Blue Ribbon

The Copperstate Fly In, which is held in Casa Grande, a little South of Phoenix, every year, took place a couple of weeks ago.  The event, the forth largest of it's kind in all of the world, brings together planes and pilots from all over the country.   As the pilots wander around the airplanes they take care to examine them.  Just as an automobile aficionado would do at a Concours d'Elegance, or a shopper in front of a counter full of tomatoes, they rate them.

Now here are as sorry a looking bunch of tomato raters  as I've  ever seen.  Starting from the left there's David, Randy, Doug, Roger C., Ron, Roger S. and some dude hiding under a hat and behind sunglasses.  I'm betting the law is looking for that one - probably lawmen from several different states.   

All kidding aside,  several of these guys have built their own airplanes from scratch, a couple of others have torn apart and rebuilt their factory produced aircraft, there's a master mechanic and machinist in the group, and an A&P rated mechanic is with the bunch of them, as they rest under the wing and around the side of Jeff's bird.  Ya'd never know it just by looking, but if you were to spend an hour with anyone of them you'd quickly realize they are the cream of the people who have earned the right to call themselves pilots.   They KNOW airplanes, and willingly share their knowledge and will always lend a hand.     

Experienced judges who help to plan and host the event also look at the planes that flew in  - and their eyes are much more discerning.  You see, not only have they bought tomatoes, just like the group pictured above, they've grown them. This year a buddy of mine, Jeff Scott, was judged to have produced the  "Best Custom Built Replica" aircraft at the show and brought a little extra weight back with him on the way home.  A blue ribbon and  a wall plaque celebrating his work. 

The winner.

You folks have seen this airplane several times before on this blog.  Always before I have marveled at the quality of work that went into building it.  Seems another qualified group of Aviation Experts agrees with my assessment.  Way to go, Jeff.

Now, I have a favor to ask of you, big guy.  Can you hang the plaque on the hanger wall to the right of the Choo-Choo and to the left of the Luckenbach sign?

Thanks.

If ya want to see more of Jeff's work, follow the link  http://jscott.comlu.com/Cub/completed/Completed.html

Sailing - Again

Ya know, it's a little after one o'clock in the morning and I'm sitting at my keyboard in my birthday suit and the shampoo is still in my hair.  I didn't bother to rinse yet.  No matter, the shower will be there when I finish this, and I'll bet my hair will be none the worse for enduring the two hours or so I plan on sitting in front of my keyboard.  Ya just never know when you're gonna have to write.

My life can be measured in decades - and the years of those decades ending in "9" seem to dominate the period.  1969 was the year of the witch and close friends will know about that episode.  Discussing the witch will only give power to a force I have already dealt with and do not wish to re-energize. 1989 was the year I met Carolyn, and my life changed dramatically when that happened.  1999 was the year I took what would be the last job in a long and varied career.  2009 was the year we found out about Carolyn.  Even though I did not recognize it at the time, all these years were turning points in my life.

You may have noticed I skipped over the year 1979.  That year a friend introduced me to the music of Christopfer Cross - and one of the songs he wrote that got a bunch of air time a little later, changed my life.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQeqmNbA2Hs 

Every circumstance you can imagined had changed in my life between 1979 and 1983 - as it had in Chris's.  He will not know the change he brought to my life, but I remembered the song he wrote and when I found myself on the beach in Ventura, California I checked to see if he was right .  He had said "The canvas can do miracles.  Just you wait and see.  Believe me."  So I bought a boat.

 I also read a book around that time; it's title was "Dove."  The tale was one of a 16 year old kid who had sailed around the world singlehanded in a twenty some odd foot boat.  Well, now I had Chris's song, a twenty-six foot boat and a dream.  I learned to sail and took my little boat far out into the Pacific Ocean. 

I took it so far out into that Sea that a week or more would pass from the time I lost sight of land until it reappeared.  I dreamed of ocean passages - fame and fortune beyond my wildest belief was there in front of my fingers. So I did the natural thing for me at the time - I managed to get wasted and sank the boat.  Fame is such a fleeting thing.

But the dream did not die.  A couple of days ago I talked with a friend for several hours.  It was much as Lewis Carrol's "The Walrus and The Carpenter."  We talked "of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings."  We talked of many things, and I was reminded once more of the dream.  To sail around the world in my own small boat. 

