I had the surprise just a couple days ago of being told by someone just how long it had been since I wrote anything to post in Uncle Ducks Tracks. While I had not a single doubt about the correctness of their statement I found it hard to believe. Of course I also had to check to prove to myself that they were correct, and I wanted to see what I had written so I know where to star today. Another friend told me last fall that a high percent of blogs are laying fallow. That in itself is unfortunate but it is almost criminal when I have to admit that my blog is fallow. Is it okay if I do like a crop farmer and just plant a couple crops a year and let my friends do the harvesting. I do not seem to have the ability to be like the farmer that raises chickens and sends product off to market every day. (Okay, I have another confession to make. This was published in the wrong blog back on June 13. I guess that I will leave it there for a while longer too.)
At my last posting I just ready to start my duties as the new editor of the “Bentsen Grove Mirror.” That proved to be quite a job. It is desirable to submit the final draft to the office on Monday morning. Hopefully the Activity Director does not find any serious errors and she can send it on to the printer. If all goes well it will be printed and back for distribution on Friday, so that people can have it by the publication date of Saturday. Fortunately the publication is fortnightly, every two weeks. I would be in trouble if I had to do it weekly. When I thought I had the first issue that I was to edit complete I had Erma proofread it. She found some errors, which were corrected, and we both missed a couple. The next morning the activity director found a name that was incorrectly spelled. Those were bad enough. The Mirror has advertisers that pay a fee to be put into each issue. After it was distributed I found out that one of the advertisers was left out. There are supposed to be 24 outside advertisers plus 2 in park advertisers. I did not know about the in park advertisers. So I only had 23 ads. Later still I discovered that I only had 20 ads because 3 were in it twice. So with a grading system I could only give myself a “D”. Even that was after staying up till 3:00 AM trying to get it right. Many people complimented me on the “good” job I did. They did not see the mistakes that were made. Most did not notice three of the six pages of that issue had either the wrong month or wrong year or both wrong.
I have edited five more issues, which had eight pages each, and each time I have been able to improve my grade slightly. I cannot say that I have made an “A” yet but I keep getting closer. I decided that it would be desirable to make the Mirror available to people by e-mail. At first I tried to set up a system that people could join or leave without me doing anything. When that turned out to be not too feasible I decide that I would just set up a group and add anybody who asked to be added. There are many residents, former residents, residents family and others that would like to know what is going on in the park. I can send an e-mail to them and nobody has any expense for stamps or printing. Some of the residents do not get to the park until after Christmas or they leave early and therefore don't get the early issues or the late ones. Anyone, resident or nonresident, that is interested in getting the Mirror only has to write to bentsengrovemirror@gmail.com and ask and I will put them on the list.
Fortnight is a word that I have known since late grade school or so. But I had never thought about where the word came from. I just now looked it up in a dictionary of ethnology on the Internet. Apparently it originated around 1000 AD and was a contraction of fourteen and nights. When I read that I wondered “Why night instead of day?” For the most of my time reckoning I think about days, but apparently the Germans of that time counted time as the number of nights. Thus it was a time period covering fourteen “nights.” It is too bad that when I was a kid I did not feel the need to become more knowledgeable. Too soon I have become old and too long I have waited to try to become smart. It may be too late for the smart, but I am doing well in getting old.
When a lot of the winter Texans went back to their homes in the north the amount of computer help that I was doing dropped, but did not stop. I was helping a couple ladies the day before we left Bentsen Grove. I do not even know if my help was successful. I have yet to figure out how I seem to be able to fix the things I do. Part of it is that I am not afraid of computers and have tried many things. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. Someone told me that anything you know how to do is easy. So I like the easy things so I am successful. With the slowdown I did have time to do some reading and that I enjoyed. I also had some time to visit a couple friend that I had not talked to much during the year. That also was nice.
