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-Gramps-

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Blog Entries posted by -Gramps-

  3. -Gramps-

    Family

    By -Gramps-,

    Why have Diane and I kept motorcoaching the last ten years and moving full time next month?

    Here is the answer to that question:

    http://www.myrandomviews.com/blog/family
  6. -Gramps-
    I love puns and one liners. I love blurting them out...regardless of those in hearing range around me want to hear them or not.
    http://www.myrandomviews.com/blog/punsandoneliners
  8. -Gramps-
    Today I would liked to have posted a blog about how much fun it has been since Diane and I retired. I wanted to tell you about our adventures in the coach, describe all the new sites we have seen etc..
    http://www.myrandomviews.com/blog/2015/7/10/the-human-whisperer
  9. -Gramps-

    Tips and Hints

    By -Gramps-,

    Over the last ten years, Diane and I have learned, discovered, or otherwise stumbled upon a few things that have helped us during our adventures on the road.
    http://www.myrandomviews.com/blog/tipsandhints
  10. -Gramps-

    My Random Views

    By -Gramps-,

    Well folks, I have decided that the time has come for me to have my own photography and personal observation site. I will post randomly what I see and think about numerous subjects including motorhoming, faith, kids, who knows. I hope you will take a look. http://www.myrandomviews.com/
    I have enjoyed my time blogging here at FMCA.com.
    It has been a good learning experience. If and when Diane and I retire and go full time, then you can expect to see more random entries here as well.
    Gramps
  11. -Gramps-
    Diane and I camped in a tent for 30 years before making the huge jump to a motorhome. There was no step in between.
    Over the years, we talked about getting a trailer or a pop-up a few times. We had friends who purchased one, and then the discussion between the two of us would begin.
    I was not interested. If it had to be towed, then it needed to be registered. And if it had to be registered, it would be taxed by some government somewhere. My tent cost me nothing and I liked it that way. Besides, I was proud of my ability to rough it. I thought I pitched a pretty good campsite. I had lots of experience at it, that was for sure.
    A few weeks before Diane and I were married, we were discussing where we would be living. Would we rent a house or an apartment? Would we consider a house trailer? There were quite a few of those scattered around the mountains of North Carolina, the place where we were heading.
    Just for the fun of it, we decided to visit an RV dealer in Virginia Beach. I knew something about small trailers and pop-ups. I sold them during the summer while working for a large hardware and lumber store. I assembled bicycles, lawnmowers and grills, and I demonstrated Apache travel trailers.
    It was always fun when a new load of them would come in. We parked them in the front of the store and it was my job to set them up for display, show them to customers and, hopefully, sell one or two a week. I don’t remember what they cost in 1972 dollars, but they were not cheap.
    Neither were the trailers and fifth-wheels at the RV dealer, either. They cost a lot more than a house trailer. I don’t know if you could finance them for up to 20 years back then, I never asked. I was impressed with the miniaturization of things inside, including the furniture, the bathroom and the kitchen. I was also impressed by the way a travel-trailer took advantage of all the space it had for storage and how it could be pretty self-supporting.
    I was also impressed by the price ... way too much for two 19-year-olds to start a life together in.
    Flash forward a couple of years. Diane and I were living in Charlotte, North Carolina. During that time President Ford started his “Whip Inflation Now” program, which included a substantial tax rebate. This was a real rebate, not a loan from one year to the next. The president encouraged people to spend this money, not save it or pay off bills. He wanted to keep the economy from going into a deeper recession -- go buy something nice for yourself and your family, was the idea.
    It was a good amount of money, for us anyway. The question was, what to do with it?
    Some days before the checks were due to arrive, some friends of ours whom we worked with at PTL suggested we buy camping gear. David and Brenda were active campers as well as being a fisherman and fisherlady.
    They told us about the campsites along the Blue Ridge Parkway. They told us how beautiful it was up there and how you got to know the area so much more by staying there as opposed to driving through on your way to some hotel somewhere.
    Diane and I were convinced, so with their help we shopped for a tent, sleeping bags, stove, mess kits and all the tons of little things that made camping more enjoyable.
    We took to it like ducks to water. From then on if we had a weekend free, or a vacation, it was spent in a tent. As our family grew, we shopped and bought a bigger tent to hold everyone. We had some great times and adventures, including a bear attack, visits from skunks and food poisoning that put me in the hospital in Boone, North Carolina.
    We have been caught in huge thunderstorms that blew our dining canopy down, subfreezing weather and unexpected snow storms. I don’t know if our kids learned to walk in the kitchen at home or on a trail in the mountains. They all spent a lot of time in a baby backpack on my or an older sibling’s back while hiking in the woods.
    Things changed after our girls turned into teenagers, so we purchased a second tent for them. The day came, however, when a tent, cold showers and no blow dryer and no swimming pool, no longer appealed to the kids. We found ourselves taking the traditional hotel motel vacation.
    When the kids spent the weekend with friends or family, Diane and I would once again hit the road with our camping gear and give the woods another try.
    Like I said, I was proud of my double-walled tent, my dome dining canopy and my ability to pack all our equipment (most of which we still have) into our van. It could get pretty tight in there. Joel would be surrounded by sleeping bags with a large cooler under his feet.
    Yes, sir, I was a rugged man who made fun of people who camped alongside of us in their fancy white rigs, some of which looked almost as big as our house.
    We called Rvers "city slickers" and made up jokes about them. It was a play on Jeff Foxworthy’s red-neck jokes.
    Ours went something like this:
    If you have to call Terminex to kill the bugs at your campsite, you might be a city slicker.
    If at 6 p.m. you have Chinese food delivered to your site, you might be a city slicker.
    If the first thing you do after parking your big trailer or motorhome is to cover your site with lawn ornaments and plant your own flowers, you might be a city slicker.
    If you have to use a hair dryer while on a camping trip, you might be a city slicker.
    If you have to turn on a generator to use your hair dryer, you might be a city slicker.
    If you go hiking in the woods on a strenuous trail wearing sun screen and flip-flops, you might be a city slicker.
    If your charcoal grill is all-electric, you might be a city slicker.
    If you have a screen room next to your rig with a TV, refrigerator, giant electric fan, big boom box, and a wine chiller, you might be a city slicker.
    If you use designer luggage to carry your clothes into your rig, you might be a city slicker.
    If you use a blow torch to start a campfire, you might be a city slicker.
    If the sound of a smoke detector comes from your campsite, you might be a city slicker.
    I think you get the picture.
    Then came a back injury, followed by a pit bull attack, and our tent camping days came to an end.
    As I said, I didn’t believe it when Diane said she wanted to look at RVs. I saw no possible way to buy one of those things, not a large one anyway, and I saw no real advantage to a pop-up over a tent.
    One day, soon after Diane had recovered from her injuries, she asked me to walk with her. She took me to see a motorhome that was for sale in our neighborhood. She knew the owner, Doc. Doc, who would become our friend and traveling companion, took us on a tour of his Fleetwood Flair. Not many days after that, we went to an RV show, at Diane’s suggestion, and looked at trailers and coaches. You see where this is going, don’t you?
    A few days later, I found myself at a dealer's lot signing the paperwork to purchase a gently-used 2004 Fleetwood Bounder. I took it home a few days later. I had never driven one in my life.
    And that is how it started for us ... or should I say, how it started down the road for us. (Read my Rules for Owning a Motor Coach, Number 2 if you want to know more.)
    Now I am thinking about full-timing .... If the day comes when Diane wants to do that, well, I think you can see what will happen. Then this city slicker will really will have something to blog about.
    Gramps
  12. -Gramps-
    Today I am thinking about one of the things in my life that I am passionate about, something that goes well with owning a coach.
    That something is Photography.
    When I was a young boy I took pictures with a Kodak Brownie box camera. While attending broadcasting technical school in Washington D.C. in 1972, I tried my hand at shooting transparencies (slides) with my dad’s old Agfa 35mm rangefinder with a bellow lens. I had some success with it, during daylight hours anyway. When the first Panda Bears arrived from China at the Washington National Zoo, I attended the acceptance ceremony, hosted by Pat Nixon. I was up in the press stands snapping away. I still have those pictures.
    A few years later I found myself high in the mountains above Nogales, Arizona. As a network news cameraman (videographer), I was there to tape the assembly of one of the first network broadcast satellite dishes built in the southwest. I was running around with a heavy shoulder mounted portable video camera, with a battery belt strapped to my waste and carrying a three quarter inch video tape recorder. I taped the building of the dish, which was mounted on a platform overlooking a five hundred foot drop. The techs building the dish, one was my brother, had to strap themselves to the dish legs to keep from falling to the rocks far below. I captured on tape a number of beautiful sunsets and sunrises. My brother did the same with his Olympus OM-1 35mm SLR film camera.
    Later, after watching my recordings and knowing what was on his exposed film, I decided that I had to get my own 35mm camera. A few months later I visited a catalog showroom in Norfolk, Virginia where I purchased a Minolta XG-1 SLR along with an accessory package that was composed of a bag, a cheap 135mm lens, a flash, and a lens cleaning kit. This purchase started a long love affair with photography which would include many more cameras, and lenses, lots of reading, including the 16 volume Time-Life photography library (which I still own), and one day a complete color darkroom set up in my wife’s laundry room. I stored mixed chemicals and boxes of paper in the refrigerator. This was not always popular with all members of my family.
    I became a semi-pro photographer. I use the term semi-pro because I did not do it to make a living but I did make money at it. I made money shooting weddings, portraits, and other special events. I also made money selling my pictures at art shows. I was one of the photographers at the PBS television station I worked at. My function as video engineer, both in the studio and on remote locations, gave me an opportunity to shoot still shots behind the scenes. These shots were displayed in bank lobbies and libraries around this area and I sold copies to various people who saw them. My pictures were also published a few times in the local paper. The money I made went to feed my habit of taking pictures. It paid for film, chemicals, paper, and new equipment. I also entered a number of photo contests sponsored by local camera shops and cities. I won a few prizes, none of great monetary value, but winning meant a lot to me. The contest gave me the chance to meet other shooters, some of which became friends, and I learned a lot from them.
    I had my darkroom for about four years and then the opportunity to start my own phone business presented itself. I then had to make a decision about what was going to get most of my time and energy. I thought about what the head photography curator of the Chrysler Museum said to me when he was judging the photography at one of the local outdoor art shows where my work was on display. He asked me if I really took the pictures. He was pointing to one in particular when he asked this. Taken a bit back I answered with an emphatic Yes. He then told me I did good work and to keep at it.
    To make a really good picture took two shots, one in the field and one in the darkroom. To give up my darkroom meant giving up my ability to make the kind of finished art I wanted to make. However, I needed to make money to take care of my growing family, so it was a sad day when I sold my easels, large darkroom timer, trays, color developing drums, really good Saunders C760 dichroic color photo enlarger and watched them go out my back door.
    I went into film withdrawal. I threw myself into the phone business and didn't touch a camera again for months.
    Eventually I did get back into it. I purchased a new Minolta 550si Auto Focus camera. I took pictures with that camera as my telephone business took me around the world. I shot pictures of my kids, of the mountains, the sea. Not having a darkroom, I concentrated more on making a better picture inside the camera. I intensified my study of light, depth of field, the capability of different lenses, the best techniques for using a flash. I purchased a Minolta Dimage digital rangefinder camera when that technology was new. I was disappointed. I liked the instant picture, but I found the quality to be very lacking compared to film, so I stayed with that medium for quite a long time. I did scan many negatives and slides for posting on various picture hosting sites. I did post production work on some of those scanned images using different software programs including PhotoShop and others. In other words I was dabbling into the world of digital photography. I dabbled around the edges anyway, but I still could not see a real compelling reason to buy a DSLR.
    One day about seven years ago my daughter Jeri called me and said she was getting married. Jeri and her fiancé Tom would be hosting the event at the Little Switzerland Lodge and Resort on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Marion, North Carolina. The lodge had a staff photographer and as part of their wedding package, he would take pictures during the ceremony. She wanted me to take all the before and after and some during the wedding before I walked her “down the isle”. She wanted my shots, like the staff photographer’s, to be digital. She then informed me she would buy the camera for me. This presented me with a very interesting opportunity.
    I purchased the ten mega pixel Sony Alpha 100 DSLR. This camera had just hit the market a few weeks before Jeri’s call. The bundle included the camera body, 18-70 zoom lens, battery and charger. It cost one thousand dollars. I had a hard time with that price, but considering all my Minolta AF lenses would still work with the new camera, the cost was worth it. However, I could not allow Jeri to spend that kind of money so we split the purchase. I had a few days to learn the ins and outs of the camera. It wasn’t that hard. I took a couple of classes at the Ritz camera store where I bought the camera. I tried, but I found the classes to be a waste of time. I could have taught them, plus I got tired of hearing that the only camera you should own is a Nikon. That is a most silly untrue thing for someone who works in a camera store to say.
    Jeri and Tom were married on October 7, 2006. I took some shots before the ceremony started, then sat aside my camera (and my cell phone) to walk my daughter down the stone pathway to the side of her soon to be husband. I wished I could have been in two places at once. I really wanted to shoot her walking down the isle. Maybe I needed a small drone to hover in front of us and I could have used a remote control? Just kidding.
    My daughter Christine recently started taking a digital photography course at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. Christine enrolled to pick up some, what she thought, would be a few easy credit hours. She found out the class is not that easy and she also found out she likes it. She likes taking pictures with my Sony Alpha 100, a camera that meets the class requirements. The two of us have spent quite a bit of time on the phone discussing photography, including the various parts of a DSLR, lenses, and how they all work together. We have also talked about techniques, how to develop an “eye” for a good shot. Christine grew up around photography; it was a part of her life just like computers and telephones. Now photography is a part of her life again and I have enjoyed helping her.
    Working with Christine started me thinking.
    I thought I could provide a few lessons in digital photography, specifically Digital SLR photography here. If you want to get into taking really good pictures, something a lot more than a snap shot, then I can help. I will provide lots of information, both basic and advanced, about choosing and using a DSLR. To make it really interesting I may provide some tasks for you as well, that all depends on the responses I receive here of course.
    Shall we begin? Today’s lesson is a bit of an introduction.
    In order to become a better photographer you need to know two main things.
    1. How to use your equipment.
    2. How to use your eyes.
    What is a DSLR? It is a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. It combines the optics and mechanics of a Single Lens Camera with a digital sensor instead of film. The term SLR or Single Lens Reflex, refers to the fact that light, passes through the lens, hits a mirror which turns the image right side up and displays it on the viewfinder focusing screen. When the picture is taken the mirror flips up (reflex) as the shutter opens, the iris in the lens closes, and the sensor is exposed. The final image looks very close to what was seen in the viewfinder.
    The best DSLRs have interchangeable lenses. They can have an optical or electronic viewfinder. My newest Sony DSLR has an LCD viewfinder. It is technically an SLT not an SLR. The mirror is translucent (T) which allows light to the viewfinder and exposes the sensor at the same time without the mirror moving during the shot. There are many advantages to this that I will tell you about later. In all other aspects my camera is still a DSLR
    A DSLR with interchangeable lens provides you with almost total control over the image you want to capture. You can adjust the exposure of the shot. Exposure is a combination of the sensitivity of the sensor to light, the speed of the shutter, and the aperture or opening of the iris of the lens. These three things all work together.
    Exposure starts wit the ISO setting. ISO is also known as ASA or DIN. These acronyms are so old no one remembers what they stand for anymore. They are the acronyms of the original folks who set the standards for film. What does this have to do with digital photography? Digital photography still uses those standards. Those standards are used to determine how to set the camera to capture a correctly exposed image.
    The exposure process is a combination of three things…ISO number, which sets the sensitivity of the internal light meter, shutter speed, which determines how long the sensor is exposed to light, we are talking hundredths of seconds here, and the aperture setting or F-stop which determines how large or small the opening of the lens iris.
    A DSLR will set all the above for you automatically or you can decide for yourself. You do have control. You can set the camera for shutter priority meaning you choose the shutter speed; the camera sets the correct lens aperture or F-stop for you. You can reverse that and set the aperture yourself and the camera sets the shutter speed. The third choice, and it is the one that most photography instructors want their students to use, is full manual. You set it all using the camera’s meter.
    Let me give an example. The camera is set for an ISO of 200. The f-stop of the camera is set at 5.6; the shutter speed will be at 125 hundreds of a second. How do I know that? because the meter in my camera tells me. Now if I want to set it myself then there will be an indicator in the viewfinder to let me know when I have the correct exposure. Each manufacturer or camera has its own way of doing that. There might be a vertical or horizontal scale with an arrow or pointer that needs to be set on zero. Older film cameras used a ring and a needle… you adjusted the shutter and F-stop until the needle was in the ring and then take the shot.
    Typically film cameras had an ISO setting as low as 25 to as high as 6400 or more. These settings matched the speed of the film which was on the canister. For example: Kodak Kodachrome daylight film could have an ASA of 25. This was a great film for taking bright colored and very sharp slides in bright daylight. Kodak Ektachrome 400 was good for taking pictures in low light without a flash.
    The higher the ISO the less light you need to expose the picture. The lower the ISO setting the more light you need. So why not use a high ISO all the time? Well that sounds reasonable, but because of the way the other parts of the exposure process work the final picture may have results you don’t want.
    Film has an emulsion consisting of fine grains of silver halide salt particles suspended in a gelatin. These salts based on size determined the sensitivity of the film to light, the more sliver particles the less light, the less light the higher the ISO. The more particles the film contains the grainier the film. This translates to a grainer picture from the developed negative or slide. The bigger the picture the more noticeable this grain becomes. Digital photography experiences the same thing only the grain is called noise. The higher the ISO setting the less light you need but the noise, or digital grain, increases. Some cameras produce more noise at higher ISO than others. The older Sony A100 is noticeably noisier at ISO 400 than my newer A57 SLT.

