View allAll Photos Tagged Scheduling,
No 7802 'Badley Manor' departs Bewdley for Kidderminster with the last scheduled passenger service of the day.
Carl Friedberg (1872-1955): Brahms - Intermezzo in E flat no.1
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4-oOizOgVU&list=RDGMEM8h-ASY...
Indonesians are so musical
This Grade II*-listed stone packhorse bridge over the River Welland at Deeping St James in south Lincolnshire dates from 1651. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
Deeping St James is based around a now lost 12th-century Benedictine Priory, destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The stones from the priory were used to build various 17th-century buildings in the area. The village is one mile east of Market Deeping which is also on the River Welland. This rises near Sibbertoft in Northamptonshire. The Welland is one of the main rivers that helps to drain the Fens. It joins the sea near Fosdike in The Wash.
Amtrak's California Zephyr train No. 6 has crested 7440 ft. Soldier Summit the morning of Jan. 17, 1987. The tiny brick D&RGW train order depot, at the time used by maintenance of way, was demolished by April the same year.
Really nice light on this airshow. The Blue Angels were scheduled but did an 8 week stand down for safety. From now on they will only do 7 weekends in a row.
Barden Bridge is a three-arched humpbacked bridge across the River Wharfe north of Bolton Abbey on the eastern edge of the Yorkshire Dales.
On the north side of the east end of the bridge is an inscription reading 'this bridge was repayred at the charge of the whole West riding 1676'.
The date refers to the fact that the original 1659 bridge was swept away in a flood in 1673 and had to be rebuilt. The parapets had to be renewed in 1856 and again in 1956 after flood damage.
The bridge is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and is a Grade II Listed Building.
Stonehenge a Scheduled Ancient prehistoric monument located 2 miles west of Amesbury in Wiltshire.
One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is the remains of a ring of standing stones set within earthworks. It is in the middle of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred burial mounds.
Archaeologists believe it was constructed from 3,000 BC to 2,000 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3,100 BC. Radiocarbon dating in 2008 suggested that the first bluestones were raised between 2,400 and 2,200 BC. Another theory suggests the bluestones may have been raised at the site as early as 3,000 BC.
The site and its surroundings were added to the UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1986 in a co-listing with Avebury Henge. It is a national legally protected Scheduled Ancient Monument. Stonehenge is owned by the Crown and managed by English Heritage, while the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.
Archaeological evidence found by the Stonehenge Riverside Project in 2008 indicates that Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. The dating of cremated remains indicate that deposits contain human bone from as early as 3000 BC, when the ditch and bank were first dug. Such deposits continued at Stonehenge for at least another 500 years.
We are going away for a week and have just told Poppy that as the eldest, she will be in charge!
Poppy: *groaning* Mom! It’s not fair! This is too much responsibility! It’ll interfere with my nap schedule!
Mishka: *excited* What’s repsonbalipity? Is it a new treat? A new toy? Can I have one too, please?
Bino: *whining* Mom! It’s not fair! If Poppy and Mishka are getting new toys and treats, I want repsonbalipity too!
Me: Silly boys! It’s called responsibility! Means Poppy is in charge when we’re gone next week…and Aunty Sue will visit you twice a day to make sure you’re all behaving!
Mishka: *Crying* Waahh! Who’s gonna give me treats and play with me? I don’t want you to go!
Bino: *crying* Waahh! Who’s gonna rub my nose the way I like it? I don’t want you to go!
Poppy: *crying* Waahh! Who’s gonna keep these idiot boys away from me? I don’t want you to go!
Me: *crying* Waahh! I’m gonna miss my babies! I don’t want to go!
Husband: *muttering* It’s like living in a three-ring circus!
SIMULACRUM, the April-May 2025 exhibition by Manoji Yachvili (aka Onceagain) @ Nitroglobus Main hall.
I'm proud to share that Onceagain is back at Nitroglobus, and this time her work is featured in the Main Hall, giving her more space to showcase her stunning art.
I’ve always loved her work—delicate in color yet powerful in emotion, offering a glimpse into her real-life personality. When she mentioned she might leave Second Life after completing her SLEA3 project ("What is Art and What Will I Leave Behind When I Go?"), I asked her to please exhibit at Nitroglobus one last time before departing. Thankfully, she agreed.
Her current exhibition, SIMULACRUM, is one of her most recent projects. It addresses a very timely topic: the rise of AI-generated imagery and her personal opinion about this. It goes without saying that Onceagain created all the art in this exhibition without the use of AI.
Come visit see for yourself AND most of all ENJOY.
dido haas, owner/curator Nitroglobus gallery
As always I am super glad David Silence found time in his busy schedule to create the excellent poster, based on one of Onceagain's images.
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Opening party: Wednesday, 23 April, 12.30 PM SLT (21.30 hrs CET)
Music by DJ Jillx
LM: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sunshine%20Homestead/38/22...
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Description of the exhibition by the artist:
The simulacrum, borrowed from the Latin simulacrum, was born as an effigy, as a statue that depicts divinities, heroes, illustrious figures (but nothing is more illustrious) and the extension of meaning makes the simulacrum a shadow, a ghost, a reflection, which in essence is not or is no longer that someone or something it represents – imperfect simulation.
Reality no longer exists, it has disappeared, crumbled by the media and modern technologies that propose images that do not refer to reality, that receive meaning only from other images and that are perpetually regenerated, thus remaining increasingly disconnected from what was originally real.
Everything I see has an appearance and the power of appearance, without a faithful external image and therefore devoid of the original vitality.
We are surrounded by empty shells, as I feel now, and perhaps it is time to disappear because nothing of what I see pleases me anymore, including this vain attempt of mine to translate this feeling into images
Manoji Yachvili
A huge thanks to Dido that push me to do this exhibition
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More about Onceagain:
Manoji Yachvili (Onceagain) has been in SL since 2007
You can find her art gallery at her land here: maps.secondlife.com/.../Fading%20Shadows/117/147/23
Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/69389809@N03/
Until the end of June 2025 Onceagain has a SLEA grant @ SLEA3, which is for sure worth visiting.
It's called 'What is art and What will I leave behind when I go?'
Two DMVW SD50Fs head east on BNSF's ex-Northern Pacific main line at Sterling, N.D. with a coal train for the Great River Energy plant at Spiritwood. A crewman told me these coal runs are now pretty infrequent. The Spiritwood plant is also scheduled to go to natural gas in the next few years (they get most of their fuel from natural gas now) putting an end to these trains.
In November 2019 we went to Hong Kong. Protests against curbing freedom were going on for a few months, and happened mainly on weekends. My niece from Switzerland, a Chinese friend, and I took a bus that was scheduled to go through the protest area in Tsim Sha Tsui on Sunday. The bus stopped a few blocks before the area, and the bus driver asked everybody to disembark - end of service due to protests. We walked two blocks towards the protest area. We only saw police in riot gear, no protesters. Over 100 of them, maybe 200. At one point the police blocked off the streets, so we could not proceed further. I took this shot from a higher vantage point, pointing out the militarization of the police. Nowadays Hong Kong is controlled by China, freedom is gone, and there is a big tension between the well off older generation leaning towards China, and younger generation that has an economic hardship due to the high cost of living and difficult employment situation in Hong Kong.
I processed a balanced, a photographic, and a paintery HDR photo from a RAW exposure, merged them selectively, carefully adjusted the color balance and curves, desaturated the image, and added some vignetting. I welcome and appreciate constructive comments.
Thank you for visiting - ♡ with gratitude! Fave if you like it, add comments below, like the Facebook page, order beautiful HDR prints at qualityHDR.com.
-- ƒ/7.1, 135 mm, 1/320 sec, ISO 250, Sony A6000, SEL-55210, HDR, 1 RAW exposure, _DSC5949_hdr1bal1pho1pai1e.jpg
-- CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, © 2019 Peter Thoeny, Quality HDR Photography
The sprawling two story Earl's Palace in Birsay, Orkney, Scotland was built between 1570 and 1580 by the notorious Robert Stewart, Earl of Orkney, the illegitimate son of James V. The Earl considered himself the absolute ruler of Orkney and Shetland and was the father of the even nastier tyrant Patrick Stewart, executed for treason in 1615. It was in ruins by 1700 and is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
As I sit at my computer and excitingly schedule a return trip to Alaska, I decided to break out the old external hard drive and review the hundreds of shots taken there in 2019. Of the 900+ shots on the hard drive from that trip, only 40 or so have ever been shared either on FB or Flicker…basically that is all that have seen the light of day.
Some I share, most are just for me…like a fire extinguisher…when I start feeling down on the grey days of December (today is unfortunately a perfect example) I can quickly access them, flip through the blessing of my life and instantly suppress most of those feeling. As I view the photo, whether it be of family, friends, critters or in this case a single sailboat against one of the many glaciers within Glacier National Park, I try to remember my other senses…how did it smell, what did it sound like and what was the wind and temperature like. When I came across this shot, I remembered feeling something else, something that for me, once recognized provides guilt and a loss of self-worth.
As I stood shoulder to shoulder with a couple hundred strangers (my bride and friends excluded) on the ninth deck of the cruise ship I spotted this sailboat under motor power heading our way. I remember being instantly pulled from the warmth of experiencing a blessing into the realm of envy…how it must be so nice to experience this magical place on a sailboat and not this sold-out hotel on a hull.
As I watched the sailboat approach, luckily my “Don’t be a dumbass” internal alarm sounded and I was swept back into the understanding of my blessing, of being there, of sharing it with loved ones. I took this photo for its beauty, and as a personal reminder to keep envy at bay.
In the words of Bertrand Russell “Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.”
This variety of Cicada (Magicicada) has a 17-year life cycle and is part of brood IV, or the Kansan Brood. The last time they emerged in Nebraska was 1998. They started to emerge from the ground about a week ago as they were delayed by the rainy weather. So happy that we were able to find them in Weeping Water, Nebraska yesterday afternoon.
People call these cicadas “locusts” but they are not true locusts — real locusts look like grasshoppers. The phrase “17 year cicada” indicates that they arrive every 17 years. The name “periodical cicadas” indicates that they arrive periodically and not each and every year. The scientific name for the Genus of these cicadas is Magicicada, and there are 3 types of 17 year Magicicadas: Magicicada septendecim, Magicicada cassini and Magicicada septendecula. This is a true locust:
There are literally billions of 17- year cicadas. Why? One theory suggests that the large number of cicadas overwhelms predators, so predators are never able to eat them all and many always survive to mate. This is a survival strategy called “predator satiation”.
Some of you may enjoy the following website: www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/brood-iv-the-kansan-brood-wil...
It hadn’t even been six hours since I had arrived back him from my trip and I already found myself glued next to one of the local mainlines.
My flight home from Chile on AA912 wasn’t terrible, somehow managing to catch some sleep in a fully packed Boeing 777-223ER, and a lengthy phone call with friends upon arriving back at Miami Int’l Airport at 05:00 would further wake me up that morning. Leaving the house to hunt some train movements seemed like the ideal plan. No room for sleep anymore; after all, the rest of the family was knocked out at that hour. I wasn’t trying to be nuisance at home.
While on the aforementioned phone call, I’d receive confirmation regarding FEC Train 101-27’s consist for the day: a complete “Champion”-painted power set with a solid train of solely intermodal traffic for Port Everglades and Hialeah. Definitely something worth photographing in this day and age of the Florida East Coast Railway. Making it out to Dania Beach around 10:00, a short waiting period would play out while waiting for 101-27 to arrive at Port Everglades and make their setout.
Bypassing the Hialeah-bound freight occupying the East Main by PEV Storage, BLF 723-27 takes on the curve—aptly named by some local buffs as ‘Dania Curve’—at Milepost 347 on its morning southbound revenue run from Orlando Int’l Airport to MiamiCentral, now five miles away from its Aventura station stop. A pair of second order SCB-40’s bracket a five-car BrightBlue train set, a shiny #BLF113 on the point of the train breezing past lush trackside shrubbery. With how regular these trains are along the mainline, they make for fantastic photo angle test subjects… you could say it was warmup. Safe to say this was one of the rare ‘keeper’ test shots from that morning.
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Dania, FL
FEC Mainline
Date: 01/27/2025 | 10:45
ID: BLF 723-27
Type: Passenger [Intercity]
Direction: Southbound
Car Count: 5
1. BLF SCB-40 #113
2. BLF SCB-40 #120
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© Vicente Alonso 2025
St Mary's Church is a ruined former Church of England parish church, in the grounds of Eastwell Park in the hamlet of Eastwell, Kent, England.It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building, and is a Scheduled monument. The ruins have been in the care of the Friends of Friendless Churches charity since they took over the freehold on 20 March 1980.
RFA TIDESPRING moved from APCL Cammell Laird wet basin to Liverpool Cruise Terminal on the morning of February 28, 2025.
She was due to remain alongside the cruise terminal for the rest of the day before being scheduled to enter dry dock at APCL Cammell Laird in the late evening.
Click here for more photographs of RFA TIDESPRING: www.jhluxton.com/Shipping/Ships-Naval/Royal-Fleet-Auxilia...
RFA TIDESPRING (A136) is a Tide-class replenishment tanker of the British Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA). Built by DSME in 2016, the ship entered service with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary in November 2017.
The construction of RFA TIDESPRING was undertaken by DSME in South Korea with her steel first being cut by RFA Commodore Rob Dorey on 24 June 2014.
The ship was laid down on 22 December 2014 and launched four months later on 25 April 2015.
A series of builders sea trials commenced from 29 March 2015 and were completed by 1 July 2016.
The finalisation of electrical elements and the installation of Multi-Cable Transit insulation, as per new legislative regulations, caused a delay in the ship's delivery to the UK. On 5 February 2017, the ship departed South Korea for delivery to the UK, making stopovers at Yokosuka, Japan and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The ship transited the Panama Canal into the Atlantic Ocean and arrived in Falmouth, England on 31 March 2017.[
The ship was drydocked in Falmouth Docks for fitting out to be carried out by A&P Group on 27 April 2017. On 10 May 2017, a crane collapsed beside the ship whilst she was drydocked, however the vessel was not damaged in the incident.
RFA TIDESPRING sailed from Falmouth for final evaluation trials on 1 September 2017 which included her first visit to Gibraltar, first of class flying trials and her first replenishment at sea (RAS) with RFA WAVE KNIGHT. She was officially accepted into the RFA on 27 November 2017.
A King Tide is an exceptionally high tide that occurs several times a year, on a predictable schedule. Magic happens when a king tide is combined with stormy skies, high winds, and light breaking through the clouds. While the raw power of the sea is indescribable, its beauty is undeniable.
Crane and workers in place for diamond replacement. Prior to the puck drop, IC 1029 west scoots by, everyone pauses to admire the deathstar. Perhaps it seemed like a tribute to the late Ozzy Osbourne.
Running slightly behind schedule, a pair of P42's hustle Amtrak's Lakeshore Limited east out of Rochester, New York after completing their station stop. With fresh snow on the ground, the train rolls through the Can of Worms where I-490 and I-590 interchange while the CSX Rochester Subdivision runs through the middle of the junction.
====Info====
CSX Rochester Sub
Rochester, NY
AMTK 48 (Passenger; Chicago, IL to New York, NY/Boston, MA)
AMTK 151 P42DC Blt. 2001
AMTK 146 P42DC Blt. 2001
A specially upgraded radio-frequency chamber in ESA’s technical heart is testing what is set to become the smallest radar system to be flown in space, hosted aboard a breadbox-sized spacecraft.
Scheduled to fly to the Didymos binary asteroid system with ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence in 2024, the compact radar aboard the Juventas CubeSat will perform the first ever radar sounding inside an asteroid. Juventas will peer up to 100 m deep within the 160-m-diameter Dimorphos moonlet of the 780-m-diameter Didymos asteroid.
CubeSats are mini-satellites built up from standardised 10-cm boxes. Juventas is a ‘6-unit’ CubeSat, measuring 10x20x30 cm, while its quartet of radar antennas measure 1.5 m long each. So the test campaign includes a structural model of the Juventas CubeSat, to evaluate how the body of the miniature spacecraft might affect the radar signals.
The test campaign is taking place inside the ‘Hybrid European Radio Frequency and Antenna Test Zone’ or Hertz chamber at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands. However testing here only became feasible after a skillful upgrade.
“An essential element of anechoic test chambers like Hertz are the radio-absorbing foam spikes lining the inside walls, allowing tests to mimic the infinite void of space,” explains ESA antenna engineer Paul Moseley.
“But typically Hertz can only test down to 400 MHz, while Hertz’s main antennas will radiate at 60 MHz. At this frequency the spikes no longer absorb signals, so instead of a dark room the chamber would be turned into a hall of mirrors, throwing out multiple radio reflections that interfere with the accuracy of our measurements.”
ESA’s Hertz team worked with MVG in Italy to devise a new setup making lower frequency testing possible, initially as part of a general upgrade but then specially targeted to enable Juventas testing.
Paul adds: “It’s a combination of hardware and software that allows us to measure in this environment but still reconstruct the correct results, including fibreglass support towers that are transparent to antennas and software that combines measurements made at many different points across the room, in order to cancel out the reflection effects.”
Franco Perez Lissi of ESA’s CubeSats Systems Unit is overseeing the Juventas testing: “We’re measuring the radiation pattern in a full sphere surrounding the antennas- the results of which should also be very useful for Juventas’s critical design review, taking place next month – as well as the total radiated power. This entire campaign additionally serves as a dress rehearsal of sorts for the flight model of Juventas, which is scheduled to be tested here in early 2023.”
The radar aboard Juventas is developed from the Rosetta spacecraft’s CONSERT radar system, which peered into the interior of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. It is a synthetic aperture radar design, meaning it will take advantage of Juventas’s orbit 3 km above the surface of Dimorphos to integrate together multiple signal reflections and resolve them into images.
“We are proud to see Rosetta’s legacy living on in the next generation of deep-space missions,” adds Alain Herique of the University of Grenoble, Principal Investigator of Juventa’s JuRa low-frequency radar.
Juventas is being led for ESA by GomSpace company in Luxembourg with GMV in Romania, with its radar developed by the Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble group at the University Grenoble and Technical University Dresden, with Astronika in Poland constructing the antennas and EmTroniX in Luxembourg contributing the signal generation system.
Hera will also be embarking a second deep space CubeSat, the Italian-led Milani, which will employ a multispectral imager to prospect the asteroid’s surface composition. Hera will be preceded to the Didymos asteroids by NASA’s DART spacecraft which will perform a test deflection of the smaller body. DART is due for launch next Wednesday, 24 November.
Credits: ESA-P. de Maagt
Whilst at my brother-in-laws house, my father-in-law asked "Do you fancy a walk?" He'd been itching to get up to this graveyard just outside Cloughy for "a wee nosey"
The Slans graveyard as it's known is just outside Cloughy situated within a former rath, or ringfort, an enclosure of the first millennium A.D, and is surrounded by a white wall. Within it are the ruins of a medieval church which is believed to be the Church of Ardmacossce or Ardmacaisse, mentioned in the Taxation of Pope Nicholas, 1306 , along with an unusual cross-carved boulder. Aerial photography has indicated that the graveyard is in fact the nucleus of a much larger enclosure, which survives below ground in the surrounding fields. At a time, it was the main graveyard for the Cloughey/Kirkistown area, and was also the burial place for many poor sailors who lost their lives on the notorious Cloughey rocks. The graveyard has an outstanding 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside and outside the wall there is a souterrain, approx. 50 metres in length which was quite accessible until recent years. The site is Scheduled for protection in recognition of its historic importance. 'Most of the oldest gravestones are of slate and the earliest readable date of death is 1677.
NUMBER 52 AND ADJOINING NEWPORT ARCH, 52, BAILGATE, LINCOLN
Grade I listed
List Entry Number: 1388450
Detail
LINCOLN
SK9772SE BAILGATE 1941-1/7/28 No.52 08/10/53 and adjoining Newport Arch
GV I
Remains of the inner face of the Roman north gateway, and adjoining house to east. C3 and C17, altered and restored C14, C18, C19, mid and late C20. Coursed squared stone facing with rubble core. Adjoining house has plain tile roof and 2 brick gable stacks. Main archway has to right a smaller archway with a pedestrian tunnel. On the north side, remains of the inner walls of the gateway, approx. 10m long. The house has a central beaded plank door with a C20 tiled hood, flanked by single windows. Above, 2 windows, all C20. The Newport Arch is the remnant of the north gate to the Roman legionary fortress, and became the north gate of the late Roman and medieval city. Scheduled Ancient Monument, County No.4. (Buildings of England : Lincolnshire: Pevsner N: Lincolnshire: London: 1989-: 440).
Listing NGR: SK9767072132
Runway 28. The site of a forgotten and little known, abandoned airport in Poland. It was built in 1912 making it the first airfield in Poland. In 1914, the airfield was employed to train crews and repair aircraft for the front-line units during World War I. Before the end of World War I, the airfield became one of the staging points for an airmail service between Vienna and Kiev/Odessa, the first such scheduled service in Europe. By the end of October 1918, the Polish Military Authorities took over and the first Polish aviation unit - known as the 1st Combat Squadron - was formed here. It went on to become the training ground for the rapidly expanding Polish Air Force and the largest Polish Air Force base. During the occupation of Poland, the Germans took over until 1945 when the Russians took over the airfield. The airfield went out of service in the early 1960s and now is surrounded by communist block housing.
I'm one day behind my initial schedule, but I'll be in NYC by tomorrow morning.
I don't know if I'll have internet, so if I don't update, know that eventually I will.
Probably will extensively.
Or maybe I'll find a way to throw a bunch of images here with magic alone.
trying out provia 400x @ 1600 (this 1st roll via mailer took over 2 weeks to get back from a&i due to a very busy holiday schedule at their lab) View On Black
"Shift change"
Both the male and female great egret take turns sitting on the eggs and tending to the babies. The male (I think), on the left, had just flown into the nest to relieve the female which had been tending to the babies. Within a minute or so, the female flew off to go wherever she goes to take a break.
It was interesting to note that over the course of about 10 or 15 minutes, several other mates flew in relieving their respective mate, as if on schedule.
Kiwanis Park, York, Pennsylvania
A rarely seen motor tram plus trailer on the 'old' tram line 17 to Osdorp. Routinely modern rolling stock was scheduled due to the 'fast track and long' nature of the sector Surinameplein - Osdorp. © Henk Graalman 3-1968 (493+999) 13019
ESA astronaut Tim Peake is seen during the final fit check of his spacesuit ahead of the International Space Station spacewalk scheduled for 15 January.
He will venture outside of the International Space Station together with NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra to replace a failed voltage regulator to return power to one of eight power channels. The spacewalk is expected to last 6.5 hours.
Tim's six-month mission is named Principia, after Isaac Newton’s ground-breaking Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which describes the principal laws of motion and gravity. He is performing more than 30 scientific experiments for ESA and taking part in numerous others from ESA’s international partners.
ESA and the UK Space Agency have partnered to develop many exciting educational activities around the Principia mission, aimed at sparking the interest of young children in science and space.
Read more about the spacewalk in Tim Peake's blog: blogs.esa.int/tim-peake/
Connect with Tim on social media: timpeake.esa.int
Credit: ESA/NASA
After a brief mushroom break, it's back to the fall spectacle which is very nearly at peak. And despite three days of relatively constant rain, your intrepid reporter continues to dash about between the drops to document the scene for you more than deserving contacts. However, this has unfortunately put a damper (finally a truly appropriate use of the word) on some of the local annual events scheduled for this weekend, those being the apple and cranberry festivals. The rain, combined with 50F (10C) temps and 20 mph winds has also no doubt discouraged less than hardy travelers who make the trip to the Northwoods to view the color changes. This has caused concern amongst the local merchants who depend on the tourist trade to keep their coffers filled. I was going to recommend that they call their Congressman to see if he might filibuster the weather patterns, but then remembered that he is one of those responsible for the government currently being closed (regardless of weather), and thus unavailable to take any calls.