Ozark Plateau & Dallas Figure Eight Road Trip & Total Solar Eclipse Extravaganza

Posted on April 17, 2024 by admin

The April 8, 2024 North American solar eclipse is already old news. It was practically so the minute it was over, a news cycle balloon whose air didn’t just leak out, but popped. A thousand articles bloomed in the days ahead of the event, mostly trotting out the same information: an elementary-school level explanation of solar eclipses, dire warnings about the dire consequences of staring into the Sun, maybe a note about festivals, quaint towns and surge motel pricing in the path of totality as people gathered in cities and towns in that narrow band.

Yuriko and I headed south to Dallas to see totality, making a two-night, three-day drive of it beginning on April 5; stayed five nights in Dallas; and then made a three-night, four-day return drive, arriving home yesterday. All together we drove 2,496 miles, generally crossing the Ozark Plateau in a course that made a (badly crumbled) figure 8 on a string.

After checking into a limited-service hospitality property in the old lead mining hills of southeastern Missouri on (Friday) April 5 – T-minus three days ahead of totality on Monday – I asked the clerk if they were booked up on Sunday, the day before.

“We’re booked up all weekend,” she said.

“At high prices?”

“Some places are getting $300 or $400 a night,” she said, not willing to admit (you never know who’s listening) that the same was true at her property, a franchisee of a multinational hospitality company that surely knows a thing or two surge pricing.

I had a similar conversation with the desk clerk in 2017, ahead of the solar eclipse that year. I’d booked a room months earlier then – and this time too – to avoid surge pricing. Eclipses can be predicted at least 1,000 years into the future, and more importantly for ordinary folk, that information is readily available in our time. So it’s easy enough to avoid motel gouging. The next night, April 6, we were in a different motel, also (probably) a creature of surge pricing, also booked early.

As for the night before the eclipse, April 7, we avoided paying for a place to stay by relying on the good offices of my brother Jay, whom we stayed with. It just so happened that the path of totality passed over Dallas, a fact not lost on me some years ago. So I planned to be there at that time, and we were fortunate enough that all went according to plan.

We’ll never be able to do that exactly again, either, since the next time Dallas – or the place where Dallas is – will be in the the path of totality is 2317.

Totality was in the early afternoon. I considered it my lunch hour, since I was working that day. The skies over Dallas that morning were uncooperatively cloudy most of the morning, but by noon the Sun peeked out sometimes. Jay and Yuriko and I joined my nephew Sam and his family and, after a quick Torchy’s takeout lunch – and a zoom interview for me – we went to the nearby Lakeland Hills Park, at 32°48’14.1″N 96°41’47.5″W, according to Google Maps.

To add to the entertainment, Sam shot off a rocket. The idea had originally been to do so during totality, but he correctly decided that would be a distraction from the main event, so he shot it off early. Twice. Small children, including his children, chased it as it parachuted to the ground the first time. The second time, the parachute failed and that was the end of the rocket’s useful life. Naturally I was reminded of the rockets we shot off in ’75.

The orange crescent Sun was visible on and off as the Moon ate further into it. People were watching.

No need to see the partial eclipse via pin-hole when the Sun happened to be out.

We assessed the nearby clouds for size and what direction they seemed to be moving. The odds didn’t look that great for an unobscured view. Darkness began closing in anyway.

Totality came, just as the astronomers said it would. Luck was with us, mostly. We saw the blackened disk of the Sun and much of its close-in corona, as apt a name as any in astronomy, though little of the corona’s tendrils that so memorably stretched into the void in the clear skies of ’17. Still, quite the sight in ’24. Even saw a few solar prominences, gold-red-orange light blips at the edge of the disk, which I’m not sure I did last time. So was the partly cloudy totality worth driving more than 1,000 miles to see? Yes. Double yes.

