June’s only a few days old and the first storm of the season is out in the Gulf of Mexico. The advisory for TS Andrea was issued a few hours ago and seems like it just popped out of nowhere.
I’m heading out of town to Charlotte for Southeast Linuxfest, so hopefully it’s nothing more than a lot of rain and some wind. It doesn’t look like Andrea will spend enough time over open water to strengthen much more so that’s good. The forecast track has it traveling along the coast reaching the Charleston area around Friday morning. Looks like it will be moving fairly rapidly by then so it should be over quickly.
At a visit to McKay’s this past weekend, Connie found three volumes of a bible printed in Braille. I’ve only been to McKay’s a handful of times, but each time I’ve always managed to find something interesting there. These Braille bibles printed by the Braille Bible Foundation are so far the most interesting and unique thing we’ve found there.
Neither of us had ever seen an entire book printed in just Braille. I’ve seen signs and elevator buttons with Braille on them, but never an entire book of Braille.
The books use a pretty heavy weight paper, similar to construction paper. The volumes we found were in pretty good condition and didn’t look like they had been used much at all.
One thing I thought was interesting was that both sides of the page were printed/embossed. Making sure the raised dots on one side don’t mess up the dots on the other side must take some careful aligning in the printing process. The Wikipedia entry on Braille refers to the process as “interpoint”. I can’t really “read” Braille, but I think it’s pretty neat to run my fingers across the raised dots and feel the different patterns.
Connie decided we needed to purchase the volumes because of the note printed on the front page:
Please do not destroy this Braille book Braille is very expensive to produce. If this volume is no longer needed please return it to the Braille Bible Foundation. It may be returned free of postal charges by writing “Free Matter for the Blind” on the upper right-hand corner of the carton.
We decided that rather than leave the volumes sitting on the shelf at McKay’s, we’d buy them and ship them back to the Braille Bible Foundation. Hopefully when they go back they’ll get put back to use.
The city of Ringgold, GA does a very impressive display of flags and crosses to commemorate the fallen veterans from the area. It’s a pretty remarkable and moving display. Each cross has the name of someone and the war(s) they served in. Some also included the branch of the military they were in.
I don’t know a whole lot about Ringgold’s flag display other than that it sounds like it’s been going on for quite a few years. Each year, the number of flags grows.
There’s one road where the flags are especially impressive. Flags line both sides of Robin St, and as you crest the hill you see even more flags and crosses along the road
If you’re ever in the Ringgold, GA area around Memorial Day, it’s definitely a sight worth checking out.
Got to go driving around to play a little bit of tourist in Chattanooga today (well, Connie’s dad was doing the driving, we were playing tourist).
We drove up to Missionary Ridge where there were some nice scenic views of Chattanooga and some very nice looking houses. Lots of Civil War markers, saw a few canons (some of which were pointed at houses). We were on a two lane road with no areas to pull over, so we weren’t able to stop and check out the markers or take pictures. It was pretty nice though.
Then we drove over to Lookout Mountain and Point Park. Point Park is a National Park and was the location of a significant battle of the Civil War. Lots of markers and battle information. Didn’t spend a huge amount of time there, but enough to walk around a bit and learn a little bit of history. Nice scenic view of Chattanooga and the surrounding area. It’s easy to see why it was such a fought over location during the Civil War. From way up there, you can control pretty much the entire area with artillery.
View of Chattanooga from Lookout Mountain
After that, we took a ride down the mountain on the Incline Railway. It claims to have the steepest section of rail around, with a 72% (about 35°) grade.
The Incline railway
The photo above is looking down at the track from the observation deck. It’s pretty steep at the very top and levels off towards the bottom. The trip is about a mile long and takes around 10 minutes. A good way to get up and down the mountain if you live there. Not sure how many people do that, but it’s a pretty nice trip.
The Incline railway
This is from inside the rail car looking down from the station at the top of the mountain. Kind of like looking down from the top of a roller coaster ride.
The Incline railway
The railcar. Seating is arranged so that you’re pretty much upright when the rail car is at the top, but once you’re at the bottom you’re leaning kind of backwards. Going up the mountain, you also end up riding backwards.
In lieu of donations, Theresa requests flowers. Being a Cystic Fibrosis and transplant patient, Theresa was never allowed to have flowers, so she would want them in her celebration of life.
She got a lot of them. At the brunch (at Morgan Creek Grill) following the funeral mass, just about every table had two or three vases of flower arrangements, and there were several other larger arrangements on stands and on the floor. There were so many flowers it was almost like being in a florist shop.
As brunch wound up, guests were encouraged to take whichever arrangements they wanted. As pretty as they all were, I’m sure Theresa’s parents just didn’t have room to take them all.
I looked around for the arrangement we had sent, but I guess someone else thought it looked nice and claimed it. I picked out another nice colourful one instead.
Flowers for Theresa
Flowers for Theresa
She would have loved all the flowers.
It was a nice funeral mass (even though the priest told a rather different version of my gym story during his homily), and a nice brunch gathering afterwards, sharing favourite Theresa stories.
