Month: July 2016

Howling Wind

/ Leland Olson Hoel / Leave a comment
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Prairie Wind

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Wind Chicago Lakefront

 

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/wind/

Daily Prompt
Wind
Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt.

Howling Wind

Chicago has the honor of being known as the Windy City, just because they have Lake Michigan right out of their front window. It is a rather large body of water, the wind has long distantces to cross that lake. It is packing plenty of strength when it arrives in Chicago. The wind clobbers and pounds Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive most of the time. That is why they are proud to have the Windy City attached to their Chamber of Commerce logo.

Saskatchewan, Canada and the Dakotas in the USA, have a somewhat larger area for the wind to develop in. They are all pretty much wide open, all the way to the North Pole. When that wind arrives here it means business. This is the Desert Wind Maria’s nasty first cousin. That wind left the North Pole about a week earlier. The wintertime brings a very icy blast in the mass of air rolling down from the North. The summertime hot, dry-wind will often time climb up to 100°F, with very high humidity. There doesn’t seem to be a happy medium.

I once visited with a fellow before in Saskatchewan Canada, I said, ” kind of breezy today, isn’t it?” He looked at me, smiled and said, “This really isn’t much of a wind right now, the Gophers are out around their little holes over there. Some days the wind keeps them in their holes. The gophers that are brave enough to come out have to hang on to the sides of the hole, their little tails pointing straight out in the wind. They seem to enjoy the challenge.

Dakotans are so acclimated to the wind, hot or cold they go about business as usual, regardless of the wind velocity. There is always something to do on a family farm. I do recall one time we went to pick rocks. The fields are scattered with a lot of different sized rocks from the glacier period. Every generation since farming began has picked rocks. We got out to the field and commenced picking, would you believe we actually had to quit. No, the wind wasn’t blowing the rocks away. The wind was blowing our eyes full of dust and dirt with every rock we picked up. We decided it wasn’t worth it, we actually had a day off.

Wind-powered generators will soon make the United States a World leader in the production of electric energy. Let it blow!

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Old? Worry Not!

/ Leland Olson Hoel / Leave a comment

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AdinaVoicu https://pixabay.com/en/old-man-time-watch-fear-old-age-1507781/

FICTION FOR THE PURPOSEFUL PRACTITIONER: WEEK #28 – 2016
by rogershipp

Old Worry Not

Fools worry about old age, worry will only bring bad fruit if anything. You earned your old age, it has treasure chests full of marvelous memories, enjoy them. An occasional bad memory will pop up but you will now see it with a different perspective.

You know old age is approaching when it takes eight hours of sleep again. You start thinking about giving away your worldly stuff to family members and others. It might be well if that is one final job left undone.

Grandpa, Why is your skin so wrinkled? Son, when you spend most of your life in the saddle as a cowhand the weather makes your skin start to wrinkle. The hot sun will make jerky out of your face. You can’t tell a smile from a frown on my face, can you? Grandpa your funny. “I can’t take your watch.” “Why not?” “There is still a lot of time on it for us to use together.”

https://lghoelson.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/old-worry-not/

Talk Slowly it Works Better

/ Leland Olson Hoel / 1 Comment

 

Motor Mouth

Motor Mouth

 

Daily Prompt
Slowly
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Talk Slowly it Works Better

I have a challenge for everyone in this blogasphere and all of cyberspace. The next time you start talking keep both ears wide open and listen to yourself when you’re speaking. For some reason people are talking so rapidly they are very hard to understand. I’m sure they a have problem understanding what they’re saying themselves. The speech part of the brain seems to be out of control, in a runaway, crash mode

I would think this all started in the early days of telemarketing. The telemarketers out there want to get their message out as quickly as possible before the person on the other end slams the phone back on the receiver or push the button to cut them off. If it wasn’t the telemarketing community who sparked machine gun speaking, it mus have been the start of the computer age and robotics.

When the first computers came out they had a four bit processor or ‘CPU’ Central processing unit. That is as fast as they could process the information that was fed into . The computer industry has progressed so rapidly it has become completely unbelievable. CPU’s today process information in Ghz. billions per second. CPU clock speeds have doubled every year since 1980, today there is a 5 Ghz processor

For some reason human voice communication has made a dramatic change. It seems like people are talking so fast they don’t hear anything that you say when you make your reply. They still have their last blast of speed talk echoing through their mind. It is very disconcerting when you look directly into someone’s eyes and talk to them. They seem to be understanding, you talking slowly, explaining what you would like done. They look back at you with an understanding look and most of the time they know nothing about what you said. They seem to remain confused on the subject, maybe they require speed talk to understand English now.

