Things I Truly Love- Coloring Books

I bought two new coloring books and both were about Vogue Magazine.

    Vogue Coloring Book by Iain R. Webb .  Mr. Webb's artwork was inspired by photos in 1950 -1959 copies of
British Vogue Magazine.

Vogue Colors a to z: A Fashion Coloring Book edited by Valerie Steiker.

Things I Truly Love- Coloring Books

I've been coloring in one of the new coloring books that have been published by the hundreds ( Just Add Color: Day of the Dead with artwork by Sarah Walsh) and the first one I did was frustrating.  I like to use colored pencils but the slick paper did not take up the color the way that I am used to and I felt more like I was scrubbing the color on than actually coloring.  So I did a small  coloring experiment.  I finished the color pencil page and then colored another page with art markers and then a third page using crayons.  Results below.

Color pencils.  The paper just doesn't pull in the color and the slickness makes it hard to cover all that bright white paper.

Markers.  Color absorbs well but  I still felt like I was scrubbing the color on. 

Crayons.  Actually felt like I was coloring and covered well but I don't remember crayons being this waxy.

So I've decided that I will not use color pencils in this book but markers and crayons.  I think the problem  I had with the markers was because I bought a cheap set at Target and they dried out even as I was using them.  A better quality set should take care of that problem.

Still I Rise

RIP Maya Angelou (1928 - 2014)

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Those Were The Days

 

 

Been Busy

Yard-work, laundry, dogs, trips, and

A Very Short Song

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.




Symptom Recital

I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men....
I'm due to fall in love again.

reading Dorothy Parker.

This I Truly Love

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay,

In my backyard.

The Joy of Books

My sister shared this with me and now I am sharing it with you.

Things I Truely Love

The world is a carousel of color
Wonderful, wonderful color
-Walt Disney's Wonderful World Of Color

Used with the permission of the photographer Vincent Cotnoir

The Aluminum Overcast Bits And Pieces

Either the Army thinks you are stupid or wants to help you when you are in a situation that may cause you to panic.

Switch used to change fuel tanks .

For your safety only people who can read very fast are allowed to sit near this exit.

The man who made my trip extra-special, Crew Chief Bob "Gunny" Baumgartner, and me after the flight. Thanks, Gunny.

The Aluminum Overcast In The Air (part 4)

Looking out waist gunner's window.

Looking out waist gunner's window.

Looking toward the tail through the top turret.

Number 3 and 4 engines (co-pilot side).

Number 1 and 2 engines (pilot side).

Looking out the nose as we were still rising above the runway. This is the only photo I took in the bombardier section because I was so excited to be there I forgot to take anymore. This was the highlight of my flight.

The Aluminum Overcast In The Air (part 3)

Rack of bombs with names written on them. I forgot to ask who and why those names were on them.

This is the crew chief standing right under the top gun turret.

Radio room. Once of my favorite photos as in the lower left corner you can see the smart phone someone sitting in the radio operator's seat was holding. Hello, past, meet the future.

On return to the airport I ended up in a seat across from the door in the rear of the aircraft. The seat belt latched across it puzzled me since it was used to bar anyone from entering the aircraft when the door was open on the ground. Then I realized it was latched to keep it from being thrown around if the air got too bumpy.

The Aluminum Overcast In The Air (part 2)

Photos of the waist gunner's machine gun.

Gun barrel and port.

Close-up of gun port and the cartridge belt.

I always thought these guns were just point and shoot but in this photo you can see the metal box installed behind the gun grip. I love the wooden cartridge belt holder on the wall to the right of the gun.

Close-up of box with the gun site on top and the various gauges and knobs used to fire the gun accurately.

Close-up of opposite gun showing the rest of the knobs on the box.

The Aluminum Overcast In The Air

Looking from the back of the aircraft to the front. Row of seats on the right with waist gunner station behind it, ball turret and yellow container above the ball turret holding whatever fluid it is that operates the ball, platform around turret to radio room, and then the flight deck.

Looking past the yellow tank into the flight deck. That guy in the baseball cap is sitting where I was sitting on take-off.

Close-up of seats and seat-belts. The latches on the belts were different from any I've used before and it took me a few seconds to figure out how they worked.

Close-up of ball turret and walkway.

The pilots. I sat right behind the co-pilot on the right on take-off.

The Aluminum Overcast On The Ground (part 2)

Upper gun turret behind the cockpit.

Fuselage and waist-gunner window. If you look closely you will see the machine gun pointing right at the camera.

(Remember, click on photos to enlarge.)

Tail. I have no idea what the letters mean.

Rear gun with period dressed and equipped mannequin sitting behind the plexiglass. This was the only area we were not allowed in.

Close-up of mannequin.

The Aluminum Overcast On The Ground

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1888)

The Aluminum Overcast is World War II bomber built in 1945. It has four Curtis Wright 1820-97 nine-cylinder radial engines. Six to ten passengers are allowed on each flight along with a crew of three; two pilots and one crew chief. After take-off passengers are allowed to walk around but I had the wonderful experience of being allowed to sit forward in one of the jump seats behind the pilots and next to the crew chief. As we were lifting off the ground he unbuckled himself and leaped up motioning me to do the same. This allowed me to crawl toward the nose of the aircraft and into the bombardier section where I took a photo through the plexiglass just as the aircraft flew over the end of the runway. That photo will be in the In Flight photos. Today we will start with photos I took while the aircraft was on the ground.

