STORM CLOUDS--

The awesome beauty and power of Nature arrived just west of my home one recent evening. I was near the lagoon and fiddling with some images of a wild grass plant when I heard the most basic of storm warnings—an ominous rumble of thunder.

I turned my surprised attention around and was rewarded with the above tapestry.

An immature but rapidly growing Cumulonimbus cloud provided the pallet for the sun to push its diagonal rays through the rapidly waning, clear evening skies.

This one was a mere child. A mature, towering cumulous thunderstorm can exceed 60,000 feet in size; twice the height of Mt. Everest.

Soon scattered raindrops dimpled the pond, then, God dumped the buckets as I doubled over to protect my camera and scurried for the house.

Max was waiting under the eve that somewhat protects the front step and his mildly, scolding stare seemed to inquire, “What kept ya’”?

OLD FLYING YARN...

...and a moonlit tropical beach

My bride and I were on the Bahamian island of Inagua years ago where I was working on my multi-engine flight rating.

That night it was just like you might have imagined. The moon was low in the western sky and making undulating sparkles in the slowly pulsating ocean swells. At regular intervals the lighthouse on the point would cast a glow on the rocky, shoreline while the vacant beach beckoned a pair of young lovers.

We chuckled as my bride and I left the lighthouse road and scampered down through the scattered saw grass, then, climbed slowly over the rocks as the nearby waves gently slapped our beach.

We whispered those sweet nothings as we allowed the ambiance to smother our willing senses.

Then--it was just like you might imagine.

Some years later I was flying as the instrument qualified pilot with a local doctor in his Piper Aztec. We were southeast bound in the cool air at 9,000 feet between West Palm Beach, FL and Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

That same lighthouse began to pass under us far below. It was arriving just in time as I checked off another correctly estimated leg of our flight. I said, “Doc, you’ll never guess what I was doing the last time I saw that lighthouse.”

As he looked at me curiously I felt a sharp thump through the bottom of my seat as my bride, who was sitting behind me on this flight, silently announced her preference for my discretion.

I obliged by a smooth change of subject.

When I looked back I was rewarded with a chaste wink.

CJ and an evening of vibrant rhythm...Jim and Marianna on their Red Neck Yacht-of-the-evening, Jazz Express...Marianna “rehearsing” her choir of Ring Billed Gulls.

AHHH; THE GOOD LIFE--

It was one of those enchanted evenings that has been firmly embossed in my memory.

Picture this: A pontoon boat ride across a placid, sun drenched lake with friends whose presence is always a treasure. The destination--a casual mooring leading to a walk in bucolic woods to a prime restaurant and a dining experience punctuated by classy, jazz music.

Marianna Basting tossed treats to a flock of gulls as husband Jim gently piloted us to the impromptu dock area of The Cabin restaurant down below Mifflin.

Our table was “stage” front where local jazz icon Dr. Tom Croghan was already sharing his keyboard magic. Our waiter, Larry, was the Basting’s favorite. I wondered if Jim had generously tipped an invisible Maitre ‘de.

Soon CJ arrived, a bundle of smoothly vibrating rhythm with a voice that had a range from New Orleans to Tahiti.

He and Croghan made music with a casual flair like two guys long acquainted. They ooze music. It’s not rehearsed. It’s a live happening. It’s jazz candy, delicious to the senses and the soul.

We ate and listened and clapped and listened some more. My shoes wanted to dance. I was enveloped in the warm fuzzies of an experience that life only occasionally awards.

Afterward, the plan was to float back to the Basting’s home with a setting sun on the bow. Actually, our lanterns bounced jiggling shadows off the trees as we mellowed our return to the boat long after sunset.

We wound up rafting Jim’s boat port side to a neighbor’s houseboat and enjoyed a boisterous, nautical frolic as we glided home through the moonlit semi-darkness.

My meal, you ask? A small fillet with all the trimmings, of course.

An enchanted evening indeed.

DAYLIGHT IS DECREASING--

Now that we have passed the Summer Solstice our days are getting shorter. Why?

The sun's latitude changes. That’s why.

The sun lights about half of the planet at any moment. As the Earth turns, we enter the lit area, experience a day, and then leave the lit area. When the sun is toward the south, our path through the lit zone has a shorter length. When the sun is toward the north, the lit path has a longer length.

Accordingly, at the Summer Solstice when the sun is highest in our sky our days are longest. Then, the sun starts to head back south and our days begin to shorten. On the Winter Solstice, the sun is farthest south and our days are shortest.

Maybe it is easiest to understand this way: Remember extreme effects occur at the North and South Poles. When the sun is farthest north (our summer) there are 24 hours of daylight at Santa’s house. The opposite occurs in our winter—there are 24 hours of darkness up there.

Consequently, the length of our days change as the sun is making this annual migration back and forth. There, it’s just that simple.

Editor’s note: For those of you with greater scientific curiosity you realize, of course, there are many other things involved: the Earth is tipped 23.5 degrees, it wobbles and precesses in its elliptical orbit, and it takes us 365¼ days to orbit the sun, a fractional inconvenience that imposes the concept of leap year.

