Watching the world

Last Monday when Cindy Lou and I left the Cincinnati Zoo with granddaughter Ellie about 2 in the afternoon, the thermometer in the car read 107 degrees.  I knew it was hot, but that number still surprised me.  By that evening at grandson Noah’s last baseball game of the season, it was still really hot and as all you Ohioans know, damned humid to boot.  And, I might add, I thought it was child abuse to have those little men play baseball in such oppressive conditions, but all stayed hydrated and everybody seemed to get through it okay.  His team lost, BTW.

So it was no surprise that by 9 o’clock that night, all heaven broke loose when the skies lit up with electricity.  Thunder boomed for over an hour and the skies opened up with much needed rain.  All of the intense heat over the last couple of days translated into natural pyrotechnics  that I must admit, drew me out of the house to world watch.  I spent that flashy and booming hour on both front and back porches just witnessing the wonder and power of a Midwest summer thunderstorm.   

I try not to worry too much about being outside with lightning in the area.  Though I’ve seen lots of lightning in my life, I’ve never been really close to a strike.  Earlier this summer, while soaking up a storm from under the back porch canopy, I could have sworn I felt the heat from a bright white lightning strike a mile or so away.  Did I really feel the heat?  Can’t say.  All I know is that it was full of power.  

I realize we have all been cautioned countless times to be careful of lightning.  On another of Noah’s ball game nights, play was delayed for 30 minutes because lightning was merely seen on the horizon.  Football games and golf outings all are impacted when lightning is in the area.  Caution is certainly a better idea that valor when it comes to electrical storms.  

Still, I do so enjoy being out on covered porches when summer storms move through the area.  I feel the same way about going out to walk in snow storms, too, actually.  Something there is about witnessing the power of weather that makes watching the world go by mighty engaging.  

And, I might add, the family is off to Colorado next week.  Back to Crestone, it is, this time with two young men completing our company.  More on that in the next blogs.  

One thing is for sure:  during our nine days out there in the high desert we should witness some good rain activity out across the vast San Luis valley from our perch at a b&b on the skirts of the Sangre de Christo mountain.

Oh, my.  I am ever looking forward to sharing what the Rockies offer to two young men who have never been west of the Mississippi.  Should be a hoot.  Stay tuned....

Today’s elder idea:  The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

Mark Twain

image:  scavenged from Yahoo images (used without permission)

Yard birds

I’ve loved birds ever since I watched over a nest of robin eggs  hatching from a precarious spot just outside my attic bedroom window when I was a kid.  Back then maybe I could relate to wee creatures coming into the world and having to deal with the rigors of life.  I remember it wasn’t always easy for me. 

I can remember one time, too -- after watching a Woody Woodpecker cartoon on afternoon tv -- trying to capture a bird in the side yard by pouring salt on its tail.  It did seem a bit ridiculous, but it was on the Woody show after all and, well, I figured it was worth a try.  Didn’t work, though.

There are a few species of birds I seem to have a richer relationship with than others.  Whenever I spot a great blue heron either flying or standing in a local river bed, I figure I’ve earned a little good luck for the day.  

In the spring, I know we’ve survived the winter when I hear the descending spiral ‘flute’ of the Swainson’s thrush as it sings on its way to more northern woodlands.  I hear this lovely song for a couple of weeks before their migration is over in this part of the flyway.

For me lately, though, I’d have to pick the Carolina wren as my favorite ‘yard bird.‘  Such a great little critter with such a big voice!  

We’ve had a few birdhouses posted at our Wild Grace homestead for years now, but they don’t get nesting customers every year.  Male Carolina wrens, I have learned, build a number of nests and then let the female pick the one she feels best about.  We’ve seen a few wren nests about, one even in a small open drawer in the garage.  All have been made beautifully out of lacy leaves and mosses, but few have been populated.  

Well, this spring, Ms. Carolina picked the bird box just off our front porch.  It was fun watching mom and dad haul in food and haul out the bad stuff.  One of the two would sing loudly as the other approached the box.  Maybe the song got the little ones’ digestive juices going in anticipation.  Maybe the folks were just plain proud of their kids.  Don’t know, but it was fun to watch and listen. 

