Even the hard, drawn-up clay of North Carolina's Piedmont seemed to welcome the rain that finally fell last evening, but the best part was the lightning and thunder.

The fruit and vegetable farmers – and those of use that consume their produce – have enjoyed the sweet richness created by the drought and heat we have been experiencing.

Melons, cantaloupes and berries have been especially good this year because it has been exceptionally hot and dry. Just ask any farmer about this phenomena.

However, the sweet fruit is best enjoyed in a nice, air-conditioned room. Out-of-doors has been just too unpleasant.

Mosquitoes don't like my blood, but those that are afflicted by the little critters say that they are bad this year – another good reason to enjoy the in-of-airconditioned-doors.

The lightning and thunder was most intense when I was a young-un in the Virginia mountains. We had many different minerals in the ground there and there are huge deposits of low-grade iron ore. I could list the other things that were present in the ground, but I don't want you to get bored and fall asleep and bang your head on your keyboard. 
The impression of the keys on your forehead would be hard to explain to Nurse Johnson in the General Hospital emergency room, which, interestingly, is not located on the ground floor.

I wonder how the ambulances back up to the 9th floor elevator ... 
Back to the lightning and thunder in the mountains. The iron ore is attractive to the lightning looking for a ground. Charged clouds sending out their fingers sometimes will hit a pocket of ore and the grand connection is made. More than ripples of thunder, this causes shakes and quakes in the ground.

When such an event would strike close to home, we'd go out to look for the strike point.

If we found it, the prizes were globules of iron. Probably the iron first discovered and put to use by early humans.

Lightning, thunder and iron. Manly stuff.

If you want to see something very pretty, you just have to visit The Cascades Falls near Pearisburg, Virginia. Just type this into your search bar in Google Earth or Yahoo Maps. The Cascades are near Mountain Lake, a spot where a bit of the movie Dirty Dancing was filmed.

When taking the twins there so that they could tell everyone they had been to this pretty place where God had spent some extra time making the place beautiful. By the time we had gotten to within about a quarter mile from the falls, a swift and sudden storm unleashed its fury on us and we ran away from the dangerous lightning and toward the safety of our vehicle.

We got back, safe, but soaked.

On the way back though town I thought it would be a good idea to bring dinner home so we did an odd thing for me and pulled into a fast food drive-through.

I must tell you that it had only rained at the top of the Cascades and not in the little town.

Needless to say, when I paid for the order with soaked paper money, the lady studied me very thoroughly. She looked at the mildly dried clothes of the girls and all I could think to say was that they had just demanded to be baptized and that we were off to have a post baptismal dinner.

It was really the hot food, bath and dry clothes that were going to feel so good.

Then, the nap that followed would not be disturbed by a direct strike by lightning or the biggest echoing boomer the mountains could create.

I know that God's Voice was sometimes in that thunder and was stronger and clearer than that of Charlton Heston.

The Voice is still there and maybe there is something that we can all hear the next time the Thunder rolls.

“Did you back up your files Tim?” “Is the UPS software working and is the battery in the APC up to its task?” “Shouldn't you unplug all of the electronics this time?” 

“Weren't the best storms experienced in the tree house?” 

