Flying and Heights

A DelphiForums friend mentioned she's afraid of flying and would never go up in an airplane. That prompted this response of some of my own experience regarding flying and heights.

I can deal with flying. My first flying experience was with my father - we were both passengers - in a helicopter in the '60s that flew over Niagara Falls (slowly I turned, step by step - no wait...) in the days before they had to fly very high - we were probably 500 feet up. It was quite an experience.

In early '73 I flew in an old Convair 440 from Denver to Aspen when I worked for Aspen Airways, "the world's fastest ski lift." Going into Aspen, we circled once with the mountains below. The second circle was with the peaks above us and the airport runway still looked like a streak of grease on the snow. I was a gate agent on a day off and on the flight back they asked me to help run the metal detectors over the other passengers before they boarded. (One day in Denver I got to do that to New York's Mayor John Lindsay, who'd clomped through the detection gate carrying his ski boots with lots of metal. His bodyguard gave me the evil eye as I did my job. I was not impressed.)

My parents' house was about a mile as the DC-3 flies from the end of an airport in Massachusetts. I say DC-3 because they often flew quite low right over the house when Northeast Airlines had commercial flights into the airport. Being so close, I'd go to air shows they had in the '80s and once went up in a helicopter, one similar to the Niagara Falls (slowly...no, stop that!) whirlybird except this one had no side doors. I was strapped in front. I was careful, but I also used my video camera (strap wrapped firmly around my wrist) to tape the whole flight.

Another time a barnstorming pilot with his Ford Tri-Motor, the "Tin Goose," visited the airport. My father had ridden in one in 1928 or 1929. He definitely wanted to look inside, but, being a product of the Great Depression, wasn't about to spend money for a ride. I think it was $40 for both of us. Fortunately I had a credit card with me, so we went up.

I flew on airliners a number of times from 19995 to 2000, then again for a brief visit to New York last November.

For some reason, going up in aircraft doesn't bother me at all. But if I look at pictures like this one, my stomach does a little lurch:

Actually, this little version doesn't bother me much, but one place where I worked had it on a wall as a mural. Eeeesh! It's a 1932 photo taken during the construction of Rockefeller Center in New York City.

Then a few days ago someone on Facebook posted a picture of Julia Butterfly Hill, an environmental activist who spent 738 days in a 200-foot redwood tree in Northern California in a successful attempt to save it from loggers:

Even when I was her age (she was in her early 20s then) I never would've been able to do that! Cliffs, being in the open atop a tall building, stuff like that, no thanks! Or if I do get in someplace like that, I approach the edge very carefully. For instance, I did not go out on this rock overhang at Granite Point in Yosemite National Park, but I was at the location where the photographer got this picture:

There's a railing where the photographer and I stood (not together). It overlooks a drop straight to the valley floor about 3,000 feet below. I wished the railing had been maybe a foot higher, but I still looked over it.

Going to Faerieworlds 2012

Faerieworlds is one of the world's largest festivals devoted to faeries and other mythical folk. It's a festival of music, art and imagination that started in Prescott, Arizona in 2002. After several evening/one-day events in various places in the Southwest, two of the three creators, Emilio and Kelly Miller-Lopez moved to Oregon. (Robert Gould, the third creator, hails from Los Angeles and also is in charge of Imaginosis, publisher of several books by world-famous faerie artist Brian Froud.) Faerieworlds 2004 took place at Hornung's Hideout west of Portland, as a two-day event.

From 2005 to 2008, Faerieworlds was held at the Secret House Winery in Veneta, Oregon, about a half-hour west of Eugene and very close to the site of the Oregon Country Fair but a couple of weeks later. It became a three-day event - Friday to Sunday - in 2008.

In 2009, the winery was sold and Faerieworlds moved on short notice to fields at the Mount Pisgah Arboretum, located southeast of Eugene and closer to I-5. July 27-29, 2012 will be Faerieworlds' fourth year at this site.

Music has always been the focus of Faerieworlds, with this year's artists including Donovan (yes, that Donovan - "Sunshine Superman," Mellow Yellow," "Atlantis" and more. Faerieworlds will mark, quite rightly, his new show, "The Living Crystal Faery Realm" on Sunday evening. Also appearing with be dub-step violinist Lindsey Stirling, Afro-Celtic group Baka Beyond, the Australian brothers of Brother, SJ Tucker and Tricky Pixie, Woodland and Treguenda (both featuring the Miller-Lopezes) and more.

Brian Froud (author/illustrator of Faeries, Goblins, Good Faeries/Bad Faeries and more) and Wendy Froud (dollmaker and creator of Star Wars' Yoda) serve as hosts of the event and also have their books prints, dolls, etc. for sale.

Numerous other vendors have all types of faerie, mythic and musical items for sale. One of the major features of Faerieworlds is the people who attend in their creative and ever-changing costumes. From infants to senior citizens, there's a wide array of faeries, goblins, wizards, steampunkers and just about anything else that might conceivable fit in.

There's camping for those who make a mini-vacation out of Faerieworlds and the local hotels fill up fast.

