Re: John Shelton "tempus fugit" (Full Version)

Foro Flamenco: http://www.foroflamenco.com/
- Discussions: http://www.foroflamenco.com/default.asp?catApp=0
- - Off Topic: http://www.foroflamenco.com/in_forum.asp?forumid=23
- - - Re: John Shelton "tempus fugit": http://www.foroflamenco.com/fb.asp?m=306758



Message


Richard Jernigan -> Re: John Shelton "tempus fugit" (Aug. 25 2017 5:12:32)

quote:

ORIGINAL: jshelton5040

It's amazing how this happens, it just seems like you're going along fine and suddenly realize you're old. You look in the mirror and an old man stares back. It's a little disconcerting! The worst thing though is losing your old friends.


I just got back from my brother's and sister-in-law's 60th wedding anniversary party. Their three children were there and all but three of their eleven grandchildren, as well as other friends and relatives.

When my mother passed away in 2008, my sister-in-law asked me to take charge of the hundreds of family photos my mother had collected, a handful of them even old daguerrotypes and tintypes. For this anniversary she asked me to pick out some with images of my brother. This one proved to be one of the favorites with the crowd. I'm nearly 4 years old, my brother is 7.

My father was a career military man. By early 1942 all eight of my uncles had volunteered for the navy, army or marines. The studios were doing a big business making photos of men's families for them to take with them as they went overseas to fight.

Today one of my nieces posed my brother and me shoulder to shoulder for a photo, holding a larger framed version that hung on our parents's wall for many years. I only had a glimpse of today's photo, but 75 years later we old farts were unrecognizable in the youthful image.

Tempus fugit!


RNJ



Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px




estebanana -> RE: Re: John Shelton "tempus fugit" (Aug. 25 2017 5:29:55)

I want to see the photo of you and Dr. Nasa




Richard Jernigan -> RE: Re: John Shelton "tempus fugit" (Aug. 25 2017 6:00:25)

quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana

I want to see the photo of you and Dr. Nasa


This one's from back in May, 2017 at the wedding of one of their granddaughters in Washington DC.




Richard Jernigan -> RE: Re: John Shelton "tempus fugit" (Aug. 25 2017 6:14:26)

quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana

I want to see the photo of you and Dr. Nasa


In this one he's actually being Dr. NASA. On the deck of USS Hornet with Neal Armstrong, Mike Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Tricky Dick Nixon, just after the Apollo 11 guys got back from the moon. During the flight to the moon and back, my brother's job was to monitor the crew's vital signs and their radiation exposure. For the recovery he supervised getting them out of the water and into that little Airstream trailer, then back to the quarantine lab at Houston.

He looks fairly calm, but he's not really. The air in the quarantine trailer is at lower pressure than the atmosphere outside. The idea was, if there was a leak, air would leak into the trailer, not out, possibly spreading moon bugs.

There was a leak. At the time of the photo the air inside the trailer was 0.2 psi from the threshold where my brother would have had to quarantine the whole flight deck of the carrier, including of course, Tricky Dick. An engineer found the leak just in time and stuck a piece of duct tape over it.

RNJ



Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px




estebanana -> RE: Re: John Shelton "tempus fugit" (Aug. 25 2017 10:51:38)

You shoulda been a movie star, you got your moms looks. But I'm thinking I've seen that picture of Nixon and the Doc before.




BarkellWH -> RE: Re: John Shelton "tempus fugit" (Aug. 25 2017 13:15:14)

quote:

quote:ORIGINAL: estebanana I want to see the photo of you and Dr. Nasa.

his one's from back in May, 2017 at the wedding of one of their granddaughters in Washington DC.


You look very spry and fit, Richard. Not much different than when you and I met for a Mexican dinner in Killeen, TX back in 2011 (six years ago!) where I was pulling a gig at Fort Hood and you were kind enough to drive up and meet for dinner.

I've been following the hurricane, which is going to be a bear for the Gulf region of Texas. I've heard it may affect Austin as well. Heard anything more about that?

I am in Omaha, Nebraska attending a reunion of those of us who were in the Air Force serving with our intelligence unit at a base near Peshawar, Pakistan back in the '50s and '60s. It was where Francis Gary Powers took off on his ill-fated mission in 1960 and continued as a "listening post" until it closed down in 1970. Off to see the Strategic Air Command museum today.


Bill




Richard Jernigan -> RE: Re: John Shelton "tempus fugit" (Aug. 26 2017 3:23:18)

quote:

ORIGINAL: BarkellWH

I've been following the hurricane, which is going to be a bear for the Gulf region of Texas. I've heard it may affect Austin as well. Heard anything more about that?

Bill


We had one fairly hard but brief shower late this afternoon. Weather radar shows that the continuous extent of rain extending to Hurricane Harvey's eye has reached the next county southeast of Austin. NOAA forecasts several days of continual rain, increasing in intensity. The total amount of expected rain increases sharply as you look further southeast of Austin, toward Houston. To me it implies that the expected amount of rain is uncertain.

I was planning to start on a road trip on Wednesday. It would have passed through Houston, but Houston is predicted to be largely under water on Wednesday.

The last time a hurricane dumped a significant amount or rain on Austin was about this time of year in 2010. I was in Kingsland Georgia, enjoying taking a friend out for a steak dinner, when my cellphone rang. It was my next door neighbor. He said he noticed my lawn sprinklers running while it was raining. Would I like him to shut them off?

I asked how hard it was raining. "Not very hard right now, but last night it rained 11 inches (28 cm)."

"Sounds like you ought to shut off those sprinklers."