© tim www.timjohnsonphoto.com

I was born on this date and here are some other July 16th events:
Amundsen, Roald (Birth Date)
Atomic Bomb Tested (65th Anniversary)
Big Sky State Games
Bolivia: La Paz Day
Canada: Vancouver Folk Music Festival
Comet Crashes Into Jupiter
District of Columbia Establishing Legislation
Earthquake Jolts Philippines (20th Anniversary)
Eddy, Mary Baker (Birth Date)
Honda US Open of Surfing Championship Presented by O'neill
Kentucky State Championship Old-Time Fiddler's Contest
Mission San Diego de Alcala (Founding Anniversary)
Natchitoches–northwestern State University Folk Festival and the Louisiana State Fiddle Championship
Rafle Du Vélodrome D'hiver
Reynolds, Joshua (Birth Date)
Rogers, Ginger (Birth Date)
Sherwood Robin Hood Festival
Show-Me State Games
Space Milestone: Apollo 11 (US): Man Sent to the Moon
Stanwyck, Barbara (Birth Date)
Targhee Fest
Wells, Ida B. (Birth Date)
Yarmouth Clam Festival
Birthdays on July 16, 2010
Ruben Blades, 62, singer, actor (Crossover Dreams, The Milagro Beanfield War), born Panama City, Panama, July 16, 1948.
Phoebe Cates, 47, actress (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Gremlins), born New York, NY, July 16, 1963.
Stewart Copeland, 58, composer, musician (The Police), born Alexandria, VA, July 16, 1952.
Corey Feldman, 39, actor (Stand by Me, The Lost Boys), born Reseda, CA, July 16, 1971.
Will Ferrell, 43, comedian, actor (Semi-Pro, Blades of Glory, Stranger Than Fiction, Anchorman), born Irvine, CA, July 16, 1967.
Michael Flatley, 52, dancer (Lord of the Dance, Feet of Flames), born Chicago, IL, July 16, 1958.
Mark Indelicato, 16, actor (“Ugly Betty”), born Philadelphia, PA, July 16, 1994.
Bess Myerson, 86, former Miss America (1945), former government official, born New York, NY, July 16, 1924.
Barry Sanders, 42, former football player, born Wichita, KS, July 16, 1968.
Pinchas Zukerman, 62, violinist, born Tel Aviv, Israel, July 16, 1948.


I do admit being torn on how to celebrate this year. The Fiddlers' contest would be fun but many of the instruments are poor and I have perfect pitch. 
La Paz Day would be fine but things are still unsettled in Bolivia. Anything in Canada would be … Canadian.
So it stands between the Robin Hood Festival and the Clam Festival. If I could find my green tights, the issue would be resolved and I don't care that much for bottom feeders unless bacon is involved, like politicians and that makes for a double comparison.
I do like the group of Bess Myerson, Ginger Rogers, Barbara Stanwyck and ME. Three of the four of us had great legs and I am one of them.
It is not clear how the folk in the islands are going to mark the 20th anniversary of the earthquake. Maybe a bean dish for breakfast.
For me I will look through a few hundred photos and chromes. I will read through some journals and do some travel to revisit places on Google earth.
Oh, how speedily that program works on my new i7 machine with Windows 7 Pro!
Maybe I will get to talk with some family and friends and then perhaps a late evening walk.
When I gave myself permission to celebrate my birthday for an extended season it really opened the possibilities to endless fun. There just may be time to get to the Targhee Fest before everyone closes shop.
Happy Birthday, Bess, Ginger and Barbara! I'm happy to have finally joined you, in a tiny way, on the big screen.
Now, for that Boston Cream Pie and a wobble down memory lane as I plot out the next happy hazy crazy days! © tim www.timjohnsonphoto.com

Birthdaze 2010 Style

If the convenience stores and pharmacies can sell Christmas merchandise in October, I can damn well celebrate my birthing experience on more than a single day.

My mom was super pregnant with me for a long time and had a few false starts at labor which could have led to my birth on any June or July day – but the delivery (what a pristine word for such a brutal process) date was the 16^th of July.

We go to the event which took place in Princeton, WV, instead of my hometown of Narrows, VA, since mom was very pregnant but spunky and wanted to go shopping. I was not born IN Kresge's, but did leave a warm, watery mess for someone to clean up. We did manage to make it to Princeton Memorial Hospital, not General Hospital by any means.

I was a “live birth” and was able to go home pretty quickly. They did not ask me about hanging on to my foreskin, though we were not Jewish and I think I have a vague memory of wanting to smack somebody for being rude to me and my parts.

You have to know I loved nursing. My mom was great at it and there was just something about the warmth, the heartbeat and the … mind your business.

I have had 61 birthdays prior to this one and some have been cool and others have been less than cool.

I never cared for birthday cake – preferring, if you can imagine a 6 year-old having a preference, Boston Cream Pie. Dark Chocolate and the creamy pudding in the middle of grand sponge cakes. Hmmmmm and yum. Mom made them from scratch, of course, because Duncan Hines had not yet met Betty Crocker.

My favorite foods were mom's spaghetti, her fine salads, potato salad and the love she put into her cooking.

