Air Traffic Around Neptune 08/08/2010 - Blue Angels And Float Planes

The Goat, The Convent And A Mild Case Of Arrhythmia

The Goat, The Convent And A Mild Case Of Arrhythmia by nephew M.

Mom decided that we should all go to a Catholic school. I'm not sure why. We were getting good grades in the public schools. I got an A in paper mache balloon making, and my brother Steve got consistently good grades in roll call. Our little sister was doing fantastic in her "Walk to the Water Fountain and Drink" studies and all of us were able to place a right or left hand in the general area of our heart while lip sinking the Pledge of Allegiance. Mom, however, had it in her head that HER kids should be able to perform at a higher intellectual level than either Congress, or the as yet undiscovered Milly Vanilly. So it came to pass that we had to wear uniforms and actually perform to one degree or another in things like math and reading. Little sister Christie did especially well and, I think, enjoyed dressing up in plaid skirts like a Scottish Highlander. She fell in love with her teacher, Sister Marie Susanne, and the good Sister became a regular visitor at our modest farm. All of us kids called her "Sister", thus demonstrating our keen imagination and wit, and we loved her dearly. To the best of my recollection, she was a very young lady, full of life and with a ready laugh. She had a bubbly personality, a great sense of humor, and hair that always looked just like a nuns habit. She was well acquainted with our various animals, knew them all by name and occupation, and even took a lesson or two from Mom in goat milking. Poor Sister. It all went down hill for her after the goats. Our little sister had named one of our baby goats after her favorite teacher. Marie Susanne. Sister Marie Susan was tickled pink, or possibly black and white to match her uniform..... I'm not sure what the rules are for nuns. Either way, she was tickled. Some months went by and Sister continued to stop by for coffee and cake, and to check on the progress of her name sake. Well, as anyone familiar with farms would anticipate, Marie Susanne (the goat) grew up and fell madly in love with our billy goat, Jose. Not surprisingly, this passionate affair resulted in a pregnancy. While the church performed no ceremony to legitimize the offspring, a dispensation must have been given, as the mood seemed to be celebratory and nobody made any "tisking" sounds.

Sister was actually very excited about the whole thing and decided to announce the happy news over dinner at the convent. It went something like this..... While the dishes from the salad course were being removed from the table, wine was poured and Sister Marie Susanne stood and tapped her glass to get the attention of the other Sisters and the Mother Superior. "I have an announcement to make!" She said. With a huge smile and barely contained excitement she declared.....

"MARIE SUSANNE IS PREGNANT!"

There was a moment of silence followed by the sound of tea cups and wine glasses shattering on the floor. Several of the nuns present, finding themselves with empty hands, were forced to grab an item at random to drop just on principle. Realizing that clarification was needed Sister began yelling "The Goat! The Goat!" It all worked out in the end, and the Mother Superior actually got to test drive her nitroglycerin tablets. Have a great day, M.

Pygmy Goat

Pathetic Old-Tech Geezers vs. Amazing Hi-Tech Wonderkins

Here is a video showing pathetic, slow old Ham Radio guys still limping along with 170-year-old Morse Code technology vs. speedy modern kids with amazing text messaging technology... off to the races... place your bets... click on this blue link, then download the race: Technology1.wmv or click on the Tou Tube link: Wonderkins please note: There is a high volume of Ham Radio traffic from the International Space Station between astronauts and School-Age Kids Using Ham Radio.... Hams regularly converse at lightning speeds with friends and strangers around the world using Morse Code via home-built, credit-card-sized or smaller radios, with zero air-time charges. Imagine that... Telegrapher using Morse Code in the White House telegraph room during the Lincoln era. Actual size IN3 DC-RX (One-Cubic-Inch Direct-Conversion Receiver) built into an Altoid Tin by Monty Northrup, N5ESE http://www.io.com/~n5fc/

The View From Rooftop Eden. Click on the pix to see them enlarged

An insensitive, cruel shaggy dog story disguised as a letter of sympathy to my friend Miss S.

