I watched a great show last night on PBS, "The Sidewalk Astronomer". It was basically a biographical piece on John Dobson, the extraordinary amateur astronomer. He is very well known in astronomy circles. The "Dobsonian Mount" is named after him. His specialty is building very inexpensive powerful telescopes. A Dobson construction will typically include the base mount (2-axis swivel) of his name sake and a concrete construction tube known as a sonotube (perhaps 10 or 12 inches) for the body of a reflector telescope. He is known for setting up a one of these great scopes on a sidewalk in a city and inviting people to look thru it to a celestial body. What a great thing.
He has a great philosophy. I caught a great tidbit in the program last night where he said something like, "People only know the food they eat, the tree, the monkey, the grass, the cat and the dog. People only think in the extents of biology. If we could only get people thinking outside their own gonads that would be really something." Wow. John Dobson has been to Antarctica! Looking at planets and understanding them is like the experience of spending time in Antarctica. There is no biology. There is only ice and rock. In fact when I was out in the field a few times you can't help but fill in the unimaginable (life without life). You will look a scape and see colors of different rocks and think it is a shrubs or scrub... something living. Self-actualization may be just that... understanding life without life. Great stuff.
The plane is back together after its annual inspection. I didn't end up doing much work, but I was there. I was checking out the details inside and out of the plane. My instructor and mentor took the plane out for the check ride just after its reassembly as shown in the picture below as the plane just about to lift off.
A lot has been going on. The weather has been nice. A couple of big things happened as well.
Douglas and Becky got married. The wedding was nice and it was good to see folks. Everything went pretty well. They planned well and there was a lot of attention to detail.
We ended up putting Rosey down. She was not getting better. In fact, her rear legs were getting worse. She couldn't move her legs at all the last few days. The asprin helped for a while. We took a chaulk gun filled with ground-up horse aspirin and unflavored yogurt or milk and we could get a few asprins into her at a time. She was eating and alert, but she just couldn't stand up, even when we lifted her. Bob and DJ drove their backhoe over to dig the grave. That was big help. RIP Rosey. Bonnie and I both weeped. We are one of the few people who own a llama sling. We have used it on three llamas. Two llamas we lost eventually, one Bonnie saved using the sling and the TLC.
I have my tractor ready for mowing. I like to wait until the first week in June to allow the ground nesting birds a chance to hatch and all that. So I am only a little late. It is good work to do in the evenings after work.
I had a flying lesson or two. I am handling more of the work load and I am getting better at flying. One of tricks seems for landing is to "let the ground come to you. Don't fly the aiplane to the ground." That seems sort of weird but it is very meaningful. The plane goes in for its annual inspection tommorow. I will be removing access panels and cowlings for that Monday evening. I will have pictures.
Today I am making gates for the new pasture. Of course I am getting carried away. I did firewood yesterday. I have a lot more of that to do.
Some old guy (Jack Corson) stopped over and was telling us how his dad milled the lumber for our barn from trees on the farm with a car engine powered portable mill back in the 1930s. He is a big steam power enthusiast out in Indiana these days. He took pictures of the barn and remarked that there are that many left. He left us a video and we gave him some chocolate chip cookies.