    Now the question changes to: why use a higher ISO if it increases noise? The answer is because it increases the shutter speed as well.
    Why is that an advantage?
    Simple answer is that a faster shutter speed makes it easier to hold the camera steady and capture the shot. In other words, a faster shutter speed reduces or eliminates a thing called blur. With a fast shutter speed you can freeze your subject. You can catch a bird in flight; freeze a baseball pitcher's curve ball in the air. With a fast shutter speed you can take multiple pictures per second as you pan and follow a track star or a horse racing with its neck outstretched as it passes the winning post.

    A high ISO setting allows for hand held shooting in low light…to a point anyway. I love shooting in low light. I prefer the term available light. If the light is really low then your exposure setting could require a slow shutter speed and as I said that could make it hard to hold the camera steady during the exposure. One way to reduce camera movement is to hold it properly. Elbows tucked in against your body, left hand under the lens with palm up and cradling the lens. This type of hold also helps to keep your fingers from getting in the shot. Another way to reduce camera movement is to take advantage of DSLRs that have built in anti shake. Sony has named this function Steady Shot. Sony built this function into the camera body, some camera makers build it into the lens. I prefer Sony’s method because it reduces the size and weight of their lenses.

    The best way to avoid camera shake when shooting a long exposure is to use a monopod or even better a tripod. Both of these pieces of equipment are essential to the serious photographer.
    I think this is a good start to our online photography course. Next time I will discuss in further detail the relationship between lens settings and focus range also known as depth of field. Controlling DOF is a great advantage that DSLRs provide over the conventional point and shoot camera.
    Gramps.
    http://community.fmca.com/blog/62/entry-1382-depth-of-field/
    Lesson Two.
  13. -Gramps-

    The Black Ribbon

    By -Gramps-,

    Part 1 "That Day"
    Recently Diane and I were given two large gifts. These gifts allowed us to escape from work, from our day to day routines, to recover from disappointment and hurt, to be refreshed. These gifts allowed us to spend time with many friends, including our closest ones, to learn new things, and to have a whole lot of fun in the process.
    These two gifts were tied together by time, distance, and a long black ribbon.
    Sometimes a black ribbon is a sign of mourning.
    On December thirty first of this last year, Diane and I signed an agreement to provide an exclusive option to sell my business. We set a cash price for the purchase and a date for that option to be exercised.
    We agreed that I would spend the next six months training the buyer’s personnel to look after my customers and their equipment.
    So for the next six months we took very few trips in our coach. We had a couple of weekend campouts with our FMCA chapter and in May we took a weeklong trip to the Blue Ridge for a Parker Family Reunion. By this time all looked well for me to retire and the new company to take over. Diane and I promised to travel to Florida to see our daughter and to pick up the grand boys for a few days so she and her husband could take a cruise together. We also made other travel plans as well.
    I guess you could say that with only a couple of weeks to go before the closing that we could now start to count our chickens….we could look forward to retiring after twenty three years of being self-employed.
    We planned to sell the house and live full time in our coach. We started downsizing, making plans to sell some things, and give lots of things away.
    The day before the closing, actually about eleven hours before, the other company killed the deal. They did not want to spend the cash, they would only purchase if I loaned them the money at terms totally acceptable to them.
    I refused to do that. I had no other choice. I could not loan them my financial future.
    Just like that our dream for retirement vanished.
    Diane said it felt like she was a bride left standing at the altar.
    That analogy seemed to sum it up pretty well.
    We mourned for the life that we thought was about to start.
    I was not devastated, not completely anyway, because being the pessimist that I am, I told myself right from the beginning that something could happen that might stop this deal and I should have a backup plan. I needed a way to keep going even though I was tired and worn out from the long term responsibility of running my own business.
    The first thing I did after the air came out of the balloon, was to contact my customers and inform them I was not retiring, which they had no problem with. One of the ladies I work with when hearing the news said "Thank God! I was praying you wouldn't leave us."
    I suppose I could have responded with "well, at least God answered someone's prayer." But I didn't.
    Actually contacting my customers was the second thing I did.
    The first was I prayed to God to give me the wisdom and the courage to keep going for as long as I needed to.
    God answered two prayers.
    I wisely rebuilt my company website. I also created a company Facebook, Pinterest and Google Plus Page. I updated my oldest field test and office equipment. I attended out of town training classes in order to be certified to sell and service Vertical's new telephone equipment. I did things that the other company should have done in order to become successful at their new venture.
    In essence I sold my company to myself.
    I rebooted and it worked. I received plenty of work. I did not take a day off, except for a couple of Sundays, for the next two months.
    Just after Labor Day, things began to slow down. That was a good thing because that gave Diane and I time to plan to take the one trip that we refused to cancel after “that day”, as she and I refer to it, happened.
    We were not going to miss the GEAR rally in Asheville, North Carolina. We had not attended a GEAR rally in three or four years. This one looked so good that six months earlier we had paid for the trip. We planned on arriving early as volunteers and extending our visit to Asheville by a few days simply because we love the area so much.
    The trip to Asheville became present number one.
    On a sunny, pretty Friday in late September, Diane and I loaded up the coach for what we hoped would be a quiet two week trip to the gentle Blue Ridge Mountains. It was one of those unseasonably warm days that can fool you into thinking short sleeves is all you need, but we knew better so we carried clothes out to the coach that covered three seasons. I find that golfing shirts work well for all occasions.
    We left the next morning around ten thirty with the intent to drive to a point mid-way between Portsmouth and Asheville. Our target was the appropriately named Mid-Way campground and RV Park located just off I-40 near Statesville, NC. We planned to stay there for two nights and do absolutely nothing for the only full day we were there.
    Our trip down was uneventful other than the fact that I could not get our generator to start when parked for lunch. Diane wanted to use the microwave and I flooded the genny when I held the starter down for too long. Diane settled for a cold tuna fish sandwich instead of the hot chicken patty she had hoped to eat.
    We arrived at Mid-Way just after three. The office parked us parallel between a hill and a, what you could call a small lake or large duck pond. There was a fountain in the middle to keep the water moving and a lot of baby ducks were floating along like one of those carnival duck games. It was very peaceful and quiet. The phone never rang once the whole time we were on the road, well if it did it was family calling, not customers.
    It was easy to park the coach on our spot. It was not so easy to level it. I used about twenty of my many Lynx blocks under the wheels and the jacks to get it level, but in the end I prevailed.
    I tested the generator and it started without a hitch. That was a relief.

    Saturday I washed the coach roof after climbing up there to see if a limb that fell off the oak tree we were parked under had done any damage. It had not, but my new slide out toppers were filthy from pine needles and road dirt. We were not supposed to use a large amount of water but I could not let it go, so I carried a few five gallon buckets of water, one at a time of course, to the roof to wash it.
    Just as I was about to finish, Diane said “how are you going to rinse all the soap off?”
    Just then it started to rain.
    “I think God is taking care of that for me!” was my response.
    Sunday morning I climbed up on the roof again to remove the many acorns that were laying on the toppers. I didn’t want them jamming up the works when I retracted the slide outs back in. We soon pulled out and had some excitement when making a very tight turn uphill between trees on the left and a drainage ditch on the right. It can be fun taking a forty foot coach around a thirty foot curve.
    Diane kept saying I was getting too close to the edge and I told her hang on because I had to get the tailpipe past a tree, which I did successfully.
    In just a few minutes we were back on I-40 heading west. It was only a couple of hours later that the mountains started getting larger and larger in the front window. We stopped for gas and filled the tank. We added the weight of a full gas tank to the weight of a full water tank. The hardest climb was still ahead of us…so much for getting good gas mileage. I was confident that our UFO coach would make it up the mountain regardless of all our liquid cargo.
    About noon we arrived at the Western North Carolina Agricultural Center. Now this is the only time when things went a bit array. We took the wrong turn at a fork in the road so to speak. We turned left when we should have gone straight. We ended up on a very twisty one and a half lane road with no place to make a u turn. Diane is on the phone with Andy our chapter president, who was already at the venue, and he is telling us to turn around, Diane is relaying this message and I am saying, none too kindly, that I cannot do it…..yet. My fear was that I might not be able to do it at all. I hate being lost, especially when driving the coach. I wasn't actually lost but you know what I mean.
    We finally came out of the woods to a major intersection and I found a place to reverse our route. We made it to gate seven and with a little guidance from Andy and a couple of other chapter members we parked our coach. I needed to use quite a few Lynx blocks again but I had no trouble with that considering the rehearsal I had a couple of days earlier.
    Our good friends Gary and Janis, who should have arrived after us, were already parked due to the fact that Gary did not make the same wrong turn that I did. I was not the only one who made that mistake however.
    The next day there were volunteers directing traffic. Good thing too.
    It was absolutely beautiful in Asheville. Being parked on a large parking lot was not bad at all. We had full hookups which included fifty amp service. Gary and I shared a sewer connection but that presented no problem at all. The only question was what to do with all the water I was hauling and no longer needed. I figured at some point during the coming week I would just use the water pump and dump it down the sewer.
    That first afternoon we registered our coach, one of some four hundred that would attend the rally, plus vendors, and we made some plans for later that day.
    Gary, Janis, Diane and our good friend Jerry, decided to make, what for us is a pilgrimage, to the Moose Café. This great eatery is located next to the Asheville farmer’s market just around the corner from the Biltmore Estate. We left around four thirty for what should have been a half hour drive. Due to an accident, which was flashing on my Verizon GPS, it took an hour and a half. I told our three companions, who had never eaten at the Moose Café that it was worth the longer drive. It was.
    Most of us had the smoked pork chops, which came with the largest buttermilk biscuits you have ever seen. They have great country side dishes, all freshly made from ingredients that come from the farmer’s market next door. The meal was really good. I finished mine off with fresh blackberry cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of that warm sticky berry stuff.

    We covered a lot of subjects during dinner. We talked about the upcoming rally, the vendors and seminars we hoped to see and what we would do during our down time. We also talked about our non- retirement and I told them more details about what happened back in July.
    Most of our friends and family already knew about it falling apart and many gave us their initial response of “It must be for the best”, or “It will work out for good”, or “it just isn't the right time.”
    All of those responses are absolutely true, but I didn't always want to hear any of them. It just seemed like too simple a thing to say.
    Our friend Jerry lost his wife almost the same day we lost our dream and that really put things into perspective for me. I watched him stay upbeat and cheerful with his friends even though he had lost Charlotte, his best friend in life. I figured that going into some dark place just because I couldn't retire and travel “right now” really wasn't the thing to do.
    I still had a good life to live with my wife and best friend so I best get on living it.
    We decided to do just that and while In Asheville we were going to have some fun.
    Diane told everyone we planned on taking a white water trip while there. Gary and Janis had never done that before. Jerry had done it quite a few times. We asked ourselves, why not book a trip for the very next morning?
    We found some flyers in the information stand in front of the café and later that night, after a stop at Wal-Mart for tooth paste and other things I needed, I hopped online and started looking to book five people for a trip down the French Broad River early in the morning.
    I didn't have much luck. The season was over for most of the rafting companies and some sites would not take a booking our size. I would have to wait until morning and make some calls.
    The next morning at eight ten am, I contacted the Blue Heron Rafting Company. I asked them if they could squeeze in five people and they say sure, if we could be there around nine fifteen. Wow, that did not give us a lot of time to make our way forty-five miles the other side of the Blue Ridge Parkway, but we said we would get there. They said they would wait for us as long as they could.
    We quickly packed changes of clothes, water, snacks and people in Gary’s car and took off like a bat out of you know where.
  14. -Gramps-

    The Death of XP

    By -Gramps-,

    Windows XP is now 12 years old. It has been one of the best, if not the best, operating systems to ever be installed on a hard drive. I personally think it is better than Windows 7. However, it is now officially at it's EOL stage.

    EOL stands for End Of Life.

    Let us not morn for it quite yet. As Mark Twain was once reported to have said: "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

    The above is a misquotation. Mr. Twain actually said: "The report of my death was an exaggeration."

    In other words, he wasn't dead yet, even if he, or as the case may be, his cousin, wasn't feeling all that well.

