Captain Erken has crew problems

19 May 2010 Houston, TX USA

Captain Janet Erken has many years of experience with crew problems. Here her brother runs them aground. As the Brits say, “He was made redundant.” (The Yanks say, “He was laid off or discharged from his position.”)

In David Heath, she has found excellent crew that seldom runs them on the beach. Perhaps because Captain Erken does most of the driving.

We are still in Houston, getting lots done, but there is lots to do.

Happy Summer,

Dave + Janet

Burial Plots in Seattle

Janet’s family owns five (5) adjacent, full size burial plots available at Evergreen-Washelli in Seattle at 11111 Aurora Ave. North. 

$3,000 each plot or best offer. I phoned Evergreen-Washelli on May 6, 2011 and they sell these for $5,750 each today. These are on the Evergreen side, section 1, Lot 152, graves 3, 4, 6, 7, & 8. You may buy 1, 2, 3, 4, or all 5 plots.

This is a chance to invest for the future, or they are ready immediately if desired. These are full size plots 40” by 9ft.

The perpetual care (care for the graves forever) comes included, pre-paid with this price. These are in a quiet, 150 year old part of the Evergreen Memorial Park [Flat Memorials], next to a beautiful tree. The location is convenient to drive to, yet well away from the busy Aurora Ave North. 

Janet’s parents and grand parents are there and we can highly recommend the quality of the staff and the ambiance of this full service facility. We were told that these full size plots may be used for a single casket each or up to 3 cremains urns in each plot. Please confirm the current rules and costs as the basic plot prices have doubled in the last 7 years. There is an additional cost for cremains. That is between you and Evergreen Washelli.

Contact by us at

svalegria

At

Hotmail dot com

for more info and to be certain that we have what you want.

Alegria on sticks

This is how it is done here. No jackstands.

Update Apr 20, 2010

Sorry for the gap in postings. We have been really busy. Yes, I know that you’ve heard that one many times before.

 

Janet & Dave fly to Houston on Apr 29 for an open ended visit to Dave’s mom. She has moved into an apartment and is selling her house and contents. We are going to be helping her with that.

 

She is well and just downsizing to an easier place to live.

 

Alegría is hauled out at Finike and will be until Apr 1, 2011. We don’t expect to be in Houston nearly that long, but want to do some land travel upon our return and think that she will be safer on the hard. Especially in the sometimes stormy Winters.

 

A quotable quote heard here in the haulout yard. “A walk through a haulout yard is a lot like going to a topless bar. You get to see interesting things that you can’t normally see.”

 

How true. We are amazed at the diversity of boat designs, especially the underwater part.

 

Keep in touch through email. The best is our gmail account. Put alegria1976 in front of the at sign.

 

Dave & Janet

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The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.

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Aerial Photos of Turkey

This was sent to us by the very nice staff at our present Marina. If you have a few minutes and a medium to fast connection, we encourage you to click on the link and see some National Geographic quality, low altitude, photos of a tiny fraction of the cool places in Turkey.

You may notice that the text below is oddly phrased. It is translated from Turkish, so you need to ‘read between the lines’ or try to see what the original thought probably was. That is a recurring problem with changing languages.

But, the photos speak all languages.

We (Dave & Janet) are well and hurrying to get as many things as we can, done before flying back to Istanbul on Feb 2. So, I will stop writing and get back to work, but I wanted you to see these photos. If you find other cool stuff about Turkey online, please pass it on to us.

Cheers,

Dave & Janet

 

 

Turkiye from 1000 feet 

Aerial Photos by Alp Alper 

http://www.alpalper.com/kitap/kitap.html

“What a pity! There’s no time to save the future
Even if we think about it from now on or don’t think about it
Furthermore it neither takes away from nor adds to our way of living
Not a thing! Because whatever there is in us for the future
It’s as if this is a dream, the decorating of life”
[The Park of the Hopeless / Edip CANSEVER]

To carry the past to the future
The above lines of Edip Cansever come immediately to my mind,whenever past and future are mentioned .The idea that there is no time left to save the future and that we do not even think about it, captures me and takes me to “The Park of the Hopeless.” But if such a beautiful poem has been written, it means that the past didn’t go by in vain and there is still time to save the future; it has to be, I think.

