German-Fest in Naples, Florida

Held on Saturday, February 4, 2017  at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Naples, Florida.   

There was a very large turnout and music was  everywhere - good, German music all over the place.  Music was available for the dining areas and then there was a dance floor with a band, the “Florida Snow Bird Polka Band” playing polkas and waltzes mainly

Great German food was available, and being devoured by people who  apparently had not had such a meal in a long time.  My wife and I had sausages, I had a knackwurst and a brat, with sauerkraut and spaetzle with gravy.  Rye bread was added and it took me right back to Germany. Wow!  The sauerkraut especially was a little bit different and it was great! A couple of pretzels with German mustard made a superfabulous desert. 

A great time was had by all who attended and it was all made even better because of the way the people who provided the wonder treated us!  We were very special guests.  That was obvious.  

Missile Launch - 50 Years Ago!

 50 years ago today, my crew assumed command of Titan II missile #459 in site 395 B at Vandenberg AFB, in California.  That missile tour ended about 0350 hours the next morning on July 22, 1966, when the SAC Command Post broadcast a warble tone followed by a coded message “ . . . for Vandenberg Air Force Base and Site 395 Bravo only.”  My deputy, Lt Jim Harshbarger and I copied the message, decoded it, verified it was a valid launch message for our silo, and I directed the crew to enter the Missile Launch Checklist.  The BMAT, Senior Master Sergeant Walt Kundis, called out “BMAT ready to launch, sir”, and the MFT, Master Sergeant Jim Meddress responded, “MFT is ready to launch, sir”.  I press Plumbing Shutoff pushbutton and it lighted white.  “BMAT, set circuit breaker 103 to “on”. “Roger Commannder, circuit breaker 103 – set to on”  Electrical power can now be applied to the missile ordinance items.  Proper target selection is verified.  “Deputy, insert your key and turn on my count of “Mark”.  We both snap safety seals off our Launch Commit covers.  Deputy responds “Roger, sir, key is inserted.”  I continued:  “three . . . two . . . one . . . mark!”  The deputy and I turn our keys and “Launch Enable” lights, then “Missile Batteries Activated” lights.  The 750 ton silo door slides open on its railroad tracks as the Silo Soft pushbutton lights.  Guidance Go pushbutton lights, and Fire in the Engine lights a steady red.  Then the klaxon blasts out and Fire in the Engine begins flashing red.  I push the klaxon off. It sounds again as

Oxidizer in Launch Duct is flashing red.  I push the klaxon off again.  Another pushbutton lights a steady white – easy to overlook – it reads “Liftoff”.  I announce, “Crew we have Liftoff.”  The klaxon sounds again and again, and I turn it off again and again.  In less than a minute the missile has lifted off.  The penetration team, topside and 2 miles away, felt the earth pound up and down like a powerful earthquake happening when the engines lighted, then felt the pulse of its sound waves beat against their bodies, finally the rumble of the second stage climbing into space was all that remained.  That was 50 years ago, tomorrow morning.

Photo Display in von Liebig Museum in Naples, Florida.

To the von Liebig Art Museum (vonLEEbig) in Naples, Florida.  The draw was “Camera USA 2016”, a national photography exhibition and award, presently on display in Naples, from June 20 to August 5, 2016.

The quality of the art varied enormously and some of it was clearly borderline photography, having been severely maipulated after having been “shot”. Nothing wrong with manipulation, I “adjust” almost all the photographs that I make, and some photographs are made with the  intention of manipulation in mind from the very beginning.  Most of the photographs currently on display

are clearly camera productions.  Some of them portray far-away scenes from distant parts of the world, and some look like they could have been made right down the street or in a nearby woodlands.  

Most of the photographs here clearly stand on their own art.  You can tell that from the initial view.  Others are a bit of a puzzle.  One or two can only be understood by reading the comments which accompany them.  To their credit, all of those currently on display which need description for understanding, tend to amaze the viewer, with people gathered around them, pointing out items to their open-mouthed companions.  It is a good photographic display, open’minded and inspiring.                                                                                                       

Wild Places

I have spent a lot of time in some of the Wild Places of the world and I never really thought much about how those places felt, or if they ever thought about anything.  But there is some almost-magnetic attraction that keeps

pulling me back to them and I know that I am not alone.  I have met some of you there.   I suspect many of us share knowledge we try to ignore because it does not seem to fit the world in which we think we live.