Ashes to Ashes, Paw Prints to Paw Prints

Posted on March 28, 2024 by admin

Maundy Thursday has come around again, which seems like a good time to knock off posting until Easter Monday, which also happens this year to be April Fools’, known for its pranks and hoaxes. But really, isn’t every day a day for hoaxes in our time?

Or at least absurd assertions. From Wired yesterday: “A non-exhaustive list of things that are getting blamed for the bridge collapse on Telegram and X include President Biden, Hamas, ISIS, P. Diddy, Nickelodeon, India, former president Barack Obama, Islam, aliens, Sri Lanka, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, Wokeness, Ukraine, foreign aid, the CIA, Jewish people, Israel, Russia, China, Iran, Covid vaccines, DEI, immigrants, Black people, and lockdowns.”

A pleasant Easter to all. Easter is the last day of March this year. Twenty-seven years ago, it was March 30, which put Maundy Thursday on March 27, 1997, which is a date with some resonance for us: we found out we were going to be parents.

Both daughters were in town at the same time for a few days earlier this month. It was unfortunately the same week that Payton died, though the visits were scheduled well before that happened.

Still, we could all enjoy dinner together two evenings (at home, and out the next day at a familiar Korean barbecue joint) and share our recollections of the dog, among other things.

We received the dog’s ashes this week, along with a paw print. I didn’t know memorial paw prints were a thing, but it seems they are.

Truth was, she could be prickly. But once you knew that, you could have fun with it. One way to get a rise was to slowly approach her food. In this video, about a month before her death, I told her, “I’m coming for your food,” but naturally no language other than body language was necessary.

She was already having trouble walking then – the hind legs were the first to fail her – and spent much of her time in our living room, among towels to catch her pee when she couldn’t quite get up to go to the door, and didn’t bother to tell us that by yapping, in which case we could help her go outside. Often enough, of course, she’d miss the towels. We didn’t care much. It was still good to have her around at all.

Paper

Posted on March 17, 2024 by admin

Sometimes I think about writing paper letters regularly again. Something like once or twice a month maybe, just short notes to different people I used to correspond with that way. Even those of us who used to create voluminous amounts of paper letters – and I did – don’t do so any more. I keep up the volume of postcards, but not letters. I toy with this idea, but nothing has come of it yet.

That came to mind rummaging through my letter files recently. I found this.

Twenty years ago, my 78-year-old mother in Texas writes to her six-year-old granddaughter in Illinois, whose 26-year-old self happens to be visiting us now. I don’t think my mother sent an email or text message in her life, and she was no worse for it. I’d say as long as this paper letter and others of hers are accessible to those of us who knew her, her memory is no worse for it either.

Payton the Bassador, ca. 2009-2024

Posted on March 12, 2024 by admin

Today was the sad day we had our dog, Payton, put down. In the end, it was quick and painless. The time had come. She couldn’t even move much as of the weekend, refused all nourishment during the last few days, and howled in pain for minutes at a time. Dogs don’t have many advantages over people, but not having to suffer as much at the end of their lives is one they do have.

“Payton” by Emi S. (2023)

She had been with us nearly 11 years, and came with the name Payton. We couldn’t decide on a new name, so that’s what it remained. Back when we got her, if you Googled “Payton” and “bassador” – for she was a basset-lab mix – her image would appear at the web site of the organization we acquired her from, with a banner on the pic announcing ADOPTED.

I got it in my head, soon after she came to live with us, that if I published her name and picture, whoever gave her up might see it, track us down, and demand her back. Not likely at all, but as a result I got into the habit of simply referring to our dog or the dog, beginning from day one. This is the first time I’ve used her name.

In the fullness of time, I may post other images, maybe even a short video of elderly Payton guarding her food a few weeks ago, back when she had an appetite. For now, enough to pause for a few days in her honor, till next Sunday. She wasn’t people, but she was a member of the family.

RIP, Payton.