------------------------------- From: S.<xxxxxxxx@comcast.net> Well this does sound like a great start to the day.. better then mine.. i woke up with a puppy that has a sore paw and tried to wrap it.. Eventually successfully.. Went to start my car for early am work and found my sister had a flat tire... and forgot to eat before leaving for work.. then at work it was all downhill from there You look great on the scooter enjoy the rest of your week S. ------------------------------- Good evening Miss S., Ow, poo poo and frig-a-duck! ... is what I say when that happens, or something sounding very roughly similar. It won't spend at any bank, but I do pucker and wince and care when I hear of other people's tough days. "Thank God there was no gunfire involved", I usually say. I suspect your week will get better, or at least next week or the one after will. I'll chew on that good idea a little, being hopeful for you. So, tonight P. and I made new friends with several "farmers" at the local street market. We also met a fun community activist / lady manager of a "senior" apartment house just down the street from the old South Lake Union Community Center and the Community Garden. It seems that community activism has become the growth industry among African Americans these days. That seems so very just and right to me. Thank you Mr. President. I often wonder at our outrageous gall in believing we have any right at all to pass any judgment on any consenting adults about "status" or their harmless choices in life. It seems that this week U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker agrees. Duuuuh. Every Thursday the Cascade Farmers Market sells good stuff in the street by the Community Garden. We have attended two Thursdays in a row. The "farmers" all bring potluck meats and veggies and one brings a grill and charcoal. A fiddle player and a trombonist provide good toe-tappin' music. One couple did an impromptu, scary Cirque du Soleil type dance over hard asphalt without a single crunching, bloody fall, all my tense angst for naught. After selecting some beautiful fresh beets-with-tops-still-on, blackberries, a couple of used books and a pretty good home-made lemon bar we went to the corner Irish pup for a Coke and a Guinness and some excellent food. P. ate a very tasty steak sandwich and I enjoyed a yummy meat loaf with delicious Guinness gravy. We will go back for more. The used books came from the woman who owns Inner Chapters & Cafe here at South Lake Union (who also brews some pretty good coffee). One book is One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and the other is The Standard Life of a Temporary Pantyhose Salesman, translated from Italian. The back cover of Pantyhose Salesman reads, "A disgraceful story. Buggery and incest, suicide, murder, bribery and corruption, extortion, blackmail: all human life is here. Not since Boccaccio have the manners and morals of Italy been so ruthlessly laid bare." Independent. It sounds kinda juicy, very good bodacious fun: good rooftop-garden-reading, with Guinness in hand with which I will toast you, for these sooo nice sunny days overlooking outstandingly beautiful South Lake Union... et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum... So, it could always get worse, for example: if you should wish me to continue with this very long shaggy dog story... Grin. Hugs, K., P., Sparky, Dubya, Fr. Grigori (after Rasputin, the "Mad Monk", who is perceived as having influenced the latter days of the Russian Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their only son Alexei. ), our new red beta fighting fish, & the twin dull-green pygmy African aquatic frogs: our latest roadside zoo. PS. I hope your puppy is feeling better soon. Father Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, for which our Beta is named, stares piercingly, ever so hypnotically into your eyes...

Karma Doesn't Tickle

This true short story from his boyhood was written by my nephew, M.

M. is a fierce-looking sensitive soul, a retired military policeman, currently he tenderly supervises inmates at a federal lock-up. M. is about 6' 17", his head is shaved and his salty goatee belies his gentle, poetic nature.

