A quick housecleaning note, since dear Anon has asked about aviation stuff.
Aviation progress is temporarily at a standstill - Miss D has the details.
The short version is that we buggered up some parts, and need to wait until she can get new ones to finish out the wings. Bother!
Expect the build log to resume as soon as we can, and the flying part (with Grace and luck) to pick up in summer.
Those hungry for more devoted Alaskan chick aviation talk, prolly best to just head on over to Wing and a Whim more regular-like. Miss D was flying before she was driving, and has some darn cool plans of hers for that bird once we have it together. I'll let her fill you in on the details, the gal's one of God's born sky-creatures. :)
So... short term, we'll be more general interest around these parts for a bit. Aviation related material will pick up heavy again around midsummer is my guess.
Longer term, I have a project brewing that may well take over here in time. But that really is longer term. Don't expect any news on that before fall at the earliest.
Thanks for coming by. :)
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Sword in the thatch.
Pardon the bit of a retrospective here. Since tomorrow I'll be schlepping pretty much the last of the arms in the house of to be sold, I thought perhaps a word on how they came to be here in the first place.
I've always loved movies of old Scotland - it appeals to the romantic in me, given so much of my bloodline and "cultural DNA" as an Appalachian mutt goes straight back to the Ulster Scots. As such, a recent conversation at the shop reminded me of something I saw in one of those movies that has always stuck with me.
The movie is Braveheart, from what... twelve years or so ago? Granted, it doesn't age well. The history is dicey, and reenactors cringe at the costumes. But more than any other moment from the film*, this one from the very beginning has always lingered in my consciousness
That was the moment.
The man... had to hide his sword.
For years afterwards, that one moment echoed in my head, a symbol of hated oppression.
Around the same time, I remember visiting a friend who lived way outside of town. I was talking with her older brother I think, and he reached behind a trunk of some kind, and pulled out what at the time I could only describe as an "army rifle," mentioning he bought it because of some "ban" or another that had recently passed.
I'm embarrassed to admit - I was horrified to learn he could actually own such a thing.
At the time, I didn't see the contradiction. I certainly had never given a thought to Constitutional law or the lessons of Concord hundreds of years ago. History was a place for playacting, not drawing lessons from.
Through slow degrees over the years that followed, patient friends (and I confess, no small amount of curiosity once I got over my trepidation), I came to see the principle remained the same - Was it, or was it not, right to render the people in your domain helpless to resist you?
That scary-looking black rifle behind the trunk started to look eerily like the sword in the thatch. Eventually, years later, other friends even taught me how to use this "AR-15" thing myself. In the process, I discovered that curious emotional shift that comes with learning the rifle of your nation. Others have dubbed that the difference between a "subject" and a "citizen." I don't think I could argue them the point - the shift in emotional frame of reference between yourself and the state is something that truly needs to be experienced to be understood.
So there we are. Sword in the thatch. Or rather, out in the open. As it should be.
There's another half to that lesson though.
Not ten minutes later we see that man's dead body being wheeled back home in a cart. He decided to resist. He was crushed. We see a young boy looking at the corpse of his father and older brother laying on a table in the living room. A family is destroyed. And the worst is yet to come.
Just 'cause it might sometimes, very rarely, when all other avenues are exhausted - be right (or at least, "least bad of a host of bad options") - that doesn't mean it comes cheap. That price is darned high, and Mr. Mitty can keep his fantasies. Bleck.
I've always loved movies of old Scotland - it appeals to the romantic in me, given so much of my bloodline and "cultural DNA" as an Appalachian mutt goes straight back to the Ulster Scots. As such, a recent conversation at the shop reminded me of something I saw in one of those movies that has always stuck with me.
The movie is Braveheart, from what... twelve years or so ago? Granted, it doesn't age well. The history is dicey, and reenactors cringe at the costumes. But more than any other moment from the film*, this one from the very beginning has always lingered in my consciousness
* okay, almost any other moment. The wedding by moonlight still makes me melt. :)
Horrors have taken place. The last straw has fallen. After a long night of arguing, the decision was reached to fight. We see a determined man walk to the side of his cottage, reach into the thatching, and pull out a sword before heading off to battle.That was the moment.
The man... had to hide his sword.
For years afterwards, that one moment echoed in my head, a symbol of hated oppression.
Around the same time, I remember visiting a friend who lived way outside of town. I was talking with her older brother I think, and he reached behind a trunk of some kind, and pulled out what at the time I could only describe as an "army rifle," mentioning he bought it because of some "ban" or another that had recently passed.