Now I wonder even more.  Do the Wild Places have Emotions?  How would we know what they feel?  Can we feel those emotions ourselves?  How can we describe them?  Can we establish a relationship between ourselves and them?

Is the realm of Thought apparent in the Wild Places?  How can we describe our encounter with Wild Places thinking?  How does our own personal thought process change in the Wild Places?

Keep in mind that Wild Places exist on great beaches, on rocky shores, high on mountaintops, and in green prairie grasses, but their Wild seeds lie scattered everywhere.  Wild Places  can be found in animals, in insects, in grass and trees and rock and stone and even in the air.  You can find a Wild Place in a park, by a waterway, even in a yard.  When you find one, even for just a moment, how do you feel?  How does it feel?  What do you think?  What do you think it thinks?

johnhwomack@gmail.com     WildPlaces

College Graduation

I graduted from college on 17 June 1956.  Sixty years ago, today.  I left with a brand new B. A. degree, 2 brand new gold bars of a second Lieutenant - penned on my shoulders by my mother.  Walked away penniless but without owing a penny.  

Every good thing that has ever happened to me since that day is a result of my going to college.  I was a lonesome traveler, just a kid, getting ready to leave a country high school out on the Illilnois prarire and go forth into a world which was poised to fly into the greatest changes that had ever happened to any nation in the history of humanity.   

Looking back I think the reason it worked so well was that we were mostly farm kids.  We did the impossible every day.  We always had problems that we couldn’t do but we had to do something, and we usually made the day turn out better than it would have been without us. 

 

Now we still look forward to the future  which gleams so brightly I can’t imagine what will happen next.  Still, I look forward with the desire to confront a new course, to learn a new skill, a new subject, and to change who I used to be for someone who can create a new future.

The Magic of Easter

Eostre - “a-OH-ster” - Goddess of Springtime, goddess of dawn.  The overall ruler of the magic of Easter.   

Easter is heavily celebrated by the Christian faith, but that is for a reason far different from its magic.  The Christian celebration of Easter is due to an  accident brought about  by the Jewish Passover which really only concerns Easter by a coincidence.

While the Christian celebration of Easter clearly goes back only about 2,000 years, the homage – indeed, if you can call it  that – bestowed upon its pagan predecessor, Eostre goes back ten, twenty, perhaps fifty thousand years, maybe hundreds of thousands of years!  

As nomadic voyagers began moving into the plains and mountains of central Europe they began to discover different aspects of life.  One was a vast wilderness filled with both strange plants and different animals, another the encounters with wild and savage people, and then there was the cold weather of winters they had not really known before.  The cold weather could be handled if you were able to keep the seeds from last summer’s harvest.  They could be replanted after the last freeze of the subsequent winter and would sustain themselves, and you and your family.  The further north you moved though, the trickier came the great decision– when to commit those last seeds you had saved into the earth?  The answer to that question is the Magic  of Easter.

The  people who lived back then had no TV, computers, radio, or anything else like that.  They lived out under the sky, and the sky was their master, their leader, their guide, in many ways their gods.  They were keen observers of all things in the sky.  They knew when the sun set each evening and how far south or north it was when it did so.  They knew when the sun had reached its southernmost point and when it would start back north again.  They knew when it would be safe to plant their last seeds.  BUT.  There was a trick involved.  A big trick.  A killer trick.  That trick involved the moon, because while it is the sun that plays the tune of the seasons, it is the moon that throws the switch that makes the change take place!  

A good example is this year.  2016.   The equinox occurred in the US on the east coast at 30 minutes after midnight (DST) on March 20.  The following full moon, the moon of Easter, occurred on the east coast 0805 (DST) on March 23.  Meanwhile, winter weather struck one last blow at the north east and the mid west.   

We mentioned the church earlier, the Christian church.  They threw an additional requirement into the equation, and that was there had to be three inputs to get the Springtime.  1)  The Vernal Equinox had to occur.  2)  The subsequent full moon, the moon of Easter had to reach fullness, and in more recent years (since 1923) 3) there had to be a Sunday.  That’s where the Magic of Easter comes from – not from the time to celebrate the Easter service, but for the time to commit the last of the seed from the preceding year into the fertile ground.  

Kites over Naples

Kites abound in the skies around Naples, Florida.  They fly elsewhere too, but seem to be quite happy here.  This appears to be a Swallowtail Kite, one of several seen here and they hang out high, sometimes barely visible, way up there, then they come in tight between the tree tops, right at you! 