Around Memorial Day when we thought the young wrens were about ready to fledge, I noticed a young face at the bird box opening looking out.  It shifted from time to time, seemingly just trying to figure out what was expected next.  We sat on the porch for some time watching and waiting for that moment of truth, but we missed it.  That evening I took a peek inside the box and saw three beautiful little heads still there, each with that bright white eye bar.  By the next evening, the box was empty of little ones. 

I love the hummingbirds that fight over the sweetwater on the back porch.  I love the stark black and yellow of American goldfinches who still visit the thistle feeder.  I rather enjoy watching robins splash around in the bird bath out back.  

But this year, I’m really appreciating the beauty of the Carolina wren family who graced us with staying at our place.  All the best out there, kids!  ;-)  

Today’s elder idea:   Tweedaddle, tweedaddle, tweedaddle, tweet

The morning message of carolina wrens as heard from our bedroom window.

Image: Carolina wren by Laura Meyers (2010) / http://www.laurameyers.com 

Used without permission.

Digital world

I entered the digital age back in 1985 or ’86, as I recall.  Up until that time, any correspondence I produced was on a typewriter and all photography was shot on film.  I even built black & white darkrooms in most houses I’ve owned and must humbly admit, some prints I souped back then still look pretty good.  My music, of course, was still on phonograph records, though Wikipedia tells me music on compact discs was available as early as 1982.   

I wouldn’t call myself a luddite, but I don’t embrace new technology all that quickly.  Truth is I’ve never had lots of money, and new technology, at least at its inception, is almost always pricy.  As mentioned on these pages previously, when I finished my masters degree in the mid-80s, I treated myself to a new electric typewriter when I could have bought myself an up-and-coming computer.   

Oh, but how things are different now.  The vinyl record collection still exists, but it is relegated to the furnace room stacked in boxes and selected few albums are played only on special occasions.  Music these days is all on my computer.   I still like to buy physical CDs for the liner notes, but most of my new music purchases are through iTunes or Amazon music. 

Photography, likewise, has gone completely digital for me.  The darkroom is now the train room on the lower level of the house, and I’ve done what I can to scan slides and negatives from the old days into usable digital images.  When I retired almost ten years ago, I made a big investment for a Nikon scanner thinking I could translate all of my best analog stuff into digital.  Unfortunately, such hasn’t worked out as well as I had hoped.  

The printed word was the first to go digital for me.  Good old AppleWorks was packaged on that first Apple IIe we bought for the kids, and boy did I enjoy learning how that program could allow me to create lovely classroom documents without having to fix things with WhiteOut.  Those were the days! 

But things have gotten much more complicated these days and I’m not happy about it.  

Steve Jobs professed years ago how the desktop computer would become the digital entertainment hub in every home.  Music, photography, data -- even movies -- would be accessible there for the whole family’s use. 

I’m here to tell you that day has come at our house.  Most times that’s just fine, but lately it has caused quite a headache.  

As all faithful readers of The Back Porch know, I’m a Mac guy.  Always have been.  Never regretted it.  Back last winter, though, I decided it was time to increase the size of my iMac’s hard drive, giving it more room to do what it needed to do.  My computer was about three years old and needed the upgrade.  

To make a long story short, the new, bigger drive failed within five months of installation.  All data was lost.  But never fear:  I had Time Machine on my system and all data was backed-up.  

Or so I thought.  

Through a comedy of errors, the new hard drive installed on my system was not loaded properly by the local technician.  While my data appears to be okay, the applications I rely on (word processing, photography, printing, and tons of others) appear to be lost.  It would seem applications don’t get backed up on the back-up drive.  All I can say is Why not?  

I write this today on my laptop computer because my desktop machine doesn’t know how to open word documents.  It doesn’t know what to do with most of my data, unfortunately, and I fret over what important stuff I rely on in my life that may be lost forever.  

I’ve been here before and it isn’t very comfortable.  In the past, I could berate myself for not backing up my data.  But I learned my lesson and do, in fact, back everything up both at home and at an on-line service.  

But I’m still not whole after a month of trying to fix things and I am not a happy camper.  