Ann at 21

Posted on February 4, 2024 by admin

Turns out it wasn’t Dry February after all. On Saturday night, I had a shot glass of Soon Hari brand flavored soju, which is the Korean equivalent of nihonshu (sake). Ann came up for the weekend, on the (near) occasion of her birthday. We went to the same Korean barbecue place we’ve taken her to twice before for her birthday dinner, only this time she ordered alcohol. Mostly this was a matter of form, since she had turned 21 a few days earlier.

The flavor was grape. It was sweet and 12% alcohol by volume, so it could sneak up on you. She had enough to make her pink in the face (“Asian glow,” she calls it) and a little tipsy.

Later we had birthday pie at home.

Twenty-one: obligatory note here about the wingéd passage of time.

First Box of Cards

Posted on January 22, 2024 by admin

Nearly above freezing today, and icy rain this evening. A slushy week is ahead, more like late February or early March than late January, but each winter has its own rhythms. A relatively warm week this time of year is entirely welcome, except for the possibility of ice patches.

I’ve undertaken to sort my postcards, sometimes on the weekends, sometimes in the evenings, in short bursts. Note the choice of verb. Not organize. My goal isn’t so grand. I just want to separate the cards by who sent them, and store them in roughly chronological order, but not down to the granularity of an exact order – even if such a thing were possible, since not everyone dates every card, and USPS postmarks are often a smear of ink daring you to make sense of them.

Why bother? They’ll all be lost to time, of course. So what? It’s one of those things you do for your own satisfaction.

I’ve made my way through the first box out of 10 or so, but some other cards are stashed in folders and I’m not sure where else, down in the laundry room. This is going to take a while.

Most cards in this particular box are from the early to mid-2010s, though some as early as 2003 and as late as 2019. The tallest pile so far is from Ed Henderson, but I expect him to be overtaken eventually by cards from my brother Jay and Geof Huth, both of whom have known me longer, and both of whom have the advantage of being alive.

One from Jay, dated July 3, 2011.

No printed text on the reverse. “I can’t say that I have any idea what this card is about,” Jay wrote. Me either.

Getting Through Various Januaries

Posted on January 21, 2024 by admin

The near-zero and subzero days eased off late last week, enough that I completed the task that no one else wants, storing Christmas decorations in the garage. Also, moving snow out of the way on our sidewalks and driveway, though Yuriko did some of that as well. Deep chill was back on Saturday and some today, or at least it felt that way when I rolled the garbage cans out to the curb this evening.

Overcast skies meant there wasn’t even the consolation of constellations, bright in the clear winter night. Some other time, Orion.

Haven’t bothered taking many pictures lately. The bleak mid-winter doesn’t inspire camera-in-hand forays near or far. The back yard pretty much looks like this image from January 2015, except the dog isn’t nearly as vigorous in crossing the powdery flats as she used to be. In fact, just getting her out the door is a process that can take a few minutes, as is getting her back in.

Back even further, she romps through the snow of January 2014. As if there were that much difference.

On Saturday especially we cleaned house, especially in the kitchen the adjacent spaces – the food handling zones of the house. Always needs some attention. January has a way of pressing in on the walls of the house, focusing one’s attention on immediate surroundings. At least, that’s how I feel it.

I did such a January cleaning in 2014 – does that year really correspond to 10 years ago? There goes time, flying again, flapping its wings just a little louder every year. Ten years ago, ours was a house with children. Who spent a fair amount of time on the living room couch.

One day I moved the couch to clean behind it.

For some reason I decided to document it. Was I mad at my daughters? I don’t think I was, but I did show it to them. What with prying the couch from its position, this was a job for Dad.

In January 2006, we visited a showing of snow sculptures in the northwest suburbs.

Nice, but I don’t think I’ve had the urge to seek out any more snow sculpture events since then.

Return From Seattle

Posted on January 9, 2024 by admin

Ann’s back from Seattle, where she went last Thursday for a visit with her sister. I picked her up at O’Hare this evening. Heavy snow in the Chicago area today, the heaviest of the winter so far but which tapered off late in the afternoon, delayed her for a few hours at her layover point in Denver after an early start this morning.

