Month: September 2005

Wow, I think I’m getting back on the beam with this blog. I’ve had a really busy day, full of luxury problems. I’ve been running around in this heat and I’m kind of bushed from it, so I’m going to stick close to home tonight. I’ll make some burgers and fries and a milkshake for dinner and settle in for some X-Files (big surprise) and maybe actually call it an early night.

Here are the haiku for the week. Have a great evening, folks, and don’t work too hard at it!

#145.
Many quiet ghosts
wander about listlessly,
speaking but not heard.

#139.
The soft air brightens,
shimmers and glistens at dusk,
and passing, pauses.

#121.
The untried fingers
of dogwood, maple, and oak,
grasp, and pull down rain.

Johnnyboy

These are pics of 1/72nd scale aircraft. For those who do not know, that scale means that 1 inch equals 6 feet in real life. So these models are pretty small. Wingspans are around 3 1/2 to 4 inches, max. The wheels are smaller than dimes by quite a bit. I think I captured the varnished wood effect on 2 of these builds quite nicely, IMHO.

From the top, going down: An English Sopwith Snipe from 1918, a German Roland DVIa, also from 1918, and an Albatros DIII from The Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Albatros is in the fictional garb of my alter-ego, Seamus O’leary von Kranken-Schafft. He was the illegitimate son of the Baron von Kranken-Schafft and the family’s Irish governess, Eileen O’leary. He chose to fly for the Austrians in order to avoid shooting down any Irish or English pilots. His victories were primarily against the Italians and the Greeks. After WW1 he fought for sundry smaller air forces in the myriad conflicts after the falls of the 3 empires (Russia, Ottoman, and Austria-Hungary). He flew for the Poles against the Ukrainians, the Finns against the Russians, Ethiopia against the Italians, and for the Loyalists against Franco in Spain. There were rumors that he flew for Paraguay in the Gran Chaco conflict of 1929, but there has been no hard evidence to back this up. As an older man he faded into the background. He avoided WW2 by becoming a mackerel fisherman in Iceland. After WW2 he was spotted only twice. Once as a Chief Mechanic for the Norwegian Air Force in Oslo, and the last as a bush pilot in northern Latvia, flying into fishing camps. He would have been 58 years old in 1950, still a very young man. Rumors abound for the next 20 years of an old guy with more stories to tell than could be believed and an undetermined accent. People would disbelieve him until he looked them in the eye and said “Oh yeah? Well I know fer sure you weren’t there, deadweight, so shut up and put on your seatbelt!”.

Johnnyboy