.  I drove out Mockingbird to Singleton Blvd. to the base of the Maggie 1 (Margaret Hunt Hill) Bridge to the plaza parking lot. I dreaded going down the steep ramps because the last time I tried to walk it, the grade was a bit of a strain on my cardio system. But, deciding that I would worry about that on the return trip, down the ramp I went. It took me about one-half hour to walk under the Maggie 1, the Union Pacific railroad bridge, the Commerce Street bridge and finally arriving at the I-30 bridge construction site. I felt pretty good too. One of the project engineers was on site with his family and we talked about the project for a bit before they headed out and I started to shoot the site. It was a perfect day with great sun angles and blue sky and most of all--a very light breeze.The flags flapped in the breeze in slow motion. Perfect!

It is amazing how what you learned from shooting Maggie 1 and can now be seen talking shape on nearly the same time table as before. I had estimated that the first arch piece was due to be fitted somewhere around this weekend and sure enough, as I got closer and could see the abutment transition base, it was obvious that the first piece was in place. The engineer said that the next four pieces were on site. This bridge, while totally different than Maggie 1, is still a massive construction project and the arches are as massive as the arches on the Maggie 1. The excitement could be felt building the longer that I was on site because I have always enjoyed big construction projects like these from a very early age. There is just something about how things come together and in a prescribed amount of time, bingo! you have a finished project and move on to the next one.

There were several photographers at the site on and off, This bridge will get more attention more quickly because it was easier seen from present day I-30 whereas on Maggie 1, the extension of the Woodall Rodgers had to be built and tied into Singleton Blvd that wasn't near as built up as it is today. And, people have had time to learn about the projects and build their own kind of curiousness. The opening of the Trinity Skyline Trail and the Santa Fe Trestle Trail have added much awareness to the project.

Therefore, Maggie 2 is born and can only grow out of the Terra firma  taking its bends from the abutment transition base skyward as it eventually will draw to completion in another  landmark architecture in the form of another bridge. Dallas is a bridge building city without question. By TxDot counts there are some 5000 plus bridges in the Dallas area. It is no wonder that Dallas now will have two remarkable landmarks as bridges. From the early days of the first Dallas TV series when the aerial shot came over downtown and headed out over all the bridges going away from downtown into historic archives, It's going to be interesting to see where the Maggie 1 and the Maggie 2 turn up in future television episodes of any kind.

The birth of the bridge as the first arch piece rises from the abutment transition base.

This is the third abutment transition base, Number 2 is curing at present having been poured already.