Prior to starting this project my friends who volunteered for this project and I were deeply concerned about all the historical destruction carried out in the name of avarice, the earthquakes, the smuggling of historical works, forest fires that hurt us inside when tracking them. All of these were only a few of the reasons that “triggered” the feeling that “It’s necessary to do something.” Therefore, we wanted to do such things to document earlier beauties, before the valuable things that we possess are destroyed. Let us offer them to future generations and let us give strength to their spirits in the name of protecting them…

The vulgar and thoughtless consumption of the bountiful Anatolian lands that was the cradle of civilization for centuries, especially began in the 1980s and increased due to wrong policies encouraging plunder. Ugly, concrete buildings rise as touristic facilities and summer home complexes, replacing the beautiful green texture of shoreline… Plenty of mistakes were unconsciously done during the process of restoration… The notion of “short-term profit” has consumed not only our future but also our children’s future. Neither the screams of trees that have been cut down nor the tears of the living in their habitat can stop the destruction and plunder of our natural wealth. ANNIHILATION! That was the sole stimulating force that made us take some action.

One of the first firmans (command) that Fatih Sultan Mehmet issued after he entered Istanbul says, “The head of the person who cuts off something young is to be cut off.” Moreover, Evliya Ηelebi wrote in his Travel Book, “A squirrel that took to the road from Van reached the Gulf of Iskenderun jumping from one oak tree to another without touching the ground.”. Whereas, in Turkey every year agricultural areas lose 500 million tons and throughout the whole country in general 1.4 billion tons of valuable top soil through erosion. According to the data of the Forestry General Directorate of 2005, from 1937 until 2005 as a result of 77,785 forest fires some one million 564 thousand hectares of forested area have been destroyed by fire and continue to be destroyed with every passing day.

The road taken to live Anatolia
Anatolia is known as the place where the sun and civilizations were born and where the oldest traces of man were on the Konya Plain from the Paleolithic (Stone) Age; there is the geography of its civilizations in which large empires have left their mark from the Great King Hattusili to Alexander the Great, from Alaattin Keykubat to Suleyman the Magnificent. Anatolia is a geography that has given shelter to hundreds of valuable scientists, architects and artists on its bountiful soil, of importance mystically and religiously, and has written its name on all the important roads of life from the Silk Road to the Royal Road where historic and religious roads intersect.

We set off on the road to experience step by step, swallow by swallow, the country of the mosaics that exist today sheltered in all Anatolia’s hundreds of years of colors. Not only seeing it in photographs or in the media but feeling it and going and touching it in its place… In doing this we chose what was difficult and what hadn’t been done until today. With the passion for the trip and discovery wrapped in time and place we made the effort to be able to reflect the difficulty of documenting the last beauties of Anatolia that had come down to our day.

According to the situation budget and land permitting, we depicted the beauties of Anatolia from the air and from a “deified” point of view. Some times while the first light of the morning and the sun were being born with a colored balloon… Sometimes with paragliding or a microlight giving the wings to the wind from a high summit and sometimes with a helicopter… In brief we tried to fly by every type of means that could fly and came to mind.Throughout the flight sometimes we found ourselves on the flame-colored wing of a flamingo, sometimes we found ourselves on the summit of Ararat, the mountain of legends. The magnificent volcano that once upon a time struck fear in Anatolia is dormant but is ready in its heart to explode at any moment. Or in the heart of the verdant green Black Sea meadows where there are hidden, lonely monasteries on the lands. One by one we discovered Anatolia anew. Feeling the wind in our hearts and on our faces, flying in the mountains and over the plains and the seas of Turkey like a bird with excitement and love. With a great hope that was always in our hands and in our hearts.

Holding tightly to our project more and more by seeing all those who believed in us clasping the hand of those who stretched them out to us. As the days and months went by, we advanced step by step. When we looked behind we felt pride in what we had succeeded so far.

 

Dec 6 update

Remember Pearl Harbor tomorrow.

Well, we are enjoying our time in Houston. Even with the record
breaking snow fall on Friday.

But we have been very busy. As usual, we had a several page shopping
list. Things that are usually not available, but sometimes just too
expensive outside the US. Yes, some things are cheaper in the US. For
example, computers, and Dave's 5.8 year old Dells needed replacing. He
loved Dells for many years, but he had so many identical hardware
failures on his 2 identical Precision M60s that he was looking forward
to some new and reliable computers.

The M60s were very high end computers and only very recently eclipsed
in hardware capability, but they had lots of parts fail, motherboards,
screens, video cards, etc, and Dave was very glad that he had the
"International Fix Anything that Breaks" warranty, but it expired in
Jan 2009 and several high dollar items failed after. Even though his
credit card added a year of warranty, it is a major hassle to get the
parts sent to Turkey. One of the downsides of travel.

But, the new Dell computers that Dave was interested in had IT experts
that buy 50 or 100 computers for big companies writing in the feedback
columns that they were seeing high failures, unlike the dependable
Inspiron models they had been buying for years.

Dave took this to mean that Dell cannot be trusted until they have
several years of "good grades." So, now he had to look at all of the
countless laptops out there today. Ugh! What a long job.