Halo Moon

Halo shinning brightly around the moon tonight in Naples.  That normally speaks to a rain event within the next three days. 
Tomorrow will be Friday, so the sky seems calling for a weekend full of rain.  

What's Going On in Naples, Florida?

"REAL ESTATE!  REAL ESTATE!!"  It's a little like Obama's current song:  "Hey, hey!  Ho, Ho, Hay-hay Ho-Ho!  Real Estate, Real Estate! Get it quick! before it goes up! Higher, Higher, Higher - even higher Yet!!"  The newspaper today showed some other stuff, but there were 4 segments devoted to Real Estate, two were 6 pages each, one was 18 pages and the biggie was 38 pages.

Meanwhile, the very short editorial section is ringing loudly their concept of the value of the Republican Party, with the very notable exception of mention of Donald Trump.  Perhaps they think he will vanish somehow.

Nuclear War.

The planetary survivors of such a war would be genetically altered, and their children would be even more so. The pollution from a war of that nature would be incomprehensible and its affect on all growing things would create a new form of evolution.  

The answer?  Government.  The sitting down with your enemy and talking frankly about your common problems – yes, each other –  and then beginning to make plans together.  Nothing easy about it.  Really, it’s stupid and dumb.  It’s time-consuming and wasteful.  But.

The planet Earth will still be here.  It will continue its orbit and there will be sunrises and moonsets, and rain and snow will fall, and it will create and evolve with its new creatures.  It doesn’t need people.  It doesn’t need governments.  It doesn’t need religions.  It doesn’t need heavens or hells or gods or devils.  It will still be here after the people kill each other.  It can handle the nuclear radiation, it won’t mind the poison gas.  Plants that need poison gas will begin to grow and start consuming that gas.  

What about it? Government IS a pain in the ass.  Agreed.  But there are a million billion planets in the universe.  Here is a chance to make a difference and be somebody.

Government.  

Think about it.

Manatees in Ft Myers

Six of us Napoleons (or Neapolitans) drove up to Ft.Myers Manatee Park to see the amazing creatures who often swim into the area.  

The water was somewhat brackish and that rendered the manatees more difficult to see clearly, but a short walk down the viewing trail quickly revealed that there were a large number of the graceful beings who were looking back at you!

Lectures were provided and were well attended, and the park has prospered in the past several years, expanding in size and facilities.

Romanian Festival Études de Ballet.

Finally, we  feel we have reached a place in our incredibly complicated move from Hickory, NC, to Naples, Florida, so that we can take an evening  to attend one of the many events taking place in Naples.  We choose a visit to Études de Ballet and to take in the annual Romanian Festival held there.   


First thing we saw when we arrived was an art exhibit by Viorica Ghetu-Vuono.  Lovely work, with amazingly deep emotional details, particularly with respect to some of America's darkest involvement in matters of the soul, like slavery, the Orphan Trains, and the attack on Hawaii in 1941.  I found the work to be probing, full of thought and emotion, yet tempered by the acknowledgment  of historical unfoldment.  I met her and talked with her and was very impressed with her work.  She is from Moldova, in the eastern Czech Republic, and has studied art in Russia, Moldova and Ukraine.  Currently, she is living and studying in Connecticut.  More information on her work and photographs of her art can be found at www.vioricavuono.com




Once inside the festival hall, we found wildness unfolding in the form of dancing, singing, shouting, stomping, swirling, all at a very LOUD level of musical noise.  However, the people were obviously enjoying themselves and almost all of the announcements were made in some language other than English.  The food was good, and we sat with another couple at at table in the far rear, away from the awesome sounds.  During a lull in the music we found out that they were from Asheville, NC.  So – our first excursion out to meet the people of Naples, after our trip from Hickory, NC, turned up two:  One from Moldavia, and another from Asheville.  An awesome beginning.  Actually, kind of the way everything else has gone so far!

Zero Two Fifteen.

“180 seconds to go.”  The radar-navigator speaks with a faint country-music twang.

“Roger, RN,“ says the pilot softly, “you have second station.”  The radar-navigator is now controlling the flight of the B-52 with the tracking handle of his computer-radar bombing system.

Over the radios we hear an urgent call for action:  “Attention all personnel, this is Crown on Guard, there is an Arc Light strike in progress at 18-08N 105-37E; all aircraft evacuate this area IMMEDIATELY!  I repeat . . .”