I have seen very little written or discussed about this topic, it is a serious issue as far as voice communication goes. Most secretaries in offices today speak so rapidly, you have to ask them several times what it was they were trying to tell you. Maybe the problem just lies in my own ears, not being able to hear well. Please listen to broadcasters, telemarketers, secretaries, or anyone calling you from an office about an appointment or for a business call. It might be my imagination.
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Drive Much

/ Leland Olson Hoel / 1 Comment

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Daily Prompt
Drive
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Drive Much

There was a time when a drive into the city meant there would be a car full of people. Why waste gas? Now gas prices don’t matter, just pit it on credit cards? Country folks usually had a car load because they may have only gone into town once a week. One chance to get away for a day, better take it. Taking a long drive with a car full of strangers finds everyone acting like old friends in less than a day. A cross country drive with kids is said ‘to build character.’ A driving trip by auto should have more than one driver to share part of the trip, alternate regularly.

We have become a nation of single minded individuals, each person now wants to drive alone. There’s bumper-to-bumper traffic going 5 miles an hour at rush hour? That is not really what you would call a rush-hour. Maybe a one finger salute, horn honking, gun pointing, road rage, and cursing hour. The cities have been fighting traffic congestion for years, so they asked people to carpool. They even allow carpool lane to move along faster. Sitting in stopped traffic a few times should be a great incentive to join a carpool and drive in the fast lane. I believe there are very heavy fines for a single driver not playing by the rules and speeding down the carpool lane.

Just about every working person in the country has to drive to work at least five times a week. This brings up a big question, “why are they speeding and running late.” Why not just leave a few minutes early? It’s a lot safer to eat your cornflakes and toast at your breakfast table than behind the steering wheel. Many people have lost their lives because the other driver was just finishing his breakfast instead of watching the lights changing.

The same car was reported speeding every morning for about a month. Every morning at the same time she would come speeding down the interstate highway doing 90 miles an hour. The Highway Patrol watched for her, sure enough she came speeding past, right on schedule. She didn’t have any answer for why she didn’t bother to leave her home just a few minutes earlier. She was a schoolteacher with a sixty mile drive to school. What does that tell John Q Public ?

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Let Your Light Shine

/ Leland Olson Hoel / 3 Comments

 

https://ceenphotography.com/2015/07/16/cees-black-white-photo-challenge-older-than-50-years/

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Older than 50 Years

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Let Your Light Shine

We have had this picture “Christ of St. John of the Cross”. Since the 1950s, the artist was Salvador Dali. This was one of his more publicized paintings, he had led a very colorful life. Maybe born a generation to early! He saw himself in a different light when this work of his was finished, possibly. I’m not sure just how this picture speaks to me, it has a light about it. It makes no difference where you hang it, even in darkness the light of the cross is there.

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This lamp is a old cast-iron goose neck table lamp. This was one of the first lamps our family bought when we got the magic of electricity. It has been a very good table lamp plus, a durable utility light to carry to another work area. It has been my favorite lamp for about seventy years now. The designer must have considered that, when it was made with a heavy cast iron base, it does not get knocked over very easy.

That heavy cast iron bottom of that lamp would have made a very lethal weapon. I know my mother grew up around the light from the Cross. She came from a family of believers, or she surely would have used that cast iron lamp base on my dad’s head. He could have met with an early demise on many different occasions. The light of the cross saved him many times. I hope it did the same on his last day.

 

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These last two photos are pictures of my grandfather’s diary from 1935, and my mother’s diary from 1947. My mother’s diary has a wooden cover both front and back and linen paper for the pages. The binding on it is made from Birch Bark. The book was hand made in Finland.. It had a Finish Coat Of Arms on the cover and was given to my mother in 1947 by my grandmother.

My grandfather Andrew faithfully wrote in his diary every day. He was born in Norway and came to this country as a teenager, his penmanship was perfect. I feel both my mother and my grandfather left a little light shining for us in those diaries, for all of the family to read and hopefully be guided by what they have written. What they have done in a way lets their light shine through the memories they wrote in their diaries.

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Typhoon Carmen

/ Leland Olson Hoel / 5 Comments

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Daily Prompt

Storm

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Typhoon Carmen

I arrived in Japan on August 8, 1960. Typhoon Carmen arrived on August 16 and stayed until the 23rd. I was there two years and may have stirred up a little dust, but nothing compared to Carmen.

I was stationed at Misawa Air Force Base, Japan. It is located on the far northeast corner of the island of Honshu, Japan across from the Korean Peninsula. The United States joint Typhoon Warning Center told us we had two days to get ready to meet Carmen. We had time for preparations but nobody seemed to know for sure how to use it. Misawa is a large Air Force Base with many huge hangers for aircraft. We had every hanger on that base completely packed full of airplanes, a lot closer together than any manual allowed. They were predicting 100 mile an hour winds for Misawa. Every airplane that would fit was put inside. This still left many aircraft out on the parking ramps, vulnerable to the wind that was coming.

