Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, March 19, 2024

  • Yesterday, I wrote about the PV-1 Ventura plane my father flew when he served in the Navy. I mentioned that Dad had a story about his plane being shot down, the pilot landing on the water, and knowing from training he only had x-amount of seconds to get the life raft out before the plane submerged. Last night, I watched a video about the aircraft, and at this point in the video, it states, “The plane had poor buoyancy, and when forced to land on the water, it did not stay on the surface for more than 30 to 40 seconds.”
  • The image at the top of today’s post is a painting of the PV-1 in action bombing a sub, which I mentioned was a mission of my father and his crew. I think I will purchase a print or canvas copy of it, but I can’t decide which one and what size.
  • Years ago I had trouble finding any good information or pictures about the PV-1 Ventura. It’s still a little challenging, but one surprising source was Twitter. I found all sort of neat stuff about the aircraft on there.
  • Today’s short dog-related Rumble video
  • I saw a local story on one of the Regal Cinemas in the area in which the side walls of the theater also serve as a movie screen, but I can’t find it. But here’s stuff on it from Regal’s website what they call ScreenX. You can currently watch Dune 2 on it. This technology provides moviegoers with a 270-degree panoramic viewing experience by expanding the screen onto the side walls of the auditorium.
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Bag of Randomness for Monday, March 18, 2024

  • For the last nine weeks, Apple TV has released an episode of Masters of the Air, the latest WWII drama series by the producers of Band of Brothers, so Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are associated with it. I purposely haven’t watched any of them so I can binge-watch them in one weekend, and that’s what I did this past weekend.
  • It may not measure up to Band of Brothers, but I highly recommend it. I think it was better than The Pacific, which aired in 2010. Too bad this series wasn’t made earlier. Band of Brothers aired 21 years ago and had the emotional benefit of interviews before the start of each episode with the actual soldiers on which the book and series were based. Most of the vets are now dead. My guess is that at least 98% of them have passed.
  • I would have loved to have watched it with my father. While he didn’t fly on the B-17 bombers the series was based on, he earned his wings in the Navy during WWII as a gunner flying in the PV-1 Ventura, which I have pictured at the top of this post. My father is in the photo below. He’s either the second or third from the left. I feel like this is something I should know, but I’m pretty sure he’s the one in the middle.
    • I remember renting the Spielberg film Always from Blockbuster in junior high, really enjoying it, and recommending Dad to watch it before we had to return it the next day. Blockbuster had those two-day rentals. I always thought it was a little sleazy that the day of rental was considered a full day. Anywho, I remember walking to the kitchen. Dad just finished watching the movie. We were always the type to be kind and rewind. Not to mention, we didn’t want to be fined. It was always our habit to rewind immediately after viewing. Dad was shedding a few tears, wiped his eyes, and called me “Boy” like he always did. He said something like, “Boy, you picked a really good movie. It brought back a lot of memories of my flying days. That plane was similar to what I flew in.” Up until then, I had no idea he flew while in the service.
    • In case you were wondering, the plane in the film was an A-26 Invader. And here’s another piece of movie trivia for you, it was Audrey Hepburn’s last film.
  • After watching the last episode of Masters of the Air, I decided to go through a few of my father’s things related to flying days. Here’s his 1940 Bluejackets Manual and a flight log. His military career started when he enlisted in the Navy after Pearl Harbor. After the war, he joined the Ohio National Guard and then went into the Army for the Korean War. He retired from the Army in 1968.
  • Looking at the flight log led me to do a little research. For instance, I didn’t know what the “Character of Flight” column was for or its entries. Here’s what I found:
    • C – Training
    • Y – Nite Flying
    • G – Gunnery
    • J – Scout-Patrol Escort
    • O – Utility
    • V – Instruments
  • I loved my father’s penmanship. 
  • Searching for subs sounds cool, but may have been a little boring. Bombing certainly sounds exciting. Dad did have a story about his plane being shot down, the pilot landing on the water, and knowing from training he only had x-amount of seconds to get the life raft out before the plane submerged. I believe everyone survived, but they were lost at sea for several days and his parents were informed he was MIA. I noticed all the dates were two to six months after D-Day, June 6, 1944.
  • Something that really stood out was “Rocket Practice.” That was a real head-scratcher. From my understanding, WWII aircraft didn’t have rockets or missiles. That technology wasn’t available until after the war. But then again, it wasn’t until five years ago I learned Germany launched rockets and bombed London. Heck, more than 500 V2 rockets would strike London between September 1944 and March 1945. And, I’m humbled again. Rockets were indeed launched from aircraft in WWII.
    • The High Velocity Aircraft Rocket, or HVAR, also known by the nickname Holy Moses, was an American unguided rocket developed during World War II to attack targets on the ground from aircraft. It saw extensive use during both World War II and the Korean War.
    • And they were indeed a part of the PV-1 Ventura: These aircraft could also carry eight 5-inch (127 mm) HVAR rockets on launchers underneath the wings.
    • From my understanding, in the military sense, a rocket has to be guided to be called a missile.
  • I think only one PV-1 Ventura exists. One took 16 years to restore (without engines) and is on permanent display at the Orlando Sanford International Airport. I would very much like to see it in person one day, but it’s not presented in a way in which I would be able to view it very well. I learned in this video there are guns at the top and the rear. In the rear, the gunner would have to lay on his stomach, and I think Dad mentioned that.