    XP is not feeling all that well in the eyes of its creator. However, that does not change the fact that it is still running on a third of the world's computers, including half of the world's business machines and 90 percent of the ATMs. Some of these machines run embedded proprietary application software that will not migrate to Windows 7 or Windows 8. I have yet to see any Windows 8 computers sitting on a desk belonging to any of my customers.

    If so many computers still run on XP or embedded XP, why the big push to move away from it? I can sum that up in a couple of words: Phones and Tablets, or to use a different two words: Touch Screen. Touch screen devices have a much greater ability to deliver great new experiences. These new experiences, or to call them by what they really are -- apps -- cost money. You either pay to get them or pay to play them, or both.

    What does this mean for all of us XP users? Does this mean our XP pc is going to just one day quit? Does it mean we have to run out a buy a new computer if we want to read our email, stream our favorite movie, shop on Amazon, Skype our grand kids, or do any of the things we love to do? Some people selling computers (and a certain home shopping network will go unnamed here) want you to think so.

    You don't have to do a thing if you don't want to. Well, there is one thing you might have to do: Update your antivirus program to one that has very good real-time protection.

    If you are using Microsoft Security Essentials, the antivirus malware protection that Microsoft offered for free, then you need to replace it ASAP. Microsoft sent out an update for MSE users about a week ago warning of the immediate end to the support of this program and then two days later started supporting it again.

    Now I have learned that virus definition updates will still be available until July 2015. This does not mean you have total protection from hackers. Then again, you never did! I know that for a fact. The thing is, updates for your other programs, such as Microsoft Office, including Outlook, will still come your way. If any of those programs have a security flaw and Microsoft makes a fix, you will be able to get the update.

    So here is what you should consider doing if you want to keep rolling happily along with XP residing on your desktop or laptop. Purchase a copy of a good antivirus Internet security anti Spam program from Norton, or Kaspersky or MacAfee. All of those software makers have promised to continue supporting the system. I am used to using a very good free program but it didn't kill me to move from MSE to a three device license of Kaspersky.

    I installed it on my very old self-built XP workstation and on my wife's new Windows 8.1 touchscreen laptop.

    Yes, I did run out and replace her old Compaq. I did not do this because it had Windows XP installed on it. I did it because it ran or walked or crawled on Vista Home Premium. Now, there is an operating system with a built-in reason to replace it with something better.

    If you really are looking to upgrade from XP -- some use the word "upgrade" with a bit of reluctance -- to Windows 8.1, then I have a few suggestions on how to go about doing just that. Before I do, let me tell you that I think Windows 7 is not a bad operating system; however, you will not find many or depending where you shop, any new consumer devices with that operating system any longer. It is still the system of choice for business workstations. With a bit of shopping online you can possibly get a personal device with Windows 7, but I suggest that you just move on to Windows 8.1.

    Here is my first and most important suggestion. When you buy a laptop with Windows 8.1 installed, make sure the laptop has a touchscreen. There are some features of Windows 8.1 that a mouse just cant use, not without a lot of trouble anyway. One of those features is closing an application. There is at the present no X at the top of the window, so you close an app or Internet site by dragging the window down from the top with your finger until it shrinks and then spins around backwards. I kid you not. I have not figured out how to do this with a mouse.

    Windows 8 also has a feature named the charm bar. This little ditty of a program appears on the right side of the screen after a swipe of the finger that begins off screen and to the left. The charm bar, or charms menu, has a search button, a settings button which includes the power button, Wi-Fi connections, control panel and a bunch of other icons. The candy bar/charms menu also has a shortcut to the start screen, which displays all those big pretty tiles.

    The charm bar is the intersection of all that Windows 8.1 does and you need your finger to get there, so a touch screen is necessary. Also many of the free games and not free games you can download from the Windows store are touch games. Diane is addicted to one called Tap Tiles and I am finding myself playing a quiz game called Logo and killing a lot of time in the process.

    Second suggestion: The laptop you buy should have at least four gigs of Ram. Windows 8.1 is not the easiest program to manage the memory it takes to make it work. It is too hard to shut down a program and it continues to run in the background eating up resources. This can happen with a smart phone as well but there is a feature in settings called force stop. Windows 8.1 does not make it easy to force stop a program, not without thinking about it. My wife's laptop has eight gigs of RAM and Window 8.1 can use almost half that memory doing nothing but looking pretty.

    Actually I find Windows 8.1 to be quite intriguing. There are some aspects of it I like a lot and some I don't. It has retained enough of Windows 7 to make it possible for me to find my way around deep inside of it and at the same time its metro aps page and start page look good and make it easy to find and start programs.

    One other thing to do: when you buy a new pc, remove all the bloat ware from it. This takes a bit of time but it will make the machine run better, which will make you feel better.

    Remember, if you do decide to migrate to Windows 8.1 then get a touchscreen laptop with at least 4 gigs of ram, but more is better. By the way, if the pc you buy has Windows 8 on it, you should update it to 8.1 before you do anything else. Did I not mention that before? The update is free and some retail places like Best Buy will do it for you.

    In conclusion, if you have an XP laptop right now, don't panic. It isn't going to blow up or refuse to boot up. If you don't have one installed already, then you should purchase a good antivirus program if you intend to keep it for awhile longer. You can take your time looking for a new computer if that is what you want to do. XP isn't really dead, not yet anyway. It is still lingering around.

    Derrick
  15. -Gramps-
    This lesson is a continuation of using your eyes and your imagination.
    One of the volumes in my Time Life library of photography is called The Great Themes. These photography themes include The Human Condition (life as the camera sees it) War, Nature, Portraits, The Nude, and finally Still Life.
    I have captured a lot of nature shots. I have taken pictures of many humans including ones in love, sad, happy and just arrived in the world.
    I have not dedicated much time or effort to becoming a better formal portrait photographer. It is on my list to improve that skill.
    The Nude or figure study as it is sometimes called, has been a subject for art for as long as the human form has existed I bet. However it creates such a mix of attitudes and taboos that I have confined my eye behind the lens to pictures of my children when they were very, very young. You know the kind of image I am talking about, the standard bathtub shot that mortifies your now adult son or daughter when the image pops up in the middle of a family slide show to a chorus of DAD!....I can't believe you are showing that! I come back with a response of Look how cute she was. I will not be posting any of those shots here, not if I want any of my kids to keep speaking to me.
    I think some of these themes will make for new and interesting lessons.
    Lets talk about shooting things when they are still.
    This is a very challenging form of photography. I find the thought process that goes into picturing things to be at times difficult but at times satisfying when the final product looks, well, good, to me anyway. A still life takes time to design before the shot is taken. There is the object or objects to consider, the lighting, the angle, and the story that you want to convey. You might create the design or be someplace and find it already there in front of you.
    There are no hard and fast rules when creating a still life, except for the obvious one, the subject must be still! The image can be of objects you arranged, such as the common bowl of fruit. The image can be a form, a shadow, a light. The pictures don't always have to be good, all of mine certainly are not, but that is not the most important thing. The important thing is to try.
    Shooting still life pictures is a great exercise that uses a lot of what I have tried to pass on to you.
    I do have a suggestion. A tripod is a very helpful piece of equipment to own when making a still life image. Long exposures are common when shooting still life images, especially when using available light. I used a tripod when taking one of the following pictures, can you guess which one that is?
    Let us look at a few images.

    The below picture of the Chrysler Museum (a wing no longer there) won third place in the open category of the first photo contest I entered many years ago. The contest was sponsored by the Portsmouth Parks and Recreation Dept in partnership with local camera retailers.


    This picture won third place in the still life category. I was told by one of the judges it would have won first place and been up for best in show if not for one thing the panel of judges did not like. That one thing is not in this picture because I edited it. I will show you the original image at some point.
    I shot the next picture at a large flea market. I walked around for hours fighting with a malfunctioning camera but managed to take one picture that I rather liked.


    This dining room was just as I found it. The light was from one window, as is the next picture shot in the kitchen just off the dining room. It was a very small area. The picture was shot with a 24mm lens mounted on my 35mm film camera. My question for you is: What focal length would I use if I shot this picture with my APS-C camera and kept the same angle of view?

    I gave a lot of thought to the next picture...I shot it on a light table with my camera positioned directly above the image, It never came out exactly the way I visioned it. I think it would have been better if the background was not textured. What do you think? Oh, the answer for the question I asked above is 16mm.


    Just a simple image that conveys a message about time. I shot it using available light and hand held it as well.
    The next shot is very simple, just apples, but for some reason people like it. I should mention that that I shot it in the horizontal format. The blog uploading program likes it the other way. I find that interesting.

    I said that there were no hard and fast rules for creating a still life image...so one can be whimsical don't you agree?

    Last is the original image of my Third Place still life. It is really neat what one can do with a good photo editing software program. Check the comments at the bottom of this blog.
    By the way, I used a tripod when shooting the "bowl of fruit."
    Now I would like to make a personal observation. I have only received one response from viewers who are members of this site. That is a bit disappointing. I was hoping for a lot more than that! I was hoping for a number of reasons. One, a blog is a bit of work (Tom and Mike would agree I am sure!) and one likes to have one's work appreciated; that is just a vanity thing. Second, I would really like to know if I am encouraging people to take better pictures, just as I am my daughter (Christine does read this blog). Third, I was hoping to have a kind of simple photo contest. Maybe that is wishing for too much. Still, I have had fun creating these blog entries and there might be some more.
    Thanks!
    Gramps.
  16. -Gramps-

    Compose the Picture!

    By -Gramps-,

    I think photography is in my DNA. One of the things that fostered my interest in becoming a shooter is the fact that my Dad was one for many years. He shot thousands of pictures of places he traveled to while serving in the U.S. Navy, both at sea and shore duty. His pictures also included travels at home, to the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia as well a trip to Canada in 1967. Dad’s camera was always recording images of birthday parties, holidays, and trips to the beach.
    Now my daughter is learning as much as she can about digital photography. My brother shoots, as does Charity his daughter. Charity happens to be a really good photographer of children, in my opinion.
    I think that when you go to a studio and have a portrait of yourself or your family taken, you have a record of what you looked like at that time.
    When you capture a picture yourself, you create a record of what your life was like at the time you took it. You also create a record about what you are like as a person.
    A photograph says as much or more about the photographer as a painting says about the artist who puts brush to canvas. Just as a painter leaves his work behind, so does the photographer.
    Just something to think about.
    Lesson Five, Compose the Picture!
    This lesson will expand using depth of depth and the rule of thirds. We will also learn how to use framing and take advantage of diagonal and converging lines.
    First though, let us shake things up a bit and talk about breaking the rules.
    I will, on occasion, break the rule of thirds by the way I use lines.
    I talked earlier about how the rule of thirds adds interest to a picture by using points of interest that can have natural lines. Lines can also be man made. Multiple lines that converge together or come close to one another can be a great way to lead the eye of the viewer into a shot. These lines can cross the dead center of the frame, which technically breaks the rule.
    Look at the following picture. What line or lines of the picture does your eye automatically go too? Does the location of that element break the Rule of Thirds?

    The placement of the lines of the railroad track breaks the rule but takes advantage of it at the same time. What makes that possible?
    Is the rule of thirds still used in this picture as well as being broken?


    The position of the butterfly blatantly breaks the rule, however I used a shallow Depth of Field to create a final effect which I think makes the picture better than if I had kept the rule.

    Whether you adhere to the rule or not is determined by the total picture and how you frame it. Framing is composed of two parts. First is the extreme edge of the picture itself ...where it ends. Second is also what is in the picture along any edge. You see a picture before you take it and you think it will make a good image to capture, but have you really looked at it from the best vantage point? Can something be added to "frame it" and make it more than just a good shot.
    I believe you will see what I mean with the following two pictures. The first one is a good picture. It incorporates the rule of thirds. Notice the position of the four lines in the picture, the rock in the foreground, the fence line, the path in the distance, and the mountain ridge. Notice, too, the little bit of tree on the left side of the picture.

    In this next shot I kept the same four lines but I moved my position, which added an object to frame the original image, and the whole picture changes.


    I told you that back in my film days, making a really good picture took two exposures. One in the camera and one in the darkroom. Well I still have the opportunity to make that "second shot."
    I can do that using my computer and a good photo editing program. I will show you what I mean.
    This picture was originally supposed to be a shot of the geese. I was just learning to use the camera at a William and Mary cross country event, and while I was playing with the focus I saw the Georgetown girls track team come over the hill. This is the final product.


    This is the original shot before I edited it.

    The original image placed the girls almost dead center of the frame. The edited picture made better use of the rule of thirds, which creates a more dynamic picture even with the track team out of focus. This also exhibits once again how a shallow depth of field contributes to the picture.
    Knowing how to use lines, the rule of thirds, depth of field both wide and shallow and looking at the framing of your shot is going to help you create a good, and sometimes great, shot. You never know when you might need to use knowledge of all the above to create one special picture.


    Did I use convergent lines? Did I use the rule of thirds to position my subject? How does the depth of field of my wide angle zoom contribute to this shot?
    Not bad! Right?
    Next time we will learn how to use the brains behind the camera to help us capture that still moment in time.
    http://community.fmca.com/blog/62/entry-1400-when-things-are-still/
    Gramps
  17. -Gramps-
    I suspect that some of you that have read my first three lessons are thinking that getting deeper into digital photography and purchasing a DSLR is just TOO much. It is too complicated and too expensive. Why bother when my cell phone or inexpensive point and shoot camera works just fine?
    Well, it all depends on what you want from the experience of shooting pictures. If I can use an analogy, you can take a vacation, stay in a hotel in a great location that you drove or flew to, or you can travel there in a coach and really get to know the place while still feeling at home. Okay, maybe that isn't a great analogy…but it is true.
    A DSLR and its ability to control the exposure and the array of lenses it offers opens up a whole new world for you to see and record. With the right equipment you can throw yourself into it. You can think big, wide, small.
    Imagine you are walking in the woods near a campground in the mountains. You worked hard to make the time and the money to get there and now you are experiencing the first day in a long time that you don’t have to think about work, taxes, and bills. Your camera is hanging around your neck, the birds are singing, the sun is making interesting shadows on the path in front of you. Just stop and look, turn around slowly…what do you see? Look down at the path, what is growing there? Stoop down; look closer! What do you see? Imagine looking at anything you see from a different angle, from below or behind, and if you can move there, look through the viewfinder, take a breath, and press the button! What do you see? What do you think of the image you just captured? How does it make you feel? Did you see the picture before you took it? No? You will. Do you think it is a good picture? Do you want to make it better? You will.
    Lesson Four,
    Using Your Eyes and The Rule of Thirds
    The rule of thirds is not really a rule. It is really more of a guideline. Look at any photograph. Now imagine a grid on top of it. This grid is like a tic-tac-toe board. It is composed of nine squares all the same size. When you compose a picture, you will give it greater impact if you place the subject at the intersection or lines of these squares.
    For example: you are shooting a sunset. You look through your viewfinder; the sun is dead in the middle of the screen. Don’t leave it there. Move the sun to the right third or the top third of the frame before you take the shot. You might move it to the bottom third to show more sky. In other words don’t just focus and shoot, let go and move the camera before you take the picture. Think about what you are looking at. Don’t always keep the horizon or a person’s eyes dead in the middle of the picture. Notice I used the word always, I didn’t say never.
    Look closely at the following pictures. Image the nine square grid on each one. What is the main point of interest of each one? What attracts your eye first? If the picture has a horizon, where is it?





