Heaven must be like this . . .

SPECTACULAR GLOW: Commercial photographer Brent Gilstrap captures a moonbow over Yosemite Falls. Ideal conditions for moonbows include clear skies, abundant mist at the base of a fall and the absence of artificial light. For more information see article below by Eric Bailey -- Click on Link for the complete article.

The schedule of moonbows can be found online at uweb.txstate.edu/do01.

Gilstrap's moonbow photographs are online at groundhog.smugmug.com/gallery/1036309/1/69899911/Original.


Beauty in the Misty Moonlight

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK — Aristotle took note of this celestial happening a couple of millenniums back. Ben Franklin bagged a sighting or two, as did Mark Twain. The venerable John Muir, chronicler of Sierra mountaintop and meadow, waxed enthusiastic about the nighttime phenomenon.

The hunt for the elusive "moonbow" has long been a nocturnal lure for dreamy hikers, insomniac seamen and intrepid photo buffs. But in the past, seeing one of these nighttime rainbows — caused when a full moon's rays bounce off the mist of a departing rain cloud or raging waterfall — has been dictated mostly by chance.

No longer.

A team of astronomers from Texas State University in San Marcos has produced a computer model that can reliably predict the date and duration of moonbows at Yosemite Falls, the national park's tallest and most photogenic waterfall.

Their predictions have sent waves of camera buffs and Yosemite Valley visitors trekking up the trail to the plank bridge near the base of the waterfall.

Aside from those who have visited during an overcast night, few have come away disappointed.

"So far as we know, we're the first to predict dates and precise times for when moonbows will appear," said Don Olson, the Texas State astronomy professor who led a team of honors students in the project. "It's great for people who otherwise might have sat around all night waiting to see a moonbow, and for the students it was a nice exercise in calculus, spherical trig and computing."

The team's moonbow table took Brent Gilstrap to the waterfall one recent night.

Gilstrap, who two years ago chucked his computer software career to become a commercial landscape photographer, has been dependably making spectacular shots of moonbows ever since he learned of the Texas State lunar table.

What may be his most remarkable moonbow photo came not at the fall's base but across the valley on a cloudless night last year. Gilstrap caught a broad panorama: the entire Yosemite Falls cascading down with a moonbow arching across mist halfway up the sheer cliff face, the whole scene reflected in mirrored waters of a flooded meadow.

1883 : Brooklyn Bridge opens

After 14 years and 27 deaths while being constructed, the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River is opened, connecting the great cities of New York and Brooklyn for the first time in history (May 24, 1883). Thousands of residents of Brooklyn and Manhattan Island turned out to witness the dedication ceremony, which was presided over by President Chester A. Arthur and New York Governor Grover Cleveland. Designed by the late John A. Roebling, the Brooklyn Bridge was the largest suspension bridge ever built to that date.

John Roebling, born in Germany in 1806, was a great pioneer in the design of steel suspension bridges. He studied industrial engineering in Berlin and at the age of 25 immigrated to western Pennsylvania, where he attempted, unsuccessfully, to make his living as a farmer. He later moved to the state capital in Harrisburg, where he found work as a civil engineer. He promoted the use of wire cable and established a successful wire-cable factory.

Meanwhile, he earned a reputation as a designer of suspension bridges, which at the time were widely used but known to fail under strong winds or heavy loads. Roebling is credited with a major breakthrough in suspension-bridge technology: a web truss added to either side of the bridge roadway that greatly stabilized the structure. Using this model, Roebling successfully bridged the Niagara Gorge at Niagara Falls, New York, and the Ohio River at Cincinnati, Ohio. On the basis of these achievements, New York State accepted Roebling's design for a bridge connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan--with a span of 1,595 feet--and appointed him chief engineer. It was to be the world's first steel suspension bridge.
Just before construction began in 1869, Roebling was fatally injured while taking a few final compass readings across the East River. A boat smashed the toes on one of his feet, and three weeks later he died of tetanus. He was the first of more than two dozen people who would die building his bridge. His 32-year-old son, Washington A. Roebling, took over as chief engineer. Roebling had worked with his father on several bridges and had helped design the Brooklyn Bridge.

