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JL Sargent

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On 6/10/2021 at 6:15 PM, Islander said:

 

Did you bring warm clothes for the cold at the top of the mountain?  Years ago, I drove up Mount Washington in New Hampshire with my gf.  It was around 80F at the the bottom, but more like 40F at the top, around 6,000 feet up.  This was in July, but we'd brought jeans, sweaters, and jackets in case of bad weather at ground level, so we changed from our shorts and T-shirts before getting out of the car.  The views were pretty good, and it was happily not too windy that day.

 

I hope I make it to Hawaii one day.

 

Hey Pat. We were just there in late April so it wasn’t too cold - especially by Montana standards.  We just wore multiple layers on the summit.  It was a bit strange though packing warm clothes along with shorts, sandals, and tasteful Hawaiian shirts.  


 

 

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We did get pretty cold back at sea level after an evening snorkeling with manta rays.  It’s an amazing experience.  I’ve included a few shots that were taken by a pro ocean photographer that went along with us and shared some of his photos.
 

 

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On 6/11/2021 at 6:16 PM, Dave A said:

Black Walnut. I don't know what I will make out of this if I get it but thinking I just can't pass it up.2775.thumb.jpg.a8f4c4e5be10c779940fd3006be3e300.jpg

If ya slice and book match it will make scary faces. Very nice figuring on the exposed faces.

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4 hours ago, sputnik said:

We did get pretty cold back at sea level after an evening snorkeling with manta rays.  It’s an amazing experience.  I’ve included a few shots that were taken by a pro ocean photographer that went along with us and shared some of his photos.
 

 

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Those are some great images.  One time, while diving off Palm Beach in Florida, my dive partner and I noticed a patch of sand on the sea bottom that was coloured a bit differently from the rest, so we took a closer look and could see that something was breathing there.  At that point, the “something” seemed to realize that it’s cover was blown and decided to move somewhere else.  It was an eagle ray, and it rose from the bottom with sand streaming off it.  With fins added to the ends of my legs, I look about 7 feet long, and that was roughly the width of the ray, as we could see in the picture of me posing behind it.

 

It was pretty cool to see the eagle ray rise up from the bottom, circle around once, and then fly out of sight into the distance, with less and less sand streaming off it as it cleaned up.  It appeared that it had hidden itself by kicking up a big cloud of sand and then lying on the bottom, while the sand settled down on it.  All the was visible was its eyes and breathing holes.

 

Good plan, but to human eyes it was easy to see the area of sand that was just a slight shade different from the rest.  So that’s the extent of my interactions with rays, except for an occasion when I visited a small aquarium in Northern Ireland, about 100 km south of Belfast.  In the large central room, there was a big round tank with glass sides that were only about 4 feet tall and an open top.

 

In the tank were a couple of little thornback rays, which are native to the area.  One was about a foot across, while the other one was about a foot-and-a-half across.  There was also a variety of sea life in the tank, and several visitors were standing around the tank, as well as me and my cousin, who lives there.

 

I was amazed to see that the little rays were coming up to see the people.  They went from one person to the next, to get petted!  They came around to my cousin and me.  It was kind of sweet to see their little faces come a few inches out of the water, and we petted them for a while, which seemed to make them happy.  Their skin felt kind of like wet sandpaper, but not really scratchy.

 

That was a little experience, but I still remember it more than thirty years later.  Your encounter must have been magic.  Were the rays more active at night?  Were you able to touch them at all?  That must have been a wonderful experience.  Rays are so infèrent from us that you could think that they’re some kind of alien life form, but they like their food, and they like some human  contact sometimes, so they’re not that different from us.

 

Are the mantas all really big, or were they a variety of sizes?  Enquiring minds like to know.  Thanks for your patience in reading all this.

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4 hours ago, Islander said:

...except for an occasion when I visited a small aquarium in Northern Ireland, about 100 km south of Belfast.

 

I'm curious about this... I think 100 km would put you into the Republic of Ireland.

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3 hours ago, DizRotus said:

 

Oxymoron?

Not really.  Reyn Spooners are classics, and there are lots of tasteful versions by Tori Richard.  

What these Haleakala photos are missing are the amazing other worldly colors in the crater, truly a sight to behold.  We never were early risers to go for sun up, so we would go for sunset.  The place has a special feeling to it.

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Coastal Goodwills have treated me/friends well with Hawaiian shirt finds and at under $10 a pop. Silk Tommy Bahamas (matching fronts and pockets) and brands I've never heard of in rayon which are comfortable. 