If I could, I’d drop the whole digital world thing and do my tasks another way.  But that would make me feel like I was a real luddite and to be honest, when things work, digital stuff is a whole lot of fun.  And darned useful. 

So I feel pretty stuck and cranky today.  Sure, I have my laptop to keep me going, but all of my original photos, poems, essays, and most of my blogs are locked inside the iMac on my desk and are inaccessible.  I head down to the Apple Store in Cincinnati tomorrow morning to see if some Genius there can fix me.  

But in the meantime, I wonder what I have lost by depending on electronics so much.  Right now it feels like I’ve suffered through a house fire where most of my important possessions have been lost.  

It doesn’t feel very comfortable from where I sit on the back porch today, I can assure you.

How’s the digital world working for you?  

Today’s elder idea:  Logic is an organized procedure for going wrong with confidence and certainty.

Charles F. Kettering

Prayer flags

One of the thought provoking things I brought back from Crestone, Colorado on that first trip in summer 2009 was a set of Tibetan prayer flags.  I don’t remember knowing about them prior, and I do love to bring something of places where I’ve been home with me as talisman.  And they’re colorful.  I mean, I did come face to face with them in Colorado, after all.  

From pictures I’ve seen since I acquired my set of prayer flags, looks like a body ought to have a whole string of ‘em, letting them cover lots of linear space.  I suppose if they are prayer flags, multiple flags would only multiply the prayers.  Can’t be a bad idea.  

My string of flags consisted of eight individual flags, a set of four duplicated.  Each had an Eastern-world line drawing printed with a message in a lovely script I couldn’t decipher.  At the bottom of one flag, in English, was written ‘Knowledge’; on another, ‘Prosperity’; on another, ‘Long Life’; on the last, another lovely wish that somehow escapes me.  

Part of the problem here is that I took down my prayer flags.  You may have noticed the past tense verbs in the paragraph above.  It was just that after hanging on the back porch for a couple of Ohio winters, the line broke and I figured at the time that what was left wasn’t long enough to tie another string to, so down from the canopy pipes they came.  

Did I throw the things away?  Maybe.  I just went searching for the injured litany of wishes in all the places where I keep back porch stuff with no luck.  

And now the big query:  Is one allowed to throw prayer flags away?  

Right now as I sit here on the back porch with my laptop glowing in the fading daylight, I wonder what I’ve done and what karma might come of it.  

I’m really not that concerned about it because, after all, flags are only fabric.  The beauty of the flags is the state of mind they engender in the people whose space they inhabit.  Even in their absence, my set of prayer flags have me thinking, so regardless of where they are, they have made me mindful of their purpose, and therein is their being.   

One of the things I learned about the flags when they came into my life was that as they weathered in their place and they began to fray, the loose threads would spread the prayer intentions to the four winds.  By the time the support string holding my prayers together failed, some threads had, indeed, departed the mother flag and had drifted off into Wild Grace.  It felt good to see them as they blessed my space.  

I do miss them.  

They were replaced, in a way, by a much smaller set received this week from an organization the Dali Lama is currently promoting.  In a fundraising letter I got from His Holiness a few days ago, a small, mailable set of prayer flags was included.  I did, in fact, unpackage the set and immediately set them free in the local air, hanging them on the canopy pipes at the other end of the porch.  

Which got me to thinking about the flags all over again.  Ergo, this blog entry. 

In the winter, the old set of prayer flags were open to the elements:  wind, snow, rain, whatever.  As I recall, it was the winter that took them down.  

But in summer, they -- as does this new set -- resided under the canopy, out of the sun and rain.  They got breezes okay, but not the tough, fading stuff of Nature.  

Is that how prayers should be handled:  protected from the elements?  

Sure got me to thinking...

In any case, when I return to Crestone this summer for a week with Cindy Lou, Noah, and our young friend Adel, you can count on my buying a handful of sets of prayer flags.  Just seems like the right thing to do.  They’ll be colorful reminders of a prayerful, sacred place that I like to be reminded of as often as I can.  

The Rockies are a good place to be.  Crestone especially.

Today’s elder idea:  

The Colorado rocky mountain high

I’ve seen it raining fire in the sky

You can talk to God and listen to his casual reply

Rocky mountain high

John Denver

‘Rocky Mountain High’ (1972)

image:  From goodfortune.co.nz via Yahoo image search.  Pretty cool, eh? 

