First performance for the Men & Women of A-Chord barbershop chorus for this season

 68º here in La Feria, TX at 11 am Monday.  Was a cool, to us, 59º this morning, but to get to 74º this afternoon.  Was -2º with a "feel like" of -22º this morning at our Son's place near Iowa City this morning, so guess I won't complain about the 59º.  Click on any photos to enlarge them.

A Wise Man Once Said:

1) Hate has 4 letters, so does Love -- your choice.

2) Enemies has 7 letters, so does Friends -- your company matters.

3) Lying has 5 letters, so does Truth -- decide your path.

4) Cry has 3 letters, so does Joy -- where do you stay?

5) Negativity has 10 letters, so does Positivity -- pick your energy.

We took part in the first performance, of the year, of our barbershop chorus, Men & Women of A-Chord at McAllen Mobile Home RV Park.  Most of our chorus was present and we had a pretty good crowd.  We did an abreviated program of mostly religious songs and were central part of their Sunday worship service at their Rec Hall.

We picked up Lois Outcelt at Snow To Sun RV in Weslaco and made the 32 mile drive in time to help put up the risers and help with the speaker system, etc.

On the way home we stopped for some good chicken at Golden Chick in Pharr, TX.  We always enjoy this place and introduced it to Lois for her first time.

This is an ad I placed in the Winter Texan weekly newspaper that is distributed to all the RV Parks in the Rio Grande Valley.  Hope it helps bring in some extra attendance.

Took the opportunity yesterday morning, after returning from church, to wash the pickukp.  I think it went into shock since this is the first time since we got here the first of November.

For the last several weeks we have been playing "Bean Bag Baseball" on thursday evening at the Rec Hall, making sure we got enough people to play because the lad, Cody, from Bowdle, South Dakota, who has Downs Syndrom gets such joy from it.  He comes down with his parents before Christmas and a brother flew down to escort him home -- they flew out yesterday.

At right is picture of Cody with Activity Director Mashelle

  at the performance at the hall Saturday afternoon.

Jayne's Jukebox Junkie show from Gilbert MN
Saturday afternoon at the Rec Hall

Tom Urban and crew served a Chicken Pot Pie
Supper Friday evening.  He also made Kolache's

We drove over to The Pasta Company in McAllen Friday evening to scout out a place to have the Barbershop Chorus eat together on February 2nd.  One of our oldest members is moving in February to a Care Facility in Austin, Texas, and this is to honor his years with the group.  He joined the Men of A-Chord in the 1990's.  This now leaves only our Director Bob as the only remaining member of the group from the 1990's.  I made a reservation for a private room that will hold 40 people and hope we can fill much of it.  This will be on February 2nd at 1 pm.  Pictures to follow.

All for now, Lynn

Crazy Horse Carving in Custer County, South Dakota

 In the summer of 2015 we went through the Black Hills of South Dakota and spent time at the Crazy Horse Carving Museum.  I found this video Click HERE to see it.  This and this next video Click HERE  are very interesting and I will give some links to the people who are working on that carving.  Click HERE  and HERE .  Click THIS LINK for a page that has numerous pages about the people who have and are working on the project.

Oh, here is another video, of a quartet and the National Anthem, that you should enjoy.

Click HERE  

Later, LCM

Casey Jones

 At seventy-five miles an hour, he saw the freight train blocking the tracks. He had two choices: jump and save himself, or stay and save a hundred sleeping passengers. He chose to die.

It was 3:52 a.m. on April 30, 1900, near Vaughan, Mississippi. Rain cut through the darkness, slicking the rails and flattening visibility to almost nothing. Inside the cab of Engine 382, steam hissed and pressure gauges trembled at their limits. The speed held at seventy-five miles per hour, far faster than safety allowed, but the train was already late and time mattered.

Behind the locomotive, passenger cars rocked gently, their occupants asleep and unaware. Mail clerks, salesmen, families traveling through the South rested in their berths, soothed by the steady rhythm of steel on rail. Every one of their lives depended on a single man at the controls.

That man was Casey Jones, born John Luther Jones, already legendary on the Illinois Central Railroad. Towering, disciplined, and exacting, he was trusted with the Cannonball Express because he knew engines, track, and timing better than almost anyone alive. That night, he was pushing Engine 382 hard, making up lost minutes the only way he knew how.