I'll be going this year to assist some vending friends who have a booth called Three Moons Emporium. I'll be going to the site on Thursday, July 28, to help set up and staying through until Monday, July 30 to get things packed up again. This allows me to get a vendor camping pass for much less than a regular camping pass. Other expenses will be for food and drink and most likely a car rental since I no longer have a car on the road. Living in the Portland area means I can get along without a car pretty well with some planning, but to geet all my stuff - tent, clothing and costumes, sleeping stuff, and probably a few hats I hope to sell, may make it hard to share a ride, although that hasn't been ruled out yet. Car rental is estimated at $125 to $175 based on what I've seen so far. Some of what I hope to raise will be used to get supplies for making the hats.



The hats, by the way, will be simplified versions of the one I made for the 2010 event (shown here). It has four battery-powered clocks, each set to a different time zone (Pacific, Eastern, Greenwich Mean Time and Sydney, Australia's time zone). I tore apart several windup clocks and stuck the gears all over. There's a brass sundial on the top and a sextant on the front brim, with a small Slinky, which looks steampunkish (to me, anyway) on the back brim. This year's hats will have one clock plus whatever else I think might work.

Any money above and beyond what I need for Faerieworlds fees, food, rentals, etc. will be used to keep my head above water as I try to restructure life and debt payments.

You might ask "Why not just skip Faerieworlds?" Well, strictly speaking, I could, but this one longish weekend will most likely be the one event I'll be going to this year. I've made a lot of friends there and I keep in touch with them on Facebook. It's like Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July and several Celtic festivals (it's held the weekend before Lugnasadh) rolled into one. The anticipation, the participation and the memories that follow help keep my spirits up for a long time. I need Faerieworlds!

If you'd like to help me get to Faerieworlds, click on the ChipIn widget at the top right corner of this blog. Any amount is truly appreciated.

"Come, Watson!"

"The game is a foot!"

The foot, famous for its appearances in Monty Python's Flying Circus, is from Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time painted by Agnolo Bronzino in 1545. Terry Gilliam flipped its orientation horizontally.

Rhododendrons Outside the Apartment

Each Spring for a brief time the rhododendron bushes in my apartment complex come into bloom. The ones right outside the window I sit near while on the computer have a whole lot of blossoms this year, so I went out on my tiny deck - I'm on the second floor - to get some photos:

 

 

 

 These were shot with my Canon PowerShot S3 IS. I used a tripod for most of the shots since I needed to zoom in. Some of the blossoms were about 15 feet away.

Updating Thunderbird Mail Client

A couple of years ago I decided to dump Windows - I was still using Windows XP at the time - and start using Linux. I decided on Linux Mint because it's pretty user-friendly. While I may be a bit geekier than your average person when it comes to computers, I'm also one who really likes things to just work without a whole lot of esoteric and convoluted messing around. Mint is a good choice for people like me.

Mostly when I want to install something new, I'll go to Mint's software manager in the main menu down in the lower right corner of the screen (where Start is located in Windows). I can look up stuff and install it if it's there. It's very handy to use, but it doesn't always have the latest versions. This is especially true for me because I am still using Linux Mint 11, not having updated to Mint 12 last November. I'll probably skip 12 altogether and go right to 13 when it comes out. I've never had any serious problems updating.

The update feature for Mint 11 only recently updated Thunderbird, Mozilla's popular email client that has been set up for Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The update was for Thunderbird 11. I decided I wanted to do a further upgrade to Thunderbird 12, so I went to Mozilla's site and downloaded it. Then I realized it comes as a .tar file and I'm not up on how to deal with those. So I decided to search for information on how to install a .tar file.

The search led me to the Linux Mint forums, where a user new to Linux asked how to do what I wanted to do. Here was his reply from a forum moderator:

"If you have to ask how to do it then you shouldn't be doing it."

Gee, thanks for nothing! And this guy's a forum moderator?

I looked around a bit more and realized, y'know, maybe it is a bit complicated with all kinds of complex commands in Terminal. I use Terminal occasionally, but it's good to have the commands I need spelled out so I can plug stuff in without to much hassle. I'm at least geeky enough to deal with that now and then, but seldom enough that I don't always retain stuff from time to time.

So I tried another search "how to install thunderbird 12 in linux mint 11" and this was a little more rewarding. I found this site:

Ravi Saive - A Technology Blog for Newbies

 I looked it over and after a bit of scrolling, I found how to install Thunderbird with just three lines in Terminal (plus my password, which is always needed when installing stuff).

Look for this at the website:

Installing Thunderbird 12 on Ubuntu 12.04/11.10/11.04, Debian & Linux Mint

Here's the commands to copy into Terminal after closing Thunderbird if it's open on your machine:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/thunderbird-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install thunderbird 

Copy the first line with CTRL-C and paste it into Terminal at the command prompt.

CTRL-V won't work to paste it in. You have to click on Edit in Terminal's menu bar and select Paste.

(That's one of those little tricks that, working completely on my own, took me a while to discover. If you learned Linux in a class, the instructor probably pointed that out. Simple, but if you don't know, you spend a lot of time trying to accurately type long lines of code sometimes. Been there, done that, very frustrating!)

Enter your password and let Terminal do it's thing, i.e. access the site.