The two granite foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge were built in timber caissons, or watertight chambers, sunk to depths of 44 feet on the Brooklyn side and 78 feet on the New York side. Compressed air pressurized the caissons, allowing underwater construction. At that time, little was known of the risks of working under such conditions, and more than a hundred workers suffered from cases of compression sickness. Compression sickness, or the "bends," is caused by the appearance of nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream that result from rapid decompression. Several died, and Washington Roebling himself became bedridden from the condition in 1872. Other workers died as a result of more conventional construction accidents, such as collapses and a fire.
Roebling continued to direct construction operations from his home, and his wife, Emily, carried his instructions to the workers. In 1877, Washington and Emily moved into a home with a view of the bridge. Roebling's health gradually improved, but he remained partially paralyzed for the rest of his life. On May 24, 1883, Emily Roebling was given the first ride over the completed bridge, with a rooster, a symbol of victory, in her lap. Within 24 hours, an estimated 250,000 people walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, using a broad promenade above the roadway that John Roebling designed solely for the enjoyment of pedestrians.

The Brooklyn Bridge, with its unprecedented length and two stately towers, was dubbed the "eighth wonder of the world." The connection it provided between the massive population centers of Brooklyn and Manhattan changed the course of New York City forever. In 1898, the city of Brooklyn formally merged with New York City, Staten Island, and a few farm towns, forming Greater New York.

Everything came up roses !!

1959 - Gypsy, a musical based on the life of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, opened on Broadway. Ethel Merman played Gypsy’s mother, Rose, who pushed her two daughters into burlesque. With music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Gypsy closed on March 25, 1961 after 702 performances.

Just Like Bogie and Bacall

1945 - Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart were married. Legend has it that the couple fell in love in 1943 during making of the film, To Have and Have Not. Theirs would become one of Hollywood’s most enduring marriages.

"Canada's Castle in the Rockies"

The Fairmont Banff Springs is "Canada's Castle in the Rockies" and a world-renowned symbol of Canadian hospitality. William Van Horne, General Manager of Canadian Pacific Railways, is credited with recognizing the tourist potential of the hot springs near the station of Banff. His vision was fueled by the philosophy "If we can't export the scenery, we will import the tourists" and thus began the campaign to design a luxury hotel amidst the beautiful mountain scenery of the Canadian Rockies. To travel there, the visitors would naturally arrive via the Canadian Pacific Railway, and Van Horne proposed the establishment of a series of luxury hotels along the railway line through the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains.

In 1886, Van Horne commissioned Bruce Price of New York, one of the foremost architects of the day, to draw up plans for a hotel to be built above the confluence of the Bow and the Spray Rivers overlooking the beautiful Bow Valley. Construction started in the spring of 1887 and the hotel officially opened on June 1, 1888.

The Fairmont Banff Springs was finished in 1928 and over the years has been lovingly maintained and restored to retain its original grandeur. The furniture for the hotel was made by Castle & Son Manufacturing of Montreal, and the pieces are exact replicas of original designs from European castles and manor houses. The Fairmont Banff Springs has been open year round since 1969, and since that time, all the rooms have been remodeled, as have the swimming pool and health facilities. The Fairmont Banff Springs continues to follow Van Horne's dictum of dynamic expansion and excellence. Offering something for vacationers and business visitors alike, it also endures as a meeting place for the world's fashionable and wealthy. On March 22, 1992, The Fairmont Banff Springs was declared a historical site by the Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.

The Man Who's Loved and Loathed

OC Blog compadre Gustavo Arellano says he's signed a two-book deal with Scribner, "home of Frank McCourt, Chuck Closterman and other assorted madmen":

The First book will expand on his “Ask a Mexican!” column to serve as a Lonely Planet guide about Mexicans to gabachos; and the second book will be about his family’s four-generation history in Orange County coupled with a history/profile of the region he loves and loathes.

Yosemite's Tioga Road had it's earliest reopening in 20 years

Because of skimpy snowpack and balmy temperatures, Yosemite National Park's Tioga Road (above) — gateway to the Eastern Sierra high country and 9,995-foot-high Tioga Pass — had its earliest reopening in 20 years on May 11. Glacier Point Road, which accesses the popular Half Dome vista spot, and some visitor services, such as the Curry Village bicycle stand and the rafting station for the Merced River, are also open just in time for Memorial Day. Info: (209) 372-0200, http://www.nps.gov/yose.

