March 31, 2020

Gliderport - 1973

Scanned an old favorite from my post-Vietnam gliderport days. I have always loved this photo, but there are many, many technical issues with it. So I rendered it as a pastel mosaic, and the result is a photo that captures the gauzy, Elysian-Fields feeling of those post-war days.

March 25, 2020

Three towns in Texas: Alpine, Paris, and Palacios

Alpine, Texas


Paris, Texas


Palacios, Texas

March 20, 2020

My brother is a radiologist at a large hospital in Atlanta .. he just emailed me:

"We had 6 patients admitted in 2 hours last night with Covid-19. I reviewed all of the CT scans this morning and it was really scary. Some of these patients had been having symptoms for a week (and shedding virus for more than that). The youngest was 32 yrs old."

March 19, 2020

Extreme Social Distancing

Atchafalaya Basin Backwaters
Louisiana

March 16, 2020

Another way of saying that we are all in this together ..

March 13, 2020

GOP politicians and celebs get COVID-19 tests immediately, it seems.

The rest of us are in that 5 tests/1 million testing range (USA).

March 8, 2020

How I flew 250+ combat missions in Vietnam and lived to tell about it: a lesson for COVID-19

SAM arcs plotted the kill zone for known SAM - surface-to-air-missile - sites (Photoshopped for emphasis, and yes, that is me 50 years ago)

I avoided flying into the SAM arcs. I avoided areas of known danger. I stayed away from SAM sites. Flying into the SAM arc got you and your crew extremely killed, or worse (captured).

I payed very close attention to my pre-mission briefings, which was done by military intelligence EXPERTS. They told me over and over, "DON'T FLY INTO THE SAM ARCS!" So, I did not "chase" targets into the SAM arcs. I never second guessed the experts. If they briefed me that a SAM site or anti-aircraft gun was at location X, I took their word .. 100%! I avoided location X.

I never put my crew in a compromising position, with respect to getting shot down. There were enough guns down there we did not know about, why get close to the places that would almost certainly shoot your ass out of the sky?

There were pilots that did not subscribe to my levels of caution. Some were cowboys. Some were damnfools. Some were congenital assholes who left trails of havoc behind them, and - sometimes - lived to tell about it. We all know the type.

I made it through Vietnam by adhering closely to the philosophy of Captain Yossarian of Joseph Heller's classic Catch-22: Yossarian wanted to live forever, or die trying. The operative word here is "TRYING."

March 6, 2020

Wouldn't want to inconvenience anyone, would you Donnie?

FAA VIP TFR = TEMPORARY FLIGHT RESTRICTION FOR A BIGSHOT


FAA @ 8:56 AM EST - VIP TFR OVER ATLANTA, GA ON FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020 (((CANCELLED)))


FAA @ 10:41 AM EST - VIP TFR OVER ATLANTA, GA ON FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020 (((REISSUED)))