As in, “Once in a … ,” meaning a rare event. You no doubt remember that a Blue Moon is the second occurrence of a full moon during a calendar month. It happens every 2-1/2 years, or so. We got a beautiful view of this year’s Blue Moon last night, on New Year’s Eve. The [...]
If you happen to have your bugle handy and have a good lip, take a look at what wiki/bugle has to say, then give your favorite call a good riff. (You can read music, can you not?)
Many of the familiar calls have had words made up to fit the tune. For example, the US Reveille [...]
Il Silenzio (The Silence) is a more formal, concert trumpet version of Taps, written in 1965 by Italian trumpeter Nino Rosso. One of our choir members asked to play it as a Veterans Day observance in church yesterday morning. From a bulletin insert I learned the story behind “Taps.” There is no attribution for [...]
In this insane world, one yearns for sane words. Many years ago I found these helpful words of wisdom, and I made a now-fading copy (typed on a real typewriter) and stuck it in my Bible. They are words from a little devotional book that I first discovered in 1984, according to the date inside [...]
In the early thirties when I was just a wee laddie, laundry day involved the use of a mangle. It was used to iron bed sheets, tablecloths, and other items too large to conveniently iron by hand. Mom had one, and I remember watching her use it. The piece to be ironed was smoothed and [...]
Boy, does this shot bring back memories! When I was a boy we often visited our paternal grandparents on their farm near Iola, Kansas. The big evening event for us Ayers kids was going out with Grandfather Ayers to bring in the cows for milking, I think about a dozen, and watch him milk those [...]
Here’s another golden oldie, to me at least, from the web site predecessor to the Orlop. It was written in 2002 after my return from a medical mission trip to an indigenous Indian tribe high on a Costa Rica mountainside. As a postscript, similar missions in the following years, in which I was not a [...]
An ex-Gates Radio executive, Larry Cervon, died recently and left a couple of albums of pictures with Bob Weirather, a recently retired Gates/Harris engineer, from one of which comes this picture of a cool and confident Engineering Manager at a Sales meeting in about 1967. I must have been younger then.
The scenario that brought me [...]
This little essay was first posted eight years ago, in August 2001, before the days of the Orlop when I was at dayers.net. Here I am once again re-living my 15 minutes of fame as a blue water sailor in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Santa Barbara.
Something strange happens when a flatlander starts [...]
That’s what we were singing and dancing to in 1948, you will be amazed to know. It occurs to me that that year may have represented the apogee of American ascendancy on the world scene, which also may mean that we have generally been going downhill for the last 61 years. Anyone want to argue [...]