    Like many rules, the Rule of Thirds is made to be broken, but I suggest that it is better to really know a rule before you decide to not use it.
    The rule of thirds was first written down over two hundred years ago by artist John Thomas Smith, who thought the rule should be applied to the balance of light and dark in a picture more than content. It proved to be a very hard rule to follow for painters, but photographers learned to use it to improve composition. They, we, use it to place emphasis on light, angles of perception, and strong points of interest.
    This rule makes a picture easier to look at because it takes advantage of how people view images. It takes advantage of natural lines. Those lines are there. A sunset has lines; a flower garden has them, as does a person or group of people. Using this guideline helps to balance the picture, which makes the whole frame help tell your story.
    Can you see in the pictures below how the RoT was used to make the photographer (me) think outside the frame and create a better picture?


    The change in perspective does not have to be as dramatic to still make an impact.

    Just a simple zoom out and a bit of a pan to the right, move the "subject" to the left third:

    The rule of thirds doesn't have to be obeyed or used at the time you take the shot. You can also use it later by editing the picture. Notice the dramatic change in these two pictures.


    The Rule of Thirds is a guideline to help you think and see sideways, to get you to see "outside the box." The ROT helps you with your composition to change your perspective, and to use the lines that naturally occur in the shot. However, we have only scratched the surface, both with this lesson and the previous three.
    Next lesson ...Composition! Using, Stretching and Breaking both Depth of Field and the Rule of Thirds.
    http://community.fmca.com/blog/62/entry-1396-compose-the-picture/
    Gramps
  18. -Gramps-
    Lenses:
    To quote Sony.com “Every Lens tells a story!”
    That is not true. Not completely anyway. A lens does no good unless it is attached to a camera, and the camera is only as good as the eye looking through it.
    Then again it is true if you remember that an eye is also a lens; a lens attached to a photographer.
    It is up to the photographer to tell the story.

    It can be a story about love, or friendship, history, the beauty of nature. It can be sensual.
    A lens is a tool to make that story visible.
    I want to remind you that if you are using an APS-C sensor camera the focal length of any compatible lens is based on the 35mm film and APS full frame equivalent times the crop factor of 1.6.
    http://community.fmca.com/blog/62/entry-1382-depth-of-field/
    Lesson two.

    There are three basic types of lenses:
    Fixed focal length; which includes wide, fisheye, normal or prime, and telephoto lenses.
    Zooms, which can also be wide or telephoto or a combination of both.
    Macros, which are also known as, close up lenses. These are also fixed focal length lenses. Any zoom that claims to be a macro lens, well it isn’t.
    Fixed focal lengths come in various lengths and f-stop configurations. First is the normal lens. The term “normal” refers to the angle of view that the human eye sees when looking straight ahead. This normal angle of view is pretty close to a full frame 50mm lens. When using an APC-C camera normal would be approximately 35mm. (35 times 1.6 equals 56). I mentioned 35mm because that is a very popular focal length. A 30mm lens is also available from some manufacturers.
    If the normal angle of view of the human eye (which is a lens) is equivalent to a full frame 50mm lens, than any lens with a greater angle of view is a wide lens and any lens with less is a long lens. Once again depending on the sensor, a normal or prime lens, as some call it, can be 28 to 50mm in length. A fast normal lens with a large aperture of f-2.8 or more makes a great lens for shooting pictures in low light. I own a 35mm f-1.8 lens.

    A 50mm lens when used with an APS-C camera makes a really good portrait lens. A 50mm prime lens can bring a person close enough for a head and shoulders shot without standing on top of them. If you set the f-stop at 3.5 or lower you will create a nice bokeh effect. Bokeh is the blurred image behind your subject. My 50mm f-2.8 Macro prime lens creates a very pleasant bokeh which I take advantage of for both portrait and close up nature shots.
    A wide angle lens pulls into the frame and focuses what a human sees with their peripheral vision. Wide angle lenses have a very wide depth of field, meaning that the foreground and the background will be in focus at just about any f-stop setting of the lens. Wide angle lenses have the ability to make an object or person that is close to you look farther away than it really is. Ultra wide angles, such as a 12mm fish eye lens, which can have a 180 degree angle of view, will also distort what you are looking at. This is the peep-hole effect and depending on the lens and sensor size, it can be very pronounced.

    I enjoy using a wide angle lens for landscape and scenic photography. I can capture all of a waterfall or a stream, a big wide sunset over the Grand Canyon. I am not a fan of fish eye lenses for a couple of reasons, one; I don’t like the extreme distortion, and two; a good fisheye lens cost as much as two good prime lenses. I also use my wide angle lens for taking group, architecture and interior shots. I happen to own a Sony 11-16mm wide angle zoom. It was expensive but well worth it.

    The primary function of a telephoto lens is the same as a telescope, to bring distant objects into closer view. The too technical definition of a telephoto lens is that the physical lens is shorter than the focal length and that the lens is constructed of groups of lenses called elements to bend light in certain ways to prevent fringing and distortion and make the image as sharp as possible.
    I don’t own a telephoto lens. I used to. A medium telephoto is between 85mm to 135mm in 35mm format (film again?). A super telephoto is over 300mm in 35mm format. The most common telephoto lenses manufactured by camera makers or lens makers are 85mm, 100mm, 135mm and 500mm lenses. Along with being fixed focal length, these lenses have something else in common, they are very expensive. Telephoto lenses are usually fast, they have a maximum aperture of 2.8. This gives them a physically large size and price tag to go along with it. The longer the lens is, literally, the bigger the price. It is my opinion that unless you need one for a very specific application, like shooting sports at night for example, your money is better spent for a good telephoto zoom lens.
    I mentioned that I used to own a telephoto lens. It was a really nice Minolta MD 135mm f-2.8 that I traded a zoom lens for. This was over twenty years ago when I had my own darkroom. At that time, I didn’t care for the quality of the shot from, or the physical size of, a zoom lens. I found that fixed focal length lenses produced a sharper image that was much better than a zoom set at the same focal length. Fixed focal length lenses were lighter, and faster. That is somewhat true today, but zoom lenses are much better constructed than they used to be, and they are more versatile than a fixed focal length lens. That is why I own four of them. In my bag is an 11-16mm wide angle zoom, a 55-200mm zoom, a 70-300mm zoom. Normally attached to my camera is the kit lens that came with it: an 18-55mm zoom lens. The last lens has an aperture of 3.5-5.6. Why two f-stops? That is because it is different at the minimum and maximum zoom setting. At 18mm the maximum aperture opening is 4.5 and at 55mm it is 5.6. All my other zooms have a maximum f-stop range of 4.5-5.6. This is rather typical of any manufacturer’s zoom with the same focal length.

    So far we have learned that fixed focal length lenses tend to be faster than a zoom so they are better for low light shooting, especially so if you want to hand hold the camera. That is why I own a 35mm f-1.8 “normal” lens. A 35mm APS-C lens is equivalent to a 50mm full frame lens. I also own a 50mm full frame f-2.8 lens which I use for portrait shots. My fixed focal length lenses are not as versatile as my zooms when composing because if I want a tighter shot, I have to move closer to the subject, and if I want a wider shot, I have to move back. Zoom lenses allow me to change my angle of view without moving as much. However, zoom lenses do not usually have as large an aperture as a fixed focal length lens, not without paying a huge amount of money. They are bigger in size so not easy to hold steady when shooting in low light. Using a tripod when shooting in low light with a zoom is a good idea.
    Last but not least is the macro lens. As I stated earlier, a zoom lens is not a photomacrography lens, even if the manufacture says it is. It simply does not have the 1:1 reproduction/magnification capability of a true macro lens. A zoom lens cannot produce an extreme close up shot resulting in a greater than life size image on the sensor. Of course, it is possible to produce a greater than life size image when viewing or printing an image.

    Sony has three macro lenses, a 30mm f-2.8, a full frame 50mm f-2.8 and a full frame 100mm f-2.8. The 50mm and 100mm lenses both have the advantage of allowing you to be farther away from your subject (we are talking inches) than the 30mm and still capture a 1:1 image. When shooting live subjects from farther away, even if it is only half a foot, is not a bad thing.... it keeps the butterfly from well, flying away. Both the 50mm and 100 mm lenses cost quite a bit more than a 30mm lens. I choose to purchase the 50mm lens (used) because I also wanted to use it as a medium telephoto lens. The 100mm, when the crop factor is applied, made it a 160mm lens which was a bit longer than I wanted.

    Remember that a Macro lens needs quite a bit of light to take an extreme close up picture. The depth of field will be very narrow and moving the camera a very small amount either closer to, or away from, the subject can dramatically change the DOF. A larger number f-stop setting helps to increase the DOF, but the shutter speed is going to be longer (slower) so mounting the camera on a good tripod is highly recommended.
    This was a very basic lesson about lenses, but my hope is I supplied enough information for you to make a wise decision about which lenses you want in your bag.
    Next lesson:
    Using the most important lenses you have: Your eyes!
    http://community.fmca.com/blog/62/entry-1392-the-rule-of-thirds-using-your-eyes/
    Gramps
  19. -Gramps-

    Depth of Field

    By -Gramps-,

    I really enjoy photography. It is the art of capturing a moment in time. Like any art form it is subjective and therefore what constitutes a good picture is really a matter of opinion. I learned that really fast from the people judging the very first contest I entered. What I thought were my best pictures received no mention and one that I entered as a lark in the still life category, almost took best in show.
    The most important thing is to know how to use your camera in order to take the picture you want at the time you want it.

    http://community.fmca.com/blog/62/entry-1378-a-bit-about-digital-photography/ Lesson one.
    So let’s continue.
    What is Depth of Field or DOF? Manipulating the DOF can change a picture dramatically and turn a simple shot into a really good one.
    DOF determines how much of the subject or scene you are looking at through your camera’s viewfinder is in sharp focus. Let’s change that to say acceptable focus. The area outside the part of the picture that is acceptably focused is known as the “Area of Confusion." The DOF focus range depending on the lens, can be from a couple of inches in front of the lens to infinity.
    Depth of field is determined by how far the lens aperture is open at the time of exposure. The smaller the aperture opening the greater the area that is in acceptable focus. The larger the opening the smaller the area in focus. f-22 provides a much greater DOF than say f-2.8. That is why shooting in low light makes shallow DOF easier to obtain or harder to avoid.
    When you look through the viewfinder the aperture is always wide open. If the f-stop, which controls that opening, changes automatically or by you because the amount of light reflecting off the subject increases or decreases, that f-stop change does not physically happen until the shot is taken. The reason for this is so while you are composing your shot, the image on the focusing screen will be as bright as possible so that you can focus. If the camera were to stop the lens down say to f16 while you are looking at the subject, the screen would go very dark. However, you may want to see the effect of the depth of field before you take the shot so many DSLR cameras have a DOF preview button. My camera has one. I focus on my subject, depress the button which allows me to see just how much of the picture is in focus, and if I like what I see I release the DOF button and press the shutter release.


    When taking a picture you really only focus the lens on one point, perhaps a person’s eyes, the center of a flower, a snowy peak in the middle of a mountain range, a rock formation in the Grand Canyon. Depending on the lens, and the aperture setting, the person’s face will also be in focus, but the background or the foreground, or in some cases, both will not. At the same f-stop a wide angle lens will have a greater depth of field than a longer lens. When shooting very close up shots with a high magnification lens, also known as a Macro lens, the depth of field will be very small.


    I now need to give you a small review. I told you in our first lesson that digital photography is based on film photography standards. It is important to remember that. Film cameras were and still are available in different sized formats. As I stated most DSLRs are built along the same design as a 35mm SLR. I didn’t tell you that also like film cameras, a DSLR is available in different formats. They are based on two different sized digital sensors: The full frame APS and the smaller APS-C
    APS stands for Advanced Photo System, An APS-C or compact sensor is smaller than a 35mm frame by quite a bit. This difference in size is called the crop factor. The 35mm format makes the angle of view larger (wider) by a factor of 1.6 as apposed to an APS-C camera. The crop factor leads to quite a bit of confusion when understanding lens focal lengths, which leads to confusion about the depth of field range of that lens. It gets even more confusing when you learn that APS-C cameras can use lenses designed for 35 mm cameras as long as they have the same lens mount. Lenses made specifically for APS-C cameras still use the same angle of view scale as they would if they could be used on a 35mm camera body, which they cannot. Well, they will mount, but if you did use one on a film camera it would cause vignetting, a darkening around the edges of the picture. Here is the really interesting part of all this. If you want to spend some big bucks you can purchase a full frame APS camera. The sensor will be the same size as a frame of 35mm film.. If you did that then you would need to also purchase lenses designed for use on that full frame camera. Those lenses will usually work with the same manufacturers APS-C camera, but remember, not the other way around. Confusing ain’t it?
    Here is a quick summary of the above. My Minolta 35mm auto focus lenses will mount and work on both my Sony Alpha DSLR cameras because Sony purchased Minolta in 2005 and kept the same lens mount. The auto focus lenses that came with my Alpha DSLR cameras will mount on my 550si 35mm camera but they cause the vignetting effect. There are other auto exposure limitations as well; in other words they are not a good fit. I own two full frame APS lenses that will fit and work on all my SLR cameras. If I were to purchase a professional APS full frame DSLR from Sony (I would love an A99!), those two lenses would work just fine with that camera. I can only hope to find out just how good one day.