 

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13 hours ago, Marvel said:

 

I'm curious about this... I think 100 km would put you into the Republic of Ireland.

 

100 km by road is not the same as 100 km as the crow flies, because most of the roads in Ireland are very twisty.  It could have been just 50 or 60 km as the crow flies.  I think the aquarium was near the tip of the Ards Peninsula, but I don’t remember which side of Strangford Lough it was on.

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34 minutes ago, Islander said:

 

100 km by road is not the same as 100 km as the crow flies, because most of the roads in Ireland are very twisty.  It could have been just 50 or 60 km as the crow flies.  I think the aquarium was near the tip of the Ards  Peninsula, but I don’t remember which side of Strangford Lough it was on.

 

Well, I sure understand that. I looked at a recording studio for sale. It was in an old church (built on an estate), only 400 ft. south of the border between the two (Republic and Northern Ireland). The road WAS rather twisty. Not that I have the money, but it was only $100k for the building and property.

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On 6/13/2021 at 5:43 PM, Marvel said:

 

Well, I sure understand that. I look at a recording studio for sale. It was in an old church (built on an estate), only a couple miles south of the border between the two (Republic and Northern Ireland). The road WAS rather twisty. Not that I have the money, but it was only $100k for the building and property.

 

Wow, that sounds like a good deal, but was it a fixer-upper?  When I decided to leave Toronto, I considered moving back to Northern Ireland, since I was born there and have a number of relatives there that I’m in touch with.  The landscapes in both the North and South of Ireland are really beautiful, and there are lots of thousand-year-old castles, as well as standing stones and the like that predate Christ.

 

However, there were a number of things that I’d have a hard time adapting to, like the odd plumbing and heating.  You have to get a fairly new house to get central heating, since most of the older homes are heated by coal fireplaces.  This means that after you go out, you come home to a house that’s cold, and stays cold until a while after you light up a fireplace or two.  It’s like camping out to someone accustomed to automatic central heating.  As well, most houses have smaller rooms than we’re accustomed to, so no room for two pairs of La Scalas and a Belle.

 

There’s also more crime than someone living in Canada is accustomed to, but for me the biggest factor was the racism.  The stupid part of that is that nearly everyone’s white, so a racist has to quiz you before deciding whether to shake your hand or turn his back on you.  The descendants of the English and Scottish settlers who were “planted” in Ireland in the 1600s still don’t consider themselves to be Irish, even after living in the country for centuries.  Foreigners in the country they were born in.  Instead, they consider themselves to be civilized British/Saxon people, surrounded by a large population of wild Irish/Celtic people.  This means that some of them feel like they’re under siege, and have to stick together to maintain their culture of separateness.  

 

When the country was partitioned in 1922, the line was drawn around where the greatest concentration of British settlers lived.  As a result, instead of being a minority million or so living in a free country of around 5 million, they’re the majority in a “statelet”/British province of about 1.5 million.  That’s the black-and white explanation, and there’s lots of grey, so not everyone feels as strongly as that, but that’s the undercurrent of the typical mindset you find there.  The province does have the legal option of rejoining the rest of Ireland by a majority vote, and that becomes more possible every year, since the numbers are shifting, with the Irish/Republican minority now very close to having  the same number of voters as the British/Unionist majority.

 

Religion?  Contrary to what you see on the news, the conflict was never over religion.  It just serves as a marker, since most of the native Irish are Catholic, while most of the settlers are Protestant.  The sect you subscribe to is seen as the prime clue to your ethnicity.

 

I’ve occasionally met racists from Northern Ireland here in Canada.  They’re really easy to identify.  Once you tell one that you’re from Northern Ireland, the probing questions begin.  “What part of Belfast did you live in?  What school did you go to?”  And so on.  If you give the “wrong” answers, that person has no desire to know you at all, and will usually walk away.  It spoils my day on the rare occasion that I meet one of them here, and in the North of Ireland I’d be meeting them nearly every day.  There are parts of Belfast where it could be unsafe for me to go, just because of my ancestry.  I’m too old for that nonsense, so I moved to the West Coast (Wet Coast?) of Canada, where I know a former housemate from my twenties, and the weather reminds me of Ireland, if a little less damp. I’m near the ocean, and the mountains around us are spectacular.  My home is warm, with its automatic electric heat, and the living room is big enough to have a complete surround Heritage sound system, and still have room to serve as a home photo studio.  Life’s not bad here.  I’m happy.

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9 hours ago, oldtimer said:

Aye.

 

My mother's side of my family is Scots/Irish/Welsh, with some English and Dutch thrown in. We have family in Limerick, Irish citizens, who speak Tagalog, lol.