I'm embarrassed to admit - I was horrified to learn he could actually own such a thing.
At the time, I didn't see the contradiction. I certainly had never given a thought to Constitutional law or the lessons of Concord hundreds of years ago. History was a place for playacting, not drawing lessons from.
Through slow degrees over the years that followed, patient friends (and I confess, no small amount of curiosity once I got over my trepidation), I came to see the principle remained the same - Was it, or was it not, right to render the people in your domain helpless to resist you?
That scary-looking black rifle behind the trunk started to look eerily like the sword in the thatch. Eventually, years later, other friends even taught me how to use this "AR-15" thing myself. In the process, I discovered that curious emotional shift that comes with learning the rifle of your nation. Others have dubbed that the difference between a "subject" and a "citizen." I don't think I could argue them the point - the shift in emotional frame of reference between yourself and the state is something that truly needs to be experienced to be understood.
So there we are. Sword in the thatch. Or rather, out in the open. As it should be.
There's another half to that lesson though.
Not ten minutes later we see that man's dead body being wheeled back home in a cart. He decided to resist. He was crushed. We see a young boy looking at the corpse of his father and older brother laying on a table in the living room. A family is destroyed. And the worst is yet to come.
Just 'cause it might sometimes, very rarely, when all other avenues are exhausted - be right (or at least, "least bad of a host of bad options") - that doesn't mean it comes cheap. That price is darned high, and Mr. Mitty can keep his fantasies. Bleck.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Fiddle dee dee
First... that ol' homemade Tennessee fiddle I picked up has the nicest quality - it really lets you know when you hit the note right. The resonance is just noticeably better when you nail the note perfect than when you're a hair off. Don't know why that is (sympathetic vibration on the open strings is my guess).. but for whatever reason, it works. The strangest thing really.. playing with it lately has been less "playing an instrument" than "having a conversation."
Also, I finally broke down and wrote one of the local instructors. I'm thinking it's time to get serious with this thing. Don't know what will come of it, but Lordy... this is love.
Also, I finally broke down and wrote one of the local instructors. I'm thinking it's time to get serious with this thing. Don't know what will come of it, but Lordy... this is love.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
January Miscellany
Just some housekeeping while I'm sitting at home my first weekend back sleeping off the icks. (note to self, getting on a plane stuffed with strangers with tykes the morning after loading up on antihistamines is not the way to arrive home in good health. It's about done with though, and Miss D makes the most awesome spicy chicken noodle soup. :) )
1. On harps.
The wirestrung one didn't make it back with me, I'm afraid. Not enough space on the airplane to be able to pay for the extra carry-on, and there was no way I was going to trust it checked. So only the nylon strung one came home.
It's been fun getting reacquainted. Like seeing an old friend and picking up right where you left off, a lot of the tunes come right back to the fingers after years away. There's still quite a few rough edges from years of neglect to polish away still of course, but the bones are still there. Neat!
More on the "how nylon compares to wire" later.
2. On the rifle.
Despite getting rid of almost all my thorny edges, there's one rifle I'm planning on keeping out of plain ol' Appalachian cussedness. With the action and the barrel finally on the same side of the continent, I stuck one to the other for the first time this week. The side-charging receiver works wonderfully under a big ol' telescope, though I don't know if that's what it will be wearing when all is said and done. Suggestions are always welcome, of course. :)
The overall feel of the thing is taking some getting used to though. I think between the extra mass in the receiver and barrel and the thicker grip, it just feels more... "authoritative" in the hands than I'm used to an AR feeling. It's neither as nimble as a stock A1 nor as rear-balanced as the tricked out M4s friends have let me play with - at the same time it's not the ponderous beast some of the target ARs I've seen are. I really don't know what to make of it yet, but I think I like it.
At this rate, the thing might even be finished enough to actually work in another three years.
3. Philosophy Alert
I've been thinking on and off about the whole "what makes a person" of late. I've mentioned both my grandmother and one of the family pets died over the Holidays. No, don't begin to think I put those in the same category, but there was a certain lesson I've been trying to tease out from both.
See, gramma had started losing her memory over the last couple years since I'd left. And that was what killed forever for me the idea that "we are the sum of our memories." Despite needing to be reminded even who that lady in the picture of her youth was, despite struggling to remember the names of her children... she remained to the end very much herself. Perhaps more gentle, more vulnerable.. but the spark of gramma never ceased to be gramma. The core of her personality never wavered. Whatever it is that makes a person, it can't just be our memories.
