by dawn67 | Dec 23, 2014 | #weeMcFee, About Dawn, The Wrights
Cisco!
This is Cisco, aka Mike Francisco. He was a fellow member of the Air Force Academy class of ’67. After graduation, we split directions as Cisco had eagle eyes and was bound for pilot training. Me, my eyes had deteriorated during my four years at the Academy and I flunked the pilot’s eye exam four times, each time getting one eye or the other to qualify but unfortunately not both at the same time. By the slimmest of margins, I found myself qualified to earn the wings of a navigator instead of becoming the fighter pilot I dreamed of.
At first, I thought I would instead take the non-rated route in the Air Force, but my squadron officer convinced me that earning navigator wings might open the door for the Air Force to grant me a waiver on my eyes and let me go to pilot training after a few years of flying. So we packed our bags and headed to Mather Air Force Base in California where I did (more…)
by dawn67 | Dec 22, 2014 | #weeMcFee, About Dawn, The Wrights
My daughter and son-in-law have a tradition of not exchanging gifts for Christmas. Instead, they find ways to contribute dollars or preferably time to folks in need. I think that might change a bit now that they have a child, but David suggested I spend time writing my and my family’s history into my blog instead of my giving Ellie a present. In a way, I understand as I too want her and Stephanie to know more about our history. Our living family that we know about is small and somewhat estranged, so it is important that I try to capture as much family history as I can while I can. Today I heard a 1960’s song that brought me quickly back to this topic. The 1962 song was Loco-motion by Little Eva: (Note: this was not a line dance back in the 60’s). (more…)
by dawn67 | Dec 22, 2014 | #weeMcFee, About Dawn, The Wrights
As I’ve previously posted, I have been taking several MOOCs in an effort to keep my skills sharp and also learn new things. I just had two MOOCs end, one successfully and the other not so successfully. By that I mean I will earn a certificate of completion for one and not for the other. Seems I have to learn something else I have been procrastinating about learning – UTC. I don’t know where I have been keeping my head but I remained thinking that all time worldwide was referenced from GMT – Greenwich Mean Time. When I was in the military, we use Zulu time to reference our 24-hour clock and Z or zero time was GMT.
Well, my recent MOOCs stated that due dates were in UTC time and I just passed that off thinking I would as usual finish early and not have to worry about due dates/times. That held true for one course but yesterday when I was entering the last of links to my course artifacts, the LMS closed me off abruptly and told me the due date/time had expired. I thought I had six hours to go but I was thinking midnight local time having never followed up checking out what UTC was. It turns out that sometimes in the 70’s after I had gotten out of the military, the powers at be decided that GMT was not appropriate anymore since Britain had daylight savings time which of course impacted the time in Greenwich. So they came up with temps universel coordonné, UTC. UTC turns out is essentially the same as the old GMT or Zulu time. If I had just taken the time 🙂 to check, I could have quickly adapted back to thinking Zulu time for the MOOCs and I would have had no problem with due dates/times. 🙁
by dawn67 | Aug 13, 2014 | #weeMcFee, About Dawn, The Wrights
Something happened on top of the water tower.
This photo of Hamilton Air Force Base, located across the Bay from San Francisco, was taken a few years before I got there, say about 10 or 15. Anyway, I had some fun there with my roommate William D Abraham. Abe, just like I did, loved Corvettes and we both got one as soon as we could legally go into debt our senior year at the Academy. But that’s another story. This one involves, two girls, the Air Police and the Base Commander, who just happened to be the father of one of the girls. Nuff said for now.
by dawn67 | Aug 4, 2014 | #weeMcFee, About Dawn, The Wrights
Nike before the swoosh. The beginning of “Just do it.”
Yes that is a relief of the Goddess Nike. I think you can see the beginnings of a swoosh in the flowing dress. This picture was taken in late 1969 and the Nike relief is still standing in the same location in a town in Turkey – anyone care to guess the name of the town? Hint: it was where Mary went to live out her later years. And yes, that is me with the aviator glasses and bandage over my eye. More later as to how I got there and how I got the owie.
So now is later and I’ll tell more of the story.
First, the town is Ephesus. Ephesus was the second largest city behind Rome itself in the Roman Empire in the time of Christ. It is currently located near the Turkish town of Selcurt and some 8 KM from the sea. In its prime, Ephesus was a major port but the bay silted in and access to the sea was lost. (more…)
