Musings

Fog on the moor this morning. Love the visual contrasts of, from front to back, the uncultivated moor, the quilt of fields separated by hedges, the sea, the Wales coast, and the muted sky.

Quick stop in Clevedon to see several places used as the town in “Broadchurch”—including this church, St Andrews in real life. This is a living church, as it were, with a gravedigger (man and machine) busy opening a new spot and prayer books shelved by the door.

Then, farther up the coast, we turned west to cross this Big Bridge, the pleasure for which we paid the princely sum of £6.60. Of course, leaving Wales is no charge…just a one-way fee collection plan…perhaps to encourage the English to leave but not to visit?

Welsh lesson: ARAF means slow. Sometimes they’re in the other order. (I was going to make the title of this post “post wan,” which translates as “weak bridge,” a not uncommon phrasing on a sign on a country lane.)

And, now for Tintern’s church ruins. It is mostly commonly referred to as an abbey, and it was, but most photos are, frankly, not of the monastery, but of the church.

First, the window opening above the east, altar end of the main hall. Second, the newly restored upper window area of the opposite, west (door) end. North transept, wall of high window openings extending to west end.

The light was transcendent.

Today is our first visit to Wales. Signs are different—bilingual. Sheep seem the same to us non-shepherds.

And this is the National Assembly building in the dock-front area of Cardiff. Shipping is not what it used to be and this zone is being repurposed to draw locals and visitors. While somewhat commercialized, there are also stunning modern and historic buildings. And glittering water, wheeling gulls, and, for a while just for us(!), late-afternoon warm-toned sunshine.

Here’s a closeup of a living fence, mentioned yesterday. This one has the uprights just bent to the side, rather than all the way horizontal. After growing, it has the same effect of making a latticework impenetrable to sheep, cattle, and people. Small birds, rodents, and other small creatures may well make their home here….

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

We had several sightings of “fog smoke” signs (no photo) along the highway. Since we experienced bright sunshine, we remain unclear about how to recognize this condition. That was the first two-word phrase of the day.

Our first stop…this “Rocket Garden,” or so the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex signs described it. I guess they’re all real, and not copies. They kindly broadcast a live “tour” of the garden periodically. We caught part of two of them, both the same voice, one disconcertingly similar to Rachel Maddow’s.

This is the Space Shuttle Atlantis, somewhat distorted by the pano process. It is huge, and I was happy that we could see it for real—not a copy, not a mockup. The two words? The business end (terminus?) of the arm (made in Canada and liberally decorated with Canada/maple leaf logos)…is the end effector. That cylindrical thing you see to the far left is the end effector.

This stencil is from a lower flank of a space shuttle fuel tank. Self explanatory (another two-word phrase, teeeheee).

Posted at 10:01 PM | Comments Off on Two-word phrases

Easiest closeup flower photo of the day: this hyacinth was in an almost eye-level planting by the sidewalk. A bit frost-nipped….

I smelled a combination of honey and orange…looked for the flower and found this unassuming specimen. Sorry I can’t post the lovely scent.

For no apparent reason, I include this knobby tire/wheel, aka tire with toenails, as I once heard it put.

Happy spring, or almost-spring.

Posted at 11:05 PM | Comments Off on Season-noted

I thought about steps today, about architectural solutions to elevation change between the sidewalk and a house. Nothing monumental in that…just functional problem-solving.

This is simple, however—footprints in mud. People (sneakers) and dog.

Are Fitb_t steps (possibly simply footfalls?) simpler or more complex?

Posted at 10:16 PM | 1 Comment »

Beautiful sunny day, and I took advantage of it for an early afternoon ramble. I found a power-pole festooned with lines and a light and maybe that’s a transformer, too. That’s not the simple one to three lines passing straight by that I remember from The Old Days.

Then, around the corner, I found another pole, with fewer accessories on top, and a Man on a Ladder—not a mechanized ladder, just the regular painter-carpenter kind—checking out the lowest level of technologies. I think his work is related to the coming fiber-delivered communication options we keep hearing about (foot-tapping impatience…).

