Spring Showers and April Love

 

We are getting some spring storms now. Last night we had lots of rain and thunderstorms. Weather seems to be mixed up now from what it was although I am not convinced about the Global Warming myths that are circulating around. I do have reservations, though, about pollutants being spewed into the air. I think though that we should be looking for real solutions to pollution  in the air rather than marketing schemes and Al Gore schemes. When I see advertising based on “going green” I get a bit put out. We should be always looking for ways to clean up our and our children’s earth and doing it as a matter of course not a matter of marketing and politics.  I think many times when people advertise that they are going green they are just jumping on the scam and spin bandwagon.

Well back to my subject at hand. I started to think about the song “April Love” yesterday when we were having an april shower.

These are the April Love lyrics by Pat Boone

April love is for the very young
Every star’s a wishing star that shines for you
April love is all the seven wonders
One little kiss can tell you this is true

Sometimes an April day will suddenly bring showers
Rain to grow the flowers for her first bouquet
But April love can slip right through your fingers
So if she’s the one don’t let her run away

[Instrumental Interlude]

Sometimes an April day will suddenly bring showers
Rain to grow the flowers for her first bouquet
But April love can slip right through your fingers
So if she’s the one don’t let her run away

So I guess the weather is somewhat the same as described in this song. I have always heard the expression that April showers bring May flowers and thaqt March is the windy month.

These are some of the fond memories of my youth.

 

Steak is better than chitlins

Steak is better than chitlins

“What brings this to mind is that I was driving to Ozark Alabama, the other day and I saw a bridge on the Road just west of Ozark which was called “James Kelly Junior Bridge”. Now Jim Kelly is a good friend of mine and also his father James Kelly Senior was. He was a very prominent member of the “The Dale County Chitterling Society.” This very unctuous society met at Mack’s Café there in Ozark.  Mack’s Café was a fixture in Ozark for quite a while. Mack ran a drygoods store there near where the café was before he opened the café. I think he began hosting the Chitterling society as a public service.  Anyway I am not especially fond of chitterlings but I did go to the society meetings to keep up my social standing.

At each meeting of the Society Mr. Kelly would give a speech, usually very humorous concerning “chitlins” and the merits of them as a food and how good they were. I remember he had one speech about a trip to Africa where he discovered elephant chitlins which is very comical. I didn’t go to the Society meetings so much that I craved  the chitterlings but that I had to keep up my standing in society.  I always enjoy the fried chitlins more than I did the boiled ones it just seems like it couldn’t get the essence of the hog out of the boiled ones. Judy would go with me sometimes but she only ate the items that went along with the chitlins which were collards and dry peas and cornbread and onions which, I admit,  is a very good meal within itself.

 

Propagation Seems to be in the Doldrums

Well, I still get on the radio every day but I don’t seem to be working as much DX is the recent past. The sunspot number and the solar flux number have gone down in the past few days. But when “Old Sol,” or rotates around I expect propagation to pick up some. Sometimes you can find a real good station on a band that otherwise seems to be dead in the station may be all the way around the world or 180° out of geophase with me. I have been hearing some very good stations on 12 m recently, but they all seem to have such a pile of that I could not break through. Everybody wanted to talk to them. Oh well, the harder the challenge the better is when you do get someone into the log. I’ve been able to copy most of the dxpeditions very well here but I have missed a couple of them that never could hear me. I am convinced I can work anywhere in the world with 100w and a dipole if it is the right time of day and there are sufficient freckles on the sun. The more I do it the more I think that chasing dx is like hunting only you don’t have to clean the game.

I am planning to work the “Alabama QSO Party” this coming Saturday. You can find rules for the qso party at the following URL http://www.alabamaqsoparty.org/ . We will be operating the station W4GEN in Geneva County Alabama. Please work us if you can.