At the same time, the dear family pup we brought home from the pound, well.. towards the end her wiring was so far gone the only thing she could do is turn in ever tighter circles before flopping over and seizing. She'd have moments of lucidness, but they got rarer and rarer as the machine that ran her body fell to pieces around her. She was still in there someplace I think, but so overpowered by a brain gone haywire that it must have been like getting swept away in the ocean.
It's an old problem, of course. How much of us is meat and chemicals and how much is soul? Where does the one end and the other begin? Certainly the chemical soup swimming in our brains can affect our mood and experience sure as anything in the outside world - it doesn't take long paying attention to one's own body to learn that. How far that goes? Heck, we've been trying to figure that one out for as long as we've been able to reason at all.
Personally, I'm still firmly in the "I'm not a human having a spiritual experience, I'm a soul having a human experience" camp - tempered by the knowledge that absent mindfulness, a goodly amount of that "me" is a mix of biology and the shortcuts of learned response. How much of the me of me is still there once this body's gone? No idea. Honestly, not that bothered by it either, for the important part remains. But it is a curious puzzle.
Estelio han, estelio han, estelio,
estelio han, estelio veleth.
1. On harps.
The wirestrung one didn't make it back with me, I'm afraid. Not enough space on the airplane to be able to pay for the extra carry-on, and there was no way I was going to trust it checked. So only the nylon strung one came home.
It's been fun getting reacquainted. Like seeing an old friend and picking up right where you left off, a lot of the tunes come right back to the fingers after years away. There's still quite a few rough edges from years of neglect to polish away still of course, but the bones are still there. Neat!
More on the "how nylon compares to wire" later.
2. On the rifle.
Despite getting rid of almost all my thorny edges, there's one rifle I'm planning on keeping out of plain ol' Appalachian cussedness. With the action and the barrel finally on the same side of the continent, I stuck one to the other for the first time this week. The side-charging receiver works wonderfully under a big ol' telescope, though I don't know if that's what it will be wearing when all is said and done. Suggestions are always welcome, of course. :)
The overall feel of the thing is taking some getting used to though. I think between the extra mass in the receiver and barrel and the thicker grip, it just feels more... "authoritative" in the hands than I'm used to an AR feeling. It's neither as nimble as a stock A1 nor as rear-balanced as the tricked out M4s friends have let me play with - at the same time it's not the ponderous beast some of the target ARs I've seen are. I really don't know what to make of it yet, but I think I like it.
At this rate, the thing might even be finished enough to actually work in another three years.
3. Philosophy Alert
I've been thinking on and off about the whole "what makes a person" of late. I've mentioned both my grandmother and one of the family pets died over the Holidays. No, don't begin to think I put those in the same category, but there was a certain lesson I've been trying to tease out from both.
See, gramma had started losing her memory over the last couple years since I'd left. And that was what killed forever for me the idea that "we are the sum of our memories." Despite needing to be reminded even who that lady in the picture of her youth was, despite struggling to remember the names of her children... she remained to the end very much herself. Perhaps more gentle, more vulnerable.. but the spark of gramma never ceased to be gramma. The core of her personality never wavered. Whatever it is that makes a person, it can't just be our memories.
At the same time, the dear family pup we brought home from the pound, well.. towards the end her wiring was so far gone the only thing she could do is turn in ever tighter circles before flopping over and seizing. She'd have moments of lucidness, but they got rarer and rarer as the machine that ran her body fell to pieces around her. She was still in there someplace I think, but so overpowered by a brain gone haywire that it must have been like getting swept away in the ocean.
It's an old problem, of course. How much of us is meat and chemicals and how much is soul? Where does the one end and the other begin? Certainly the chemical soup swimming in our brains can affect our mood and experience sure as anything in the outside world - it doesn't take long paying attention to one's own body to learn that. How far that goes? Heck, we've been trying to figure that one out for as long as we've been able to reason at all.
Personally, I'm still firmly in the "I'm not a human having a spiritual experience, I'm a soul having a human experience" camp - tempered by the knowledge that absent mindfulness, a goodly amount of that "me" is a mix of biology and the shortcuts of learned response. How much of the me of me is still there once this body's gone? No idea. Honestly, not that bothered by it either, for the important part remains. But it is a curious puzzle.