You may even note the omission of sidereal and synodic days or the plane of the ecliptic from this discussion, or, mention of how an analemma explains the variation in the rate of change of the length of our days.

While these are very interesting topics to explore, the inclusion of too many facts can sometimes get in the way of comfortable understanding. I chose to present this topic with any error of omission being in favor of both brevity and clarity.

Blurred by speed, a cyclist takes the checkered flag at the Vintage Motorcycle Days at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course last weekend.

RACING FOLLOW-UP—

In the earlier post on this event I mentioned our $35 tickets and nobody collecting them at the back entrance gate. To that, my oldest son, Brian, quipped, “It’s going to make it difficult for me to sell my other ticket.” He was kidding, naturally. He had four tickets as a gift from a business friend and managed to rustle up three of us to enjoy the day—including his helper Adam.

* * *

After devouring our lunch at the kiosk’s picnic table, we discussed heading for our favorite race viewing area and stood up, nearly in unison. There was a concurrent, squawking commotion and I turned around to see what was causing the ruckus. Our three rather rotund tablemates, seated on the opposite side were making a Herculean effort to free themselves from the capsizing table.
We offered our profound apologizes as six guys enjoyed our dose of poor table engineering with a collective laugh.

* * *

For you photo enthusiasts the above picture is an example of using shutter speed to create the illusion of motion in a still photo. I ran the digital SLR on the manual setting and pre-selected a shutter speed of 1/1,000 of a second with the appropriate aperture for correct exposure. While there is minimal shutter operation lag in these higher end cameras I still turned off other automatic functions like auto-focus because I needed an instant reaction from the camera.

As the bike approached the finish line I sighted the camera with my right eye through the viewfinder and, watching the action with my left eye, tripped the shutter the instant the bike came into view. A little bit of human and camera lag placed the bike ideally in the composition.

A slower shutter speed likely would have made the racer blurred beyond recognition and a faster shutter speed likely would have diminished the illusion of speed. The easiest way to determine the correct shutter speed is to do some test shots during the race.

* * *

While walking through a camping area I had eye contact with a fellow who promptly offered me a political brochure and explained swiftly, “Ron Paul needs your vote for President he’s the candidate who wants to abolish the IRS.”

That’s certainly a catchy way to get someone’s attention.

I made a careful comparison of this fellow’s visage to the brochure photo. Nah, wasn’t the candidate, just an enthusiastic supporter. I wondered why Paul’s candidacy was failing to ignite much national interest while we chatted for a few minutes.

Regardless, this fellow certainly received my “A grade” for grassroots political effort.

* * *

I noted a couple of other things that spoke to the classiness of this racing event. There was an astonishing lack of trash spewed about on the ground. Twice, I even saw parents escorting toddlers to trash containers for an early lesson on being friendly to our Earth.

And, at the conclusion of each heat, the track marshals in the infield would signal an enthusiastic “thumbs up” to the contestants for their gentlemanly and spirited performance. Real class!

Sorry readers. Of late I am experiencing all kinds of difficulty with the formatting of my posts. In today's post on viewing the International Space Station I have found it impossible to get the text to appear correctly. With luck, I will return tomorrow with a new subject.

--Terry

A WALK IN A SMALL TOWN--

I was hoofing it around the village of Butler the other morning. The Jeep was in Weekley’s garage getting some last minute repairs before I delivered it to its new owner.

I had read my library book for awhile—until my butt began to protest the park bench hardness—then, I was simply amusing myself by poking around the back alleys of the town.

Up there on Henry St., I was pondering my next turn when I encountered a lady about my age who came hustling up the hill on 5th Ave. with a well used binder under her arm. I could tell that by all the yellow Post-Its sticking out.

My cheery “Good Morning” led to a discussion and it turned out we knew each other, from somewhere in our distant pasts.

The binder she was carrying was a well-thumbed copy of the town’s zoning ordinances and she was on her way to share her notes with a cohort regarding the town’s current dispute.

The controversy involved another lady running a very well populated cat shelter in an area of residential zoning. “She’s doing the right thing with all those cats,” she told me with a wrinkled nose, “She’s simply doing it in the wrong place.”

Turns out I also knew the lady where she was headed so I wandered along and listened to her informed analysis of the town’s peculiarities, both structural and human.

Her grade card for the town’s council wasn’t like one you would want your youngster to bring home from elementary school. I nodded with complete understanding. And, anything the mayor manages to accomplish is usually an accident or notably to his political advantage she opined. I continued to nod my understanding.

The town’s convolutions are regular fodder in the valley’s weekly newspaper.

Up on Reeder Dr., she showed me the huge scar where a new housing development was just beginning. We don’t have enough water pressure to serve those homes yet they allowed it to be done anyhow she explained with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

The drainage infrastructure is awful too she pointed out as we walked by a house often flooded by overloaded sanitary sewers.

And, these council people either don’t have anyone with the ability to write applications for federal grants to help us with our problems, or, anyone with sufficient ambition to even try.

As we concluded our walk down Union St., I found myself pondering the town’s future with her hand firmly on the political tiller.

I didn’t have a chance to advance that theory to her but I found it mischievous to contemplate.