Memorial Day 2011

This Memorial Day afternoon Cindy Lou and I trekked over to the National Cemetery at the Veterans Administration in Dayton to visit with her buried father and place an American flag at his headstone.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.  I stopped by my father’s place at Calvary Cemetery late last week to place a World War II marker with a flag at his place.  I was too late, though.  One of my sibs beat me to it.  Thanks to whoever that was.  

Yesterday at the National Cemetery was particularly special because lots of folks were there to appreciate the place dressed up for the patriotic occasion.  Every grave on the property had a flag already in place which, according to the newspaper, totaled 46,000 Old Glories.  Impressive, indeed.  And to make the grounds even more lovely, larger American flags mounted on poles were erected every 50 feet or so along both sides of every road in the cemetery.   

It is duly important to remember our fathers and mothers and friends who served our nation on Memorial Day.  It is good to remember all our dead, to be sure, but especially those who gave up a chunk of their lives for lousy pay and a dangerous gig to keep all of us at home safe and able to practice a life with the freedoms we have come to expect.

I was lucky not to have to serve in the military.  I’m sure that sounds self-serving, and I guess it is.  It’s not that I didn’t want to serve when my time came.  Dad told plenty of stories that made me proud of his service, and hailing from the Birthplace of Aviation, I suppose in different circumstances, I would have been damned excited to do time with the United States Air Force.  It’s just that for me the Vietnam war was going on, and by the time I signed up for my draft card, I had a very bad feeling about that conflict.  Instead, I went to college and got my degree and went on to serve my time as a public school educator.  I’ve always hoped my dad understood.  

I write this today because it is, indeed, important to remember our veterans and celebrate their sacrifice.  But something else happened at the National Cemetery yesterday that moved me deeply.  

As we pulled up to the corner of Kansas and Texas avenues, which is where we park to visit Cindy’s dad, I noticed a guy, probably about my age, standing back on the other side of the street taking a picture.  If I had kept going, my car very easily could have screwed up his photograph.  So we waited.  

He took a long time composing a seemingly easy landscape shot, but no problem.  We weren’t in any big hurry.  He didn’t even seem to notice us.  When he finished, we pulled around the corner, parked, and then walked up under the big spruce tree that provides the former First Lieutenant Ralph Thomas Cooke with shade on a sunny day.  

A young woman was standing there under the tree, talking with an older man not far from where Cindy’s dad is interred.  They were not distracted by our searching for the right headstone, as they were deep in storytelling about the one fallen and buried there.  Cindy placed a second flag at her dad’s place and stood there a while in thought.  After a couple of minutes, she was ready to leave.  

On the short walk back to the car, I felt odd walking over the headstones of fallen soldiers.  As soon as we reached a wider easement between the stones, we followed it to stay out of other’s sacred space.  

Just as we got to the road, I noticed the guy who had taken the landscape shot of the headstones a few minutes earlier.  He was hovering over a marker with a few keepsakes, trying to take a close-up shot.  As I often do when I notice a person taking a picture he or she should be in, too, I walked over and asked if I could take a picture with him in the shot.  He was grateful.  

He smiled at me a bit sheepishly when I recognized one of the memory pieces he brought to his dad’s grave site was roll of toilet paper inscribed with ‘RIP.‘  He grinned and said his father had died on the toilet and that he would appreciate the tp since he always had such a great sense of humor.  We both laughed easily.

The guy hunched down over his father’s stone and I snapped off a couple of quick pics for him.  I couldn’t tell what his expression was since the sun was so bright.  I could hardly make out anything in the viewfinder.  But I could tell the shot was pretty balanced and knew whatever I got would be okay.  

When the man approached to reclaim his camera, he gave me the biggest bearhug I’ve had in a while.  I never got his name.  I never got his father’s name.  All I know is he was grateful to be there with his dad and pleased that he had a picture of it.  He gave Cindy a big hug, too.