Then we would play and there might be presents or not – but no matter, it was still a party.

When the Glen Lyn 4H Club was formed we had special birthday celebrations for every one of our 5 members. Dress up, cook up, eat up and party down as best as we were able.

On some birthdays my significant seniors would pass along important items like pocket knives, guns, shoeshine kits, tools and knowledge.

I have my grandfather's mother-of-pearl “church” pocket knife he gave me when I turned 21. It is a treasure that will go, along with the story, to one of the grandsons.

There came a time that, because of my proficiency in calligraphy, people would not send me birthday cards. Pity. I am not judgmental except for the crap Hallmark prints.

The twins even got to the point that they knew I could always use AA or AAA batteries or some picture frames or some fine HP printing paper and these made fine presents along with black shirts and black Hanes underwear.

Spending time and talking with these wonderful grown-up offspring and their children and spouses is the BEST year-round gift of all.

This year, my best friend did bestow on me a beautiful book. Another thing people who don't understand me fear to do. I am a book lover and love people who love me enough to give me a book. Lover.

This is a special edition of a volume I have read and studied, but never owned. It is signature, sewn bound, and has gilt edges. Gold edges keep dust and insects from invading manuscripts since the gold sheets adhere to each other and form an airtight bond. The book suits the hand and fills the heart and it came from a heart that cares.

The book jacket is grand and the contents will be a pleasure to read again – with 40 years of the lenses of life to peer through at the words.

So, what is left for the 16^th and beyond is the need for TWO HOT DOGS, maybe a Hot and Now Krispy Kreme or 3 and the colored pencils with which to color in the empty spaces remaining on the majestic and wonderful image that is my LIFE, so far. © tim www.timjohnsonphoto.com

A New Box Of Toys

Bigger, faster, better !?!
With Microsoft ending its support of Windows XP, the time has come to make a jump in my desktop software and hardware.
In 1982, people had not quite figured out what personal computers were for, but I knew that I could write sermons, lessons, keep up with my pastoral work and eventually jump onto a yet-to-be created internet.
My first IBM PC was an amazing 8086 system with two 180K drives - BIG floppies. Hard drives were a couple of years away. I could "Write" with one disk and then swap that out and "print" using another. The system cost a whopping $5k. I was one of the first pastors to have one of these machines and people knew I was really nuts, including the members of my congregation who worked for IBM and Data General.
I had a monochrome monitor a 9 pin printer and worked the hummy out of the thing.
Then followed the 386, 486, Pentiums, AMDs and now, my new i7 processor, which is essentially a mini mainframe.
I have a screen print of an ITT 4116 RAM chip - 4K - where you can see the on and off gates where the binary code plays hide and seek.
I have tried to push the limits of everything I have ever owned, testing all of their capabilities and knowing how they worked and what they could really do - and honestly trying to apply that to myself. Pushing is just natural for me.
Electronic things that were fast and productive got s l o w and I pushed for more speed and capabilities.
Along came computer graphics and publishing, sound and high resolution color monitors. I owned a couple of Power PCs just for the MAC experience. 2 years was enough.
My chrome and negative film images could be scanned and manipulated without the stench of the chemical darkroom. But I miss the magic of seeing things come to life in the developing trays.
I know that a PC is like a Mr. Coffee or an electric razor. It is an appliance that will have its day. It is a consumable.
With my new system my software gets to breathe more easily and run faster. They promise a 5 second boot.
Movie rendering will be FAST. This thing has an SLi video card with a whole gig of ram - just on the video card.
Photoshop will scream and RAW files will load in a zippy fashion.
I bought the Win 7 Pro because it has a Win XP emulation mode that lets me use my older software that might not work in the Win 7 environment.
However, in a month, 6 months or sometime. I will be adding RAM and wondering when Intel will be bringing out its i9.
I am very patient with people - machinery gets little slack.
We'll see.
I still have a dependable Win 2000 Pro, an XP Pro machine, a Linux Ubuntu system and a Windows 98 system with over $4k of software on it from Adobe. It weighs almost as much as my truck and has some wonderful abilities.
We'll see what Quark does.
We'll just see. We'll monitor and report. © tim www.timjohnsonphoto.com