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Most are too young to remember the popularity of home made movies using 8mm film.  Kodak, Bell & Howell, and others made cameras that created movies on either black and white film or color film (later) that was 8mm wide.  These cameras shot scenes at about 17 frames per second, which is fast enough so that when shown with a projector on a screen, the motion was reasonably smooth and not jerky.   This era lasted until the video camera completely displaced the film movie camera. Now, even digital cameras can take either still pictures or videos, so even the video camera is on the way to history.  From all this movie making during the last half of the last century, there remain many reels of film of family gatherings, young children taking their first steps, graduation day, etc and these reels now sit in back closets----too valuable to throw away but too costly to see on the screen.  What a dilemma.  I have such a collection, perhaps 40 reels of film ...

Back in the "early days" if someone needed information, they went to the library.  Then the internet arrived and that put the library in second position regarding problem solving information.  True, some of the information on the internet is outdated, but that can be filtered.  The problem with printed information is that small bits of information are not easily added to print versions; they must wait for the "next edition". Here are some recent experiences with the internet on problem solving. After having my amateur radio transceiver sit idle for almost two years, I reassembled all the antenna connections to the transmitter and turned on the transceiver and, surprise, all the digital display modules on the frequency screen showed sixes and they were all jumping wildly.  So, I went to the internet and searched for problems with the Kenwood 440S, describing the problem with my set and discovered that a common problem with this older generation of transceiver was gun...

 Of all the choice restaurants and cafes in the area for lunch, the likes of Dairy Queen, Whataburger, and others, we often choose to have lunch at the Quik Cafe.  Now, the Quik Cafe is no ordinary cafe, because here you can  not only have lunch at a real table, but can also buy all sorts of things that you don't need, but best of all, you can get your car fueled up with Exxon gasoline.  When we have guests in town, we take them to the Quik Cafe; well, maybe not for lunch but certainly for a coke or two.   The Quik Cafe's gasoline pumps are always in full use with cars and trucks filling up because the price is competitive with unbranded gasoline and is always 20 cents less than that of the other major brands in this small town. When we have lunch in the cafe section of the store, we always opt for the chicken tenders.  Often times, we can strike up a chat with some one of the more colorful characters who make Wimberley their home.  One time we ev...

 On the subject of errors and quality, lets look at books and the errors that are almost always present in them.  I have just finished a 210 page book on the history of an old road in Michigan and have put it through a pretty tough regimen of proofing, but I know that there are still some errors---but the problem is I don't know where to look.  So why do I know there are errors yet I don't know where to look?  Because one can not find every last error by inspection.  There are classroom exercises that demonstrate that a whole group of students, working independently, that fail to find every error.  Error free writing can only be accomplished by the writers ability to write error free text--in other words, error free writing has to be accomplished by the process of writing and not by the process of inspection. Oh, but you say, how do we do that, meaning, what is the process of writing? Avoiding errors in written material is important simply because any reade...

It has always been a war between the haves and the have nots.  This standoff seems to have  always existed;, this taking sides apparently is in the genes of all animals.  So we either have to get comfortable with it or we have to give in to ease the pain on the part of the haves. The have nots say that they are already in a lot of pain but they will not give in. For the last five years we have had a garden in the back yard.  The garden contained flowers that bloomed regularly, well, at least when the plants were supplied with enough water.  The garden also had lots of good green vegetables too and provided a relief from store bought stuff.  In fact it is the first time we have grown carrots successfully.  The garden was the result of a lot of work; much more work than it was probably worth, but the achievement of this garden made us stand apart from others in that we had this nice garden produce as a valuable asset.  We obviously were the haves. B...

The cat, name is Amber, for this story is called Kat to make a fit with Kit.  Over her life of a mere four years, cat has had a lot of experiences even though she is an indoor cat and has spent only five of her nine lives. In her early years she had not yet developed her true nocturnal habit, so she slept part of the night and daytime. Now, she is asleep most of the day and awake and prowling most of the night.  On the few occasions of prowling during the day, she still checks out the closet where she last saw the mouse (described in an earlier post) to see if the little creature had not really left so abruptly.  But the night time is when it all action takes place outdoors so she is now a converted nocturnal animal, spending  most daylight hours napping and most dark hours checking the glass windows next to the front door to see who is visiting the bird feeder and the water trough.  Nose prints on the inside and outside  of the glass reveals that a lot is ...

Most people know the theory that when change occurs in a steady and continuous process those involved have no idea that change is, in fact, taking place.  It happens in politics, in the culture of society and, even with the proverbial frog placed in a pan of cold water on the stove, with the frog so oblivious to the change in temperature, it just sits in the water to its death. This type of change has been going on in the retail trade for many years and when it first started, I, for one, did not sense what was going on, but now I realize that the whole idea of commerce between the supplier and the customer is to shift work from one to the other. As I now recall, it all started when I was about ten years old (long time ago) when our family would go to the grocery store with our list of needs and present the list to the the shopkeeper and he (women did not work in those jobs then) would hustle about the store and fetch things on the list.  Then in 1945, Mr. Eberhard decided to...