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Bag of Randomness for Friday, March 15, 2024

  • Yesterday was just a very off day. Actually, most of the week has felt off. Maybe I’m having trouble dealing with the time change.
  • I’m ignorant of more things than I like to be, and my vocabulary isn’t as rich as I’d like. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “sublime.” Of course, I’ve heard of it, but I don’t think I ever used it in conversation or a paper. I’ll be honest, I thought the word dealt with something blah or underwhelming, equivalent to “meh.” I think that’s because of this album cover. I heard someone use it yesterday to describe his experience with gratitude and how he went from feeling happiness to joy and ultimately sublime with God. Confused, I looked it up. I wish I had known the meaning of it earlier: Sublime is an adjective that means something is very beautiful or good, and causes strong feelings of admiration or wonder.
  • Unexpectedly, BoyGeeding came over for a few hours yesterday. I don’t get to be with him as much as I’d like, so I often express things to him that most parents would keep to themselves. For instance, yesterday I wanted to let him know he was awesome. So, I said, “Son, how did you get to be so awesome?” I didn’t expect him to answer, but he replied, “Well, Dad. It’s basically because you’re my dad.”
  • Late last year, one of my childhood friend’s mother died. I wasn’t healthy enough to go to the funeral, which was frustrating, but I for sure sent flowers. Within that last year, two of my closest friends’ mothers developed a form of cancer. One responded well to treatment and is in remission. The other’s outcome is not favorable. I hold her in high esteem, stayed in touch with her, and felt she treated me as one of her own many times. That got me thinking about her funeral and how I should be able to make it because I’m now in good health. Not to be macabre, but I try to plan ahead for stuff like this so I can easily take time away from work. But, for some reason I’m not able to attend, I will definitely send flowers. Then an epiphany slapped me across the face. Send her flowers NOW so she can enjoy them when she’s still alive and know that she’s loved. I tell you all this in case you are in a similar situation. No one can feel your love or appreciate a gift after they are dead, so do what you can to let them know you love them today while they are still alive.
  • Today’s short goofy dog Rumble video.
  • I’ve followed the life of local resident Paul Alexander, one of the last humans to live most of his life in an iron lung, for a long time. But I haven’t been too impressed with the coverage of his death by the national media. Most, like this CNN article, don’t even mention where he spent most of his life. This NBC News article only states he caught polio in the Fifties in Texas. None of them described how an iron lung worked and why his life couldn’t have been made easier with the advancement of medical technology. This 2020 article by The Guardian does the best job of describing his life outside of the contraption and compared what was going on with COVID with polio. The Dallas Morning News did a great video segment on him years ago, but it also lacked coverage of how he spent time outside of the device.

