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Greetings again.
These last couple of weekends have been kind of fun. Easter time brought visits, and the weekend after was the Davis-Monthan Air Show.
I have been observing the world for better that a half a century now, and just this last week I noted a previously missed phenomenon. Even though I have experienced it from three different perspectives, it simply went right over my head. I have seen it in my interactions with my Grandmother Allen, observed in my mother's interactions with my children (as well as their cousins), and finally, I am currently experiencing it again with Barbara. The presence of one or more grandchildren causes grandmothers to revert to a "second childhood."
Grandchildren are present in this household well less than 1% of the time. Not with standing, Barbara has amassed for their enjoyment, more toys than I even saw during my first ten years on earth. Even AJ likes to play with them.
Easter was a fun time. We did the usual egg dying/hiding/finding etc. Sabrina also made chocolates. She has developed some talent in that area.
The return of vultures is a sure sign of spring. The return of highchairs is a sure sign of grandchildren.
The next weekend was the Davis-Monthan Air Show. Security was tightened (read long lines), and it takes a special kind of person (mildly retarded?) to stand in line for 45 minutes to get in. There sure seemed to be a lot of that kind of people in Tucson that day.
This B25 Mitchell bomber, in addition to being a nicely done static display, flew in the air show. It is a relatively slow, lumbering freight hauler and, as you might expect, performed no aerobatics. This is the type of aircraft that performed a demonstration-bombing raid of Japan (more to prove we could than to inflict significant damage) in the early days of the war (when we were losing badly). Most of the actual aircraft in the raid were lost, along with many of their crews, and James Dolittle, who conceived of and led the raid, expected to be reprimanded. Instead he was promoted, and finished the war as a general.
This is the vaulted B17. During WWII, my mother (Norma Allen) worked in the Boeing plant in Lake Ellsinore, California, manufacturing these aircraft. She wielded a rivet gun, and she (and her partner who "bucked" the rivets for her) fabricated left cockpit sidewalls. Mother told stories of getting a promotion and a raise (along with the ire of some of her coworkers) for exceeding her quotas, and turning out 8 or 9 sidewalls per day. I haven't looked at the serial numbers and done the research, but you may be looking at a cockpit she helped build.
A reenactment of the Pearl Harbor raid was staged, with Japanese bombers and fighters flying every which way through smoke and exploding munitions. As a finale, they had a Mitchell B25 being chased by a Japanese Zero, who in turn was pursued by a P51 Mustang. It was quite a show, and very impressive (if you ignore the fact that the Mustang wasn't built [or even conceived of] until 1944, almost three years after Pearl Harbor).
One of the most impressive things I saw was Ethen, who stayed through the whole thing (8:30 to 4:30) without seeming to tire (if you don't count the two naps he took in his stroller). I don't think he fully grasped the relationship between the huge chunks of aluminum around which we walked, and the noisy specks leaving contrails across the sky, but he did demonstrate an interest in the minutest details of the show (the bits of debris that collected in the recessed tie down wells).
Sabrina and Braxton accompanied us to the air show. Braxton brought his new cameras, and got some fairly good photos. I brought my new camera and shared it with Nathen. Between us we captured over 400 images. When we returned to Nathen's house and viewed them on his computer, we discovered that taking images of a moving object using a long telephoto lens requires the stabilizing influence of a tripod. The images shot using the shorter lens (set to auto focus) were mostly good (basically, the still shots), but the rest (many of which were nicely composed) were an exercise from which to learn.
Return to Start Page
These last couple of weekends have been kind of fun. Easter time brought visits, and the weekend after was the Davis-Monthan Air Show.
Easter was a fun time. We did the usual egg dying/hiding/finding etc. Sabrina also made chocolates. She has developed some talent in that area.
The return of vultures is a sure sign of spring. The return of highchairs is a sure sign of grandchildren.
The next weekend was the Davis-Monthan Air Show. Security was tightened (read long lines), and it takes a special kind of person (mildly retarded?) to stand in line for 45 minutes to get in. There sure seemed to be a lot of that kind of people in Tucson that day.
This B25 Mitchell bomber, in addition to being a nicely done static display, flew in the air show. It is a relatively slow, lumbering freight hauler and, as you might expect, performed no aerobatics. This is the type of aircraft that performed a demonstration-bombing raid of Japan (more to prove we could than to inflict significant damage) in the early days of the war (when we were losing badly). Most of the actual aircraft in the raid were lost, along with many of their crews, and James Dolittle, who conceived of and led the raid, expected to be reprimanded. Instead he was promoted, and finished the war as a general.
This is the vaulted B17. During WWII, my mother (Norma Allen) worked in the Boeing plant in Lake Ellsinore, California, manufacturing these aircraft. She wielded a rivet gun, and she (and her partner who "bucked" the rivets for her) fabricated left cockpit sidewalls. Mother told stories of getting a promotion and a raise (along with the ire of some of her coworkers) for exceeding her quotas, and turning out 8 or 9 sidewalls per day. I haven't looked at the serial numbers and done the research, but you may be looking at a cockpit she helped build.
A reenactment of the Pearl Harbor raid was staged, with Japanese bombers and fighters flying every which way through smoke and exploding munitions. As a finale, they had a Mitchell B25 being chased by a Japanese Zero, who in turn was pursued by a P51 Mustang. It was quite a show, and very impressive (if you ignore the fact that the Mustang wasn't built [or even conceived of] until 1944, almost three years after Pearl Harbor).
One of the most impressive things I saw was Ethen, who stayed through the whole thing (8:30 to 4:30) without seeming to tire (if you don't count the two naps he took in his stroller). I don't think he fully grasped the relationship between the huge chunks of aluminum around which we walked, and the noisy specks leaving contrails across the sky, but he did demonstrate an interest in the minutest details of the show (the bits of debris that collected in the recessed tie down wells).
Sabrina and Braxton accompanied us to the air show. Braxton brought his new cameras, and got some fairly good photos. I brought my new camera and shared it with Nathen. Between us we captured over 400 images. When we returned to Nathen's house and viewed them on his computer, we discovered that taking images of a moving object using a long telephoto lens requires the stabilizing influence of a tripod. The images shot using the shorter lens (set to auto focus) were mostly good (basically, the still shots), but the rest (many of which were nicely composed) were an exercise from which to learn.