The rain made the curves treacherous. The fog erased the distance ahead. But Casey had run this route countless times. He knew the grades, the bends, the margins where danger lived. Beside him, fireman Sim Webb fed coal into the firebox, the two men moving in practiced harmony, reading the track by instinct as much as sight.

Then, as they rounded a curve, Sim caught sight of something that did not belong there. Three dim red lights floated in the fog ahead. Rear markers. A caboose.

A freight train had failed to clear the main line. It was sitting directly in their path.

At that speed, with wet rails and loaded passenger cars, there was no stopping in time. Impact meant wooden coaches splintering, steel collapsing, and sleeping passengers crushed before they ever woke. Physics offered no mercy.

In that instant, Casey Jones understood everything.

Most men would have jumped. Survival demands it. A leap from the cab might have saved his life.

Instead, Casey slammed the air brakes into emergency. The train lurched as iron screamed against iron. He threw the reverse lever, forcing the driving wheels to fight their own momentum, sparks spraying into the rain-soaked night. Every action stole speed, inch by inch, second by second.

He turned to Sim Webb and shouted the last order he would ever give. “Jump, Sim, jump.”

Sim obeyed, hurling himself from the cab into the darkness as the locomotive thundered forward.

Casey stayed.

One hand locked on the brake lever, the other yanked the whistle cord. A long, piercing blast tore through the Mississippi Delta, warning anyone ahead in the final seconds available. He braced himself and rode the engine straight into the collision, using the mass of the locomotive and his own body to slow what could still be slowed.

The impact was catastrophic. Engine 382 tore through the caboose and slammed into freight cars loaded with corn and hay. Steel twisted. Wood exploded. The locomotive was ripped from the rails and reduced to wreckage in a heartbeat.

When the noise faded, rescuers arrived expecting devastation. Instead, they found passenger cars battered but upright. People stumbled out shaken and bleeding, terrified but alive. Not a single passenger had been killed.

Only when they reached the front did they understand the cost.

Casey Jones lay crushed in the cab. One hand still gripped the whistle cord. The other remained clamped on the brake. He had slowed the train from seventy-five miles an hour to roughly thirty-five before impact, just enough to turn certain death into survival.

He was thirty-seven years old.

He left behind a wife and three children. Thousands attended his funeral, including railroad workers and strangers who knew they were alive because he had stayed. Within weeks, songs about Casey Jones spread across the country, carried by workers, taught to children, and woven into American folklore.

But the truth behind the legend is simple and stark. In the span of seconds, Casey Jones chose sacrifice over survival. He calculated that his death might save everyone behind him, and he accepted that cost without hesitation.

The passengers he saved went home. They lived full lives. They raised families. Their descendants exist today because one man refused to jump.

Engine 382’s whistle now rests in the Casey Jones Museum in Jackson, Tennessee, and pieces of the locomotive remain on display. But the real memorial lives in the lives that continued because he stayed at the controls.

Casey Jones did not become a hero by chance. He became one by choice. When the moment came to choose between himself and strangers he would never meet, he chose them.

His hand was still on the brake when they found him.

He never let go.

Follow us Netfoxx

47 dregrees for low this morning in our end of the Rio Grande Valley

 55º here in Kenwood RV aat 9:15 am Thursday.  Was a chilly (for us) 49º when we got up this morning.

Phyllis siinging in choir Sunday.
I was home with stomach issues

Here are a few pictures from Men & Women of A-Chord barbershop chorus practice Tuesday.  We perform at our first concert this Sunday in McAllan.

Our first performance will be this
Sunday in McAllen, TX

This morning I helped Phyllis set up tables for her quilting ladies who work from 9 to 12 today.  Whole room was set up with chairs, I guess from Tuesay's jam.  Removed most of them and set tables as she needed them under lights so they can work.

Somewhat complicated steps Tom Urban is making in his Texas Room.  He still made them nearly 8" risers---which he will surely regret as he gets older.  I wouldn't make anything higher than 6".