    I leave you with this last bit of info. There is a scale etched on any DSLR lens I have ever seen. The scale is exactly the same for full frame lenses or APS-C only lenses. The scale is equal to the scale etched on a 35mm camera lens. The lens could have a depth of field scale that also matches a 35 mm camera lens of the same focal or zoom length. A 24mm wide angle full frame or a 24 mm APS-C lens mounted on an APS-c digital camera is no longer a 24 mm wide angle lens. The crop factor of 1.6 converts that lens to a 38.4 mm lens that has a slightly narrower depth of field. A 100mm portrait lens mounted on an APS-C camera becomes in effect a 160mm telephoto lens with an extremely narrow depth of field at just about any f-stop you use. Like you I don’t know why lens manufactures don’t have a lens scale specifically for APS-C cameras. They have chosen to leave 35mm numbers as the standard and we must learn to deal with it.
    That is the purpose of this posted lesson, to help you deal with it.
    If you reply with a question I will be more than happy to answer it.
    My next entry will deal with the various types of lenses, including zooms, fixed focal length and macro. Oh, don't worry, DOF will come up again!
    Gramps
    http://community.fmca.com/blog/62/entry-1390-every-lens-tells-a-story/
    Lesson Three
  20. -Gramps-
    This part of my past is very hard for me to write about. I guess that is why I haven't blogged for over a month and it has been even longer since I wrote the previous part of this story. I guess I am afraid I run the risk of having people read this story and think I am crazy, just like the people in our church, close friends, and eventually family thought my whole family was crazy. They all thought we had "gone off the deep end." I am not sure what good, if any, these words will accomplish. But like my father, I am a writer, and as such I feel compelled to continue typing and let the reader be the judge.
    From Wikipedia:
    A miracle is an unexpected event attributed to divine intervention. Sometimes an event is also attributed (in part) to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that God may work with the laws of nature to perform what people perceive as miracles. Theologians say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through created nature yet is free to work without, above, or against it as well.
    A miracle is often considered a fortuitous event: compare with an Act of God.
    In casual usage, "miracle" may also refer to any statistically unlikely but beneficial event, (such as the survival of a natural disaster) or even which regarded as "wonderful" regardless of its likelihood, such as birth. Other miracles might be: survival of a terminal illness, escaping a life threatening situation or 'beating the odds.' Some coincidences are perceived to be miracles.
    I have heard the word miracle tossed around a lot. It is used to describe someone surviving a bad car crash (I used it myself after I was in a fiery car wreck in California-but that's another story) or a plane crash. I have heard someone talk about the miracle of surviving cancer. I remember the Miracle Mets and the USA Hockey Team and the Miracle on Ice after the 1980 Olympics, but how many people have experienced a "see it with your own eyes" miracle of Biblical proportions and suffered the consequences of such a miracle? Not many in this land. When I was a child I wished for one, I prayed for one and I got one. I had no idea what would come along with it.
    The morning after Penni was healed I floated off to school. I figured I could tell everyone about this life changing event. I believed that all who heard my words would believe me and would be just as excited to find out that God is real, just as real as I knew Him to be.
    I, being naive, could not have been more wrong.
    As I was walking to school, my Dad was struggling with his own thoughts about the night before.
    I think it is told best with his words.
    I remember the night, every bit of it. I lay facing one wall and Catherine lay facing the other and we didn't say a word to each other all night. I don't know if there was any sleep or if I froze in one position and allowed my body to rest a bit, but I managed to get up the next day and go on to work.
    At work, I tried unsuccessfully to bury myself in whatever I was doing. My mind was preoccupied and I don't know what I did. I'm a metal smith and I might have made cornbread that day, I don't recall. In my mind was a turning and churning of "what if, what if? and if it isn't?, if it isn't?" and how to handle it. This went on until about 10 o'clock in the morning.
    Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I got to a telephone, called home, and when Catherine recognized my voice, in tears she said, "It's healed. And it looks great!"
    I don't know what my answer was to her, if I answered her at all. I managed to get through the rest of the very long day.
    I managed to get home at my usual time about 4:00 P.M. and as I pulled in the driveway, the screen door opened and this little 18-month-old girl came running out. Because of her foot, it had not Penni's nature to run on cement--she had always walked very cautiously. But she came running out and when she got to that little step in front of the house, she just passed right on down, past me and around the car, back up the step and over the door, turned around and came back down the step and around the car and back up a couple or three times before I could get hold of her. Finally she just came running up to me and I picked her up. I don't recall saying anything to her. I just remember picking her up and realizing then a kind of peace--that it really had happened, that this was no fantasy anymore.
    I walked into the house and I don't even know what conversation went on between Catherine and me. All I can tell you is that we were realizing that we'd had a visitation from the Lord in our home. It was Wednesday and we were going to church that night.
    We only lived four blocks from the church. We would often walk, but most of the time we drove because of Penni. That night when we started to get in the car, Penni said, No. She wanted to walk. As usual, I reached for her finger, but she shook her head and started running on down the street ahead of us....all the way to the church. I saw a whole new personality in the child. She was trying out new feet.
    I knew that one of the things we had to do was deal with Derrick about it because he didn't totally understand what had happened. He had seen us through the hassle of Kam's leg in a cast, for the same situation. He had also seen us ministering to Penni with corrective shoes, putting them on the wrong feet, and always helping her across the sidewalk, and holding onto her finger and so forth.
    When we did sit down to talk, Derrick explained in detail what had taken place when he had gone in that night to pray for her. He related that he had picked her foot up in his hand. Penni's foot had had no instep at all; it was twisted in at almost a 90-degree angle toward the other. He held her foot in his hand, which was similar to the therapy we had done before. In his hand he felt the muscles shape and move back where they were supposed to be. As he held Penni's foot firmly in his hand, he said it was almost like it wanted to force his hand open. He knew it was God because he had been exposed to a healing a few moments before on television. For a fourteen-year-old child this was a tremendous experience.
    We talked about it, and yet we knew we had to put it into perspective. We had to figure out what we could do with this, what we were supposed to do. I guess my question was Why? Why me? What had I done to deserve this? What was God looking for in my life that He would come and visit my home? What was it all about? What was my obligation now?
    I had not been taught this; I had not been exposed to this type of thing. It was not something that one could just get up before the church where we were going and testify about. I realized that there would be some problem with their accepting it, and yet there would also be a lot of problems with my denying it.
    I finally said to Catherine, "I don't know why, but God wants our attention and we'd better give it to Him. Above and beyond all other things that might happen in our lives at this point, we'd better give God our attention."
    So we pledged to do that.
    I found out real quick that some people didn't want to hear about this miracle. I found out at school the first time I tried to tell my friends in study hall. Some looked at me like I had gone crazy; some told me to shut up. One said he didn't believe in God so he could not possibly believe my story of a miracle. After telling me this, he got up and moved to the other end of the table.
    It wasn't long till the word got around the ninth grade that Derrick Parker was now some kind of religious nut. It was like being back in Denton, sharing stories of my traveling to Washington and being told "No one has ever been to there, it's too far away!"
    The hardest part was being cold shouldered by my friends who knew my sister, who could see for themselves but still said there is no such thing as a miracle.
    I didn't get it. How could one deny what one could see with one's own eyes?
    Apparently it was pretty easy to do, even if you attended church with the people who "claimed" to have had a miracle. It was even easier to deny what your eyes told you if the pastor of that same church didn't believe in miracles either.
    I wish I could tell you all the things that transpired after the people in the church saw my sister running up and down the hallways, climbing steps and being a normal, active eighteen month old. The things that transpired were shocking to me. We became the epicenter of a controversy.
    This controversy erupted out of the maelstrom of questions this miracle created. These questions were about the power of God and what our church believed.
    Let me some up the questions this way:
    Is God real or does the church just give lip service about him? Does God use His power through His Son Jesus like it says in the Bible or are we coming to church every Sunday for a Mythology-History lesson?
    The church split into two groups, those who believed what we told them and believed their own eyes. The second group, unfortunately the larger of the two, was composed of those who thought we were some kind of troublemakers and denied what their "lying eyes" told them.
    The pastor of our church was the leader of the second group as my Father soon found out.
    We were totally aware that God wanted to get our attention, so we were leaning in that direction like we never had before. Above and beyond anything that our church was teaching, above and beyond anything we had been taught in our lives, we were seeking the will of the Lord. By doing that, we were getting involved in home meetings in our house where we had prayer and studied the Full Gospel. We could feel the tension in the church growing like an epidemic. It wasn't just us, but we seemed to be the center of it.
    The word was getting out about Penni's healing. Anytime something like this happens, there's an aftermath. In an aftermath, there is some good and there is also some onslaught from the enemy. Our little Baptist church was very conservative in its doctrine with gracious, lovely people; but this was not a part of their program.
    Peggy Stewart, (one of our church Bible study friends) came to me one day and said, "Clay, you must tell the pastor." Well I knew already that I had to tell him because the evidence was there. I knew he was not the type of person who would understand with a lot of sympathy what was going on with us, so this was not going to be an easy task. He and I saw things a little differently and he knew anytime that I approached him that "Here comes the thorn in my flesh."
    I sought the Lord and prayed, Lord, You know where I'm coming from and You know what I'm facing, so if You really want me to tell him, tonight when we go to church, let him be available. This was not normally the case; he was very reserved and did not come out and mingle with the people a lot.
    That night when we went to church, we started down the hall and looked into the Sunday school office and there sat one person: the pastor, looking through a new Sunday school quarterly. It didn't seem like he was too engrossed in anything, so I stepped inside and said, "Pastor, may I talk with you a minute?" He said, "Sure you may." I imagine he already had some idea of what was taking place.
    I started from the beginning. I didn't hide any of the terminology and I didn't pull any punches. I told him that we had been watching The 700 Club with Pat Robertson and we saw a healing take place before our eyes on the television. Without taking a breath, I added, "and Jim Bakker turned and explained to the audience what God had done and we all heard. Derrick then went down to Penni's room and prayed for her and her foot was healed. We don't know why, but God has visited our home and we know it's real and we're gonna lend ourselves to Him and we're concerned about this church. I would like to have an opportunity to stand and tell the whole thing to the church so that there will be no rumors". I just spit all this out without giving him a chance to make any comment in return.
    Finally, when I gave him the chance, the pastor said, "We've not known your little girl that well, so we can't be sure of wha's happened. Since you haven't received a confirmation from the doctor and we plan our services quite a ways in advance, there's really no time or room for this type of thing, so I couldn't allow it to happen. And another thing, I need to talk to you further about what's going on at your house. We don't want any trouble in this church, so I want you to make an appointment when we will have more time to talk about this."
    That was the end of this conversation. I still had a lot to say. I made an appointment to came back.
    I thought that I was prepared to take my stand and to be firm about what I was going to say to this Baptist minister. It didn't take courage; I was anxious now. I wanted to go in and tear things up. When I got in his presence, I was ready to take my stand.
    The pastor has his own stand to take.
    "Clay, you know we're a Baptist church around here. I don't know how much you know about our denomination's background, but the Baptist church is a well-established church, one of the largest in the nations, led by men of many years of Bible research with many degrees and awards, men that stand strong and tall and are well-versed in their field. They are heroes of our time in the entire church world. They've set up the bylaws and the doctrines and of them we can be proud. They're our heritage."
    He continued, "What you are saying to me is not for us today. The healing as you've described it, is not a part of our doctrine. We Baptists, of course, believe in healing, but through the modern means that God has provided in this day. You see, in earlier times, doctors and hospitals and nurses were not available, so certainly Jesus intervened and He met the needs of His people just like we're meeting the needs of our people today, but through modern medicine means."
    He was very polite, very precise. He had done his homework, no doubt about it.
    "So, you see, Brother Clay, you're being swept into an emotional fantasy which is not for us and it will bring trouble, not only to your family, but to the church. And I will not allow it to disrupt things herere while I'm the pastor. It will bring nothing but trouble, and I'm asking you to be careful if you want to continue as a part of this church."
    I was starting to boil a little bit, I guess, because I knew what I was after and I was being careful what I was listening to-very careful. I was finding things in the Bible that confirmed all I was hearing from Pat Robertson and other Full Gospel ministers, so I was waiting for my turn to lash back. Just before I had a chance, the telephone rang.
    The pastor turned and talked for a few minutes and when he got off the phone he said, "That phone call requires me to leave. But we'll pick up right where we left off in a few days."
    A few days, a lot can happen in a few days. You can loose friends, your church, maybe even your family.
    I have to admit that of all the thoughts that could go through the human mind, I was battling with "What have you gotten your family into? What is all this that you have done?"
    I was getting letters from my family saying, "It's okay to be religious, but you can go off the deep end." I was getting letters and calls from Catherine's family that said, "What âre you two into? What's going on? What's happening?" I was trying to be very discreet in my explanations to them. They were Baptists too, you see, and I knew I had to be very tactful in any explanation that I gave. Fact and truth are always the best measures to take, so I wasn't denying anything, but I was being very careful in the way I approached my explanation.
    Catherine called me one day at work and I knew something was not right. She said, "We've got to go back and see the pastor."
    So we had another conference with him one evening and in that conference the conversation that Catherine had with him was not connected with reality and I finally reached over and asked her to be quiet and I said, Pastor, we'll end it here. We won't bother you anymore. We'll just do what the Lord wants us to do."
    He made some request that we not bring this back to the church anymore. I said, "Well, if the Lord asks us to stay here, we won't have any choice."
    The next night the deacon board came to our house.
    "Can we talk to you for a while?"
    I said, "Sure, sit down and make yourselves comfortable."
    "The pastor has asked us to come and to make sure that you not bring any more of this Full Gospel issue you and your wife are involved in back to our church. If you can't get yourselves uninvolved with this and just be a good Baptists,"
    One deacon would start to talk for a minute and he'd ask another one to explain. It was like they had a final blow, a package, that they were to deliver and no one had the courage to lay it on us. Three or four of them talked. I had asked them to sit down but only a couple sat down and the others were kind of pacing around.
    They continued to gave me a pretty good spiel about how much trouble we were causing....followed by "we may have to ask you not to come back."
    Finally I said, "Are you trying to tell us that the pastor has sent you asking us not to come back to the church unless we deny what has happened?"
    They said, "Well, that's pretty much the story."
    "Go tell the pastor he has no problem, we won't be back."
    They left our house.
    I can't exactly describe the realization that this was God. It was a heartbreaking experience but at the same time there was peace.
    After the deacons walked out, Catherine and I didn't discuss it a whole lot, but we went on to bed.
    It was now about Thanksgiving week and my wife's family was coming up to visit. I think what was bringing them to visit was curiosity more than need to visit with us. To be perfectly honest, I dreaded this visit, because it was not a time when we needed outsiders. There were many things that we needed to face.
    A few days efore the family was to arrive, Catherine called me from work and she said, "I need some help, I can't handle it. I don't know how to clean up the house."
    I came home and realized that, emotionally, she was not able to handle the very basics. I knew something was seriously wrong. I started relating back in my mind the break that she had had in the pastor's office and I realized that she had not been herself since.
    I took her to the emergency room at Boone Clinic and we got no consolation at all. I took her to see our friends Bob and Peggy Stewart and they prayed and Bob called me upstairs and said, "Clay, you need to get some professional help. We can't do anything. I didn't want to admit that there was something wrong, but yet I knew there was. I called and explained the situation to Pat Robertson and he said, "Get her out of town. Take a trip, go somewhere."
    My car was in trouble, so a neighbor let us have his car. We went up to Richmond and it was a night of horror. I had not slept Friday or Saturday night because I was attending to her. She locked herself in the bathroom. She attempted to somehow open the windows of the Holiday Inn on the sixth floor. Driving home, we came through Williamsburg and the boys wanted to go in and see a movie. While Catherine and the boys were watching it, I slept through the whole thing.
    It was a terrifying time in Richmond. The trip there was mostly quiet, the kind of eerie quiet before a storm. We checked into the hotel and then went next door to a Chinese Restaurant. I loved Chinese food, and I still do, but that dinner was without taste that night. We went back to the room and Dad gave me some change and told me to take Rod downstairs to the game room.
    We played some pinball, and some kind of computer quiz game, roamed around the lobby for awhile and then went upstairs. I don't remember sleeping much that night. The next morning I woke up to my sound of my mother screaming.
    "The world is gone!....Open the window and you will see that there is nothing there!"
    I ran and pulled back the drapes from the big window and told Mom that everything was just the same. Rod started to cry.
    "What's wrong with him?" Mom wanted to know.
    "He had a nightmare Mom, don't worry about it."
    We were all having a nightmare.
    After we checked out of the hotel, we walked down the street to a breakfast place. I knew I needed to eat something, and thinking this may be my last good meal for awhile I ordered a big omelet. We said a prayer and I ate with gusto, like I was worried someone would take it away before I could finish. Dad reached across the table, grabbed my hand and told me to slow down and taste it. I looked up at him and with a shaking hand grabbed my glass of water. I knew it wouldn't help anything if I lost control
    The drive home was not so quiet as the trip up. After we left Williamsburg we crossed the James River Bridge. As we reached the high drawbridge, Mom screamed that the bridge was out and dove to the floorboards.
    That was it, for me. I burst out in tears and then Mom became calm.
    "What's wrong with him?" She asked.
    What was wrong with me? I was watching my whole family come apart.
    After we came back home, I took Catherine over to Portsmouth Naval Hospital on the pretense that we were going to visit a friend who was there. I went in first to the emergency room and pleaded with the doctor.
    "We've got a problem. My wife is having a nervous breakdown and I need some help bad."
    "Well, bring her in."
    I don't know whether or not you've ever dealt with someone who's going into a total nervous breakdown, but one moment they're perfectly normal and the next moment they're someone that no one knows and the next moment they are normal again.
    In the emergency room Catherine talked with the doctor and she seemed perfectly fine so he looked at me as if to say, what are you trying to do to your wife? I walked up the hall and prayed, Lord, there's nobody else that can help me but You.
    At that point, Catherine made a statement to the doctor that was totally disconnected from reality and he said, "Wait a minute." He started making some arrangements and gave her some medications and said, "Take her on home. This medication will cause her to sleep. If you need to sleep, you take some also." I said, "I don't need a thing."
    "If you have any problems, call me back." said the doctor.
    We went home. Our folks came and it was a horrible two days that they were there. I cooked the Thanksgiving dinner and I wouldn't have wanted to eat that turkey because it might have had the marshmallows inside and the stuffing in the banana pudding. We got through the days but our relatives couldn't communicate with Cathering...They realized something was seriously wrong.
    On Saturday morning they left, didn't say a word to me, but on Monday afternoon two of her sisters were back with a whole different attitude. They didn't come back questioning and trying to slaughter me, they said, "Clay, something is wrong and we came back to help." In the meantime, I had already called the hospital and made arrangements to have Catherine admitted.
    One of the sisters stayed with the children and the other sister and I took Catherine over to the Naval Hospital on a Monday afternoon during the peak of the rush hour traffic. It was rainy and foggy and a setting for a mystery movie is the best way I can describe it. They gave me the paperwork and we headed from Portsmouth Naval Hospital to the psychiatric hospital.
    Bayberry Psychiatric Hospital sat way down in the deep woods of Queen Street and there was moss hanging down all around and a swamp that surrounded three-quarters of it. Its physical surroundings couldn't have been worse. It was the longest, hardest trip of my life through all of the traffic and the rain and every red light was red in my favor. I finally pulled up to this great, big steel-barred door and rang the bell and somebody came out and opened it his deep low voice said, "Y-e-e-e-s-s?"
    I gave him my papers and he said, "Come on in."
    They talked to us and finally they completed all the paperwork. When they asked Catherine if she would sign herself in, she looked at me for direction. By now, she would do almost anything I said and nothing else. If I said, "Comb your hair" she would comb her hair. If I said, "Put a little lipstick on she'd put a little lipstick on. I wasn't always sure where she'd put it, but she'd put it on. If I said, "Wear this" she would put on her dress. She might put it on backwards, but she'd put it on. So I was tending to a person who was almost a robot. So when they said, "Mrs. Parker, will you sign yourself in?" She looked at me and asked, "Is that all right?" and I said, "Yes, sign your name right there. Sign yourself in."
    They took her back to the back and came out with all of her clothes, her hairpins and everything, and handed them to me. That was my darkest hour.
    To be Continued of course.
  21. -Gramps-
    Just a note about what is coming next. . . I know that this story has gotten long, but it is about to get much longer. You might want to get cup of coffee or take a break before you continue.
    You are about to find out that I have set you up. I have spent a lot of time and words to set you up for a story that I wrote twenty five years ago. It was the first serious short story I have written as an adult. I submitted it to Guidepost Magazine and just basically forgot about it. After a few weeks, I received a call at work,
    It was from an editor at the magazine. He told me that he didn't usually call a writer to tell them that their story had been rejected, but he was making an exception in my case, because he felt strongly that the story should have been printed but he was overruled by the editor in chief. He went on to tell me that my story had caused the biggest argument the magazine had ever had over whether to publish or not. They wanted me to change a few things in it but this editor felt it would change the story to much and at the time I agreed.. He was very sorry to disappoint me; everyone agreed the story was very well written, by a "trained wordsmith", to use the words of the editor in chief. He asked if I had written anything else. I said no, the conversation ended and the story sat in a drawer for years. I took it out of the drawer a few months ago, dusted it off and made a few changes to it.
