Let's get squirrely!

This is Squirrel Week, according to John Kelly of The Washington Post. Since our neighborhood is overrun with Eastern Gray Squirrels, we thought we'd share a few pictures of one of the critters who is different from all the rest. It's called a "blond" Eastern Gray Squirrel, because of its tan coat and nearly white tail. Mike says it's the first one he's ever seen, though some folks claim they're not all that rare in other parts of Florida.

One thing's for sure: ours doesn't like to have his picture taken. He gets downright . . . well, squirrely, for want of a better term. (M likes the word squirrely and says it's very descriptive of lots of beings. He says squirrels learn to act that way when they're quite young and their parents tell them, "Be sure to run both ways when you cross the street!")

Anyway, here's what we got:

Happy Squirrel Week, everybuddy!

Uncle George to the rescue!

My Uncle George, a Tampa police officer, deserves a great big ATTABOY! for coming to the aid of a stranded driver yesterday morning. But not just any stranded driver--this man was on his way to the hospital in rain and rush-hour traffic to undergo a kidney transplant when his truck got a flat tire! You can read about it in today's Tampa Bay Times.

Mike is understandably proud of his not-so-little-anymore brother, who was born on M's 39th birthday. He says it's hard to believe George is the same young man who only a few years ago forgot to bring his tuxedo to his own wedding, so everybody had to wait while he went back home for it. But that's another story.

There's another super cool aspect to George's police job: he sometimes gets to help make public relations videos for the Department. Here's one from October of 2012. George first appears at the 17-second mark, as Cop #2. When a third one joins the scene a second later, George ends up on the right. He's also in several other scenes. Can you spot them?



Whee, doggies! Book 'em, Georgie--but be careful out there!

A Song with Multiple Personalities

Today is Grandma Grace's 90th birthday. In her memory we want to play two versions of one of her favorite songs. One is sad, the other is happy. But they're the same basic song. Go figure.

The original version, called "When You and I Were Young, Maggie," is a two-hanky tearjerker. The words were written as a poem by George Washington Johnson way back in the 1860s. The poem soon became popular as a song when it was set to music by James Austin Butterfield. This is possibly the version Grandma learned as a girl, but as Mike says, we're speculating a bit on that. Here is a nice YouTube clip of it sung by a famous dead opera singer named Jan Peerce, who M got to meet after a concert when he was a teenager. (M, not Mr. Peerce.)



The reason we aren't totally sure that Grandma learned this version first is that it was re-scored in the early 1920s as an uptempo ragtime duet by Jack Frost and Jimmy McHugh. They called it "When You and I Were Young, Maggie Blues." (Mike says this title is a misnomer, since it's not a blues song at all, but an anti-blues song.) Over the next several decades it was recorded by a number of popular singers, and this was the first version that Mike ever heard. He and Grandma used to sing it together at their house and on long driving trips and even made this 78-rpm record of it in a boardwalk sound booth at Jacksonville Beach, in 1952:

Unfortunately the record is unplayable, since over the years it has come to look like someone's done an Irish step-dance all over it. But here's a good YouTube rendition of "Maggie Blues" by Margaret Whiting and Jimmy Wakely:



Are you listening, Grandma? Happy birthday!

Grandma Grace's Final Flight

We have a very important post today. I’m going to let Mike write it from his own viewpoint, so nothing gets lost in translation. Take it away, boss!

Slipping the Surly Bonds of Earth

February 14, 2014

Today I finally got to have my “Ultimate Barnstormer” experience in History Flight’s North American AT-6, a World War II-vintage two-seat trainer. Originally I’d hoped to go on January 30th, to mark the 50th anniversary of my 1964 carrier qualification, but bad weather forced a postponement. Somewhere early in the planning process, the mission grew into something more noteworthy and much more poignant: the scattering of my mother’s ashes over the Atlantic, just off of Canaveral National Seashore.

For nearly three years Jeannie and I had debated about where Mom’s ashes should be scattered. Our initial preference was for a whitewater river somewhere in the mountains of North Carolina or Georgia. But the logistics of a long drive kept getting in the way. That delay turned out to have been a good thing! Soon after “warbird flight” showed up on my bucket list, Jeannie suggested that I take Mom along, since she’d been a licensed pilot, and that burial at sea would be perfect since she was also a sailor. Clever Jeannie!

I met the History Flight pilot, John Makinson, at the DeLand Airport at 2:00 P.M. We were in the air shortly before 3:00. Unbeknownst to me, John had arranged a wonderful surprise: a two-plane “honor escort” consisting of a second AT-6 and a Beech T-34. This meant that Mom would get to enjoy not only some aerobatics before her final sendoff, but a little formation flying as well!

We began the hop with the two AT-6’s doing a section takeoff, while the T-34 followed close behind and joined us soon after.

Departing the pattern, we flew over Brandywine twice so Jeannie could see us. Then we headed for the coast just south of New Smyrna Beach.

As we went “feet wet” the escort planes broke off to return home. John and I took up a north-south pattern near the National Seashore, where he demonstrated an aileron roll and a loop. Then he let me do three loops by myself (what an awesome but strangely familiar feeling after more than 50 years!) and captured the last one on video!

When time came to let Mom go, John handled both the plane and the ash bag so I could get some pictures. As I told him afterwards, they’d have been even better if I’d turned my camera on. Luckily the plane has three videocameras: one in the tail, one in the front cockpit, and one on the right wingtip. The latter captured some great views of the event.

I got to fly us back to DeLand, except of course for the landing. We were on the ground around 4:00. Our total flight time was 1.2 hours. John endorsed my logbook for the full 1.2 and Mom’s for .6 hours. In Mom’s book we showed her points of departure and arrival as DeLand and the Atlantic Ocean, respectively, and before signing John noted, “Left up in the sky @ 1300’ soaring with the angels.”

As we dropped Mom off to let the Gulf Stream carry her north toward the “auld sod,” and then headed back home, I thought of the words of one of her favorite poems, “High Flight,” by John Gillespie Magee Jr., a young American aviator killed in England in 1941 while flying Spitfires for the Royal Canadian Air Force. It goes like this:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . .
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

(To see Magee’s original handwritten draft, which he sent to his parents just months before his death, follow this link.)

I hope you’ll have time to watch the entire video of Mom’s final flight. But if you need to “cut to the chase,” you can find my loop at about the 18-minute mark, with the ash-scattering immediately following, at around 20 minutes. Unlike the 1.2-hour flight, the video is a little over 44 minutes. You can watch it here on the blog or see the slightly larger format at YouTube.

PS - Updated 02-18-2014

Because it happens rather quickly, here are ten screen shots of the ash drop, taken from the video. The first three are of the ashes trailing out behind the airplane:

Numbers 4 through 6 are of the ash cloud hovering above our nose and canopy on the first fly-by:

And numbers 7 through 10 are from the second orbit:

By that point the ashes were dissipating quickly and hard to see, except in the sun's reflection. Mom was well on her way.

Today is February 13th, and you know what that means.

It's my sister Jenny's birthday! Each year on this date, people all over the world, from every walk of life, flock into the streets to wish Jen the happiest birthday ever. In case you think I exaggerate, check this out:



Well, dadgum! No sooner had I posted the above and settled down for a nice nap when the phone rang. Two ladies wanted to let me know that my statement about "people all over the world, from every walk of life," was not quite accurate, since the flashmob video contains no Dominican nuns. They said they had wanted to join one of those delightful mobs, singing and jumping around, but were stuck at the convent because their motorcycle is in the shop. Then they directed me to this YouTube clip of them playing "Happy Birthday" on the piano. They said Jenny should consider their performance to be especially for her and asked if I would please include it in my post, in the interests of diversity. I am happy to comply.



Okay, now I rest my case! Froh Geburtstag, Jenny!