The ancient Lost Pines area of Bastrop County experienced a huge fire that was out of control for nearly two weeks in 2011.  This area of the state was in an extended drought and during this time high winds broke high voltage power lines at two points, resulting in the live wires dropping to the ground where sparks then ignited the underbrush.  The fire of the underbrush got out of control and the flames reached the tops of the trees and ignited the foliage.  For weeks after the blaze was finally extinguished, the fire was thought to be caused by careless acts, but an in-depth study showed that the fire was caused by the broken and downed powerlines sparking to ground. The Lost Pines area is unique to central Texas because pines don't normally grow in this environment.  East Texas yes, but central Texas no, except for this area of Loblolly Pines that thrive because of the soil.  The soil is a red colored sandy soil mixed with red sandstone, all left over from...

It is quiet here in the country and we can, as one says, hear a pin drop.  In fact, it is so quiet here that when we have a mouse or two in the attic, we can hear them running along the sheetrock of the ceiling.  The mice can run on the sheetrock because the insulation is on the underside of the roof, so the sheetrock is bare A few years ago, we had a big mouse problem in the attic---they seemed to have a whole extended family up there and making more each day, way beyond my rate of trapping them.  But then they were gone, just as abruptly as they arrived. Now, we have some back again. We were sitting here one evening about a month ago when we heard a sound like "plop" and then nothing more. A little later we were looking for THE CAT and found her sitting and watching the area under the convertible sofa in he library.  So intent was she that she would not take her eye off the space under the sofa for a second. Since we did not understand what was going on, we we...

No matter how many times one searches for and finds some evidence of a certain aspect of history, there is always something more to find.  One might think of this like the tip of the iceberg. Sometime last year, we stumbled upon a book in the side room of the museum in Seguin. This side room looked more like a storeroom than it did as part of the museum's main room.  Poking around on the shelves we noticed a stack of books, all the same title--there might have been ten of them all--- neatly stacked up with the bound edge facing out so we could read the title.   It was a self published book Stagecoach Road. It looked like history as we flipped through the book, so we bought it.  And, it turned out to be an interesting account of farm life in the area to the west of Seguin, Texas during the early 1900s. After reading the book, one thing led to another and we toured the area of Stagecoach Road, still named that on maps.  From records, we learned that there were ...

Paleo scientists tell us that there are more extinct species of once-living organisms than there are living ones.   Nearly twice as many extinct as alive.  That in itself says that most of us should be looking over our shoulder for causes that might result in our own demise. This thought came to mind when we took up the task of writing about rare and unusual plants in central Texas. We often link the loss of habitat to the endangerment of a species.  The poster bird of central Texas that is so often cited in this regard is the Golden Cheeked Warbler. It only nests in a few counties in central Texas and it makes use of strips of ashe juniper bark to line its nest.  It is an elusive bird, most people have never seen it, but more have heard its call.  This bird does not come calling at your bird feeder like a Northern Cardinal.  Another example, this one in bold contrast to the Golden Cheeked Warbler is the Great Tailed Grackle.  This is the black bird...

We have been advocates of increasing the time that children spend outdoors rather than staring at a phone screen.  Our interest in this subject was sparked by attending a live lecture based on the work of Children and Nature Network.   Alongside this, after publishing the book Unstructured Time, we became more observant of children as they encounter the outdoors. Always, its amazing what you see when you look. So, on this gray day in January we decided that we were in need of some outdoor exposure, being concerned with the ills of cabin fever. Now, cabin fever is not terminal but it sure seems like sometimes it could lead to that.  W e decided to take some of our own advice about the outdoors and head for the woods. Since we're always interested in exploring new areas we decided to head for Lockhart State Park which is only about 30 minutes away.   Although this park is so close to where we live, we have never visited this park and so not only do we get t...

Here it is, January and it is now the beginning of so called cedar fever season.  Cedar is our central Texas evergreen which is not a cedar but a juniper.  But, we call junipers cedars because that is what we have called them for hundreds of years despite the fact that we all know them to be junipers.  We could not change our vocabulary now because too many phrases depend on the cedar wording. The newspapers publish on a daily basis the pollen count in ambient air to make sure that those who are not subject to cedar fever can blame their feeling bad on cedar fever without the risk of being criticized for being a hypochondriac. No matter what, allergies to cedar ---ooops---juniper pollen is a serious thing to many people.   We know of people who have moved from the area specifically because of their allergic reaction to the pollen---running nose, coughing, headaches, etc. Old timers say that the way to cure yourself from this allergy is to eat only a few of the sma...

The history of the Annual Christmas Bird Count is interesting for how it was a way to shift from annual contests of how many birds could be killed to how many birds can be counted.  So, for many years now, volunteers have been conducting bird counts in late December.  The count is conducted on the same day across broad parts of the country.  The 1600 acres which make up our community has been in the bird counting area for the last three years.  There is some fluctuations of the numbers of birds as well as the numbers of species. Below is the summary of the data for the last three years:                                                               2019       2018     2017 Number of Species                            ...