Well, he recently chose an ASUS UL50Vt that says that it has 12 hr
battery life due many ingenious power saving tricks. Since the battery
has less capacity than his M60s, we hope that this means that when we
are sailing it will use much, much less electricity. It also has a
cool feature that it recognizes Dave when he sits down in front of it.
It logs him in without him having to touch the computer or enter
passwords. Tre Cool!

The bad news so far is that ASUS included a lot of perhaps interesting
software, but has nearly NO documentation, so it is a guessing game as
to how these things work or even what they are for. Grrrrrrr! Dell was
prolific with excellent documentation and Dave has high documentation
standards as a result.

Time will tell how the old software will work on Window 7 Pro 64 bit
computers, But the new computers cost so much less than any one of the
last 4 computers that he has had, so he could spend a little on
software and still be way ahead. The UL50Vt seems to be a good to very
good laptop with an outstanding battery life and super low power
consumption. (Time will tell if that claim is correct.)

His other new computer is a Hewlett Packard dv6t Quad. That means that
in a manner of speaking that it has 4 CPUs or 'brains' and allows
'hyperthreading' so that it can do several things at once, IF the
software is smart enough to figure that out. It was on sale the day
Dave bought it and even though he'd already decided what he wanted, it
was a pleasant surprise to get over $400 off and several free upgrades
to features that Dave would not have gotten, but when they are free,
why not.

Tip: Once you have narrowed the choices to a few models, do a Goggle on

dv6t rebate

But use your computer name instead of dv6t. There was a $200 off
coupon, just for the asking. He found it totally by accident, but what
a nice surprise!

Dave is somewhat dubious about that 4 things at once stuff, but thinks
that it is a nearly state of the art computer that will be able to do
anything that he needs for the next several years and hold it's value
well. But, when anyone can get a laptop for under $300 that is
probably fine for the main uses, perhaps in 3 years we will switch to
low end computers. The jury is out on that one.

Sorry to drag on about this. Can you tell that Dave wrote it??? Happy Holidays.

Turkey is rich in history and pre-history

Click the photo if you want see it full size. The little “vaportrails” above the Blue Mosque, in Istanbul are because it is a time exposure and there were birds flying over it.




Many say that the area that is now Turkey is the birthplace of cheese, butter, olive oil, tortillas, money in the form of gold coins, mosaics and similar art forms.

Janet and I thought it humorous that from Houston to Baltimore, most cities that we past were proud to be “America’s Second Largest Seaport”. One hopes that they each used a different way to measure and not just imagination. But, Turkey has some strong evidence for all of these claims. For example, some mosaics here are much older that the Roman Civilization.

We know that the Romans discovered cherry trees here and spread them around the world. The tulip was first raised here and spread by the Dutch.

Turkey and the Tigris, Euphrates valleys are widely thought to be the cradle of Western civilization.
Modern Turkey is certainly the location of Göbeklitepe, which is a large area of stones that appear to have been large buildings, but built about 12,000 years ago BP (before present) or 10,000 BCE or BC. That is 7,000 years before the Pyramids! That is thousands of years before most scientists thought our ancestors stopped being hunter gatherers and invented towns that eventually grew into cities. There have been some arguments over this site.

This is not a collection of Teepees or Yurts. The largest stone is 25 tons and most are covered with excellent art in the form of carved animals. “They” estimate at least 2,000 men were needed to build it. “They” fail to mention how many women. At some time, perhaps 10,000 or more years ago, it was buried which caused it to be very well preserved.

The Turks proud of this, but they are also quick to point out that the “Turkish People” really came from Mongolia in about the year 1000. (This conquest/migration seems to have been very complicated and is somewhat in dispute as to exactly how many people and when each came, some came in about 700, but the big pushes were later (I think) so let’s just say “around 1000 to 1100”). The Byzantine Empire was being conquered and replaced. Some say that the Crusades were started by one group of Turks that were a superb cavalry that supported themselves through conquest of new lands. They kept moving west until the Franks had to mass a major counter attack. Once the Franks were rolling east, they eventually captured Jerusalem.

That is a horrible over simplification of a very long and complicated time of warfare and religion. I suppose that, whenever possible, the victor re-wrote the history and “history” has been used as a propaganda tool for thousands of years. So keep an open mind and expect the unexpected.

If you get a very comfortable chair and Wikipedia and Google, you can learn a lot and get very confused. By the way, they say that DNA research has added to, rather than lessened the confusion.

I think it safe to say that for at least 12,000 years and probably for hundreds of thousands of years Turkey and the Middle East have been in frequent flux. Sort of like today.

We find the Turkish people to be very nice. The stereotypes of the Islamic or Middle Eastern peoples are, as with most stereotypes, way off the mark.

I have to get back to packing for our trip,

Dave & Janet