 

I've wanted to learn more about our family history, but it may be better to not. Most that I knew have all passed away. When my wife was working in China, she became good friends with two Catholic priests, one from Limerick and the other from Belfast. We saw them both when we visited Carna's sister in Limerick in 2008. I've exchanged emails with one since. 

 

So, the old church I've seen listed for almost  200k euros,but I know they had dropped the price substantially. It was owned by the duo, "Dead Can Dance"., who had moved to France?????

 

The heating and plumbing/water supply were fixed about 20 years ago, but I am assuming, since it was a working studio, that the heating system was maintained. The copy below is from an article about the studio, from 2001.

 

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Unsurprisingly, however, the building needed considerable work before it could be turned into a functional recording space. "The church was in good condition structurally, but had no amenities," says Brendan. "To provide a water supply, a spring had to be bored about 150 feet through the limestone rock before plumbing could be installed. I had 80 percent of the plaster removed from the cut stone walls to improve the general acoustics. With my parents' help, we constructed a gallery at the opposite end from the altar to form a control room. I have always liked the layout of old radio‑style studios, where the control room looks down onto the recording area, affording greater visibility and acoustic isolation."

 

The biggest problems concerned humidity, dust and maintaining an even temperature for the equipment. The heating of this building alone is an epic undertaking, requiring no less than 14 double concentric radiators, each 10 feet long, and an industrial boiler large enough to heat a small factory. Many of these problems could have been resolved by subdividing the space into more manageable sizes, but Brendan decided that this would destroy the ambience and acoustics — the very things that made it such a special environment to work in. "The acoustics at Quivvy would certainly not suit someone who prefers to work in an anechoic setting. It is a very live space that has its own set of limitations as well as advantages. The obvious limitation is lack of separation between instruments that have a lot of high‑frequency dynamic energy, such as a typical rock band might produce. For acoustic solo recordings and vocals it is exceptional, though, providing several natural room settings in different parts of the church."

 

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Wow.  That’s a spectacular building, with a spectacular interior.  That said, keeping 14 big radiators and a great big boiler going to keep the place warm would take its running costs out of reach for the most of us.  It’s a huge space, and you can see by the bare stone walls that there’s no insulation at all.  That may be why the price was dropped.  It might only be affordable to use as a studio, or maybe a restaurant, which would require further investment.  On the plus side, being located in the Free State, as Ireland used to be called, eliminates all the sectarian issues that I referred to in my post above.  As you know, Limerick’s in the Southwest of the country where the weather may be warm enough to avoid the snow that sometimes falls in the North.

 

If you were thinking about a classy old building of affordable size in Ireland, a popular option is the gate house of a wealthy estate.  Those houses were often inhabited by the gate keeper or other employee, and were sized so that his family could live with him comfortably.  My grandfather was a chauffeur for a wealthy family, and my mother grew up in the chauffeur’s house, until her dad retired and they moved into the city.  She’s often told me about how she and her family loved living there.

 

Why not explore your family history?  A while ago, I was contacted by a young relative from Belfast, and he’s doing extensive research into our ancestors.  He managed to trace us back into the 1850s, and it’s been interesting reading.  As well, I’ve made a new friend, and we’ve had great discussions about music and lots of other topics.  We’re hoping he can visit me this year or next year.

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Yes the possibilities for that place are only held back by the amount of money you could put into it!

 

Now I've got a Hawaiian shirt from the early 80s that's not too bad. So much that my mother once paused one of her shows and called me in to view the screen. Magnum PI was wearing the exact shirt!

If I remember I'll post that and a pic of a couple of Super-Tacky ties I have that could be contest winners! Since I'm down to my normal jeans and t-shirts and two pairs of boots can't do that now.

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3 hours ago, Islander said:

That may be why the price was dropped.  It might only be affordable to use as a studio, or maybe a restaurant, which would require further investment.

 

It was booked fairly regularly, I believe, but yes, you would have to be having income to support it.

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On 6/13/2021 at 2:32 PM, oldtimer said:

Not really.  Reyn Spooners are classics, and there are lots of tasteful versions by Tori Richard.  

What these Haleakala photos are missing are the amazing other worldly colors in the crater, truly a sight to behold.  We never were early risers to go for sun up, so we would go for sunset.  The place has a special feeling to it.

 

This one is from Gap. They had a sale, so it was only about $10. I've had it for about five years, and it gets worn a lot. This on is 55/45 linen/cotton. Very comfortable. I have a linen barong that I got for my wedding, which is really nice.

 

 

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