The day we left Bentsen Grove was strange. About a week before I had found a bunch of water in a watertight compartment. I could not find a leak. I got the water out and it stayed dry. As we were ready to leave, the motor home was in the street, and I was hooking on the Jeep, I saw water running out of the compartment again. This time when I looked in I could see a valve leaking. I found out after a while that the plastic bonnet of the valve had broken. The MH's water pump puts out more pressure than the park water connection. As long as we were on park water connection it did not leak. A couple weeks before the park water was off and we switched to the pump. When we got ready to go I went in to wash my hands after disconnecting everything outside and I used the pump again. Each time the pump was used the leak became worse. If it was not fixed we would not have any water in the MH at all. I think it took over two hours driving around with the MH pulling the Jeep to find a valve. Then I simply took the new stem out of the new valve and installed it into the old valve. It is working fine. But oh did we ever get a late start. We even considered going back to the park and spending another night there.
In traveling north we seemed to follow just behind the bad weather. We never hit any rains that lasted long or was hard. I do not want to travel in rain for a couple reasons. First is just the fact that I have a big unit and there is no reason to do it unless necessary. The second is my windshield wipers. There is something wrong with them. They will stop in the middle of a wipe and will not start again until the fuse is pulled and then put back in. Now that has caused much confusion several times. Before I found out how to “reset” the computer that controls the wipers by unplugging the fuse and replacing I had it is a shop to have it repaired. Of course the first thing they did was pull the fuse and check it and put it back in. The wipers would work great and they could find no problem. Just on this trip we hit a little rain, just a sprinkle, but rain never the less. The wipers ran about ten minutes or so and stopped. I pulled off at the first exit, pulled the fuse and put it back in. Back on the Interstate and they stopped within two minutes. Next exit I pulled off, pulled the fuse and they started and then ran for forty miles till I decided to exit for the night. They have not stopped since. I never know if they will run for 5 minutes or 5 hours. I really do not want to pull off the Interstate shoulder to pull the fuse in a driving rain or drive along without wipers in a driving rain either. I am sure it can be fixed with a well place on/off switch.
Our plans are to take the motor home back to the factory where it was built and have some work done on it. There is some maintenance that needs to be done and after seven years the tires need to be replaced even though the tread is barely worn. At the rate of tread wear I could drive them for least seventy more years. But time is harder on tires than driving when you have a trailer or motor home.
In continuing with my promise of sharing place of interest that should be seen with you I will recommend that you go out along I-70 to the middle of western Kansas. Some people say that there is nothing to see out there but I hope they make the effort to see this. The painting is huge, but not quite a large as it looks in the picture with the water tower in the background. (Left click on the picture to get a larger view)
No. 3 – Largest Easel In The World, Van Gogh Painting
Goodland, Kansas has the third painting in The Van Gogh Project which is a series of Big Easel paintings based on Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflower Paintings. Vincent van Gogh was born in the Netherlands in 1853. His family worked primarily in religion and art. One of his relatives also named Vincent was a very successful sculptor. His Grandfather, Vincent, had a degree in theology. Three of his six uncles were art dealers, again one of them was named Vincent. That uncle assisted him in getting a job with an art dealer in London and Paris. He became isolated and fervent about religion and expressed to the customers resentment about how art was treated as a commodity. A decision was made that he should leave his job. For several years he either went to theology school or worked as a preacher in various locations. He chose squalid living conditions shared with the people to whom he preached. The church authorities believed this was undermining the dignity of the priesthood and he was dismissed. His brother convinced him to take up art seriously, so Vincent attended the Royal Academy of Art. Van Gogh’s early paintings were mostly dark painting in brown and black, which his brother attempted to sell. In the last ten years of his life he produced the colorful pictures for which he is famous, including a series of seven paintings of sunflowers. Three Sunflowers In A Vase is the painting on the easel that is in Goodland, Kansas. The easel is eighty foot tall and weighs forty five thousand pounds. The painting is twenty four foot by thirty two foot. The intent of the Van Gogh project is to reproduce all seven of Van Gogh’s Sunflower Paintings which he made during his stay in Arles, France between 1888 and 1889. The first easel with Twelve Sunflowers In A Vase, has been reproduced in Altona, Manitoba, Canada. The second easel is in Australia.