It's nice to nourish a dream, and if my life really takes on more significance in the year of the decade ending in "9". that's when I expect it to happen.  2019. 

I'll be 74 years old in that year, so I hope that's the year the voyage ends, not the year it starts.  For sure the voyage will be made.  With my friends to encourage me, even though I have not named them in my will, I know it will happen.

And all of you - feed your dreams.  Make them last a while and savor them for decades.  They will keep you alive during hard times and will be your salvation when the hard times are finished.

Chris was right "The canvas can do miracles."  But I'm thinking there are more canvases than those that are hanked onto forestays.  There's a dream for everone.  Find it.

Right Now

To all of you who have expressed concern at my failure to post in the last two weeks, thank you.  We are OK here, but trying hard to adjust to some new symptoms of Carolyn's condition.  We are coping, and adapting.  She's is better at it than I am - I've taken to looking at sailing vessels.

It's an escape, dreaming of blue water, ya know?  And it's so much easier than being here right now.  If you've ever been alone on the open ocean in a small boat by yourself you'll understand.  I expect most of you will just scratch your head and then look up the phone number for the nearest bunch of guys with straight jackets who can jump to my rescue.

No big deal;  I've been crazy most of my life and have learned to deal with that quirk in interesting and useful ways.  It is Carolyn's condition that makes life in this house so scary that I run from it.  No matter, she is coping well and I try to help. 

I do not want this blog to turn into a "Woe is us" kind of thing so I've taken the easy way out.  I've stopped writing.  I'm full of tales but all of them are of interest to only the two of us and a wider audience would be quickly bored.

I write this short note because several good and decent people have written me privately, inquiring about our circumstances, and offering their best wishes and help.  Thank you.  All of you.  I did not know how many cared so much. 

I will continue the blog but for now am overwhelmed and instead of writing I am enjoying pictures of Morgan 50's and Beneteau 44's.  One other thing - I am being productive - seems I've lost the ability to tie most of the knots I learned so long ago.  I'm relearning them in preparation for the time they will again be useful.

The Tenth Muse

In ancient times there were only three Muses.  Then the number was increased to seven and later to nine.  That was all we needed for several millinia to rule over the human arts, all of them.  Calliope ruled the art of Writing, Cleo ordered History, Erato was in charge of Love and it's poems. 

Those are the three we mostly speak of these days, but there are six more of them that were given to us by the Ancient Ones, and these six ruled Song, Tragedy, Hymns, Dance, Comedy and Astronomy.  The Greeks gave them to us, and all of the Human Experience could be covered under the roof provided by one or another of them from before Homer's time until the last half of the twentieth century.

Then a man was born who changed all this.  He created another discipline, one that was a marriage of both the written and the spoken word and technology.   The technology he expanded upon had been created in his childhood and his genius brought it into the everyday life of people around our planet.

First, Steve Jobs gave every average man the power to calculate thousands of times faster than our fathers could ever have dreamed of, and to store and retrieve more information than anyone could have imagined.  But he wasn't satisfied with that accomplishment.  Next he gave us the tools to use that ability at any time and at any place on the planet we chose, and also made it possible for us to use those tools to share our thoughts and ideas, either orally or by the use of written words, with any other person on the planet - as long as the other person was similarly prepared.  What he gave to us no longer fits any of the tasks assigned to the Muses we have. 

Because of Steve Jobs, we need a tenth Muse.  One who oversees his marriage of science and communication.  His contribution to humanity is so unique it fits nowhere else in all of the Human Experience.  I would suggest Steve for the job, but he was of the wrong sex and, as we all found out just yesterday, merely a mortal.

Steve's place in history is assured.  Some unrecorded hero gave us the Wheel, Prometheus gave us Fire.    Oppenheimer put the power of the Sun in our hands and Steve Jobs put an all knowing and powerful Mind in our heads.  Well done, to all of you.

Now, someone much smarter than I needs to give us a new Muse to control the power he bestowed.

Cowboy

There's group of folks on Face book who grew up more or less at the same time as I.  We lost track of each other for years but lately have had a lot of contact.  It's a ton of fun, and recently there have been several posts about the Cowboy Way.  Ya know - campfires, star filled nights, honor, all the stuff ya see in the movies.

Well, not quite everything - I don't think anybody has mentioned shooting Indians yet, but it may be there somewhere and I managed to miss the discussion.  I have to pay more attention to putting my socks on right side out these days, and my attention span is a little shorter than it used to be.  Something's got to give - usually it's something on my computer screen.

All the talk of cowboys brought to mind the only REAL cowboy I've ever known, a guy named Billy.  I've known a bunch of dudes who rode horses, owned horses and ranches, or just had a Resistol Hat and a pair of boots.  At one time or another in my life, I've done all three.  All that stuff has in no way made a cowboy of me, and all the other guys with that stuff were the same.  Wannabes.  Billy was for real. 

I met him back in the mid to late 80's while visiting my sister.  She and her husband owned a livestock transportation company, based out of Del Rio, TX  at the time, and the business put them in contact with a bunch of rowdy characters.  Billy was one of them, and he hung around the house a lot.  It might have been my sister's wonderful cooking, or her husband's home made Chili, but probably it was the indoor plumbing that kept him leaning against one or another fence.

For some reason, he and I hit it off and one day we headed across the border to Acuna, Mexico.  Twenty-five years ago a couple of guys could cross the border without first putting on a bunch of bullet-proof body armor, and since we weren't carrying around all that extra weight, it was a lot easier to have fun than it is now.

That was the start of a friendship that lasted several years.  I lived and worked in California at the time, but every year I'd head to my sister's place in Del Rio during vacations and he and I would find some sort of trouble that needed to be started.  We were pretty good at it. 

Billy was one heck of a wrangler - not the jeans, the occupation - and worked with animals most of his life.  He'd go from ranch to ranch, staying just long enough to get fed up with the foreman before moving on.  There are a lot of ranches in Texas and he could always find work.   After drifting for most of his life he finally caught a break just before I met him.

Some TV producers hired him on as a wrangler for the series "Lonesome Dove" and he made more money than at anytime before in his life.  In fact, he made enough to buy a piece of land, a good horse trailer, and when he heard the script called for a burro, he bought one of those too.  Her name was Emma, and he managed to rent her to the producers.  She was the animal the camp cook refused to ride as the herd moved from Texas to Montana during the series.

When I met him, he was living the cowboy dream.  His own land, a horse trailer to live in, an extension cord, about four or five hundred feet long, filled with electricity and a garden hose of the same length filled with water; the last two paid for by a neighbor with whom he traded his skill as a farrier.   And, for spending cash, he had Emma - the world famous TV/movie star of Lonesome Dove - who brought top dollar at the local mall parking lots giving rides to kids.  There was little government interference in his life - it's a fact that it's OK to go potty on your own land in Val Verde County, TX.  As long as you don't have running water, ya don't need a permit. 

Imagine that.  Going potty on your own land without the local government charging a fee.  Now that's a good idea.

I enjoyed his company for a while, his spirit was the freest I've known.  But, I got married and quit spending vacations in Del Rio.  My sister got divorced and moved to San Angelo.  We both lost track of Billy but I bet I can still find him camping out on his own land and trading his neighbor for lights and water. 

I guarantee he didn't get fat like I did, and if Emma has died he probably has replaced her with another Emma - and claims the new one was the movie star.  Being a cowboy has nothing to do with a slow wit - it has everything to do with working hard and being free.  Don't know if he's lonely at night now or not.  There were always plenty of ladies around back then but never one who wanted to live in a horse trailer.

He taught me being a cowboy is about not needing very much and wanting even less.  It's about taking care of yourself with your own two hands and the brain God put between your ears.  He didn't need a horse to be a cowboy - didn't want to pay for the Vet and feed.  The boss always had one if he needed to ride and, if he needed a boss for a while.  Mostly he had no use for either.  He knew more about living than about getting along and just flat didn't give a hoot about what people thought of him and his ways.

I learned a lot about life from him and hope he's well and warm.  One of these days I'm gonna look him up again.  Maybe we can find some more trouble to get into.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_a4BU09GrU

Shades of the past

This new French law is being widely reported around the Internet today.  Not so much on the Tube.  Of course, that's to be expected.  It's much more important for the American people to know if Amanda Knox will be set free, as was Willy, than to know what is happening to money around the globe.

If you care more about that than about Foxey, click on Jessies link - he may post more before you read this little note so be sure you scroll down to "Restricting Gold and Silver Sales in France"   I trust the information Jessie provides more than most, and his analysis is usually brilliant.

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/