“Roger, pilot, this is RN, I have second station.”   The aircraft ripples quietly and seems to move imperceptibly.

“120 seconds to go.”  Two minutes until bomb release.  We fly straight into the storm. 

Great White Death, indeed it is, and it rises above us and it eagerly reaches out to grab and enfold us.  

We fly Great Black Death, penetrating like a lover, and we close together at ten miles every minute.

A dark shadow falls across our flight deck as a thunderstorm moves between us and the moon, and the B-52 ripples with a change in the currents of this high tropi

cal air.  The faces of the crewmembers glow red reflecting the light from the instrument panels.

“Sixty seconds.”  The aircraft moves again, tucking a little to the left.

Some of the flashbulbs can be heard, and some of them seem to be above us now.  Hope not.

“Thirty seconds.”  We now seem to be flying into a great white canyon.  The thunderstorm has risen far above us like an enormous Christ of the Andes with its great arms stretched out to receive and destroy us.  Great violet crystal rays radiate from it and race up and down its length into and out of the ground.  Snow blossoms out of its great white shoulders, and antiaircraft explosions reflect back from its clouds.  Our own artillery can be seen off to the right - looks like it’s right off our wing.  The aircraft shudders with returning turbulence, and it is fishtailing a little.  And we fly straight into that Great White Death.

“Fifteen seconds.”

Far off to the right, through two other great thunderstorms, lies the ocean, the Gulf of Tonkin.  Moonlight shines on its surface.  Memories of days by the Florida gulf coast rise in my memory.  Some day, I think, some day soon, I’ll be back there again.  Back on the beach with my kids, camping in our trailer, and the sea will look like that.

“Four, three, two . . . “ and as the Radar Navigator punches the release button on the tracking handle, which releases the bombs,  “Hack.”  

The aircraft shudders, and a fast impulsive ripple runs through it as each bomb releases.  The B-52 is striking its target, quivering and hunching as if in orgasm, 108 times in 22 seconds. 

Now, the right wing drops deeply, pointing at the target, as we enter and leave the high-flung snow of the storm and sweep the night air out of the arms of that great thunderstorm. We sail briefly through its mist as we soar lazily, languidly into a great turn that will take almost three minutes to complete and which will head us home.  From far below comes a very faint “fumph-fumph-fumph-fumph-fumph-fumph,” cadence five times a second that lasts for more than twenty seconds, a sound that seems to be heard and also not heard.  The great thunderstorm lights up like a grotesque, pulsating, neon bonfire.

Mission accomplished. 

Page 312+ from "Into the Sun:  Air Force Memories, 1956-1976 – The Rise to Power" by  John Womack.  Available through Amazon

Camber Park, Naples

Visited Cambier Park downtown in Old Naples.  Lots of artistry on display, most of it was photography.  Some of it was pretty good, most of it clearly designed for visitors from the north to buy, take home and show their poor relatives and friends where they had just been.

It was a relatively large display area, all of the presentations being under tent awnings.  Besides photography, there was a lot of art, paintings, watercolor and other types and several displays of sketches.  There were also a lot of mugs and other ceramic displays.







Some of the displays had been crafted out of palm fronds and other yard and tree debris that had been gathered and modified to reflect the "real" world.  Not necessarily what a Neapolitan would need for the inside of his house, but a real conversation piece in most of the rest of the world.








The only people with clothes on, you know what I mean, REAL clothes - like what most of humanity wears in December - was a quartet singing Christmas music.  And they did an excellent job.

Him

I saw him unexpectedly.  Really, I wasn't looking for him because I didn't expect to find him here.  But there he was.    Already high.  I walked around a palm tree to get a better look.  And sure enough, it was him.  And on such a warm night, too.

I remember late summer nights, around two o'clock in the morning, taking the doggies out for their last whirl of the day, and seeing him slowly emerging from the horizon, already with a coolness that made me shiver.

Tonight he could have been wearing a sombrero, perhaps with a shawl carelessly draped over a shoulder.  He looked down benevolently, breathing an unexpected sigh of warmth.

New Home.

Made it so far.  Talking about the great transition from Hickory, North Carolina to Naples, Florida.  We put our house on the market and lo and behold, it sold in three days.  Now we needed a place to move to quickly, and thereby hangs a long tale.

Suffice it to say that we are now in our new home, almost a month after we severed our ties with Hickory.  There will be more to come very soon.  We are now in a different world and there will be comments about all that!

