Folks,

PV1:

Once the world was lit only by fire and the skies at night were filled with stars and planets. We town folk growing up in the last half of the twentieth century, even in a small city as I did, looked up into the heavens and saw so little. There are places on this earth one can go where far more stars may be seen without the contamination of street lights, arc lights, night lights, car lights, spot lights, aircraft lights, or Christmas tree lights. The desert is one place I guess and there are other unpopulated areas.

We have a good planetarium in Chapel Hill. The original 7 astronauts were trained there. As for me I have a very small telescope and a good pair of 7x50 binoculars. My dad, who was a captain in the merchant marines, had the finest set of glasses I've ever seen. They were German made and from the middle of the Chesapeake Bay I could count the bricks on buildings unseen by the naked eye. When my dad had a heart attack and had to be air lifted from his ship someone stole those glasses and a fine German pistol from his locker.

There are several good open source astronomical programs available for download online if there is an interest and quite a few commercial products. I have a deluxe, leather bound copy of Roger Peterson's "Stars and Planets" that is helpful. There used to be a rather nice program on PBS produced by a fellow named Horkhiemer. It went off the air when he passed away. Too bad for the kids liked that program and they had begun to show an interest in star gazing.

Gents,

I once borrowed a small refractor of the type which is readily found in the pages of newspapers and magazines. I'm sure you must have seen similar:

Astonishing value! Bulk purchase makes it possible to offer at this low, low price! The Solar System at your fingertips!
View the planets, stars and the craters of the moon with a clarity you can only have dreamed of!

Send just nine pounds, eleven shillings and fourpence-halfpenny plus ten pounds postage and packing and this remarkable optical marvel can be yours to own and cherish. That is just as soon as we receive our next consignment from our Scientific Instruments Production Centre in Central Azerbaijan.

Andromeda Enterprises Ltd.,
Third Viaduct Arch from Gasworks Street,
Bootle,
Lancashire.

Alternatively, you can leave your payment and address with Gervais at the Gay Docker pub next door which is just opposite the public lavatories and the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen For Fallen Women.

Anyway, it had an object glass of about two and a half inches which to my great surprise and wonder was capable of revealing the rings of Saturn - if you could manage to hold the tripod steady enough.

Gents,

Meehan continues his aerial carnage into October 1917 with another Albatros D.V.

Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers
The red fire blazes
The grey smoke towers

Robert Lewis Stevenson

Jolly spiffing daguerreotype what Old Dux? What a corker! Sent him all the way to hell and gave him a little taste of it on the way down didn't you?! That's the spirit!

I potted three of the rotten bounders about 20 miles East of Arras today, D.III's from the Richthofen crowd. They can't take the Nieuport 17 in those awful Hun grids what? Not a jot of it old chap! All of them flamers too which might have started a sensation in the Teutonic quartermasters office with an influx of demands for asbestos long-johns!

Jimmy,

Can't help it old chap. Once my 40 proof blue blood is up I just keep pumping lead into those sausage eating cads. Barely managed to pull away in time before I joined him in a spectacular funeral pyre among the spruce trees. Bally close thing...What!

Congrats on your hat-trick! That'll teach 'em not to flaunt their black crosses near Arras again. Report to the Mess this evening for another bar to your Military Cross and celebratory champers, courtesy of the poor sod I despatched today. I brought off a wizard landing nearby and relieved his blackened corpse of a fine wallet containing many francs and a signed photograph of Goering's boy-friend. Trophies of war y'know. No good to him, eh?

Never had much joy with Nieuport 17. I miss the twin guns and rather more seriously - the dashed wings keep coming awf.

Per Ardua Asbestos.

Folks,

Jimmy:

Welcome to HWH. Congratulations on your victories. Yet another Bosch goes down in a hail of hot lead. It would seem the Hun is hard pressed for raw materials these days. He comes up again and again to be filled with lead then leaving little or nothing behind in return. One thing is as true in aerial combat as it is in other facets of life.... it is far better to give than to receive.

Dux:

Well done my friend. The landscape must be positively littered with the tangled wreckage of Bosch aircraft. Not only that, here is yet another fine photo worthy of the archives.

THE SUMMER WIND

The summer wind, came blowin in - from across the sea
It lingered there, so warm and fair - to walk with me
All summer long, we sang a song - and strolled on golden sand
Two sweethearts, and the summer wind

Like painted kites, those days and nights - went flyin by
The world was new, beneath a blue - umbrella sky
Then softer than, a piper man - one day it called to you
And I lost you, to the summer wind

The autumn wind, and the winter wind - have come and gone
And still the days, those lonely days - go on and on
And guess who sighs his lullabies - through nights that never end
My fickle friend, the summer wind

-Johnny Mercer

An irate Nature continues to ignore the 'North' in North Carolina. Despite the name she treats us just like the rest of the deep south. We are therefore battling days and days of extreme, triple digit, record breaking heat. At least we do not yet have any major fires to contend with in our state. And a break in the heat is predicted by Tuesday when we are warned to expect the cooling kiss of torrential downpours and flash flooding for several days. A formerly beneficent Nature, mercilessly prodded by thoughtless man, has finally gone mad all over.

Gents,

JRT,

Thanks old pal! Lets hope JB returns with more stirring tails of sky-cleansing.

Murray has just lost to Federer as we realists expected. I think he will remain the 'nearly man', at least until 'The Fed' hangs up his racket.

Folks,

Dux:

Roger Federer won his seventh Wimbledon title. I used to play what I somewhat euphemistically referred to as tennis every weekend. I won some and lost some. I have always aspired to mediocrity in all sports. I never really got into golf though I had to play occasionally for business reasons. I won a few trophies in golf. "Wettest Ball" was one I was particularly proud of. "Highest Score", and "Most Lost Balls" were others I received over the years. I hardly ever hit the same ball twice. The day I gave up golf was a black day indeed for "Titleist".

Tennis was fun and good exercise. Over the years the family grew and the work grew and eventually I found I did not have time for tennis. My favorite opponent (a person whom I could beat regularly enough to save face, married and moved away and there were always family matters to attend to every weekend. Or so it seemed. Such is life. I hardly even keep up with pro tennis anymore. Of course Wimbledon is special.

Raleigh (situated 50 miles west of us) hit 106 F. at RDU Airport yesterday breaking all records for the date. We struggled hard and made it to a cooler 103 F. Today we expect to cool even more down into the high 90s so I'll be tempted to get out the winter coats. Rain and possibly severe storms are on the way. Sadly there has been quite a lot of damage done in the Midwest by these storms. Perhaps by the time they get to us they will have weakened.

JRT,

We are struggling to get 62f today when it should be around 75f. The rain has ceased however...for a while.

We are off to Worcestershire for five nights on Friday. Just a break to get away from the mayhem of the local festival week. Maybe we can take in a visit to the RAF Cosford Air Museum.

Dux, summer has abruptly arrived at last on the wet coast, with the last two days
reaching the mid twenties, I wore shorts to work today for the first time this year, and
have the screen door set to the back porch. Halleluya, looks like we won't be entirely
without a summer this year. I expect you will be getting something similar soon.
A meteorologist on the radio said it's because the jetstream has finally drifted
north into its summer configuration. Turns out to be a mixed blessing, as we are now
languishing under a blanket of nasty wood smoke smog, courtesy of extensive forest
fires in siberia, which the jetstream has delivered to us, along with the sunshine.
Hmmm. There's a message there somewhere... I don't recall this condition ever occurring
before in my lifetime, though we often get a layer of smog later in the summer due
to our own forest fires. It greatly contributes to our often spectacular summer
sunsets.