    Here is the story of the miracle that came to my family, just when we needed it. Take a deep breath and don't read it too fast.
    A Night in May
    We all have life defining moments, a moment that changes us and helps to make us who we are.. It may be for good, or for bad. We said yes to something when we should have said no. We stopped when we should have gone. We sat when we should have gotten up. Sometimes we run away from them. This is about one of those moments that happened to me. It was a moment in time when I got up.
    You may choose not to believe what you read here, that is up to you. I will tell you this. It happened just the way I have written it.
    My Mom and I argued that night. Was it a Tuesday or a Thursday? I don't remember. I do remember that it was sometime in May, 1968. I was fourteen years old, halfway between the time I first thought I should be treated like a man and nobody would and the time my parents thought I should act like a man and I couldn't.
    What did my Mom and I argue about? Was it clothes or grades or just my "attitude"? It must have been aright big fight because I remember doing what I usually did afterwards. I took a long hot shower, the kind where Mom would bang on the bathroom door, rattle the doorknob, and remind me that there was a water shortage or would be if I didn't hurry up and get out of there. No response from me of course. Ten minutes or two yells later, whichever came first, I would turn off the water as the words "it's about time" seemed to slide underneath the bathroom door.
    I will admit that I was not the easiest teenager to get along with. I was a know it all, stubborn as a rock, and at times just plain unfriendly. Simple things gave me a lot of pleasure, like removing my brother from his bunk bed, the top one, with a well placed kick in the middle of the night, or attaching a clothespin to the tail of the cat next door in order to watch it run in noisy circles.
    I did not do these things very often but my parents could not understand why I did them at all. I didn't know why either. I did know that something was wrong. I was frustrated. I was anxious. I was bored. I didn't like life. I certainly didn't understand it. Why was I here? Why was anybody here? Is there a God? Lots of questions like those constantly rolled through my head until I thought I was going crazy,
    It was usually in the wee hours of the morning that I would mull the possible answers to life's profound questions around in my brain, until out of frustration I would send my foot to the unseen, but still perfect spot, over my head which would send little Rodney flying to the floor where he would land with a thump, a wail, and a "Be Quiet In There!" from the room across the hall. I would respond by wrapping my pillow around my head trying to shut out everything. The questions with no answers just keep on coming.
    I finished my shower this particular evening, dried off and shoved the unfolded towel over the rack. As I was putting on, what I considered to be my unfashionable bathrobe, I looked at myself in the mirror. My face looked tight and drawn. The argument lines were still on my forehead and around my mouth. There was the red beginning of a zit forming over the right eyebrow,
    "Great that's all I need." I thought. "The girls will really like me now."
    I turned to leave the bathroom and stubbed my big toe against the door just as little brother was coming in; loudly claiming he couldn't hold it any longer. He also bet there wasn't enough water left to flush with. I cuffed him upside the ear and strutted angrily down the hall. I passed by my little sisters' room.
    They were both asleep. Kam was in her bed and Penni, the younger one, in her crib. Both girls were born with a twisted foot. Kam wore a cast for about a year and then wore corrective shoes so she was now cured. Penni's right foot was twisted so badly that she could hardly walk. She was due to have a cast put on her leg and foot in just a few days. She was a very active eighteen month old so the cast was sure to make things unpleasant for her. I loved my sisters very much. However at that moment as I passed the door of their room I was not thinking about them. I kept on walking.
    When I reached the den I sat down hard on the opposite end of the couch from my parents, folded my arms and stared blankly at the new color television. I couldn't stand it. They were watching that nutty religious channel again.
    I didn't mind religious things. Not a whole lot anyway. Well maybe I did. My Mom and Dad had been taking me to church all my life. I thought it was the right thing to do but I also thought it was boring. When I was small it seemed more important and frankly, then it was more fun. I liked the summer church programs with the games, the cookies and juice. I listened when I heard the stories about Noah, Sampson, David and Goliath. One thunder stormy Sunday night when I was about seven years old I asked my Father what dying on the cross must have been like for Jesus.
    "Did he hurt bad?" I asked.
    I don't remember the words that my father used. I do remember that while he talked I could almost smell the dust on the streets of Jerusalem. I could hear the shouts of the soldiers and the cries of the people as Jesus stumbled his way to the hill. The hammer struck the nail. The cross dropped roughly into the ground. As Daddy spoke the sky grew dark, the lightening struck and Jesus said, "It is finished." And somehow I knew that this had something to do with me. This terrible death of a man who healed children, made the blind to see, and the dead live again, had something to do with me. What, I wasn't sure.
    Not long after that, I was baptized and became a member of our church. It felt good for awhile. For a few years I continued to believe and to grow. Then something inside of me began to change. Church became a place to talk, to meet people (girls), to show off new clothes, and to complain that it was boring. Religion just did not have my attention.
    Religion didn't have my attention but this television show sure did. As I watched, I could tell the small studio was full of people. They were praying. I guess that's what it was. I had never seen anything like it before. Their arms were in the air. They looked at the ceiling a lot. They prayed out loud and I do mean loud. They moaned and swayed together. It made me feel very strange.
    A man named Jim, kind of small, with his hair slicked back and carrying a microphone seemed to take center stage. Two more men, a tall one and another one moved over next to him. The small one motioned to a lady who was standing off to one side. She was carrying a young boy who had a brace on one leg. On the same leg he wore a built up shoe. Obviously that leg was much shorter than the other. The boy also had one arm that was thin and twisted. He kept it pressed up against his chest.
    I found myself leaning forward on the couch. A piano began to softly play. Then the three men did something I had also never seen before. They put their hands on the little boy and starting praying. "Heal him Jesus. . . . Heal him God."
    I didn't like it at all, yet it was so compelling at the same time. The men started praying in some kind of Arabic sounding language. That really made me nervous. The piano began to play a melody that seemed to follow the sing-song pattern of the prayers of the men. The people in the studio joined in.
    One of the men asked the lady to put the boy down and when she did he began to walk, hesitantly, and then with greater speed. Then he started to walk unevenly, a kind of side to side gait. The camera took a tight shot. My mouth went dry. In awe, I realized that right in front of my eyes his short leg was growing!
    The lady looked absolutely shocked. She picked the boy up and hugged him. The people were shouting now. The music swelled and then as if on cue it stopped.
    The man named Jim held a pencil in front of the little boy. "Take this," he said. The boy reached out with his good arm. "Noâ€, he said, "I want you to take it with your other hand."
    It was obvious that the little boy had to think about this. He paused for a few seconds. I held my breath and then as if in slow motion he straightened out that little shriveled up arm and with a firm grab took the pencil.
    The people let out shout of joy that shook me to my soul. I breathed in a lung full of air. My eyes began to fill with tears.
    Then the man named Jim turned and faced the camera. He seemed to be looking right at me.
    "What just happened is real," he said. "Very real and it's just the start. Jesus wants to heal children tonight. He is going to heal children tonight, sick children, and crippled children. They will walk. They will see. They will hear."
    Then this little man with the round face, funny smile and slicked back hair pointed his finger at a boy sitting on a couch and changed his life forever.
    "Parents, go and pray for your children. Big brothers go and lay your hands on your little brothers or sisters and do it now! "
    Suddenly, without thinking, I got off the couch, ran down the hall, made a sharp left turn into my sisters' room and stopped in front of Penni's crib where her little form was asleep under her favorite blanket.
    My mind went blank. What do I do? Touch her. I did that. Maybe I should put my arm in the air like those people. I did that. Now ask God in the name of Jesus to heal this crooked little foot. Yes. I will. I did.
    "Oh please God, please, Jesus, please, please make her foot well." It was all I knew how to say. It was enough.
    I began to shake. I began to sweat. My knees became so weak I thought I would fall. Then a feeling or maybe it was a kind of presence seemed to be in me or around me. I became calm and peaceful on the inside while still shaking on the outside, and I started to cry. I felt like I was not me anymore. Somebody that was me, but not me, took my place and this somebody was better, cleaner, a new person. And this new person knew that Penni's little foot was now perfectly fine.
    I'm not sure how long I stood there. I was surrounded by something very special and I just keep breathing it in. After awhile I knew the moment had passed. Feeling a little weak and still trembling, I went back to the den to tell my parents what had happened.
    The next day watching Penni run around without the need to hold someone's hand was an amazing, wonderful sight. Just as wonderful was the change in my family and in me.
    For a short while I had been connected to something infinitely great. It was a power older than time itself. I was no longer centered on myself. I was at peace.
    The questions that haunted me no longer needed answers.
    But the story isn't over yet...
  22. -Gramps-
    On Christmas night, Diane and I met Gary and Janis for dinner and a movie. We got together at the Commodore Theater in Portsmouth for smoked chicken salad and fruit, ice tea and popcorn. We had not seen each other since the rally so we chatted about that before the show started. We all came away from the rally knowing that everyone who attended, including us, had a good time. Many, including Gary, learned to appreciate “It’s a Wonderful Life” more. Gary watched it again when it was aired just last week on NBC.
    We talked for about our hour about our families and how our Christmas day had been.
    Gary and I headed upstairs for some popcorn just as the theater lights were dimming.
    We watched Saving Mr. Banks. I really enjoyed the movie. I think we all did. I like a Disney ending. Isn’t that what we all want in life…a Disney Ending?
    Eight o’clock Saturday morning found me back in the meeting room along with Gary getting things ready for our full breakfast. The first thing I noticed on the way over was that the weather was starting to go south. In other words it was beginning to get cold. I didn't mind. It is Christmas time; it is supposed to be cold.
    Gary started the pots of coffee while I made sure the tables were in order. Janis arrived next and Diane not far behind after taking Teddy Bear for a trot around the campground.
    The caterers arrived at just after eight with lots of aluminum trays of food.
    I was surprised at how much. There were cheesy scrambled eggs, bacon, pork sausage links, turkey sausage patties, really flaky biscuits, and some of the best buttery grits I ever ate. There was plenty of juice and coffee of course.
    By eight thirty the place was full. Everyone seemed very cheerful, and ready to get this part of the festivities going. I heard very positive comments about the previous evening.
    Once again I rang a bell. As soon as I had everyone’s attention I announced that we would be eating, the Marines had arrived and once the Toys for Tots presentation was over our business meeting which included installation of our new offices would commence.
    We held hands, one our men said Grace and then the line formed.
    Breakfast was good. The two Marines, in their dress blues, sat with us at the host table and we chatted for awhile. Then they stood in front of the toy table, which by now was quite crowded with all kinds of toys and told us some history of the charity. They gratefully accepted the toys, packed them up and were on their way.
    We cleared the breakfast item and reset the buffet tables to work as officer tables and then the meeting began.
    Once the meeting was over I took the floor to announce that dinner would still be at six, happy hour at five.
    I also announced that the trivia contest would be a team effort.
    “The contest will be by table so I advise you to not sit by someone stupid!”
    That got a laugh…one of many before this day was over.
    The morning ended and every one headed out, some to go shopping (some for gifts, some for vintage clothing for some reason), some to one of the local bar-b-que spots for lunch, and some just decided to hang around in their coaches.
    The four hosts decided to go vintage clothing looking as well. Diane needed a 1940s hat. I didn’t need anything.
    I had my hat and along with that a brown three button suit, brown button up sweater vest, burgundy cap shoes, white French cuff shirt (with 60 year old cuff links!) and a burgundy striped tie it yourself bow tie. They all looked like they could have come from the movie wardrobe department. I tried the ensemble on a couple days before the rally. Along with the gray Stacey Adams fedora,I added some old wire rim glasses. I walked into the living room where Diane was sitting on the coach. She looked at me with a surprised expression:
    “You look like my Papou.” She said.
    We headed out to a place called the Old Mill shops in Weldon. There was a big flea market/consignment area there and who knows we might get lucky.
    We did get lucky. I found Diane an old 1940s black pillbox hat with a big side bow and gold beads around the crown. It reminded me of the style hat a stewardess would wear on the Pan-Am flying boats of the late 1930s or early 40s. It cost 14 bucks. Best of all it fit.
    “If this makes you happy, I will wear it” she said. It made me happy.
    We bought a couple of other things including a really cute animated snow-man baby (it plays peek-a-boo) which I wanted to buy for Diane to add to her collection, but she said no, “I have too many of them already and we are planning to downsize.” I bought it anyway with the plan to give it away that night.
    We traveled back to our coach where not much happened the rest of the day. Around three we started getting ready for the biggest event of the weekend.
    I let Diane go first and gave her lots of space. She refused to wear a dress or heels because that was too much trouble while hosting this party. I think she had a legitimate point. Earlier, I bought her a forties style black and white dress which I found at Macy’s but she didn't want to keep it both financially and logistically. She is a wise lady.
    Diane took her new hat and combined that with a Fuchsia suit jacket, a wide black belt and old style slacks with black round toed shoes. She finished it off with some antique Christmas marguisite jewelry. The whole effect was pretty darn good.
    I couldn't tie my own tie it yourself bow tie so Diane took care of that for me and she also helped with my cuff links..
    “Well now, George.” She said as she fastened a cuff and helped me with my jacket, “I think you look pretty good.”
    I put on my hat, a gold pocket watch in my left pants pocket, hooked the chain to my belt and looked in the mirror
    I thought she was right again.
    The final touch was a large light brown leather suitcase with straps that could have been a movie prop. It was provided to me by Janis, she brought it to the rally, and it looked like the real deal. I was thrilled with it.
    I looked forward to seeing what the other party goers would look like. I was hoping for some good competition. I didn't know it yet, but I was going to get just that.
    I went to the back to the room first with some items to put in my suitcase which included printouts of the trivia contest, pencils and prizes for all the winners.
    I made sure the room was in order, went back to the coach to help Diane carry our drinks and presents for the party.
    Gary and Janis caught up with us on the way back. Gary had borrowed a black bow tie and suspenders from me. He was dressed like a bartender with a white shirt and black shirt sleeve bands. Very appropriate for Gary to be Mr. Martini for the evening.
    Janis told me I looked like George Bailey. Well, that was the whole idea.
    We went in, and I shed the jacket while I set the banquet table with the leftover goodies from the night before for people to snack on during happy hour.
    About five fifteen our guests arrived including a very convincing Mr. Potter in his wheelchair, George in his football uniform, Carl and Dot came as a Gangster and his girl and others dressed for the forties. The best dressed contest now had a good number of candidates, I was glad to see.
    The caterers brought a ton of food, all of really good. While it was being set out on the table, I pulled out my suitcase and distributed pencils and copies of the Trivia contest, all six pages of it. One went to each table. It looked like a high school final exam. The surprising thing was, everyone dug right into it, even to the point that when dinner was announced no one wanted to get in line. They all kept on working at it.
    Of course everyone did finally help themselves to ham, turkey, stuffing, real mashed potatoes, Mac and cheese, green bean casserole, and peach cobbler.
    During diner the black and white version of the movie played silently on the TV. I informed all that when The End came up on the screen, the contest would be over. The contestants learned that some of the answers to the quiz could be seen, if they watched close enough and could read lips. People were huddled together discussing the questions; a lot of phones were out with Google being accessed. I never said that was not allowed. The very back table was using a couple of books about the movie that were on display on the table with the village. That was cheating, but pretty smart at the same time.
    I sat and chatted with Gary, Diane and Janis as they tried to answer as many of the trivia questions as they could. I was disqualified from playing, as I knew all the answers.
    At times the room was so quiet with just the hum of whispers and big band music playing (not too loudly) in the background.
    There was one interruption required during all this time. I needed votes for the best dressed. Once again I opened George’s suitcase and removed my pre-made ballots.
    I instructed all to vote for the top two people who fit the criteria. It didn’t take long for the votes to be turned in.
    My table did the tallying. Once the votes were counted first and second place were obvious. We had a tie for third. I had not voted yet so it fell to me to break the tie, which I did.
    I stood up to announce that we had our winners and that Mary Bailey would be presenting the prizes.
    Diane (who received a couple of votes) asked for Betty to come forward. Betty, who wheeled Mr. Potter into the room, came up front.
    Diane opened the suitcase and then said to Betty:
    “You have won third place and so I present to you…”
    She handed Betty a sea salt grinder full of sea salt.
    “Salt! So that life may always have flavor.”
    There was applause.
    Diane then turned to me and announced that I had won second place. She removed a long French Baguette from the case as she said.
    “I give you bread that this house may never know hunger!”
    There was laughter and more applause and by this time everyone had to know what the prize for first place would be.
    Diane asked for Frank to roll forward.
    “And to Mr. Potter I present” and then there was a chorus from all in the room as Diane lifted a bottle out of the case.
    “Wine! That joy and prosperity will reign forever!”
    I looked at Frank and said “Merry Christmas Mr. Potter!” in my best George voice.
    There were a lot of cheers as Frank, aka Mr. Potter, rolled back to his table.
    Even a warped, frustrated old man deserves first place sometimes. I didn't mean you Frank.
    A few minutes later as dinner continued and folks went back to the trivia questions they had passed over, THE END appeared up on the big screen.
    I rang my bell to announce the Hardest “It’s a Wonderful Life Trivia Quiz” was now over. It was time to review all the answers and determine our winners.
    I quickly read the questions followed by the answers, all fifty seven of them. There were a few “I knew it, why did we change it?!” responses along with some “We should have had that one.”
    The winning table had correctly answered fifty two. Mr. Potter was sitting at that table. I guess it was just his night.
    I carried my suitcase to the table and before I opened it I told the room I had one more question to ask of the winners.
    “What did George say when he hit the cigar lighter?”
    The table answered as one:
    “Wish I had a million dollars!”
    “Correct! You have won and here are your prizes” and then I opened my case, pulled out an old measuring tape and threw it at Mr. Potter as I said:
    “Except for you, because you don’t measure up!” That got a huge laugh.
    “For the rest of you here you go”
    Then I handed them all, including Mr. Potter, a chocolate bar wrapped in a million dollar bill.
    I also gave one to the oldest person there. We all call her Mom and she just turned ninety.
    “I think that anyone ninety years old who last night watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the very first time, unlike me who saw it for the hundred and something time, deserves a million dollars!”
    Everyone agreed with that.
    The rest of the night was a blast. We had our gift exchange and there was some stealing which created a lot of laughter, shouting and applause. Billy, our resident Santa made sure no one got too naughty. I had my gift stolen twice, I stole one from Mr. Potter. Why not? He owned me eight thousand dollars. I ended up with a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Crème and matching glasses. How appropriate is that?
    Diane, Mary, the light of my life, took home a box containing three gorgeous electric candles.
    When the last present was unwrapped, and my peek-a-boo snowman in the plain brown bag, was one of the last, the evening was officially over.
    No one wanted to leave. Everyone milled about or continued to sit even while all the hosts cleaned up and prepped for the next morning’s breakfast.
    I figured that was pretty good evidence that so far the rally had been a success.
    Tomorrow it would be breakfast; goodbyes pack it all up and then home for Christmas.
    The morning found us there early, hustling around making fresh fruit salad, ham biscuits, laying out trays of Danish and heating up leftovers from Saturday’s breakfast. Our efforts presented everyone with a good looking spread.
    A lot of our people leave early on Sunday. They skip breakfast to do so. Not this time. Everyone came. They prayed, they ate, and they talked. We heard so many good comments about how much fun the last two days had been. It really did my heart good.
    No one was in a big rush to see it end.
    When finally Andy closed it, we had lots of people stay and help us clean up. A special thanks to Grover and Margo for helping me box up my village, they saved me a couple of hours at least.
    Diane, Gary, Janis and I were the last ones to pull out of the park. We were all tired but we knew it had been worth all the work. The only thing left to do was to hug goodbye and say
    “Merry Christmas!”
    Now I know that this blog entry has gotten a bit long. I don’t apologize for that. The length is necessary to convey to you what I said at the beginning; I, we, wanted to make it possible for all my friends to really enjoy themselves. Many of our group had gone through some very tough times during the previous year and I believed they needed this weekend to reaffirm their faith in friends and family and something even greater than that.
    We did our best to create a Disney Ending.
    I wanted them to remember it, long after this rally was over.
    Now I am thinking about the next one the four of us will host….
    I already have a name for it.
    How does the “LIFE IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES RALLY” sound?
    Gramps
    PS if you want to take the IAWL quiz here it is:
    http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2006/12/most-challenging-its-wonderful-life.html
  23. -Gramps-
    Part uno of duo.
    Before I started writing this, I was sitting at my computer browsing recipes online. I am planning my menu for Christmas Day brunch with my family. I have narrowed my entrees to Blackberry French Toast Casserole, Lump Crab Meat and Shrimp Quiche and a fresh fruit and honey yogurt salad. Diane plans on making some oatmeal and date muffins. They are a tradition every Christmas day.
    This party will be for eight adults including my parents. Not as much preparation will be needed as the last party that I co-hosted. That one took place back on the first weekend of this month at an RV resort in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. The attendees, all thirty of them, are all members of the Colonial Virginians, our local FMCA chapter.
    The planning for this Christmas Rally started last December at the very end of last year’s rally which happened to be at the same location. Diane and I, along with our close friends Gary and Janis, decided then to host this year’s event. The Christmas rally is the one rally that is catered, at least in part. We told ourselves it would be a lot of fun and less work to take charge of the biggest party we have all year if someone else does the food stuff.
    I am not sure how we came to that conclusion because it isn't true. Our party turned out to need a lot of labor to pull it off.
    We started planning the two nights, three days, rally with three things in mind.

