A sign from the flight line at Santa Barbara Airport. The airport has been here since the 1920s, when it was surrounded by lemon groves and pasture. Now that those have been replaced by UC – Santa Barbara and suburbs, people complain about the noise. Like they didn’t know the airport was there when they …
An Unexpected Benefit
It’s supposed to be fun. Anything you do for yourself, as a hobby or pastime, is supposed to be fun. So why do we need this reminder? We shake our heads at angry Little League fathers and puzzle over Prima Donna chess players. Probably there’s a brooding and hostile Tiddlywinks champion out there, a big …
El Morro
One of our vacation stops was El Morro National Monument east of Zuni pueblo in west-central New Mexico. This striking mesa has been a landmark along a heavily used travel route for hundreds of years. Rainfall and snowmelt from the mesa top drains down this channel and waterfall into a large pool, also providing incentive …
Airport Adventure
Unlike a number of airports and military air bases here in Southern California, the Santa Barbara Airport doesn’t have a full-up airshow. Don’t know the reason for this, but our airport does have what they call Airport Adventure, consisting mostly of static display of aircraft and airport equipment. This year’s was held last Saturday, and …
Sinagua
Of the prehistoric Southwestern archaeological cultures the one that I have the least personal experience with is the Sinagua. The Sinagua were located in the Flagstaff, Arizona area from about AD 1100 – 1400, and were a sedentary agricultural people. They were located physically between the three great Southwestern cultural traditions, the Hohokam, Anasazi (Ancestral …
Firefighters at Rest
On the way into work this morning I took this picture ……..and this one of slurry bombers that the Forest Service has based at the Santa Barbara Airport. These P-3 Orions spent the early part of their lives patrolling for Soviet submarines, but have been extremely busy lately fighting the Day Fire in Ventura County …
A Querencia Sunset
And the appreciative spectators
Return to the Trail
Regular readers may recall a post I put up in June, where I told of a frightening accident my dogs and I had on a local trail. My Australian Shepherd pup Sadie, fell off of the trail nearly 20 feet down into a creek bottom but was miraculously unhurt. Saturday afternoon I took the two …
When You’re in Love With a Jersey Girl
Guest contributor Jacob Sewall recounts his first experiences in the pigeon fancy (glory days?), set to the music of Bruce Springsteen: The Jersey Girl © Jacob Sewall, 2006 “The year it came out, my father got the Springsteen boxed set, Live 1975–1985, on LP and my lifelong (thus far) love affair with Springsteen was born. …
A Way I Have of Driving Off the Spleen
“…Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong …