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Special NOTE: On Feb. 8, 2012 I attached a comment, readable & easily discoverable on Page 2 of the comments below, that details the vast corporatist scheme, fronted by Jeb Bush, financed in part with hundreds of millions from Rupert Murdoch (FOX nooze), to privatize American public education & reduce it to 'virtual' schools - not to improve anything (as national & international educational research studies clearly show), but rather to become the final recipients of the taxes people pay so that they can skim huge profits off of the top while providing grotesquely inferior services & lots of lying propaganda to keep the public bamboozled. I beg everyone to read the report.
The McGuffey's Ecclectic Spelling Book was published in 1879.
Raymond Cyrus Hoiles (1878-1970) founded Freedom Communications, a newspaper publishing & broadcasting company that has never hesitated to shape the news to fit right wing ideology. When Hoiles was alive & roaring I lived in Orange County, California, home of the equally right wing Walt Disney & Walter Knott, & was frequently compelled to suffer people who agreed with Hoiles' constantly editorialized insistence that public education was a form of theft & communism that must at once be got rid of. Hoiles was motivated by his fundamentalist Christian persuasions, & quite serious. We should restrain our laughter at the abysmal stupidity of his example, because in many ways he & people like him won & are still winning control of public education. - To introduce the article below, I'll say a little about the Christian strategy.
For many years Orange County's teachers worked under a Draconian ruling that forbade the teaching of values. There is no way around the fact, however, that the statement, "Values may not be taught," is itself a value statement belonging to a class of propositions known as Epimenidean Paradoxes. A comparably illustrative sentence would be, "This is not a sentence." Or, a favorite of the best hypnotists, used when addressing a resistant subject, "Do not obey any instruction which I give you."
What, then, was intended by those who created the paradoxical Orange County law? Well, if any teacher dared to say or imply something that would be disagreeable to any person whose beliefs began & ended with church, flag & free-for-all capitalism, then that teacher could be charged with teaching values & be suspended. One family friend, a young man teaching at an elementary school in Anaheim, was charged, hounded, publicly disgraced, threatened with death & discharged from his post, immediately after which he died from a heart attack. The case was depicted in Life Magazine. His only crime was that he was Jewish. His wife, also a teacher, remained bereft & embittered the rest of her long life.
These people became increasingly invisible over time, largely by devising ever more clever ways for gaining control of both education policy & the public dialogue about education.
Ralph Reed, working for Pat Robertson & the Christian Coalition, devised the "stealth agenda" to place fundamentalists in every local school board in America. The plan helped select & fund candidates, who in accord with Reed's instructions never mentioned their religion or religious connections when campaigning for office. In 1983 Reed rigged an election at his university - he got started early, in other words. Recently we learned that Mr. Reed & Jack Abramoff were associate crooks. The revelation forced Reed to abandon his run to become the lieutenant governor of Georgia. Mr. Reed will not disappear, however. He remains a darling of the far Christian right, & owns Century Strategies, a dirty-tricks political consulting & lobbying organization. In 1999 Karl Rove got reed a nice contract with Enron, which was paying Reed $30,000 per month. And guess who recently went to Georgia to try to save poor Reed? Rudy Giuliani, who has the hots to be the next U.S. president & is pandering to the Christians so he can be their new burning Bush.
Stealthiness did not go away when the Christian Coalition folded & Reed went off on his own to rig elections for big bucks. Rather, the stealth moved into policy matters. For instance, all the phony propaganda claiming religious & private education is more successful, creating the excuse to promote vouchers (for which the motives are both religious & racist). Or, most recently, Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, which was sought by the Christians not because they believed all the testing of students would lead to improved education, but rather because they wanted teachers to be made too busy preparing students for endless tests about facts to find time to do the great evil thing, which is the teaching of concepts. Teaching concepts leads to teaching logic, scientific & other academic methodologies which by their nature instill respect for critical - read, skeptical - thinking. Dogmatists, advertisers & con men have equal cause to fear skepticism.
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From: Truthdig.com
Taking Back Our Schools--and Fixing Them
Full text with links: www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060425_taking_back_our_sch...
Posted on Apr. 25, 2006
By Wellford Wilms
The recent news reported in The New York Times that schools are throwing out science, social studies and art to make time for drilling students in remedial math and reading is a sign of things gone terribly wrong. Former New York State Commissioner of Education Thomas Sobol told the Times that narrowing education to just math and reading would be akin to restricting violin students to playing scales day after day. “They’d lose their zest for music.” But most schools that serve poor populations, like those in Cuero, Texas, are squeezed to meet federal math and reading standards. Cuero Superintendent Henry Lind told the paper, “When you have so many hours per day and you’re behind in some area that’s being hammered on, you have to work on that.”