    We wanted it to be fun and meaningful so we had to come up with a theme.
    We wanted people to attend and bring only their beverages to each night’s festivities. No need for plates, utensils or a pot luck dish. We wanted to provide lots of food for Friday night, a full country breakfast on Saturday morning, full traditional Christmas meal on Saturday night and a good continental breakfast on Sunday.
    We wanted to do all this for around twenty five bucks a person. (That is what added to the work).
    I had to get myself a Fedora. Okay that’s the fourth thing I had to keep in mind.

    First thing was to work on number 2 and not forgetting about 3. Janis started looking for a caterer the first week in January. It took a couple of weeks and a lot of phone calls but she found one that would provide two meals, the country breakfast and the Holiday dinner. If we, meaning the four of us, sat up the buffet, the price was really good per person. That meant that we would have to take care of Friday night ourselves and Sunday Breakfast ourselves. We could shop for some things ahead but most of it would have to be done same day. Diane and Janis planned the menus, made some trips to BJs and the Dollar Store.
    I came up with an idea for number 1. We were sitting at our chapter business meeting this summer at the Holiday Travel Park in Virginia Beach when it hit me.
    I leaned over to Gary and Janis and said “We can make this an “It’s a Wonderful Life rally! We can show the movie on Friday night, I can set up my IAWL village and we can decorate the room with movie posters and snow flakes.” We also came up with the idea of having a trivia contest.
    They liked the whole idea. We added one thing. We decided to make it a costume party as well. Come dressed in 1940s style or as a character from the film.
    Now we had a plan. Over the next two months we worked out the details.
    Let me tell you all something. I gave this rally a lot of thought about how we could make it special. I really wanted all our friends who attended to have more than a good time. I wanted them to feel something while there. I wanted them to feel close to their other members. I intended for this rally to use the Christmas season and the It’s a Wonderful Life story to reinforce the need for friends and family. I wanted to emphasize the Family in Family Motor Coach and have fun doing it.
    I knew that was not going to be so easy.
    The decorating became really important to me. The decorations had to be inspired by the movie. My village was all about Bedford Falls but we needed more. Together we came up with ideas that were simple but good.
    Another trip to the dollar store and a trip to Andy our fearless leader’s house took care of it.
    The rally officially started on Friday. Diane and I knew that to get everything done we needed to do we would have to leave on Thursday. That included emptying a lot of bays of chairs, grills, kites and loading lots of boxes of Christmas stuff including a whole miniature village, a tree and other items.
    On Wednesday night at 8:10 pm I received a call from one of my customers. They are a telemarketing firm that makes calls to Las Vegas. Their office phones were dead.
    I was supposed to leave the next morning by ten at the latest. The office had two separate phone systems and I was going to have to move all the lines and phones from the dead one to the one that was still working. There was no way I could do that before Monday unless I did one thing….drive forty five minutes to the site and fix them tonight.
    That is just what I did.
    I crawled into bed at midnight exhausted, but couldn't fall asleep for a couple of hours. I lay thinking about all that we needed to do including packing up the coach.
    The next morning Diane and I started making the first of many trips from the house to the coach. After about an hour I lost count. I also lost count of the phone calls I received. It was one of those mornings after a not so easy night.
    We backed out of our driveway at 9:50, pulled into the church parking lot next door, hooked up the car, checked the lights, said a prayer for safety and at finally made it on the road at 10:45 am.
    We pulled into the Carolina Crossroads RV resort just before one. While I was setting down jacks and hooking up all the things that needed to be hooked up, a Monaco Knight pulled into the campground. Gary and Janis had arrived right behind us.
    Now the real fun would begin.
    I loaded up the car and delivered a bunch of containers to the meeting room. Not long after that the other three arrived and we started pushing tables around. The ladies decorated the tables including candles and silk rose petals, while Gary, using my ladder, started hanging snow flakes. We picked out a corner for the village. Gary and I successfully connected my DVD player to the large screen television, and hung movie posters in such a way they would not try to roll back up and fall off the wall. This last bit was very critical to the whole effect.
    The decorating went pretty well. There was one that that didn’t. I forgot to pack the light bulbs for the 21 village buildings. Light bulbs went on our shopping list. That trip would take place early in the morning.
    It had been a long first day. We all met at our coach for a one pot meal and some strong drink. During dinner we planned the rest of our attack.
    Early the next day it was off to Wal-Mart. We divided our shopping list and hit the aisles.
    It took a couple of hours to load up our carts, go thru the checkout lane and load up the Vue.
    Back to the resort we went, off loaded and then finished the decorating. A few more snowflakes, a bit more painters tape to hold up the posters, lights installed in the village, a bit of snow, decorate our little tree, and then it was done.
    The place looked pretty good. We found out later that the owner of the resort, who lives in Asheville, thought it looked so too. He saw it by way of his online remote security camera, called the managers and told them they needed to go take a look for themselves.
    I guess we chilled out for a couple of hours. I don’t remember if I went back to the coach and watched television or read a book. I remember that it was really warm, windy and humid. I wished I had not unpacked all my kites and left them at home.
    I spent the part of the afternoon walking around the campground handing out my printed itinerary for the weekend.
    Four o’clock and we were back at the room. We sat up a serving line, started the coffee pots perking and made up trays and crock pots of goodies. We lit the candles on the tables, and dimmed the lights. I turned on a special CD of 1940s Big Band Christmas music.
    The only thing left to really get this party started is for our friends to arrive.
    By a quarter to five our members started to arrive with anticipation knowing (in part) what was in store for them.
    Almost everyone who walked in the door took a look at the ceiling, hard to miss all the snow flakes hanging from above, and then gravitated toward the Bedford falls village with the chugging little train moving in a noisy circle.
    I forgot to mention that our Christmas rally is also a Toys for Tots event and as such every coach provides at least one toy. Those items began to fill up a couple of tables placed on one side of the room.
    The mix of drink and talk began. There was a month of catching up to do. For some it was even longer. I milled around and said hi to as many people as I could and then at five after five, I rang a bell (a sound they would hear a lot over the next two days) and when silence came, I officially opened the “It’s a Wonderful Life” Christmas Rally and Party.
    I reviewed the itinerary:
    Movie tonight at seven…popcorn will be served
    Breakfast will be served at 8:30 in the morning including our Toys for Tots presentation.
    Breakfast would be followed by our annual business meeting.
    Everyone will be on your own until happy hour at 5:00 pm tomorrow night, followed by our Holiday Dinner with ham, turkey and lots of other things.
    Also don’t forget that the hardest “It’s a Wonderful Life” trivia contest will take place during dinner as well as voting for the best dressed.
    Following Dinner is our traditional “Don’t get too attached Christmas gift/steal exchange.”
    “Now Come Eat!”
    They did. They had a lot of choices, chips and salsa, mixed nuts, raw veggies and dip, spinach dip in a bread bowl, meatballs, spicy wings, (chicken not angel), b-b-qued cocktail whinnies (my favorite), crab dip, (my very favorite!), cheese and fresh grapes, pickles, green and black olives, cake, creme puffs, really good cookies, and other things I can no longer remember. There was plenty for all.
    The tables filled up, lots of talk, lots of smiles, a few trips back to the serving tables.
    At six forty five I announced that the movie would be starting in fifteen minutes. It would be a special colorized version of “It’s a Wonderful Life”.
    “Concessions, including fresh popcorn, will be served at the back of the theater.”
    Janis had purchased a mini antique popcorn machine which she was already heating up in the back on a table set up just for that purpose. We had popcorn bags, cookies and cake, and a special lamp to illuminate it all during the showing of the movie.
    We cleared the banquet tables, which were located under the large screen TV, and placed all the goodies on the kitchen counter.
    At seven I turned off the lights and rolled the DVD.
    I suppose with any plans there can be technical glitches. I had one…audio too low. I was forced to push pause and halt the movie during an early critical scene. It took me a couple of minutes to find a way to up the sound from the max it was already it. There was a TV equalizer setting that, once all the sliders were moved to the right, increased the sound to a comfortable level. I continued the show.
    Almost everyone had stayed to watch the movie. They all became really quiet. I could tell they were listening and watching it closely. During my chit chat and milling about earlier, I was surprised to discover that a lot of people there had not see the movie at all. The rest had seen bits and pieces of it. Not like me at all.
    This would be my 100 and something viewing of the film.
    Just before I started the movie, I took a few minutes to explain how important this old little film was to me.
    I told them how “It’s a Wonderful Life” had saved my life.
    I wrote about it here about a year or two ago I think. http://community.fmca.com/blog/62/entry-526-its-a-wonderful-life/
    I like to think my little story was the reason for the total attention that the movie was receiving from all there. Maybe in part that was true….but a trivia contest could have had something to do with it as well.
    The movie played….Young George got his ears slapped back, grew up, bought a suitcase, got married, had kids, yelled at some nasty old guy in a wheel chair, lost a bunch of money, thought he was going to jail, thought about jumping off a bridge, changed his mind, helped an angel get his wings, THE END.
    The audience attending, like many others over the last seventy years, clapped at the end of the movie. Some, like me, wiped away a few tears.
    Well, I can’t help it, I cry every time.
    The party’s first night ended on a great note. I was told by many, as they filed out the exit, how much they enjoyed the movie. There was a chorus of good nights and see you in the morning.
    The four of us cleaned off tables, threw away trash, swept the floor, put away leftovers, and swept the floor some more.
    By ten we were on our way back to our coaches. We were all dog tired.
    Gramps
  24. -Gramps-