She said she’d never been so glad to leave a place as the Denver airport. Just wait, I said, there will be even longer travel days eventually. At least I hope so; airport purgatory is one of the mild prices one pays to see distant things in the modern age.

While in Seattle, she enjoyed some of the cultural richness of that city.

That’s at a place called Archie McPhee’s Rubber Chicken Museum. Can’t believe I’d never heard of it. Only open since 2018, though. Like the Chihuly Museum, a place I must see next visit to Seattle. Of course, it’s really a novelty shop. Ann bought me some stickers there, sporting rubber chickens, and I was happy to get them.

South Texas ’23: Kerrville & Bandera

Posted on October 29, 2023 by admin

Last Tuesday, my brother Jay and I drove from San Antonio to Kerrville, Texas (pop. 24,200) to visit an old friend of his, who has a separate small building in his back yard to house an extensive model train that he’s building. We got a detailed tour. Cool.

That was part of a larger trip that took me to Austin and San Antonio to visit friends and family. I flew to Austin on October 18 and returned from San Antonio today.

Rather than take I-10 west from San Antonio to Kerrville (though we returned that way), we drove Texas 16, which is mostly a two-lane highway that winds from exurban San Antonio and then into the Hill Country. Always good to drive the Hill Country, even on a rainy day. It was a rainy week in South Texas on the whole, but still quite warm for October. Had a few sweaty walks in San Antonio last week as well, more about which later.

Besides visiting Bob and his wife Nancy and his HO model train construction, we also stopped by the Glen Rest Cemetery in Kerrville (my idea). The recent rains had made it a muddy cemetery. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, but also mud to muddy?

A curious figure. At least for a cemetery.

Glen Rest – which is incorrectly noted as Glen Rose on Google Maps – dates from 1892, according to the Texas Historical Commission plaque on site. “Glen Rest Cemetery is the final resting place for many pioneer and historic families of Kerrville and the surrounding Hill Country,” it says.

En route to Kerrville on highway Texas 16 is the much smaller burg of Bandera, pop. 829 and seat of Bandera County. That means a courthouse, and we stopped to take a look.

The courthouse itself isn’t unusual, but it is positioned unusually. Instead of being the focus of a square, it’s simply facing the highway. So are a handful of memorials. This one honors “All Cowboys” because Bandera is “Cowboy Capital of the World.”

This stone oddity honors a Bandera pioneer named Amasa Clark, giving his birth and death dates as 1825-1927.

More about him is at Frontier Times magazine, which annoyingly doesn’t say when the text was written, who wrote it or where it was published. Internal evidence, along with the style of writing, puts it in the early 1920s, probably in a local newspaper. Clark came to the site of Bandera in 1852, not long after serving in the war with Mexico, and stayed until his death in 1927 as a very old man.

Also along the highway in Bandera is a strip center including a store the likes of which I’d never seen before. Neither had Jay.

We had to take a look inside.

I should have asked to woman behind the counter how long the store has been in business, or whether the man himself gets a cut, or some other questions, but I was in vacation mode, not interview mode. So all I know is what I saw, which was enough. For the record, and this is no surprise, Trump overwhelmingly carried Bandera County — 79.1% to 19.7% for Biden — in the 2020 election.

Weekend Portrait

Posted on October 8, 2023 by admin

After Lilly was in town, Ann came to visit for the weekend. They couldn’t quite be here at the same time, but early next year Ann will be visiting Lilly out in the Northwest anyway, for sister time together.

A delightful but short visit.

Taken at a local Korean restaurant we visit sometimes, with the new phone. It takes better portraits than the old phone, whose images often looked like this.

But so far some other images I’ve taken with the new phone, including some shots of flowers and other objects, aren’t as good as my disconnected iPhone, an older model that I only use as a camera. But it’s early yet in seeing what the new phone, which isn’t an iPhone, can do.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Family