I got home a couple of weeks later. To get downtown from my house I have two customary routes. One is on the freeway, the other is over a winding two lane road that parallels a spring fed creek. The road runs through a forested area. Where the road dips into the small creek canyon, it crosses the stream on low water bridges. The road surface is only a few feet above the normal water surface. There are channels below to allow the ordinary flow to pass underneath, but the bridges are built to sustain flood water passing over them.

The two lane road was closed for several days after I got home. When I finally drove over it, it was clear that in places the normally friendly trickle had been at least 50 meters wide and 15 meters deep. The raging torrent had ripped out dozens of centuries old trees, destroyed three of the seven bridges, and rearranged house sized boulders.

Today's rain predictions indicate there is some chance of it happening again.

My house is on high ground, I have plenty of food. When I was at the grocery store this afternoon on my regular Friday visit, they were out of gallon jugs of water. I began to think where else I might buy some. Then it occurred to me that I have thousands of gallons of potential bath water in the swimming pool, and if it rains as hard as they predict, all I will have to do to get more drinking and dish washing water than I can possibly use, is to put a bucket out on the deck.

RNJ




estebanana -> RE: Re: John Shelton "tempus fugit" (Aug. 26 2017 8:41:12)

It sounds like the Riparian systems took beating they won't recover from soon.




Richard Jernigan -> RE: Re: John Shelton "tempus fugit" (Aug. 26 2017 19:21:16)

quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana

It sounds like the Riparian systems took beating they won't recover from soon.


Flash floods are a regular occurrence in central Texas. The one in 2010 was unusually devastating for Bull Creek, but it wouldn't surprise me if it happened again this week.

[Edit: I just read that the 2010 event was a "250 year flood." That is, the probability of such an event in any given year is 0.4%.]

The maternal ancestors of my college room mate and good friend Tom F. came to Texas from Alsace in the 19th century, maybe before it became part of the USA in 1845. An entrepreneur organized a group of colonists in Alsace. They boarded a chartered ship, sailed across the ocean and landed at Indianola. This was before today's main Texan seaports had risen to prominence.

Meanwhile the entrepreneur had disappeared. The promised transportation to the new colony failed to materialize. There were no railroads or other regular passenger services. If there had been, the colonists could not have afforded the fare. So they walked. It's at least 160 miles from Indianola to the site of the new colony west of San Antonio. Several colonists and children died on the way from starvation, thirst, accidents or indian attacks.

The Medina River is not very big. It originates in springs in the Hill Country, and flows cool and clear in a level, wide, but steep sided valley as it passes west of San Antonio near D'Hanis. The colonists found the fertile soil and good water a fine place to settle. One puzzling feature of the new environment was noticed as they explored. In places near the top of the steep sides of the river valley there were piles of brush that looked to have lain there dead for several years. There were even sizable dead trees lying in the brush piles.

Only a few years after the colony was establihed the brush pile mystery was solved. A flash flood swept down the Medina River valley, wiping out the colonists' houses and barns, drowning their livestock and about half of the people. The remainder moved to higher ground, reestablished themselves and founded the town of D'Hanis. Tom and I once visited one of his old great-aunts. She lived in one of the original Alsatian style houses in D'Hanis. She was born years after the flood, but recounted for us her parents' story of survival.

RNJ

The first image is of a house in nearby Castroville, also an Alsatian settlement. It's like the one where Tom's aunt lived, only this one is in much better condition. The second image is of a more ornate house in Castroville, like you would find in a city in Alsace.




BarkellWH -> RE: Re: John Shelton "tempus fugit" (Aug. 26 2017 20:58:30)

quote:

I am in Omaha, Nebraska attending a reunion of those of us who were in the Air Force serving with our intelligence unit at a base near Peshawar, Pakistan back in the '50s and '60s. It was where Francis Gary Powers took off on his ill-fated mission in 1960 and continued as a "listening post" until it closed down in 1970. Off to see the Strategic Air Command museum today. Bill


Richard, at the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Omaha there was a section devoted to women in Aerospace. It had profiles of pioneers like Amelia Earhart and Jacqueline Cochran. Among them was a Tamara Jernigan who had a Doctorate and a couple of Masters Degrees, and who was named an astronaut by NASA in 1985. She made five flights into space, retired from NASA, and wen to work at Lawrence-Livermore in Berkeley. Is Tamara Jernigan by chance related to the Jernigan family of engineers, mathematicians, and aerospace activities?

Bill




Richard Jernigan -> RE: Re: John Shelton "tempus fugit" (Aug. 26 2017 23:30:51)

quote:

ORIGINAL: BarkellWH

Richard, at the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Omaha there was a section devoted to women in Aerospace. It had profiles of pioneers like Amelia Earhart and Jacqueline Cochran. Among them was a Tamara Jernigan who had a Doctorate and a couple of Masters Degrees, and who was named an astronaut by NASA in 1985. She made five flights into space, retired from NASA, and wen to work at Lawrence-Livermore in Berkeley. Is Tamara Jernigan by chance related to the Jernigan family of engineers, mathematicians, and aerospace activities?

Bill


I am the only mathematician and engineer I know of in the family, though I am sure there may be others in later generations. My ancestors were largely land owners and military men, often both.

I never met Tamara, though I am sure my brother did. One answer to your question is that I have never met anyone with my family name--in its more than 11 spellings in English and American public records--with whom I could not find a genealogical connection. However, some of the most recent generation of my extended family in Texas, now in their teens and twenties, might question me about family history when we get together.

Tamara was born in Tennessee, as was my great-grandfather. There are quite a few with the family name in that state.


RNJ




Page: [1]

Valid CSS!




Forum Software powered by ASP Playground Advanced Edition 2.0.5
Copyright © 2000 - 2003 ASPPlayground.NET