I’ve been through many Memorial Days in my 61 years.  I’ve listened to plenty of Indianapolis 500s on the radio as a kid on family picnics at Lake Loramie or at a cookout in our family’s backyard.  But this year I got a hug from a very moved stranger I’ll never see again, coming from however far away to be at his father’s grave site on Memorial Day.  It’s a memory I’ll treasure for as long as I can. 

Today’s elder idea:  There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream.  They are right.  It is the American dream.  

American poet Archibald MacLeish

image:  Monument at Dayton’s National Cemetery

The feel of America

I started this entry earlier today, then trashed it.  I began trying to explain how I don’t understand what the GOP/Tea Partiers/Libertarians have against most of America. 

You know, take workplace power away from public employees, privatize Medicare, further restrict access to abortion, cut taxes for the rich, expect the middle and lower echelons of earners to pay more, and whatever you do, DON’T RAISE TAXES, even if state and federal budgets require it.  See, there I go again.  I just don’t understand it. 

The kernel of the idea for this entry came a few days ago in quiet response to a conservative Facebook post from a friend who celebrated something about the sanctity of the US Constitution. 

And I thought, “You know, I love the Constitution.  It was a beautiful idea whose time had come.  It is a tribute to Enlightenment thinkers in the ‘old country’ and our very own founding fathers.  It has been copied by so many nations around the world.  We should be proud!’ 

And I am.  Still, I thought, it isn’t the Constitution that lights me up about this place.  It’s something else.  It’s something somehow richer.

First, the Constitution is a flawed document.  Looking at the original with the clauses struck out through amendments, shows how much actually has been changed.  I mean, those guys back then counted black folks as two-thirds of a white American.  I’m sure most of them thought that was a revolutionary liberal accomplishment.  

For me, America is something beyond a document.  America, for me, has a certain feel.  It’s a feel that anybody can be anything she or he wants.  It’s a feel that kids won’t go to bed hungry and that anybody who wants to go to college can.  It’s a feel that everybody ought to have a good job.  Everybody ought to vote.  We all should pull together to be sure even the least among us has opportunity.  

Maybe those ideas are glorified in the Declaration of Independence, but they don’t really come through in the Constitution.  The Constitution is about law, as it should be.  My America is about fairness and doing what’s best for the people. 

America today, I am sorry to say, is really run by global corporations.  Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said just this week that the business of Congress is controlled by corporate money.  In another day we said, “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.”  Now it’s more like what’s good for GE, Mobile-Exxon, and Bank of America is good for America.  Legislation comes to be because some corporation wants a favor from the government:  a tax break, a tax loophole, an angle on a growing market, reduction of competition, taking power away from workers.  

I don’t like it.  It doesn’t seem fair.  And I’m amazed at the ability of newly elected folks to get their agenda going.  

I just want to know how much of this is what Americans want and how much of this is what the folks who lobby politicians want?  They are not mutually compatible.    

America for me isn’t the Constitution, though it is surely important. 

America for me is the place where people are treated fairly and with respect and can achieve impossible dreams.  

I get the feeling that in today’s political climate, some very important impossible dreams achieved by our foremothers and forefathers are being reduced to make life more profitable for corporations.  

And I find that damned depressing.  

Today’s elder idea:

O, let America be America again--

The land that never has been yet--

And yet must be--the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, 

Negro's, ME--

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

excerpt from Langston Hughes

“Let America Be America Again”

image:  stolen off the internet

NASA and Dayton

I’ve had notes on my desk for the last couple of weeks for a blog entry on NASA and the end of space shuttle flights.  Then just an hour ago this morning, Endeavour blasted off on its last voyage, piloted by Fairborn’s own Greg Johnson.  So I guess there’s no time like the present for a few remarks about NASA -- and Dayton. 

1.  First, a beautiful launch today of STS-134 Endeavour even on a rather cloudy Florida morning.  When Cindy and I were in Florida for the February 2010 Endeavour launch, weather was clear as a bell for the second launch attempt.  Story was orbiter engine glow was visible over 700 miles downrange, which put the spaceship and its crew on an east-west line with Cape Hatteras.  That was impressive!  Today, however, the ship disappeared into a low cloud cover within a few seconds of lift-off.  I hope the estimated 400,000 witnesses gathered to watch weren’t too disappointed with the view.