And though he had to think about every breath, he got better at it. Once he could breathe reliably for long enough, he could get out of the lung for short periods of time, first out on the porch, and then into the yard.

Although he still needed to sleep in the iron lung every night – he couldn’t breathe when he was unconscious – Paul didn’t stop at the yard. At 21, he became the first person to graduate from a Dallas high school without physically attending a class. He got into Southern Methodist University in Dallas, after repeated rejections by the university administration, then into law school at the University of Texas at Austin. For decades, Paul was a lawyer in Dallas and Fort Worth, representing clients in court in a three-piece suit and a modified wheelchair that held his paralysed body upright.

At a time when disabled people were less often seen in public – the Americans With Disabilities Act, which banned discrimination, wouldn’t be passed until 1990 – Paul was visible. Over the course of his life, he has been on planes and to strip clubs, seen the ocean, prayed inchurch, fallen in love, lived alone and staged a sit-in for disability rights. He is charming, friendly, talkative, quick to anger and quick to make a joke. At 74, he is once again confined to the lung full-time.

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Bag of Randomness for Thursday, March 14, 2024

  • My electric bill was less than I expected. Curious, I thought I’d look at my usage history and compare it to the same month of last year. Oddly, my electric provider only provides 11 months of usage history. I could understand if I had only been a customer for 11 months, but I’ve been their customer for almost two years.
  • From last night’s Daily Show:
  • The new The Fall Guy movie with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt might have some potential but I don’t like the approach they took with it. I loved the show’s theme song and had the metal lunch bunch and thermos.

    One thing that continues to annoy me is when people claim Heather Locklear was on the show. She wasn’t, it was Heather Thomas. I distinctly remember the three posters my older sibling had of her in his room. Here’s The Fall Guy version that was on his closet door. A small group of you folks will be confused by the Mineral Wells Panthers stickers on the other door.
  • I watched the most recent episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Personally, it ranks in my top three favorite episodes.
  • Sleeping alone, you don’t think about washing your sheets very often. I’ve needed to for a while but kept putting it off. Having one of my dogs vomit on it was just the motivation I needed.
  • https://twitter.com/TheCensoredRock/status/1767702897263890603
  • Residents of Mineral Wells will often hear that the 13-storied Baker Hotel will be remodeled. We laugh because this story always comes up every handful of years only for nothing to come of it. But one day, the news proved to be true. All that went through my mind as I saw the headlines for this story, and the man made a great point: Australian billionaire revives dream to set sail on Titanic II
    • “It’s a lot more fun to do the Titanic than it is to sit at home and count my money,” Palmer reportedly told local media with the blunt honesty of man who earns almost half a billion dollars in mining royalties every year.
    • Everyone would love to have this problem: “For Palmer the question is not how to earn money, but where to spend it.”
      • That sentence reminded me of the intriguing 2003 documentary Born Rich created by a Johnson & Johnson decendent who was faced the same problem as he was about to turn 21 and accept his inheritance. In it, he seeks out how to be a productive person to avoid the dysfunction he sees affecting many of the very rich. He also interviews 10 other young heirs, one of which is Ivanka Trump, who I felt came off favorable in the film. You’ll also see a Vanderbuilt and Bloomberg heir.I’d like to see a follow-up and see what they did with their inheiritance and what they are up to now. You can watch the 67-minute documentary in its entirity free on YouTube. Sadly, you’ll have to do it in standard defintion, or what I like to call ULD, ultra-low defition. If you just want to catch the Ivanka section, who sports both blonde and brunette hair, here you go. As she shows us her room, you realize she was just a regular teen and hung posters of her favorite bands on the walls of her room. But the most intersting part starts at the 2:40 mark. She tells a story of her father who was going through a divorce and bankrumpt pointing at a homeless person outside Trump Tower and saying to her, “That guy has eight billion more dollars than me.” The former president is a very prideful man who doesn’t want to appear weak, so I wonder if she got any flack for saying he was in “extreme debt at the time.” To me, it makes for a better comeback story, and America likes a comback story.
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