But by the looks of things, hammering students for higher test scores isn’t making much of a difference. Most students have already lost their zest for learning. How do we know? In Los Angeles, upwards of 50% of Latino and African American students never finish high school. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve been a professor of education at UCLA for more than 25 years and am convinced that despite the fads that come and go, nothing has put a dent in the public schools’ failure to educate inner-city children. In fact, things are getting worse. But I am also convinced that we’ve been looking in the wrong places for solutions. My own research across a wide array of organizations—corporations, trade unions, public schools, colleges, teacher unions and police agencies—suggests another way of looking at the problem and that solutions will come from a new direction.
This essay is a proposition—one that I hope will spark a lively debate among Truthdig readers and inform policy leaders. Future essays will examine Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign to take over the public schools, analyze whether teacher unions can be a force for productive change, and expose promising ways to rebuild public investment in the schools.
Let’s start with Jonathan Kozol’s new book, “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.” It is a scathing indictment of American social policy that banned racial segregation in public schools in 1955 and then turned a blind eye to its implementation. Today, Kozol says, schools are more segregated than ever. But he fails to explain why resegregation has occurred. Because Kozol overlooks the root causes of the problem, his solutions—spending more money on dysfunctional schools and wishing for a social mandate to desegregate the schools—miss the point.
To be sure the problems are undeniable. Kozol examines the appalling condition of big-city schools. In school after school we see children who are brimming with potential but who are walled off from the larger society and abandoned by the schools. Most middle-class white Americans simply cannot comprehend the horrid schools that Kozol describes. Ceilings fall in, toilets are filthy, libraries, music and arts have been stripped away. Teachers in these schools, who are paid 40% less than teachers in the suburbs, are forced to teach “scripted” lessons that are written for children who are deemed incapable of learning.
It is all part of the latest reform pushed by the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind initiative, a reform aimed at the singular pursuit of increasing test scores. Learning has been stripped of its intrinsic meaning and reduced to simplistic steps—“Authentic Writing,” “Active Listening,” “Accountable Talk”—that hamper teachers in teaching anything but how to take a test. Behind it all is an attempt to impose control, much as mass production techniques were used a century ago, to standardize instruction to fit new immigrants to the system.
Meanwhile, millions of children are failing. In nearly half of the high schools in America’s 100 largest districts, fewer than 50% of students graduate in four years. Most of these students are from poor Latino and African-American families. And from 1993 to 2000 the number of failing schools has mushroomed by 75%. Mayor Villaraigosa calls Los Angeles’ high dropout rates “numbers that should put a chill down your spine.”
The reasons, Kozol argues, are lack of money and racial discrimination that produce inferior and segregated schools. No doubt this is partly true. We have tried to desegregate the schools for a half-century and failed. Middle-class white parents have voted for individual freedom with their feet, enrolling their children in private schools, leaving the public schools more segregated than ever. The same is true for middle-class black families. Gail Foster, an educator who has studied black independent schools, was quoted in 2004 in The New York Times as saying: “Many of the most empowered parents and families are removing their children. What’s left, in even working-class communities, are schools filled with the least empowered families. Families with the least parent involvement to offer, families with the least help with homework to offer. There’s been a continual outflow for at least 10 years, and it isn’t stopping now.”
More money is not the answer either. Kozol points to wide disparities in educational expenditures ranging from $11,700 per student in New York City to $22,000 in suburban Manhasset. Disturbing as that is, study after study shows that equalizing money does not necessarily equalize learning.
In 1966, sociologist James Coleman conducted the most extensive study ever made of desegregating education and found that what mattered most in students’ learning was the economic status of their peers rather than the racial makeup of the school. He also found that school funding was not closely related to students’ achievement—their families’ economic status was far more predictive. Coleman’s findings were controversial and led to a bitter debate, but they have been replicated many times. Daniel Patrick Moynihan summed it up best when he commented shortly after Coleman’s groundbreaking study, “We should begin to see that the underlying reality is not race but social class.”
Since social class matters because money follows privilege, and since desegregation will take generations to eradicate, what can be done now? Are poor children doomed to attend grossly inadequate schools? Surely not. We must find ways to remove the influences that have crippled the schools. Money must be diverted from bloated bureaucracies that snuff out innovation. Instead it must go directly to schools where principals and teachers can influence what is taught and what children learn, and help bring parents back into the fold. Otherwise, it is going down a rat hole.
Parents have a significant role to play in their children’s education, but their voices have been largely silenced. Over the last 40 years, we have witnessed the decline of civic involvement and the growing dominance of self-interest over the greater good, a social deterioration that sociologist Robert Putnam calls “hollowing out” in his 2000 book “Bowling Alone.” One result, as the old saying goes, is that “the rich get richer” and the poor fall ever further behind in crumbling schools.
Over the last 25 years, education in general has been taken from ordinary citizens and teachers by politicians, administrators, union leaders, publishers, test makers, consultants, university professors, hardware and software developers and the media, each playing its part in keeping alive the illusion of reform. All in all, this $1-trillion industry has replaced the common interest, and no one, it seems, can muster the will to rein it in.
Local control is only a dim memory. Decisions now come from the top—from the federal and state governments, school boards and high-level administrators who have little knowledge of what goes on in the classroom. Teachers are left out of these decisions, carrying on the best they can, safe in the assumption that the newest fad, like those before it, will blow over. Parents are all but forgotten.
While command-and-control management may seem to produce results in the short run, it strips schools of the capacity to develop the stable leadership that is necessary to sustain success. Principals are besieged with demands from district offices and from the educational fads that emanate from publishers and university researchers. Many principals know that they put their careers in peril unless they do what their bosses want. One elementary school principal told me, “District directives undermine our own abilities to think for ourselves, to believe in what we see and know.” When schools discover something that works, it is rarely sustained because they lack authority or stable leadership.
In 1969 when I worked for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, I monitored the schools in impoverished Ocean Hill-Brownsville in New York City. The local school board hired a charismatic superintendent, who fired incompetent teachers and hired young and idealistic ones. The firings set the local board at odds with the huge teachers’ union, which demanded due process for the fired teachers. The superintendent, Rhody McCoy, was convinced that good teachers had to respect the children they taught. He put it in plain words: “If you’re convinced that this kid is doomed by nature or by something else to lead a shrunken and curtailed life, then you’re basically incompetent to teach that child.” The experiment worked. Observing classrooms left no doubt in my mind that students were learning. Eager first-graders sat attentively on the floor in semicircles shouting out answers to fraction problems and reading aloud. The schools buzzed with excitement as parent helpers streamed in and out of classrooms. But in a bitter power struggle the board seized authority and the experiment ended.
Years later, in 1985, Deborah Meier, a passionate educator who founded Harlem’s Central Park East Secondary School, achieved stunning successes that led the school to be celebrated as a model alternative school in Time magazine. But it could not be sustained beyond Meier’s unique leadership. Today, 10 years after Meier left, a respected children’s advocacy group, Insideschools and Advocates for Children, reports that the Harlem school “…has fallen on hard times in recent years with rapid staff turnover, low staff morale and uneven discipline.”
In risk-averse environments like public schools, few principals will stick out their necks, because they don’t want to buck the bosses downtown. Courageous and visionary principals like Rhody McCoy and Deborah Meier keep coming. But charismatic leadership is no match for heavy-handed district management, which always wins out.
Take Foshay Learning Center in Los Angeles, for example. In 1989, Howard Lappin took over a failing middle school. With the help of teachers and an infusion of money, Lappin wrested control from the district and transformed Foshay. The school expanded into a K-12 “learning center” and became largely autonomous of the district’s bureaucratic requirements. Teachers and administrators decided who would be hired and what would be taught. Foshay succeeded, and in 2000 its high school was selected by Newsweek as one of the 100 best in America. But in 2001 Lappin retired, and his unique leadership was lost. Today Foshay is being threatened with sanctions by the district and the county because gains in students’ test scores have stalled. As the school has fallen under the district’s “one-size-fits all” bureaucratic requirements, the impact has been to undermine the once vibrant teacher leadership that made the school so enviable.
The problem with public education is not with the teachers, or with the children, but the way we organize the schools. Probably the greatest casualties are teachers themselves, who are forced to accept decisions by authorities about teaching that they know to be nonsense. One professor interviewed by Kozol said that forcing an absurdity on teachers teaches something: acquiescence. For example, in study after study, teachers report that relying on test scores as sole marks of student achievement and teaching scripted lessons destroy students’ natural love of learning. And such practices also erode teachers’ professional authority, which is fundamental to student learning.
Why is it so hard to foster the only kind of reform that really works, which is right in the schoolhouse? Because politicians, school board members and administrators are under intense pressure to produce immediate results, i.e., higher and higher test scores—a goal that is pursued through directives from districts with little input of principals, teachers and parents. Superintendents serve at the pleasure of school boards, and most board members are elected or appointed and have limited terms of office. As test scores have become the measure of educational quality, everyone is under immense pressure to show fast results or be turned out.
No wonder that school boards hire superintendents who promise to deliver quick results. But few do. Superintendents last on average only three or four years. Many are thwarted by outmoded bureaucracies that were designed a century ago using top-down control practiced in American industry to mass-produce learning. Within these organizations, power has quietly accumulated, making them all but impervious to outside influence. Sid Thompson, former superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, told me: “Trying to change the district is like trying to change the direction of a fast-moving freight train. You might knock it off course for a moment, but before you know it it’s rattling right down the tracks again.”
Frustration and suspicion about who might emerge from the shadows to sabotage their plans often lead superintendents to jealously guard their power. In 2002, Day Higuchi, then president of United Teachers Los Angeles, the Los Angeles teacher union, had high hopes for working with the school district’s new “can-do” superintendent, Roy Romer. Higuchi hoped that Romer would endorse a new union initiative called Lesson Study, a plan to help teachers work collectively to improve classroom lessons. At a breakfast meeting that I attended, Higuchi presented Romer with an invitation to work with the union to develop and spread Lesson Study across the district. When Higuchi finished, Romer flipped over his paper placemat and with a red felt pen drew a box with an S in it. “That’s me,” he said. Beneath he drew 11 boxes with smaller s’s in them, representing the 11 local superintendents, and below that, a number of small boxes with roofs, representing schools and teachers. Then, pulling his face near to Higuchi’s, he drew bold red arrows pointing downward from the top. Romer jabbed his pen in the air to accentuate each word: “You cannot usurp my authority to manage this district!” It was a dumbfounding moment, one that revealed the true underside of the use of power. Here was a chance for a new superintendent to forge a small but significant step with the union, but Romer, who recently announced his resignation, explained that he was “in a hurry.” He clearly had little time for ideas that were at odds with his own. In the end his refusal to work with the union undermined the possibility of creating a broader base of power that could transcend self-interest.
Nor are the unions exempt from self-interest. A few years ago I helped establish a national group of union presidents called TURN (Teacher Union Reform Network) who were dedicated to remaking their unions as forces to improve education. One way was to cooperate with administrators and encourage teachers to use their classroom know-how to redesign teaching at the schoolhouse. But hostility and mistrust run deep. The union leaders became nervous, fearing that fellow unionists would attack them for “collaborating” with the enemy and that if the effort to collaborate failed they would share the blame. Don Watley, president of the New Mexico Federation of Educational Employees, commented: “It’s like the Normandy landing. We’ve got the best troops in the world. We’ve got the best officers in the world. And we’ve got the best equipment in the world. But at 0800 when we hit the beach half of us are going to get killed!” Sadly, in the years to come, the ingrained mistrust, and the unpredictable dance of union politics, prevented these unionists from becoming a positive force in educational reform. Instead, they have been reduced to stockpiling power, much as the Soviets and Americans stockpiled nuclear weapons during the Cold War, to oppose any hostile moves the other side might make.
So what can be done to break the standoff between teacher unions and districts? How can teachers’ professional authority be restored? How can parents be awakened and brought back into the fold? Experience shows that it can be done. Schools such as Harlem’s Central Park East Secondary, Los Angeles’ Foshay Learning Center, those in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, and many others attest to the fact that schools can be made into safe places where children learn. Sustaining them is the hard part.
There is little doubt that trying to build good schools with command-and-control management doesn’t work. School boards, superintendents and union officials need to clear the obstacles—unnecessary bureaucratic requirements and outmoded work rules—to make innovation at the schoolhouse possible. These top-level educational leaders also must make resources available to support new ways of teaching. Jonathan Kozol has it right. Teaching is the only reform that counts and it can be done only at the schoolhouse by teachers, principals, parents and students working together.
Turning school districts upside down will also mean turning a century of top-down management on its head. But where is such bold leadership to be found? One promising place is among big-city mayors. But they must resist trying to take over the schools, as they did in New York, Chicago and Boston with mixed results at best. Instead, popular mayors could use their influence and visibility to tell the truth about the condition of education and to build a popular consensus about how change must occur.
In the next essay I am going to examine what mayors can do. Waiting for the schools to be saved by someone else is nonsense. Only concerted local action offers a chance. Doubters should recall Margaret Mead’s observation: “Never doubt that a small group of concerned people can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
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#AbFav_AUTUMN_SEASON
#AbFav_PHOTOSTORY
... For colder weather, stew, soup, sauces, anything hot to warm us.
MINI VEG, MAXI FOOD.
All mini vegetables, broccoli stems, tomatoes, chestnut mushroom, spring onions (no, not leeks), maize, carrot, a pepper and a mini courgette...
I do not photograph my food in the kitchen, but in the studio, under special conditions and set-up, but NO tricks.
Bon Appétit!
I wish you all the very best and thank you for all your kind words, time, comments, invites, faves and Awards.
Very much appreciated. M, (*_*)
For more: www.indigo2photography.com
IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN (BY LAW!!!) TO USE ANY OF MY image or TEXT on websites, blogs or any other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved
mini, vegetables, FOOD, broccoli-stems, chestnut, mushroom, onions, maize, carrot, pepper, courgette, studio, lighting, design, colour, black-background, square, magda indigo
arch | ɑːtʃ |
noun
a curved symmetrical structure spanning an opening and typically supporting the weight of a bridge, roof, or wall above it.
• an arch forming a monument or ornamental feature: a triumphal arch.
Napoleonic era fort, built to protect Venice from attack by Austria, just fifteen minutes walk from Punta Sabbioni Di Venezia, Italia, now in a wonderful abandoned state of decay
I couldn't resist this shot, actually my lens was to large to get anything else the plus was the water droplet on the end of the beak, please view large for detail.
Happy Valentine's Day!
Didn't want to do anything too obviously related to Valentine's Day, but have been dying to try a shot with food colouring for ages, and Tesco finally delivered some with my order last night so I decided to try using two colours - not so easy when you're on your own, trying to pour two colours AND take photos that are in focus (not to mention that at 40+1, getting down onto the floor to take the photo was a challenge in itself...)
Anyway, quite pleased with this in the end (I like how the black almost looks like it's reaching out to the red) - will definitely be trying it again sometime.
14.02.09
Last night I stopped at the pond and took Ernie and friends some cracked corn. All the usuals appeared. But no Ernie. At first I didn't think anything of it, sometimes he goes off to nap. The longer I sat there the more I worried. Ernie never leaves the pond. He may hide, but he never leaves.
The rival male and female were chasing off Ernie's male and female as well as others. I fear the worst. I walked around looking for him, hoping he decided to nap somewhere. I didn't see him. I called for him as well, no Ernie.
I went back out a short while ago. No sign of Ernie anywhere. I emailed the game warden to see if anyone reported an injured or dead duck and included a photo.
Next, I will post a few signs out there. I hope that he was rescued if injured. I fear the worst.
Think good thoughts for our Ernie. Last seen by me Wednesday, May 8th.
So this is for Week 3 of 52 Weeks!
The song I chose was "Granade" by Bruno Mars! The lyrics;
"But darling I’ll still catch a grenade for ya
Throw my hand on a blade for ya,
I’d jump in front of a train for ya,
You know I'd do anything for ya"
Currently one of my most listened to tracks, so the choise was easy! I think the photo itself is pretty self explanatory!
Yes those are scrabble letters, love that game! And this is Scarva station, only about 10min from where I live and probobally only get about 6 trains a day, so was perfect :) Enjoy!
Shot on Saint Marks and Avenue A (NY, NY)
I tend to feel worse for the old and unable but I know hard times affect everyone.
I think my friends will know who I borrowed these from ;-))
365#62
7DOS shoot anything
Compositionally Challenged - rule of odds
Indiana Jones likes to listen to "Anything Goes" by Cole Porter and John Williams from the 1984 album Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom.
This image is straight out of the camera: no tweaking, no color processing, no cropping, no nothing.
Dedicated to Devin Powell.
Submitted to the Flickr group 7 Days of Shooting.
Part of my Playing A Little Vinyl series.
Shot for Active Assignment Weekly, theme "Anything goes".
WIT
I love to go out for long walks with the dog, camera with me, hoping to see something special on the way. That is not always easy, in my totally cultivated country nature is struggling with it's existence.
Nevertheless I like to shoot birds, and especially in a non-standard fashion.
What I like to do is develop my knowledge of the behaviour of birds, and be able to predict their movements so that I can anticipate more.
This Buzzard was harassed by two Crows and decided to take off to a more quiet place. I like the movement of its wings and the look over the shoulder.
In post noting special.
Re-uploaded again with its very interesting history by Karl E. Hayes
Otter 233 was delivered to the United States Army on 12 February 1958 with serial 57-6114 (tail number 76114). It was one of sixteen Army Otters flown from Downsview to Addison, Texas for work on them by Collins Radio Corporation, to equip them for service overseas. Its initial unit allocation is unknown but it did serve in Europe, and was noted undergoing overhaul at the SABCA plant at Gosseleis near Brussels (who performed maintenance on US Army aircraft) during September 1960. By January 1962 it had joined the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), Italy based at Rome’s Ciampino Airport. It flew alongside a USAF C-47 which was also serving with the MAAG Flight.
Kenneth Ketzler flew the Otter. Apart from trips to Brienne-le-Chateau, France for maintenance, all his flying was within Italy, often visiting Italian military bases where US supplied helicopters were being introduced and MAAG personnel were working with Italian Army aviation units on these helicopters. There were also VIP flights and personnel transportation, which took the Otter all over Italy, from the mountains in the north down to the Mediterranean. As he recalls: “Ice seemed to cause me more concern than anything else. I especially remember several times flying IFR between Florence and Bologna at the lowest altitude of 12,000 feet and seeing ice forming on the wings. Flying over large bodies of water on one engine is not exactly my cup of tea. Seemed like the engine always ran rough whenever there was a trip to the islands of Sicily or Sardinia”.
76114 continued in service with MAAG Italy until February 1966, when it headed south to a new posting with the United States Mapping Mission to Ethiopia, based at the “old airport” at Addis Ababa. For this tasking the Otter was re-painted from the standard olive drab it had flown in while in Italy to the white/red colour scheme used by Army aircraft on survey work. It joined some Beavers with the Mapping Mission (76143 and 82026), a Douglas C-47 (17203) and UH-1B Huey helicopters, all of which were engaged in a topographic survey of Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Army had received some Otters under a Military Air Program and they were also based at the same airfield, making it quite an important Otter base.
The Otter was noted there in June 1969, just prior to its long flight north to Coleman Barracks, Mannheim, Germany from where it was transported to the Sharpe Army Depot, Stockton, California where it arrived in August 1969. After overhaul at the Depot it was assigned in March 1970 to the Aviation Section at Fort Ord, California used as a maintenance support aircraft. It remained in service at Fort Ord until June 1975 when its Army career came to an end. The Otter was transferred to the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) on 30 June 1975, registered that day as N5325G, and flown from Fort Ord north to Boeing Field, Seattle where Foreign & Domestic Enterprises prepared the Otter for service with the CAP. This was the company of Lloyd Rekow, who specialised in Otters. That master Otter rebuilder Harold Hansen was also involved. The Otter was surveyed on arrival at Boeing Field and found to be in excellent condition. Little work was required and on 16 July 1975 it received its Certificate of Airworthiness, with total airframe time of 3,776 hours. It was painted into an unusual colour scheme of blue top with white and red undersides and was noted as such at Boeing Field during August 1975.
Its service with the CAP lasted little more than a year and by Bill of Sale 19 November 1976 it was sold to Eagle Aviation Inc., aircraft dealers of Jones-Riverside Airport, Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was sold on for $89,500 by Bill of Sale dated 2 January 1977 to Travelair Taxi Inc., doing business as Island Airlines of Port Clinton, Ohio. When it arrived at its new base at Port Clinton it was painted in a garish red, white and blue bi-centennial colour scheme, but was soon re-painted in the somewhat more attractive house colours of Island Airlines, which was white with a silver cowling, blue around the cockpit with a red flash behind the windows. It joined the other members of the Island Airlines fleet, Beaver N62352 and Ford Tri-Motor N7584. The Ford was used for sight-seeing flights but the Beaver and the Otter flew scheduled services from Port Clinton, located at the western end of Lake Erie, to islands in the Lake – Kelley’s Island, Put-in-Bay, Middle Bass and north Bass.
This unique operation styled itself “The Shortest Airline in the World”, with some justification. Departing from Carl Keller Field at Port Clinton, the Otter took all of seven minutes to complete its scheduled flight to Put-in-Bay, and a similar time for the return sector. As Edward J. Rusch, the company’s Chief Pilot, said: “The Otter works the rough sod and stone fields of the islands very efficiently”. By March 1981 the Otter had a total time of 4,833 hours on the airframe. On the scheduled services to the islands, the Otter (or Beaver, depending on the load) carried the resident population year round; tourist during the summer as well as migrant Mexican labourers for fruit picking; and fishermen during the winter for ice fishing. The Otter also carried mail and freight and performed medevac flights, averaging several each weekend during the summer as tourists injured themselves. The island’s policeman acted as a paramedic and accompanied the flight. During the winter months when the lake froze over and the ferry no longer operated, these Beaver and Otter flights were the only means of access to the islands.
After nearly 16 years of flying with the Otter, this unique operation came to an end. Island Airlines was taken over by Griffing Flying Service Inc of Port Clinton, to whom the Otter was transferred by Bill of Sale dated 23 September 1992, and to whom the Otter was registered the following month, still as N5325G. The scheduled services were terminated and the Otter put up for sale. The buyer, through brokers C&S Enterprises, was Delay River Outfitters Inc, trading as Air Schefferville to whom the Otter was registered C-FQND on 23 August 1993 and it set off for its new base of Schefferville in the remote bush country of northern Quebec.
In 1994 the Otter was sold to Aircraft Investments LLC., of Oshkosh, Wisconsin and leased by them to Waweig Lake outfitters Ltd of Thunder Bay, Ontario to whom it was registered on 18 April 1994. It went to Recon Air at Geraldton, Ontario who converted it to a Vazar turbine Otter with a PT6A-135 engine, and it was repainted orange overall with a white cheatline and tail band. It then entered service with Waweig Lake Outfitters.
For the next number of years the Otter would fly out of Waweig Lake during the summer months, carrying tourists, fishermen and hunters wishing to experience the delights of the Ontario bush country. This business was carried on by Waweig Lake Outfitters in association with Wilderness North Air of Milwaukee. By Bill of Sale 14 April 1997 Aircraft Investments LLC, owners of the Otter, transferred title to 3006298 Nova Scotia Company, but the lease to Waweig Lake Outfitters continued. The Otter continued to fly for Waweig Lake Outfitters and Wilderness North Air alongside turbine Otters C-GMLB (359) and C-FYCX (44). On 6 June 2001 Otter QND was registered to 1401380 Ontario Ltd., (Waweig Air) and continued its services in the Ontario bush country.
Early in 2002 the Otter undertook a unique “Flight of Friendship” tour of 35 US cities, sponsored by Wilderness North Air. As the company’s website explained: “We wanted to show our friends in the US that they are welcome here in Canada during a period of uncertainty due to the attacks on the World trade Center. This is why we felt compelled to fly one of our Canadian icons, a turbine Otter, on this Canadian Hospitality Tour. At each of the 35 stops, presentations will be made by the Wilderness North Chief Pilot Randy Melnick of items donated by Canadian fire departments to their US counterparts, as a sign of solidarity and friendship. North West Ontario is renowned for its pristine wilderness environment and excellent recreational sports activities, said Alan Cheeseman, President of Wilderness North, who operate one of Canada’s finest fly-in fishing and adventure sports facilities. Wilderness North flies its guests into 16 different lakes and outpost camps from its base in Armstrong, Ontario just north of Thunder Bay”.
Otter QND, on wheels, departed Thunder Bay on 8 January 2002 and returned at the end of March. Its routing on the tour was Thunder Bay-St.Charles, Illinois-Madison, Wisconsin-Chicago/Springfield-Indianapolis-Columbus-Cincinnati-Louisville-St.Louis-Springfield, Missouri-Memphis, Tennessee-Little Rock-Oklahoma City-Dallas (Love Field)-Houston-New Orleans-Tallahassee-Tampa-Orlando-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach-Daytona Beach-Jacksonville-Savannah-Atlanta-Columbia-Charlotte-Richmond-Washington-Baltimore (Ocean City)-Philadelphia-New York (Teterboro)-Boston-Albany-Buffalo-Cleveland-Dayton-Detroit-Grand Rapids-Lansing-Kalamazoo-Cedar Rapids-Des Moines-Rochester-La Crosse-Minneapolis-Duluth-Thunder Bay. On completion of this extensive tour, QND resumed flying in the Ontario bush country, along with Otters C-GMLB and C-FYCX, for Waweig Air and Wilderness North Air, flying from Armstrong Lake and the nearby seaplane base at Waweig Lake. It is mentioned in a CADORS report for 8 September 2007. QND arrived at the Churchill, Manitoba water base but the pilot did not call down and clear after landing. The airport operator did a ground check to make sure the aircraft was down and safe. As the report shows, QND did not confine its operations to Ontario, also visiting such distant places as Churchill, Manitoba.
In September 2010 Otter QND was advertised for sale, as having 12,130 hours total time and with an asking price of US $1,300,000. It was again advertised for sale in February 2013, price reduced to $1,250,000. The advert stated: “This aircraft is currently being run through the shop” and there were photographs of QND in a hangar having work done to it. It flew again for Waweig Air/Wilderness North Air for summer 2013 but was sold at the end of the summer season, in September 2013, to Vancouver Island Air.
In early October 2013 the Otter set off for its long delivery flight westwards, in the course of which an incident was recorded on CADORS on 4 October at La Ronge, Saskatchewan. On that day, Transwest Air DHC-6 Twin Otter C-FVOG on a local VFR flight out of La Ronge, reported seeing a DHC-3 Otter turning into him on finals for the La Ronge water base. The FSS had no information on the conflicting traffic. After landing the crew of the Twin Otter were able to identify the other aircraft as Otter QND and passed the information to the FSS. A few hours later the pilot of QND contacted the FSS and advised he had had radio failure inbound to La Ronge. QND was on straight floats and after La Ronge continued “lake hopping” across the country, eventually arriving at Campbell River on Vancouver Island, its new base. Registration of the Otter to 1401380 Ontario Ltd .,(Waweig Air) was cancelled on 31 October 2013 and C-FQND was registered to Vancouver Island Air Ltd., on 9 December 2013.
The Otter retained its orange overall colour scheme with white cheatline and tail stripe but acquired Vancouver Island Air fuselage titles. It replaced Beech 18 C-FGNR, which was sold, and joined Otter C-GVIX (97), these two turbine Otters from then on constituting the Vancouver Island Air fleet. Both Otters were still in service during summer 2017, flying the company’s charters and schedules out of Campbell River.