The commander of this voyage, as you probably know, is Mark Kelly, husband of Arizona U.S Representative Gabrielle Giffords.  Story was Ms. Giffords was able to travel to the Kennedy Space Center from her rehab work Houston yesterday to witness her husband and crew ride the space shuttle ‘candle’ on the fleet’s penultimate voyage.  I hear she was accompanied by Greg Johnson’s family and others on the flight from Texas.  

Best of luck to the Endeavour crew.  They have a few spacewalks to perform to outfit the International Space Station for the long haul, and the super-snazzy Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to install on the station.  The AMS will measure space particles that we never see on earth because our atmosphere eradicates ‘em on the way down.  Some cool science should come from this experiment, maybe even some new data on mysterious ‘dark energy.’  Some folks say what the AMS will show us might be comparable to what Hubble has done.  Now that’s a tall order!  We’ll just have to wait and see.

 2.  It’s an old topic now, but the National Museum of the United States Air Force here in Dayton was not awarded one of the orbiters going into retirement this summer.  Damn.  Sure was hoping for one of those, especially Atlantis, which has flown more Air Force payloads than either Discovery or Endeavour.   Sure would have been good to have had her in a hanger over at the Springfield Street museum.  Not to be, though.  

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown was very unhappy with the decision to pass on Dayton, to instead locate all four retired vehicles in facilities on an American coast (Washington DC, New York City, Kennedy Space Center, and Los Angeles).  I’m disappointed, too.  Too bad.  Senator Brown is asking for an investigation.  

Still, the AF Museum will get some engines, tires, and some trainer equipment.  If we had gotten Atlantis, as cool as that would have been, we would have been able to only stand and look at it, like so many other static exhibits at the museum.  This way, I’m hoping we’ll all get a chance to interact with shuttle apparatus when it gets here.  Besides, placing shuttles where they are going gives us Midwesterners other good destinations to visit on trips to the space coast of Florida, the Big Apple, the nation’s capital, and the City of Angels.  We’ll survive.  

 3.  It has always bothered me that Time Warner Cable, the cable monopoly that services Dayton, never offered NASA TV.  I mean, the government feed is free, for pete’s sake, and Dayton is the home of aviation, after all.  With all the junk on cable, I could never figure out why Time Warner opted not to offer NASA TV in this market.  An Air Force friend told me Time Warner didn’t even offer NASA TV in Houston.  Who knew?  

So for a year or so, Cindy let me acquire our home television signal from Dish Network, which offered NASA TV.  I want to tell you, I’d spend most days eating my lunch in front of the set getting caught up on whatever NASA wanted to show me.  Every day at 11 am Eastern, we’d get an hour update from the ISS, as well as getting a number of good science programs for kids.  And when a shuttle was in orbit, we’d get 24/7 coverage.  Very cool.  

But whenever it rained or snowed heavily, we’d lose the satellite signal and be without the Dish feed.  Seemed pretty goofy to lose the television feed when the weather got bad.  So back to Time Warner we went last summer. 

But I wrote Time Warner a letter, telling them what they were missing by not offering NASA TV.  A couple of times a got a person on the phone and I complained.  

‘Did you say, Nascar?  We offer Nascar,’  I heard more than once.  No, not Nascar.  NASA.  

Then one day just a month ago, we got a knock on the front door from a local Time Warner employee who wanted to stop by to tell us that NASA TV was now offered in the Dayton market.  It must have been his wife, also a company employee, who heard one of my complaints.  When she heard the company expanded offerings to include NASA TV, she wanted to be sure we got word personally. 

I was duly impressed.  I take back all the nasty stuff I’ve said about Time Warner not offering NASA for all these years.  True, we get charged an additional five bucks a month for NASA and the other few channels offered on that ‘tier,’ but I’ll take it!  

An extra special thanks, too, to those couple of Dayton neighbors working for Time Warner who went the extra mile to tell me personally about the new offering.  Who says big companies have to be impersonal?  Thanks again.

Today’s elder idea:  ...three, two, one, zero -- and liftoff for the final launch of Endeavour, expanding our knowledge and expanding our lives in space. 

NASA Television announcer

16 May 2011