Towering Toy

If you're going to Legoland over Memorial Day, be prepared to work — hard. Starting at 10 a.m. Thursday and ending at 9:45 a.m. May 29, Legoland visitors are invited to build, brick by interlocking plastic brick, the world's tallest Lego tower. (In 2005, Carlsbad, Calif., theme park visitors built a record 92.6-foot tower but were outdone last year by a 93.43-foot one at the Denmark park.) The theme of the wannabe top tower, expected to use 465,000 Legos, will be a pirate ship's mast — and coincides with the debut of a ride, Captain Cranky's Challenge. Info: (760) 918-5346, http://www.legoland.com .

Helios House is a real gas

DRIVERS who pulled in to the new gas station on the corner of Olympic Boulevard and Robertson on a recent Tuesday asked the same questions: "Is this a 'real' gas station?" And "Is that woman playing guitar?"

Yes, Anna Jones said. This is a real BP station. And, yes, she's playing guitar.

Jones, 24, is a member of the "green team," a group of enviro-friendly actors and musicians who answered an ad on Craigslist and became the least likely gas station attendants you'll ever meet.

Team members proudly point out the better features of the "Helios House," as the station is called: The Space Age architecture includes 90 solar panels. The bathroom is designed with recycled glass tiles and farmed wood.

But what really sets the station apart are the people who gas up and work there.

Employees show up on their off hours to cheer each other on at the weekly "Open Mic Night." Jones and three co-workers recently got a house together. It seems more like an MTV reality show than a gas station.

It's so pleasant, regular customer Dana Handler says she drives a few miles out of her way to gas up there.

"I feel like I'm in a movie," said Bryan Besser, as he filled up his Mercedes G500. "I'm drawn by the architecture, and having live music to listen to? I'm in."

Look Out !! Here Come the Birds

Here's one threat that Homeland Security hasn't prepared for: dive-bombing birds.

The critters have pecked several pedestrians in Pacific Palisades, reported the Palisadian-Post, which landed an exclusive because its managing editor, Bill Bruns, was one of the victims.

Bruns later told me he was walking to work on Swarthmore Avenue when "suddenly I felt bird feet tangled in my hair…. We had been hearing about this bird but I was preoccupied and not thinking about being attacked. I shook my head and the bird flew up and away."

He identified the culprit as a mockingbird.

The next day he walked to work on the other side of Swarthmore — you can't be too safe in the Palisades — when "I was attacked by two blackbirds. They didn't land on my head, but pecked at me and then flew up to the overhanging eaves and made a commotion."

Odd, but I also recall instances of birds zeroing in on the heads of older men in Long Beach and Santa Monica in previous years.

The attacks in the Palisades seemed to be a case of "a mommy protecting her nest," a pet hospital worker told the Post's Sue Pascoe. Once the eggs are hatched, the worker said, the danger will be over.

Richard Gere becomes "infamous"

"To have a guy on '60 Minutes' that's lying, and to be able to play that [tape] over and over ... for an actor, that's really revelatory," Richard Gere says. In "The Hoax" Gere stars as the infamous Clifford Irving, the fake 1970's biographer of billionaire Howard Hughes.
(Damon Winter / LAT)

More Maxine-isms

An Extraordinary Life

1935 : Lawrence of Arabia dies

T.E. Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia, dies as a retired Royal Air Force mechanic living under an assumed name. The legendary war hero, author, and archaeological scholar succumbed to injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident six days before.

Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in Tremadoc, Wales, in 1888. In 1896, his family moved to Oxford. Lawrence studied architecture and archaeology, for which he made a trip to Ottoman (Turkish)-controlled Syria and Palestine in 1909. In 1911, he won a fellowship to join an expedition excavating an ancient Hittite settlement on the Euphrates River. He worked there for three years and in his free time traveled and learned Arabic. In 1914, he explored the Sinai, near the frontier of Ottoman-controlled Arabia and British-controlled Egypt. The maps Lawrence and his associates made had immediate strategic value upon the outbreak of war between Britain and the Ottoman Empire in October 1914.

Lawrence enlisted in the war and because of his expertise in Arab affairs was assigned to Cairo as an intelligence officer. He spent more than a year in Egypt, processing intelligence information and in 1916 accompanied a British diplomat to Arabia, where Hussein ibn Ali, the emir of Mecca, had proclaimed a revolt against Turkish rule. Lawrence convinced his superiors to aid Hussein's rebellion, and he was sent to join the Arabian army of Hussein's son Faisal as a liaison officer.