Soul and Spirit

I meditated today on soul and spirit.  Ten minutes worth.  Wrestled with the meanings, and relaxed to let reason come.   No result.  I “forgot” about it.

Later I went on the web and googled “spirit”, then went on Wikipedia, mentally grimacing as I noticed the comment “you’ve visited this site many times.”  I glanced through the first paragraph, then on to Etymology which I hastened through but then a word caught my eye:  “nafs”.  I wondered why I hadn’t noticed that before, but then blasted onward.  And then, backtracking to another word, listed as being the part where the item was reading “The distinction between soul and spirit also developed in the Abrahamic religions, Arabic nafs opposite ruh”  I thought I knew what a “naf” was but was not sure about a “ruh”. So I looked up “ruh” on the teaching database of Hazrat Inayat Khan.

That led me to a remarkable discovery wherein both he and Pir Vilayat both explain that the soul is like the seed of the rose while the spirit is like its perfume.  

A Hickory Day

Beautiful morning on the back porch and rear deck.  Great place to welcome the new day to Hickory and to begin tuning up your mental and emotional worlds.

Then a morning dog-walk.  Much fanfare as I gird both my loins and my lions.  Then we’re off.  I call Hickory “The Friendly City”,  and today it shows its true colors.  I meet the new dog on the block, a tiny puppy that barks and growls “ferociously”, his owner grins at us as she works on her front yard.  Then the goat-keeper has comments for me about the “goat-nappers” currently at work around around here.  Roxie’s owner waves me a “great day” as Roxie comes charging out. He’s an old guy, fought in some of the big sea battles in WWII in the Pacific.  The gal across the street from him is catching some rays, and she smile and waves.

Then off to the YMCA and yoga lessons. Nine women are here today, I am the only man.  Our guide takes pity on us as we groan and grunt through the easy class of stretching, breathing and trying to balance.  (This is a “beginner’s” class.)

Now to Hatch Restaurant and Bar.  Great Bhan-mi sandwiches with pulled pork.  We put a little bit of beans from a meal a couple of nights ago on the plate and eat one-half of the sandwich.  The other half of the luscious sandwich, still heavy with pork, shaved carrot drenched in goodie juice  and enveloped in cilantro will be out meal for tonight before we head off for the play.

The world has become so dry we have to sprinkle the yards and garden and especially the back yard where the green green grass is pushing up through the straw.

Finally, after supper with a bit of Riesling to augment the Bhan-mi sandwich and a salad, we’re off to the Hickory Community Theatre to see “Cage aux Folles”.  It was a stupendous production, lasting some two and a half hours with amazing singing and excellent acting and full of mood swings, catastrophes falling on top of each other, surprises leaping out of surprises – well, it all ended with a kiss.  So I guess that was good.  Only thing bad about the play is they wouldn’t permit photographs.  

So – another day in Hickory comes to an end.  

                                   

Early Computer, AD1960

This computer is one I used to write with about 50 years ago.   In fact it was in the early 1960’s.   It consisted of a large screen (blackboard), a keyboard (portable typewriter on a TV tray), memory (card catalog behind chair), internet (books in a precious library),  and flash memory (notebooks and looseleaf binders to the left of the typewriter) to record information taken off the “screen”  before it was trashed (with an eraser).  From such as this came great works.  And at this time it was about as good as a computer could be, and it laid the groundwork for that which followed.

A New Picture of Muhammad

Now being presented to the world by a group who call themselves Muslim is a new picture of a person they claim to be Muhammad.  

This new picture depicts their prophet as one who has no respect for human beings, a figure firmly rooted in the fifth century (except for AK-47s), who wants the world to carry on indefinitely as it was back then.  It is  the presentation of a man who has no respect for dialog or progress, one who rejects government by the people.  

It is the picture of regimentation,  of force and killing for the single purpose of imposing submission on other people in other countries and of a different religion.  It certainly has no comprehension of the separation of church and state, or of a government of the people, by the people and for the people.  According to this new picture, Islam MUST rule all the people of all the world. 

The recent actions in Paris and the French Kosher store are not the only pictures depicting their prophet.  The slaughter of innocent people including children are now adding to this new description, and the beheadings of journalists are now changing the world's perception of who they thought Muhammad was.

By definition the word “submission” requires yielding, acceptance or consent.   Otherwise, imposition of one’s will upon another is a universal declaration of war.   Is that the new picture of Muhammad?