When you get to the next prompt, copy and paste the second line, let Terminal retrieve Thunderbird from the site.

Then copy and paste the third line when you get the next prompt. The installation will take a little bit of time, then you'll get your prompt again.

Type  thunderbird and it'll start. Once it's open, click on Help and then About Thunderbird. A splash screen should launch and you should see you're now running the latest Thunderbird with everything you had before (assuming you upgraded from an earlier version) is ready and waiting for you.

You can, as you probably do most of the time, start Thunderbird from the menu or from an icon on your desktop if you created one. You don't have to replace that desktop icon.

Like Firefox, also from Mozilla, there are addons you can plug into your Thunderbird. They're worth checking out if you want to do anything beyond just reading the mail that comes in and send out the occasional reply or original email. Also like Firefox, it's a great program at the price I like most: free.

So then, after doing all that and posting this blog entry, I noticed the shield down in the task bar indicated new stuff was available for updating my Linux 11. I clicked and naturally what was in the updates?

The files needed to update Thunderbird from 11 to 12, of course. Story of my life. Oh well, at least I did something a little different and learned a little.

Starting to List on Yardsellr.com

Not long ago I found out about Yardsellr.com (note the second "e" in "Yardseller" is dropped in the site name). It's billed as "eBay for Facebook." I've got some things I'd like to sell to help stave off financial disaster and also to help me get to Faeriworlds on the last weekend of July. I'll be posting more about these here, on Facebook and Twitter as I get them listed.

Today was a decent day weatherwise, so I took a comforter out onto my tiny deck and clipped it to the railing. With my camera mounted on a tripod, I took pictures of one of my bowed psalteries, one of my dulcimers (once owned by folk musician Sally Rogers) and the rare and/or signed Spider Robinson books, all of which I'd like to sell.

After renaming the photos so I could easily identify them, I went to Yardsellr and got one of the Spider Robinson books listed. It's a rare hardcover edition of Copyright Violation, 38 pages, leather-bound with a slipcase, one of 26 produced (lettered S on a back page) by Pulphouse Publishing, Eugene, Oregon.

I checked several websites, Abebooks.com for one, and saw it's going for $250. I also have two other copies, one bound in red leather and labeled "Red Staff" on a back page, and one of 300 with a dust jacket (No. 9). I'll get those listed very soon, along with the instruments..

Here's photos of the bowed psaltery (bought from Lark in the Morning when they had a store in Seattle near Pike Place) and the dulcimer:

Faerieworlds 2012 Summer Celebration

For 2012, Faerieworlds will be held from Friday, July 27th to Sunday, July 29th at the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum located Southeast of Eugene, Oregon. It will be the festival's fourth year at the site. Activity will center around the eight standing stones of the Stone Circle which was installed before the event in 2010.

You may have heard of Donovan, especially if you're old enough to remember the '60s - well, OK old enough to be alive during the '60s. (There's also a saying that if you remember the '60s you weren't really there.) So anyway, yes, it's that Donovan, the one who gave us "Sunshine Superman," "Hurdy Gurdy Man," "Atlantis" and "Mellow Yellow." Donovan was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio on April 14, 2012. The Faerieworlds organizers have announced, "Donovan will premiere 'The Living Crystal Faery Realm,' a new musical and visual experience that the world will see for the first time at Faerieworlds under the stars at Mount Pisgah."

Niyaz, Baka Beyond and Soriah with Ashkelon Sain are making their Faerieworlds debut. Also making her first Faerieworlds appearance with be dub-step violinist Lindsey Stirling, who was a quarter-finalist on America's Got Talent two years ago. I'm excited about seeing Baka Beyond, a group that mixes African and Celtic music. I've liked their music for years.

Returning performers include SJ Tucker and Tricky Pixie (SJ is a part of Tricky Pixie), John Doan on harp guitar, Trillian Green, Treguenda (first time at Faerieworlds but they've played at FaerieCon West), Adam Hurst and more.

That's just the Main Stage - the lineup for the Neverworlds Stage will be announced later.

Faerieworlds has released a couple of YouTube videos on their channel featuring Donovan and Lindsey Stirling:

I will be there this year. I'm not sure yet how I'll afford it or how I'm getting there, but I really am determined to be there. A friend, Whisper Fae on Facebook, who I met while helping a vendor last year, has offered a vendor pass. I'll have to upgrade it to a vendor camping pass, but that's cheaper than paying for a regular camping pass and I may be able to put up my tent behind the booth Whisper and two others will be at - Three Moons Emporium. (Want to help me get there? Take a look at the ChipIn widget in the top right corner of this blog. Any amount, even a buck, will be appreciated.)

Moby as Gwydion the Wizard

Seems like every year I, along with many others, say this will be the best Faerieworlds yet, and every year we're right. We'll be right again, I'm positive. For me, Faerieworlds is more than just a festival. I've gotten to know a lot of people who help make it happen along with members of the Facebook group A Circle of Merry Folk. Along with them, I look forward to this event all year. This is my Thanksgiving, Winter Solstice, Christmas, New Years and vacation all wrapped up in five days including Thursday and Monday when I'll be helping set up and take down the vendor booth.