Solitude

Loneliness is a strong emotion. I feel it most pronounced on the occasions when I get insomnia and you hear just the house cracking and popping and the mice chewing. It is just you against the world; you feel as if sleep is fled to the hills for refuge, a thousand miles away. Mocking, “You can’t go to sleep no matter what you do.”
Then there is another kind of lonely feeling that takes place in a crowd. This is one where you don’t know a single soul. I have often felt this kind of loneliness while traveling: the greater the crowd of unknown people the more pronounced the feeling. I have often thought, “I just wish that I could go up and introduce myself to some of these people. However,  I don’t do it. They would think I was off my rocker, and for sure I was going to embarrass myself.” So what I would do do is go on besides my business swallow the lump in your throat. Doing this while endure the same-old feeling until I would get busy enough with your activities to make it go away for a while.
Another kind of loneliness, and this is a good kind is what one feels when out in the woods or wilderness a very long way away from everyone else. This is the kind of loneliness that everyone needs. Another name for it is, solitude, and it is the anthesis of the bustling crowds of urban life and also all the human filth that goes with them. That is why I love to hunt and fish out in the quietness of the wilderness. In town, it is a wilderness too, just a different kind.
Then there is the bleakness of the outcast or the old person. This person just feels that the world has forgotten about them and has minimized them out of the circle of important people. Have you ever felt what it is like to be minimized? I have, and yet I did it myself a few years back. What our society needs is not food, not shelter nor things. They greatly need to feel like someone else thinks they exist and cares that they do. This is the “throw away” society and people are part of the throw away items. How many old people, and I mean people who have worked all their lives are put in nursing homes out of convenience rather than necessity. How many children are put in cages of nursery until is convenient to take them out and play with them. They are more like toys than responsibility. And most of the time we are so absorbed in making more money to buy more toys that we forget that they are persons too. Do we have to wonder why some children do not respect their parents? However, judgement comes on all generations for their life style, because, a few short years, and they will be able to enjoy the old folks lifestyle, I wonder how enjoyable it will be.

2012 New Years Resolutions

1. Get closer to Jesus, not just with knowlege but with the heart!
2. Pray for those I don’t like and that do things against me.
3. Strive to be friendly with everyone I meet.
4. Do not worry but in everthing by prayer and supplication let my requests be known to God.
5. Eat more oatmeal.
6 Walk more.

The Joys of Microsoft Word

2011 11 18- Well it is Friday again, and we are getting ready to go to Mrs. Taylor’s funeral. I’ve been sitting here almost pulling my hair out trying to find out how to change the display on Windows word 2010. I guess I’m just not up to snuff when it comes to the modern software. I finally found it and I guess they considered it to be easy. It’s a little slider bar and will right-hand corner of the screen with changes in this life. I’ve been looking all through the menus to find something, and it was right there in front of my eyes all the time. Well, I guess I need to take the course and get a PhD in Word 2010. Oh well, it’s just the joys of Microsoft. I guess I’m telling everyone I’m not so much a computer geek as I thought I was.
I lost my, Ipad yesterday, and I think is gone forever. I had it in my shirt pocket, and some were in downtown Enterprise, space I bent over, and it slipped out of my pocket. When I got home, I started looking for it, I never could find it. Well, I worried about it for a few minutes, but then I got to thinking. Why don’t I be a little more philosophical about this because I get a little too old to let things be on my mind for several days. If it doesn’t involve my life, my health or anything about my body, then it’s not worth worrying about. It’s only money. Then thinking philosophically, I told myself, “Well, somebody is very happy that found the iPad, so I have brought great joy to somebodytoday. So losing it was not a complete loss. “Probably worth the purchase price of ipod to bring somebody that happiness,” popped into my mind.”
Then I thought to myself, “Say a prayer for the one who finds the iPod.”
I did. God has some very quiet ways of working. I don’t know what He is going to do, but I expect something dramatic.

New WSPR Mode on Ham Radio

I have been trying the new WSPR mode to check out my propogation on various bands and have been having lots of fun with it. It really amazes me that weak signals can travel so far. I am now running 5 watts but I hope to cut that down much lower when I can get me an accurate RF attenuator. I would like to try one watt or even 500mw and see just where in the world it can get to. My plans are to build a small low power rig and power it with a solar panel and battery. It is an amazing world that we live in compared to back when I first got my ticket almost 52 years ago. There is something new coming outr all the time, especially with the digital modes. Here are included two screen shots of people who have heard me or been heard by me. Wish I could work dx like that on the usual ham radio modes. I have, for a long time wanted to set up some kind of beacon rig and leave it on and see what it would do. This system seems like it was just made for me and one of my main interests in amateur radio is propogation. If you want to learn more about WSPR the URL is http://www.wsprnet.org. It is a very easy mode to get involved in but don’t look to carry on any verbose conversations because all you can send is your call, date and time, grid square and your power. But in these days of the internet you can send each other an e-mail .