    A Few More Tips and Hints

    By -Gramps-,

    1. I leave a baseball cap on the dash whenever I am driving the coach. I don’t wear it all the time but it sure comes in handy when the sun is low and shines thru the gap in our double automatic windshield shades.
    2. While we are on the subject of windshields. I replaced my stock Monaco wiper arms with ones with standard sized J-Hooks. I purchased them from Diesel Equipment Corp in Greensboro NC. Now I can use any length frameless replacement blade, easily purchased from an auto parts store or Wal-Mart.

    3. Rescue Tape works as advertised. I carry three rolls of it, Red, Orange and Clear. It can fix a hose, a broken patio umbrella and there are lots of useful reasons to have a roll in a drawer.
    Capillary action (sometimes capillarity, capillary motion, or wicking) is the ability of a liquid to flow in narrow spaces without the assistance of, and in opposition to, external forces like gravity.
    Do you read that? Water can go against gravity, flow UP, if the conditions are there. So here is hint number four…it’s a bit long but I suggest you read it.
    4. If you have a Monaco or Holiday Rambler coach with the rubber black gutters at the bottom of the side of each of your slideouts then you need to take a close look at the bottom of the floor of each slideout, especially the main one. That piece of rubber was installed to catch the water running down the side and not let it run under the slideout where it gets wicked up by the plywood floor. There is an exposed wooden edge underneath the main slideout that is well, too exposed. The rubber gutter helps to prevent a leak problem but it doesn’t quite do the trick. The gutter funnels a lot of water to the front bottom corner of the slideout causing the floor to delaminate and then it starts to soak up water and it swells and the cycle just gets worse until one day mushrooms are growing out the bottom of your slideout. Not good. I discovered this was happening to my coach. I had a lot of rotten wood which I blew out with an air compressor and then filled the void with spray in stop gap foam in a can. Then I glued a piece of rubber sweep over the edge of the slideout so the water could not defy gravity and run underneath any longer.
    If you discover you have this problem you can limit the exposed edge of the floor by running a line of deck screws through the bottom of the floor until they are flush! Don't leave any exposed screw head or it will get caught when the slide goes in and cause a lot of grief.


    6. Learn where your ice maker shut of valve is located. You don’t want to be caught by surprise and have to turn off the campground water to your coach because you can’t figure out how to turn off the water to the icemaker…not to mention the damage a leak can do to your fridge electronics.
    7. After you learn where your shutoff valve is, I suggest you replace the standard plastic tubing water supply line to your ice maker solenoid with a reinforced ice maker hose. Why risk a leak from a broken water line caused by the fact it moves when the coach moves? This part is available at Lowe’s for around 15 bucks depending on the length. I bought a six foot one. It took about twenty minutes to connect it. The line from the solenoid to the ice maker (the metallic blue in the picture) is not as critical. It is not under constant pressure.


    8. If your fridge was part of the recall and you now have the heat sensor relay box installed I have a hint for you. Those boxes are known for tripping and not resetting. When that happens your fridge will not turn on unless you bypass the relay. I learned a trick...you can reset the relay with a magnet. Just rub it on the back of the box until you hear a click.
    9. I have a rechargeable flashlight/night light plugged into a bathroom socket. Its in the middle of the coach and comes in handy during an emergency, like the dog needs to go out in the middle of the night and I don’t want to turn on the lights in the coach.
    10. I carry a CharGriller table top grill. It is a small kettle grill with cast iron grates. Best portable charcoal grill you can get. It fits in the basement but large enough to cook a mean six pound beer can chicken. This grill is available on line or at Lowe’s for around sixty nine dollars.
    http://www.lowes.com/pd_11236-49769-11236_0__?zipCode=23703&masthead=true&firstReferURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lowes.com%2Fpd_11236-49769-11236_0__%3FproductId%3D3049705%26Ntt%3Dchargriller%26pl%3D1%26currentURL%3D%253FNtt%253Dchargriller%26facetInfo%3D&catalogId=10051&catalogId=10051&productId=3049705&pl=1&findStoreErrorURL=StoreLocatorDisplayView&selectedLocalStoreBeanArray=%5Bcom.lowes.commerce.storelocator.beans.LocatorStoreBean%404f164f16%2C+com.lowes.commerce.storelocator.beans.LocatorStoreBean%4051c651c6%2C+com.lowes.commerce.storelocator.beans.LocatorStoreBean%4054765476%2C+com.lowes.commerce.storelocator.beans.LocatorStoreBean%4057265726%2C+com.lowes.commerce.storelocator.beans.LocatorStoreBean%4059d659d6%5D&currentURL=%3FNtt%3Dchargriller&Ntt=chargriller&langId=-1&langId=-1&URL=TopCategoriesDisplayView&mastheadURL=TopCategoriesDisplayView&storeId=10151&storeId=10151
    11. Do you have a dog that likes to spend a lot of time on the dash? Diane and I made a custom fit dash mat. We purchased comfort rugs…those things that usually go in a kitchen or laundry room and are designed to be easy on the feet. They are made out of the same thing that mouse pads are made from…urethane rubber. We trimmed the rugs to fit around the instrument panel and it looks really good on the dash. The rubber clings to the dash so it is not necessary to attach the two mats together. Our new dash mat is really easy to clean. I used the left over scrap material to make some matching coasters and a mouse pad for the coach.


    Well, that is all the hints I can think of at the moment. I suspect that some more will pop into my brain and I will add to this list if that happens.
    Gramps.
  25. -Gramps-

    Here Be Dragons!

    By -Gramps-,

    It is commonly believed that early geographers used this phrase to mark the uncharted areas of their maps. They had not explored these areas and therefore assumed them to be dangerous. The actual wording was Hc Svnt Dracones. The mapmakers would put images of sea monsters on the edges of the map because it was the best way to say there is bad stuff “out there”.
    This past August 2nd I turned sixty years of age. I am now entering into uncharted territory. It is for me anyway. Others have been there before me and can offer me some advice as to what I shall be facing. When I was a newlywed man of nineteen, I was also moving into uncharted territory but I did not foresee trouble or hardship. I saw a bright future, full of promise with the hope of La dolce vita, the sweet life. In many, many ways at times, it has been just that, but there have been dragons to face along the way.
    The majority of us live our lives somewhere in between the sweet life and the habitation of dragons. We come into this world empty headed (and that is a good thing) and as we grow we learn that life has its pleasures and its pains. We get married, have kids, go to work, and have passion for it all, only to discover that we have to struggle at it. We have to slay the dragons of work or lack of it, sickness, losing loved ones, suffering financial setbacks.
    .
    I have said before that owning a motor coach can improve your life if you let it. Sometimes I think we have to spend a part of our life, including our bank balance, to improve our coach. It can become, if we are not careful, a dragon in the driveway.
    In July we headed to our spot in the mountains. We had hoped to leave our house by July 1, but were delayed a couple of days by business problems. Those problems were not easy to overcome but we did and we were happy to finally reach our lot and park.
    It rained almost every day for the next 19 days. In total our coach was soaked by thirty five inches of wet. One morning I discovered mushrooms growing out of the bottom of our main slideout. This caused me a few moments of uncertainty. The repair of the obvious leak didn’t go so well. I learned two things…..capillary action can cause a lot of mischief and use the right kind of screw when repairing a slide out floor or you might not get the slide out to slide in….or out.
    At the same time our Vue sunroof starting leaking. This required a trip to the local Chevy dealer where the problem was resolved for very little cost.
    After two days of repairing broken cables, drying out rotting wood and car carpeting I was thinking I was tired of feeding the dragon. However, the day after we repaired the coach and the car the sun came out.
    Diane, The Bear and I took a long ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway and we soon felt that life was kind of sweet again.
    We brought our coach home in late July. Soon after I learned that my daughter Jeri and her family would be coming up from Florida for my birthday. I was quite surprised and pleased to hear that. My kids threw me a surprise party. My Mom and Dad were there, my brother and his wife, and most unexpected our friends Gary and Janis, who I am always glad to see.
    I will see them tomorrow as a matter of fact.
    The four of us are hosting our FMCA chapter Christmas party/rally in December. The theme of this party is “It’s A Wonderful Life!” We plan to show the movie on Friday night along with food, including lots of popcorn, and beverages. Saturday Morning will be a big breakfast, and dress up Saturday night we will serve traditional Christmas fare. During dinner there will be a “It’s a Wonderful Life” quiz. A bell will ring a question asked and the table with the most correct answers will win the contest. The winner’s prizes will be determined later. Also we plan on having a reward for the best period costume. We want everyone that attends to dress like it is the forties or any other year that the movie takes place in. I think I expressed that the best way.
    This should be fun, if all goes well in the scheduling and preparation. If I have to keep some dragons at bay to do it I will.
    I look forward to all our chapter meetings. The one in December, I have to admit, I am looking forward to more than usual. I need it. I have a couple of dragon bites in my backside and that coming weekend in December will help to reduce the pain.
    It is a lot of work to try to make life (and that includes owning a motor coach) sweeter, all of us know that. It doesn’t get any easier with age now does it?
    Enjoy your life and your coach,
    Derrick.
    Gramps.
    PS Now that I have my fingers back on the keyboard again, I suspect that the gap of time will not be as long until I post again.
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