Yesterday we took Maria and Sal with us to South Padre Island for the "Shrimp Boil Port of Brownsville boat tour.  You can read about them BY CLICKING HERE  

We were on top deck.  About 45 passengers

This is a telephoto shot of the Spacex site.
Spaceships are made and worked on in this
facility, but launched about a mile away to
prevent damage to facillities in case of explosion
Click HERE to read about Spacex

Couple of old retired people

Neighbors Maria and Sal

There were a lot of equipment in the Port of Brownsville Shipping Channel which runs from the tip of South Padre Island to Brownsville  Numerous places with huge pipelines that were used to pump the sand from the bottom of the channel to the shore.  This ship actually loads it and then goes to a pipe and hooks up to pump onland.  CLICK HERE

to see about this dredge pumper.

This huge barge was anchored and pumps into a veery long pipeline that pumps out on shore.

The Port of Brownsville is undergoing a major channel deepening project, the Brazos Island Harbor (BIH) Improvement Project, expanding from 42 to 52 feet (and 54 feet at the entrance) to accommodate larger vessels, with Phase 2 dredging starting in late 2024 and scheduled for completion in FY2026, using federal (IIJA) and private funds for new work and beneficial reuse of dredged material. Dredging uses cutter head or hopper dredges to remove material from the bottom, placing it in upland areas or offshore for beach nourishment, with recent contracts and groundbreaking for Phase 2 starting in late 2024. 

Project Details

• Goal: Deepen the main channel from 42 to 52 feet and the entrance channel to 54 feet.
• Phases: The project is moving into Phase 2, with construction commencing in late 2024.
• Funding: Funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), private funds, and TxDOT loans.
• Dredging Method: Dredges (cutter head or hopper) suck up material from the bottom.
• Dredged Material Placement: Material is placed in designated upland areas (DMPAs) or used for beneficial purposes, like beach renourishment on South Padre Island. 

Current Status & Timeline

• Funding Secured: Full funding for the project is in place.
• Phase 2 Start: Dredging for Phase 2 began in November/December 2024.
• Completion: New work dredging is scheduled for completion in Fiscal Year 2026. 

Impact

• Economic Growth: Supports regional industries, increases trade, and attracts
•  new business.
• Job Creation: Expected to create thousands of construction and permanent jobs.
• Navigational Safety: Enhances safety for vessels servicing the port and offshore energy sector. 
• ***********************************************************                                                              
• We went by an area where ships are cut up for scrap, and after salvagiing anything that 
• can be reused, the scrap iron is shipped to China.  We saw the last bit of the aircraft carrier Kitty
• Hawk, but I didn't get a picture of it.  Cousin Kent Miles took us on a tour of that ship docked in
• San Diego back in the 1990's!  This is the largest salvage yard in the United States that scraps
• ships.
• 
  

  

  Serving up shrimp, potatoes, sausage, corn

  
  
  
  
  

We had arrived at the island a little early so we drove north a few miles to show Marie & Sal the sand sculptures that are on exhibit.  They change the sculptures every year.  Takes a lot of time and patience.

This gives some facts about
the sculpture and how it is preserved

Look what I stumbled on to.  I
can't determine what year.

This showed up on Facebook from about 10 years ago

Sign where we were waitiing for the boat
on South Padre Island.

This is the boat we were on, taken as we got off.

Well, I think I have caught up.  Phyllis is

down at the Rec Hall oveerseeing the quilting.

This afternoon Lauri Kause is hosting a "Winter Happy Hour" at the Rec Hall at 4:00 pm  Hoping the 

various groups that do their own happy hour every day at someone's trailer will join!

This is getting too long, Till another time, LCM

Bit of a "Cold Spell" Here

61º with a very cold 22 mph north, northwest wind at 1:05 pm Saturday here in La Feria, Texas

Migrant Families workers from Harlingen picked up quilts and mats on Thursday.

Phyllils' "new" golf cart (Dan's)

Phyllils' "new" golf cart (Dan's)

 

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” —Henry David Thoreau

The Road Not Taken  By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged ina yellow wood.

And sorry I could not travel both.

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair.

And having perhaps the better claim.

Because it was rassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing thee

Hadd wornthem really ahout the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference

Would be nice to see this

Later, LCM