As you can tell it was a cloudy day which caused our flight to be delayed for a couple of hours. The wait was worth it.

Aluminum Overcast revving up for the first flight of the day. We were the second.

Two of the huge Curtis Wright engines

The cockpit above and the bombardier section in the nose with the Norden Bombsight visible behind the plexiglass.

Off I Go

Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high into the sun;
Here they come, zooming to meet our thunder,
At 'em, boys, give'er the gun!
Down we dive, spouting our flame from under,
Off with one helleva roar,
We live in fame or go down in flame, hey!
Nothing'll stop the Army Air Corps!

Things I Truly Wonder About

 When did Tony the Tiger start doing steroids?

Tony in the Sixties



 Tony in 2010

Things I Am Truely Sick Of

Women being held responsible for a man's sexual behavior and the underlying contempt and rage hidden behind this belief. Last week we had a New York ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspaper alter a White House photo showing President Obama and Secretary Of State Hilary Clinton during a briefing of the National Security Counsel on the raid at Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. In the photo the paper published Clinton and another women there were removed. Seems the paper never publishes photos of women because it considers any photo of women to be immodest. Code for any photo of a woman is bound to be sexually dangerous.

Then this weekend Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, was arrested for sexually assaulting a maid in a hotel in New York. While reading reports of the incident in the New York newspapers I found the comment below at the tabloid paper, The New York Post:

So much for his reputation as 'the great seducer' (he probably made that up himself and spread it around). I mean, he apparently sodomized a hotel maid - how low can you get. And his wife should step up and take some responsibility here - if she were doing her job, he wouldn't have a wandering eye. They're both trash.
Alan London- London, United Kingdom

So, according to Alan, wives are responsible when their husbands commit rape because if they were doing their job (which I assume means satisfying their husband sexually) married men wouldn't rape women at all.

What bull crap. Men are responsible for their own sexual behavior. Trying to shift the blame for a man's criminal sexual behavior onto women is absurd and an insult to the billions of men in the world who seem to be able to go though life without raping anyone and, as we all know, it is dangerous for women,too. Rape victims are usually judged as being responsible for their own rapes. "If she hadn't dressed that way." "If she hadn't gotten that drunk." "If she hadn't made me think she wanted it."

It is time to stop this. It is time to shift the blame back to were it belongs- on the criminal. Not the victim or the wife or the mother or any other woman. Shame on that paper in New York for trying to make women invisible because, in the paper's opinion, they are so sexually dangerous; shame on Alan for being a sexist pig; and shame on society for accepting this perverted view of women as the truth.

Things I Truly Wish Donald Trump Would Come Clean On

His hair. Below are statements Trump has made about President Obama and his birth certificate edited by me to now address the issue of Trump and his hair. Most of the time I've replaced the word birth certificate in his statements with the word hair. Other times I've changed words to reflect the fact that we are now talking about hair.

"I have hair. People have hair. He doesn't have hair. He may say he has hair but there is something about that hair— maybe it's fake, maybe it says he's a vain SOB, I don't know. Maybe he doesn't want hair. Or, he may not have hair."
-March 30, 2011

"I have people that have been studying it and they cannot believe what they're finding. He spent $2 million in hair products trying to get away from this issue, and if it weren't an issue, why wouldn't he just solve it? I wish he would because if he doesn't, it's one of the greatest scams in the history of politics and in history, period. You are not allowed to be a president if you have a bad comb over. Right now, I have real doubts."
— April 7, 2011

“Maybe I’m going to do the tax returns when Trump does his hair. I may tie my tax returns-I’d love to give my tax returns-I may tie my tax returns into Trump's hair.”
— April 19, 2011

“I've been told very recently, Anderson, that the hair is missing. I've been told that it's not there or it doesn't exist. And if that's the case, it's a big problem."
— April 25, 2011

The man is a overgrown child saying outrageous things just to get attention. When is the media going to learn.

Things I Truly Believed Were True When I Was Younger (Part 2)

There is no truth.  There is only perception. 
-Gustave Flaubert


I got some interesting replies in Part 1 of this subject and see now that I need to explain what the post was about a bit clearer.  The Things I Truly Believed Were True When I Was Younger post is about my learning that there are no absolute truths in life.   Every item on the list is something I believed to be the unalterable truth.  Believing eight of them caused me almost unbearable pain, and/or sorrow at some point in my life. My belief did not match reality and reality is that there are no absolute truths in life.  Here is the list again but with each item qualified:

1. Up is up and down is down...except in outer space.

2. Life is hard...except when it isn't.

3. Love will keep us together...except when it doesn't.

4. All parents love and protect their children...except when they don't.

5. Bad things only happen to bad people...except when it happens to good people.

6. Lots of money will make a unbearable job bearable...except when it doesn't.

7. All bosses will treat you fairly...except when some don't.

8. If you work hard enough you can overcome anything...except when you can not.

9. All people are basically good...except when they are not.

10. The sun rises every morning and sets every night...except when you live at a latitude above 66.5 degrees North.

Opens up the world in ways you didn't imagine, doesn't it?