Posted at 6:40 PM | Comments Off on News of the heights

Air Force One Presidential Potty, retired. The plane has three other potties, one up front for pilots and I’m guessing staff, and two in the tail (modified two-holer? each has its own door…) right next to each other. I know you’re glad to know this.

Here’s proof that it is indeed Air Force One, retired. And that the sun wanly appeared, briefly. And, yes, I know that it has an N-number and is only Air Force One when the Pres is aboard. Still, us civilians say and type inaccuracies like this.

Other attractions include a flying car. Red, of course. One wing is dismantled, and the V to the rear is (part of?) the upper tail structure.

For a Museum of Flight, there was a lot of non-flying going on. The only active flying was out the window of a control-tower mockup, and a screen there showing active airborne aircraft (clumsy phrasing; you get my drift). Again, not a flying vehicle, in contrast to the many formerly flying vehicles. And mockups.

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

For a short while, as this afternoon, I can be spellbound by deep-ocean vessels…while my feet are on solid ground. Two fishing vessels preparing to descend in a single lock of the Ballard Locks, the busiest locks in the USofA. They’re part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal.

Seaman watching to maintain proper tension on the hawser. (Or is it a line? Clearly, I’m not nautical.)

Here are the multicolored nets and floats and lines/hawsers on the leading boat. The two vessels seemed like sisters, but the deck of the other one was almost empty of nets. The windows and size of the deck and pilot house seemed identical, but the working area was set up differently, or appeared to be.

Regarding the title: sample of two.

Posted at 8:40 PM | 1 Comment »

We got out for Boxing Day into intermittent sunshine—and shadows. Looks like the locomotive world is getting going again after a down day. We saw a crew-switch at another location, but not here, although it looks like a waiting situation….

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Parked contained energy package

Our big activity today: squeezing apples aka cider-making. Which is far more than that.

The neighbors have a magic hand-operated machine that chips up the apples (circular motion, like a steering wheel), collects the chips in a cylindrical barrel lined with a stout, fabric filter. Then, with another circular motion on a different plane, we cranked down the press, squeezing the juice out through the cracks in the barrel, into the tray, and out the V-cut into the pan below. (I’m not sure why this particular batch was so foamy-bubbly.)

That brings in the next phase: filter and final bottling. We have special fabric filters (old sheeting) stretched across large funnels, and anchored with clothes pins. We pour the fresh juice through, which involves some fussing to get it all through (sediment blocks the filters, sl-o-w-ing the flow), and into a glass gallon jug. We transfer from that through the funnel (without the filter) to the final vessels, plastic jugs suitable for freezing. Long winters you know.

Use the hose outdoors to clean the fabric, wring, and reset on the funnels.

I was on the pouring operation. The Guru ended up on the apple loading and cranking and squeezing part of the operations.

Since it was raining, we did this in the commodious garage. Since it was cool, we didn’t have to watch out for busy and sometimes sated yellow jackets.

We took a break about two-thirds of the way through to have home-made potato soup and pasta (separately), topped off by home-made caramel corn. Living large!

What I didn’t mention was the prep work: collecting the apples, washing them. The apple-loaders picked through them, and selected from the various containers to make the blend.

Now, through the long winter, these households will have some fresh cider as a pick-me-up. We took a quart; it may last a few hundred miles.

Posted at 8:05 PM | Comments Off on No cabernet

During a break in the weather (more wind than rain, but none of it particularly pleasant), we went down to the beach. This dark green arc indicates a fairy ring, and the fungi’s special tenticles makes the grass darker (although some types kill the grass). I love the red of the apples and the gold and brown of the leaves superimposed on the green, both light and dark.

Panos require a lot of work by the processor, and even more so when moving water is involved. Still, this image looks both normal and spooky to me.

Posted at 6:16 PM | Comments Off on Arcs