M. writes:

Karma Doesn't Tickle

Let's wander back, again, to the mid seventies. To that spooky old house that I lived in as a boy. Where antiques weren't decorations, but things that you tripped over while doing your chores. Goats and the occasional cow to feed and milk. Natures most natural fertilizer to be spread amongst fruit trees, grapes and garden, and chickens to be fed. That's where I'm going to take you today. To the chicken coup. Watch where you step. Like a goodly number of American families, then and now, we didn't buy our eggs at the store. We bartered for them with our chickens. You see, we had a surplus of cracked corn. The chickens had a surplus of eggs. So we worked out a legally binding contract with the chickens where we would trade the corn for the eggs. Everybody came out on top. Think of it as an earth friendly, symbiotic relationship that even butterflies and bunny rabbits looked at with a smile! It was all quite wonderful really. Of course, if one of the chickens quit laying eggs, we would eat her..... but it was in the contract after all, and a deal is a deal. Well, not surprisingly, along with all of the laying hens we had a rooster. A rooster is a lot like other chickens only bigger and more aggressive. They also have a clawlike "spur" on each leg just above their feet. They use this spur to defend their harem of hens from any and all intruders. A large rooster can be quite intimidating, their attacks painful. The term "tough old bird" actually has merit. There is another term derived from our fine feathered friends. "Bird Brain" is a pejorative term that makes reference to a lack of mental prowess. It's origins are most likely rooted in our avian cousins lack of computing skills and failure to pass even basic geometry. It is even probable that it is not a reference to any members of congress. Our Rooster, who I believe was named "&$!@ BIRD!", hadn't taken the time to read the "EGGS FOR CORN" contract, and kept attacking my brother and I when we brought in the corn to trade for the eggs. Imagine standing there with a big coffee can full of corn in one hand, sprinkling it out over the ground with the other while fat and happy hens cluck and peck at their favorite food. Now imagine being hit on the back of the calves by twenty pounds of idiot bird traveling at the speed of sound and trying to spur you like Pancho Villa running from the *&^% Federales. I did what any sports loving American boy would do under those circumstances. I grabbed a stick.. "Batter Up!" It went something like this: Sprinkle of corn.... POP FLY TO CENTER FIELD! Sprinkle of corn.... AWWW FOUL BALL! (Gotta admit, THAT's funny!) Sprinkle of corn.... LINE DRIVE TO RIGHT FIELD! LOOK AT THOSE FEATHERS FLY! The rooster never got hurt. I was actually terrified of that psychotic piece of petrifying poultry, but I couldn't resist the baseball analogy. Well, renting a small cottage from us right there on the property was a twenty something couple that were "Children of the Flower". Fred and Jean. For those of you too young to remember "Flower Children" I'll sum them up for you briefly. Largely vegetarian, new age religions, big on sandals and facial hair (even the guys), anti war, soap?!? and that ain't no cigarette. It seems that Fred spotted me feeding the chickens in the batting cage one day. To him it probably looked like an idiot ten year old locked in a cage with a stick wildly swinging it at a bunch of floating feathers while making a terrified, high pitched keening sound. Which isn't even wha..... Damn! That's actually a pretty fair description... Well good old Fred approached my Dad. He was concerned that I wasn't being fair to the rooster. "Mike just has bad karma man.... If he just worked on having better vibes, and feeling the overwhelming oneness of the universal togetherness of the everything is okay with the me and you type of.........." I'm pretty sure Fred is a professor at UC Berkeley now. Turns out that my Dad has a pretty good sense of humor. Right on the spot he gave that "&$!@ BIRD!" to Fred. "You're probably right Fred! Show us how it's done." he said "If you can't handle him, just bring him back! Mike's got little league next year and......" He winked at me. Personally I couldn't have been happier to have Satan's feather duster out of my way. The next day, when Fred went out to feed the rooster, he gathered all of his good vibes, polished his Karma, probably smoked something he shouldn't have and promptly had his legs knocked out from under him by that "&$!@ BIRD!" In a panic Fred forgot about his universal oneness and kicked the bird with his Air Jerusalems, breaking it's leg. That night we had chicken and dumplings. Fred probably just smoked his salad. Have a great day, M.

Nostalgia Buffs: An Everyman's Historic Love Story On Two Wheels

"The scooter was a phenomenon of social value, both to man and, especially woman." - Kees Portanje. Cut and paste the link http://tinyurl.com/2g6ouq2 to Kees Portanje's fine Vespa website featuring good things Vespa, his amazing scooter and memorabilia collection, a touching love story to tug at sappy, tender two-wheeled-romantic-hearts. Mieke & Kees at Eurovespa 1998 in Groningen Mieke & Kees in 1961 "In the 50's the scooter was the first vehicle available to the youth, giving them the possibility of independence." - Kees Portanje. ... and included, for no particular good reason other than my familiarity with their uncontrolled, desperate situation, is my favorite scooter poster...

Three Terrified Stooges on Cushman with sidecar