Under Lawrence's guidance, the Arabians launched an effective guerrilla war against the Turkish lines. He proved a gifted military strategist and was greatly admired by the Bedouin people of Arabia. In July 1917, Arabian forces captured Aqaba near the Sinai and joined the British march on Jerusalem. Lawrence was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In November, he was captured by the Turks while reconnoitering behind enemy lines in Arab dress and was tortured and sexually abused before escaping. He rejoined his army, which slowly worked its way north to Damascus, which fell in October 1918.

Arabia was liberated, but Lawrence's hope that the peninsula would be united as a single nation was dashed when Arabian factionalism came to the fore after Damascus. Lawrence, exhausted and disillusioned, left for England. Feeling that Britain had exacerbated the rivalries between the Arabian groups, he appeared before King George V and politely refused the medals offered to him.

After the war, he lobbied hard for independence for Arab countries and appeared at the Paris peace conference in Arab robes. He became something of a legendary figure in his own lifetime, and in 1922 he gave up higher-paying appointments to enlist in the Royal Air Force (RAF) under an assumed name, John Hume Ross. He had just completed writing his monumental war memoir, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and he hoped to escape his fame and acquire material for a new book. Found out by the press, he was discharged, but in 1923 he managed to enlist as a private in the Royal Tanks Corps under another assumed name, T.E. Shaw, a reference to his friend, Irish writer George Bernard Shaw. In 1925, Lawrence rejoined the RAF and two years later legally changed his last name to Shaw.

In 1927, an abridged version of his memoir was published and generated tremendous publicity, but the press was unable to locate Lawrence (he was posted to a base in India). In 1929, he returned to England and spent the next six years writing and working as an RAF mechanic. In 1932, his English translation of Homer's Odyssey was published under the name of T.E. Shaw. The Mint, a fictionalized account of Royal Air Force recruit training, was not published until 1955 because of its explicitness.

In February 1935, Lawrence was discharged from the RAF and returned to his simple cottage at Clouds Hill, Dorset. On May 13, he was critically injured while driving his motorcycle through the Dorset countryside. He had swerved to avoid two boys on bicycles. On May 19, he died at the hospital of his former RAF camp. All of Britain mourned his passing.

Unforgettable . . .

A Chart Topper in 1955 was "A Blossom Fell" by Nat King Cole as well as "In the Jailhouse Now" by Webb Pierce. What a contrast.

Bobby Short means Cabaret

1968 - Piano stylist and vocalist Bobby Short gained national attention as he presented a concert with Mabel Mercer at New York’s Town Hall. He had been the featured artist at the intimate Hotel Carlisle for years.

Jumping Frog Jubilee

The Pride of San Joaquin Valley was declared the winner of the first frog-jumping jubilee held in Calaveras County, CA on this day in 1928. The froggy jumped three feet, four inches, higher than 49 other frogs entered in the contest. The true beginnings of the frog jubilee date back to gold rush days, an event instigated by none other than Mark Twain.
The frogs are still hoppin’ each May at the Calaveras County Fair & Jumping Frog Jubilee. Frogs come from all over the world to compete in this, the road to top frog. Incidentally, frogs jump a lot more than three feet today, and for a fair amount of money, prizes and media exposure. The current record is held by Rosie the Ribiter from Santa Clara, CA. Rosie made the record-setting 21 feet, 5 3/4 inch jump in May of 1986.

A New Vision

The Honda Remix sports coupe concept that debuted in November at the annual Los Angeles Auto Show has a new vision. Honda hopes that this concept car will show off a design "language" that will inspire a new generation of Hondas and Acuras — sleeker, lower and more high-tech-looking, with sharply creased sheet metal softened by smoothly curved rooflines.

(Honda)

There's only one "Maxine"

"Grief gushed faster than oil"

In 1985 Bobby Ewing died on the season finale of Dallas on CBS-TV. “Grief gushed faster than oil,” said the critics on this five-hanky episode. Bobby, played by actor Patrick Duffy, died in a violent car explosion, but came back to life the following season (he was seen taking a shower, of all things, just as Victoria Principal, his TV wife, was about to step into the shower stall).

You'd better be ready . . .

... a batch of self-cleaning, electronically monitored, fully automatic toilets are now on their way to downtown Vancouver, and Toronto is next in the lineup....The so-called automatic public toilets, or APTs, not only flush automatically but also are fully disinfected and blown dry after each use. Each standalone unit houses one toilet, with a self-locking door and a timer that lets you know when the allotted time (usually 10 to 15 minutes) is about to end....And if you're not done when the time expires? Start waving to passersby, because the door will spring open anyway