1. Armageddon!, 2. When Night Falls It Is Better To Be Reddy For Anything!, 3. Even Daffodils Can Go Into The Red!, 4. Look What Blue In Through The Window!, 5. BeLEAF in Beauty!, 6. Reflecting on the Heart of an Abstraction!, 7. Trieste - a Gas to Visit and Electrifying Too!, 8. Circumstances Can Sometimes Force You to Look in Different Directions!,
9. There Are Always Two Sides to Every Story!, 10. Trieste - A DeLIGHTful Sunset Down By The Harbour!, 11. Trieste - A Bluetiful Harbour View Reddy For Your Inspection!, 12. Trieste - A City Where It Is Easy To Keep Things In Perspective!, 13. Trieste - A Daylightful View of the Harbour Lighthouse!, 14. Something Red to Chair You Up!, 15. When You See Something Lurking in the Dark, Remember Red Can Spell Danger!, 16. Trieste - A Seagull Waiting for Its Flight Insurance Quote on Top of the Assicurazioni Generali Building!,
17. Trieste - An Open and Shut(tering) Case!, 18. Rediance?, 19. Trieste - An Angelic Aspect of The Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Nicholas, 20. Trieste - Reflecting on a Captivating Coastal City, 21. Trieste - Reaching for the Sky, the Church of San Antonio Nuovo, 22. Sometimes an Abstract Comes Out of the Blue!, 23. Trieste - Buoyed Up by the Bacolana Regata!, 24. Venice - The Dome of San Simeone Piccolo,
25. Venice - A Gondolier Gets Ready for His Next Trip, 26. Venice - A DeLIGHTful Evening on the Canale della Giudecca, 27. Venice - A Sideways Glance at the Doge's Palace!, 28. Venice - Another View of the Grand Canal, 29. Venice - There's No Ceiling on Beauty in the Doge's Palace!, 30. Venice - Man's Ambition Had No Ceiling in the Doge's Palace!, 31. Blossoming Beauty!, 32. An Abstract to Chair You Up!,
33. Heralding a Bright New Tomorrow in New South Wales, 34. Sunset Over the Ridge Down from Mount Canobolas, 35. Passing Clouds in a New South Wales Sky, 36. 'E's a Diamond Geezer!, 37. Strawberries and Cream Rose!, 38. Stretching the Imagination...., 39. California Dreaming 2, 40. Booty?,
41. You Must Be Off Your Blueming Trolley!, 42. All But One...., 43. Family Outing!, 44. Cloud Diver, 45. No Longer the Sole of Discretion!, 46. I Had to Gain My Stripes Somehow!, 47. Which Way Did He Go?, 48. Holesome!,
49. Top Knob?, 50. Taking In the View at Pevensey Castle!, 51. Abstract Condensation!, 52. Browned Off....?, 53. The Long and the Short of It...., 54. Life on Mars, 55. Ghost Chair!, 56. Black Curve, White Light,
57. Red Sky at Night..., 58. Ball-istique!, 59. Along the Right Lines?, 60. Catching the Light - An East Sussex Landscape, 61. Lone Tree, Big Sky, 62. A Tearful Pinkerton Agent!, 63. I Could Only Stop and Stair!, 64. Incandescenza Dorata sul Mediterraneo!,
65. A Nice Little Orangement 3, 66. Leading You Up the Garden Path Again at Great Dixter!, 67. Givng Topiary the Bird at Great Dixter!, 68. Seeing Double at Great Dixter!, 69. An 'Arrowing Experience at Bodiam Castle, 70. Bodium Castle Inside Out!, 71. The Way Into Bodiam Castle, 72. Who Killed Mickey Mouse?
Created with fd's Flickr Toys
This was anything but peaceful which was my first thought when I processed it today
The wind was hammering up the cliffs
I was hoping for some colour and broken cloud but this is 15 minutes after sunrise and I wasn`t aware of it [visually]
I also wanted to get some star shots and car trails winding up and down the range crossing 700 -1000 meters below ..... next time
This is the peak of Mt Mitchell at Cunningham`s Gap in the Main Range NP
When I arrived at the car park below the police who were escorting a wide load which had stopped while they uncoupled a second truck pushing it up the range crossing
I got some strange looks as I crossed the highway carrying my tripod backpack and headlamp and disappeared into the bush at 2am
Would you do some of the things we do if it wasn`t to get a photo ????
Got to love the adventure it takes to get some shots
It keeps me young !!!
There are cliffs on the right about 200 meters high with the road almost straight below you and the other side is about an 80 degree slope
Its hard to believe a week later we are in a heat wave and that morning was rather cool up there .... about 5C , I had to get the gloves out as the hands were starting to get numb
I must admit I was pleasantly surprised how well this one turned out
Its a three shot stitch
The cloud was so thick it was only letting blue light through
Heres a shot looking up at the peak
www.flickr.com/photos/johnfinnanimages/5022467013/in/set-...
And another looking down over the side
www.flickr.com/photos/johnfinnanimages/5025975867/in/set-...
Two rather young looking Network Rail chaps and a young signalman watch the passage of a Cross Country Voyager from the window of Banbury North Signal Box.
Yes, indeed. When he saw that I was too far away from him, he tried to take a shortcut and fell into a seemingly bottomless mud hole. He really had to struggle to come out again. So MY dog became a little dirty. We better don't talk about the smell.
On our way down we both literally jumped into a clean, but ice-cold brook in order to get rid of some of the mud. As a result he was a bit cleaner and my trousers were a lot dirtier then before. Later I borrowed a towel and rubbed him clean until my arms were sore. Now he resembled a grey street dog. So another stop by the brook near our home was necessary and then he had to stay outside for a few hours. Mogli didn't quite understand why he wasn't allowed to sleep at his favorite place, under my chair, during dinner time.
If you can't stand the dirt, don't get you a big white fluffy monster. ; )