Estelio han, estelio han, estelio,
estelio han, estelio veleth.
Friday, January 9, 2009
2008 - The year I stopped believing.
Naw, not that. Me and the Invisible Pink Unicorn are still tight, yo.
I mean the news.
I clearly remember the first time I noticed news bias.
I was in middle school, maybe early high school, sitting on the front porch thumbing through an old copy of "US News and World Report" my Dad had lying around. I can't even remember what the article was about now, but I remember even then thinking "you know, I agree with the slant.... but gosh is this slanted."
That was how it started.
Eventually, I came to say "any time they're covering something I know something about, or was there for, they rarely get it quite right.... so take everything they're saying about things I don't know anything about with a grain of salt."
I chalked that up though not to malice or agenda generally, just the plain old human tendency to see what we expect to see.
Everybody sees things through their own prism - it's natural for someone, no matter how good-hearted, to just discount things that don't fit in with how they see the world, or push those that play up their pre-conceptions. We all do that. It's human.
Lord knows I have a beam in my own eye to. Heck, I may have enough to build a house.
But this year was different.
From supposedly apolitical New Year's Eve broadcasts of the ball drop, filled with gushing announcers going on about how everything will be different now, to the outright character assassination of Gov. Palin.. the bold-faced one-sidedness of self-professed professional, neutral media outlets was breathtaking.
For the first time ever, I found myself looking at a newscast and saying to myself "I... I can't believe a word you're telling me anymore."
Not just "I think you're looking at this through your own prism," but rather "I don't trust you not to intentionally lie to me to further your own agenda."
... and that's scary.
That's the stuff of people in occupied countries ignoring the nightly propaganda.
Still and all though - in a free society, if you alienate half your audience by acting like a bought-and-paid-for hack, you lose market share, someone else comes along and fills it - no problem. Evolution in action, as it were.
I guess we'll see.
Interesting times.
I mean the news.
I clearly remember the first time I noticed news bias.
I was in middle school, maybe early high school, sitting on the front porch thumbing through an old copy of "US News and World Report" my Dad had lying around. I can't even remember what the article was about now, but I remember even then thinking "you know, I agree with the slant.... but gosh is this slanted."
That was how it started.
Eventually, I came to say "any time they're covering something I know something about, or was there for, they rarely get it quite right.... so take everything they're saying about things I don't know anything about with a grain of salt."
I chalked that up though not to malice or agenda generally, just the plain old human tendency to see what we expect to see.
Everybody sees things through their own prism - it's natural for someone, no matter how good-hearted, to just discount things that don't fit in with how they see the world, or push those that play up their pre-conceptions. We all do that. It's human.
Lord knows I have a beam in my own eye to. Heck, I may have enough to build a house.
But this year was different.
From supposedly apolitical New Year's Eve broadcasts of the ball drop, filled with gushing announcers going on about how everything will be different now, to the outright character assassination of Gov. Palin.. the bold-faced one-sidedness of self-professed professional, neutral media outlets was breathtaking.
For the first time ever, I found myself looking at a newscast and saying to myself "I... I can't believe a word you're telling me anymore."
Not just "I think you're looking at this through your own prism," but rather "I don't trust you not to intentionally lie to me to further your own agenda."
... and that's scary.
That's the stuff of people in occupied countries ignoring the nightly propaganda.
Still and all though - in a free society, if you alienate half your audience by acting like a bought-and-paid-for hack, you lose market share, someone else comes along and fills it - no problem. Evolution in action, as it were.
I guess we'll see.
Interesting times.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
home again home again.
Well... the house is warm.
The pipes are still frozen or shut off, so Miss D has been kind enough to put me up for the time being. In the meantime....
* those nifty contrails you see behind jet planes are all sorts of cool from the air - like seeing a highway peeling off into forever.
* Mobius is a little farther along. More on that another time.
* Family is truly a great gift. Thanks y'all.
The pipes are still frozen or shut off, so Miss D has been kind enough to put me up for the time being. In the meantime....
* those nifty contrails you see behind jet planes are all sorts of cool from the air - like seeing a highway peeling off into forever.
* Mobius is a little farther along. More on that another time.
* Family is truly a great gift. Thanks y'all.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Oh cold, I come to you.
Tomorrow is the last leg of the trip back to Alaska. Old friends have been hugged, gifts exchanged, and of course lots of family time. In the interim.... Gremlin is every bit as sweet in real life as he looks in the pictures. :)
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