Space Shuttle - Bucket List Item

On May 11, 2009, the space shuttle Atlantis blasted off from launch pad 39A (28.608 N, 80.604 W) at the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to repair the Hubble telescope. And I was there to see the lift-off. Check off a bucket list item!

 

My brother-in-law and I drove from Dallas, Texas to Titusville, Florida, which is the closest town to the Kennedy Space Center (right across the Indian River) and offers the closest off-site viewing after the NASA causeway. The causeway requires you to purchase tickets and unfortunately there are very few and are sold out months in advance. Not being among the lucky few able to acquire tickets, we watched the launch from Spaceview Park in Titusville, which is 12.1 miles directly across from the launch pad. As you can see from the photos, it was still a spectacular experience. 

Photographs and YouTube clips do not do justice to a shuttle lift-off. It's one of those things you really need to see in person - feel the awesome rumble of incomprehensible power deep in your chest; the man-made fire as bright as the sun. The collective experience of several hundred of your fellow human beings, all holding their breath for the first few seconds after lift-off and then the cheers; "Go Baby, go!" "My God, do you feel that?" "Holy cow! Look at her go!" It's an experience you will not forget.

 

Was it worth the hundreds of miles we drove and waiting in the hot sun for almost 5 hours just to watch about 15 seconds of shuttle lift-off?

 

Oh hell yeah!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arkansas Tornado

 

This used to be somebody's home.

In the little Arkansas community of Damascus, very close to my own house, the devil came to town in the form of a tornado. It took several lives, destroyed property, and scarred survivors, perhaps forever. If you are not safe in your own home or even in your church, is there safety anywhere? What does it say when the beast jumps over a road-side fruit stand, not disturbing jars of home-made jam and jelly sitting out on a table or even fluttering the well-worn plastic tarp covering them and comes down a few yards away to destroy a brick church and across the street where it demolishes a house and takes the lives of the family that lived there?



Destroyed church

Do we thank God that more lives were not lost? Do the family members of those killed feel the same? I'm just glad the devil missed me and my loved ones this time.


Vehicle that was blown about 75 yards from
the church parking lot.

 

Truck that was full of grain.

Debris

 

Postcard From The Old Mill - Little Rock, Arkansas

In the opening sequence of the movie Gone with the Wind, the narrator eulogizes the passing of the Old South over a montage of quaint, picture-postcard scenes. One scene of pastoral bliss is a brief shot of a nineteenth-century gristmill. Few people realize that the Old Mill, as the building became known, was not old, was not a gristmill, and instead of being located in a quaint, sleepy southern hamlet, is located in a small park a block away from a busy thorough-fare in downtown North Little Rock, Arkansas.

Designed by the architect Frank Carmean and built in the early 1930’s, it is the work done by Dionico Rodriguez that is truly outstanding as he sculpted concrete to look exactly like wood, stone, and iron. Walkways and bridges look as though they were made from trees and driftwood instead of concrete. The intricate details are amazing. Even the planking and an old rain barrel are so realistic that you have to touch them to be sure they really are made of concrete.
 

The grounds are wonderful with a small pond and waterway surrounded by trees and moss covered rocky hillsides. Visitors instinctively speak using their inside voices and treat each other a little nicer. It’s like a time-out spot from the hustle and hurry world that lie just outside the gate of this oasis.

To visit, in North Little Rock, take McCain Boulevard East, turn south onto Fairway Avenue and then take a left onto Lakeshore Drive.