Saturday, August 15, 2009 - Red Rock, East Chatham NY
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The Midnight Striper, August 15, 2009
I spent last night in the Walmart parking lot in Pittsfield MA. About midnight I awoke to the sound of a small engine accelerating and decelerating. Strange. I look out and here's a guy on a beat up old articulated garden tractor with a striping machine hanging out front with a couple headlights carefully aimed just ahead of it. He's out there striping the parking lot. Fast. He'd slow a bit - stripe a line - then accelerate across to the next line, brake sharply and stripe the next line. Back and forth across the lot. He was done in no time flat and put nary a stripe on my rig. Cool.
BTW, that's a Crane & Co papermill steaming in the background - I wonder if that's where Crane makes currency paper.
Night camp
On my property off Less Traveled Road - The Home Place, Red Rock, East Chatham NY
- I used to camp in a few locations on what little I had left of the family farm
- In the driveway by the house
- Across the road where the barn once stood
- On the 20 acre piece off Less Traveled Road
- Now, with the kind support of the friends who now own the place, I camp across the road where the barn once stood.
- Verizon cell phone service - Terrible, barely usable with an amplifier
- Verizon EVDO service - Terrible, barely usable with an amplifier
- Find other references to Home Place
- List the nights I've camped here
- Check the weather here
Heliograph routes of the 1890 Practice
The date was May 15th, 1890, and the Army's Department of Arizona had just completed a major heliograph practice; it was, in fact, the largest the world had ever seen. I call it the "Volkmar Practice", after the man responsible for it, Col. Wm. J. Volkmar, the Assistant Adjutant General and Chief Signal Officer for the Department of Arizona. Although the practice lasted only sixteen days, preparations for it took months of reconnaissance and preparation. Involved in the long range signaling maneuvers were twenty-five heliograph stations stretching from Whipple Barracks near Prescott to Fort Stanton near Ruidoso, New Mexico. My guess is that close to two hundred men were involved, both cavalry and infantry.