The base commander had a plan to fly the remaining aircraft out just before the storm arrived. The next morning we got a report that the wind speeds were only going to be in the 60 to 70 mile an hour range. They canceled the order to fly the airplanes out. We all started thinking, maybe there won’t be much wind. Then the howling winds hit with a vengeance, the watery blast  lasted all day. We were very fortunate to have daylight to work in.

Airplanes started bouncing up and down and jumping over the chocks that were keeping their wheels from turning. Some planes just rolled around on the ramps by themselves. We had complete pandemonium, all we could do was park a tug or jeep up against the landing gear to stop them from rolling. Pushing on wing tips and trying to steer some from going off the concrete and sinking into the mud was a little dangerous, but we had to do it.

All during this Typhoon learning experience we are being pelted by flying gravel, felt like buck shot. The winds must’ve been around 80 miles an hour because we had raised red spots on our skin from the rocks and stones. I recall being completely exhausted, miserable, soaked to the skin even with foul weather gear on. When we finally got to the mess hall I must have set a new record for the consumption of SOS.

“A sharp trough of low pressure organized into a tropical depression on August 16. It moved northward, quickly strengthening to an 85 mph (137 km/h) typhoon. Carmen lost intensity as it continued to the north, and made landfall on South Korea as a 50 mph (80 km/h) tropical storm on the 23rd. The storm brought 50-foot (15 m) waves to the Korean peninsula, flooding coastal cities and sinking ships offshore. In all, Carmen caused 24 casualties and $2 million in damage (1960 USD). Carmen? is known for having the largest eye of any tropical cyclone in recorded history. Radar data from Okinawa Japan </wiki/Okinawa>,  indicated that it was more than 200 miles (320 km) across.”

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Guest On Planet Earth

/ Leland Olson Hoel / 1 Comment

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Daily Prompt

Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt.

Guest

Guest On Planet Earth

We Humans are all guests here on  Earth. We zip around acting like we own the place, but we really don’t. We are only guests. Maybe if we did own the place. We would take better care of it and not contaminate all the water, soil and air. A few have big plans for traveling to Mars or to other places in this Universe. If somehow any of those trips are made possible. We will be there as guests also. Will we treat those places any different than we treat planet Earth? We are supposed to be good stewards of this place called Earth, for the right to live here.

There are people who are even allowed to roam around free who have big plans for tourist travel in outer space! If they see their plans fulfilled, the roadsides on Mars and Venus and throughout the universe will be littered with beer cans, pop cans, fast food wrappers and other human waste.

There are many volunteers who walk along the roadsides picking up garbage that slobs throw out of their car windows at eighty miles an hour. Those volunteers have an endless task, we all owe them a big thank you. People continue to get worse at littering every place they go. Why, are they just too lazy or important to take their garbage home and pit it in the dumpster? I wonder if they watch their garbage in the rear view mirror as it flies in the wind?

If I come to your home, or you ask me into your home. I am a guest there and I should treat you and your property as if I am a guest. Something has gone dramatically wrong with how we as a nation treat other people and property, both public and private. We depend on this Earth for our survival. We must start doing a lot better job at being good guests here and stewards of the land.

https://lghoelson.wordpress.com/

Marble Topped Soda Fountain

/ Leland Olson Hoel / 1 Comment

 

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Cherry On Top

This week, share a photo of a detail that makes a good thing even better.

Marble Topped Soda Fountain

‘Cherry On top’, took me off the photo detail plan and right back to our little small-town Soda Fountain in the front of the drugstore. Right on Main Street with easy access for all. It was close enough for school kids to run down to at noon. The old druggist would put together for them a cherry coke, or any flavor they desired. This was possibly the first cherry coke, well before Coca-Cola was putting Cherry Cokes in cans and bottles. The cherry coke was a very popular drink with the school kids, they even got a cherry with it.

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Most everything that was served at that soda fountain, ice cream parlor had a cherry on top of the finished product. If you wanted to go all out and party. You could have the Royal Banana Split that was out of this world. As far as tempting taste treats, it was unbeatable.

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Every ice cream Sunday, no matter what flavor crossed the counter it had a cherry on top. You could also have some sprinkles, chopped nuts or peanuts and maybe a little shot of whipped cream to hold the cherry on top.

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As I recall there were many other things to order. They all had a cherry on top. The owner evidently bought cherries in a 5 gallon can or at least a gallon jar because he went through a lot of cherries. The operator of that old-time soda fountain could make you about any kind of an ice cream float that you wanted or a malt or milkshake. One for the road, make it a double dip ice cream cone with different flavors on each dip if that was your fancy, 5 cents a scoop.

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There was always this big old one penny scale by the door. We should have weighed both coming in and going out. It cost a penny for your weight, a little fortune card popped out of a slot on the bottom for a nickel. Those were the good old days, the memories I have of the old soda fountain, one little red cherry took me right back there.

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