Ash Monday: Makin' Hay While the Sun Shines

The setting sun, photographed Saturday from a front window here at home, attempted to burn its way through the gunk that volcano in Iceland continues to spew into the atmosphere. All aircraft here are grounded, even the fighters, tankers and cargo craft in and out of RAF Lakenheath and Mildenhall. Which, if you work on Lakenheath, especially, is a blessing. You get used to the flights of four roaring overhead, but never really.

Among the thousands stranded by the ash cloud in airports in Europe and at home in the U.S. are hundreds of teachers employed by the U.S. Defense Department to teach in its schools for dependents across Europe. They were caught by the flight ban away from their homes on Spring Break. And hooray for that. A battalion of subs was summoned to fill the breach this morning and looks like they'll be making hay for the remainder of the week, if not longer.

I pitched in for a math teacher during the day's first period. She's in Slovenia and heading home by train. She's due back Thursday. The remainder of the day I spent as a teacher of U.S. History. I don't know where that teacher went, but she can't return before Saturday. That's a full week of work for yours truly. Some of the kids were on a church trip to Poland on an aid project. They endured a 27-hour bus trip to get home in time for school first thing this morning. Some were too tired after the ordeal to make it to class. The principal is out, too, until Friday.

My one concern is that the volcano will continue boiling into May and disrupt my plans to fly to Sarajevo. More on that in another post.

Three Bugs Full

The weekend bug hunting was rewarding. This insolent specimen lives just down the street. I caught him just outside Bug Alley.

This layabout was just yards away. As you can see, the street is teeming with these animals.

Look carefully at this frame and test your powers of bugspottery. This was a scene from a country lane along a string of farms known as Padney, just south of Ely. Yeah, he's in there. Look closer.

Finally, this lunker was grazing outside Witnesham in Suffolk County about an hour east of here.


That's right, it's not a cat at all. It's a llama. So sue me.





All Quiet on the Eastern Front

Attacks in Kandahar and Kabul rocked the news recently, and I confess that hearing TV talking heads announce, "Breaking news from Afghanistan" twice in one week caused a momentary pause in the usual cardiac rhythm. But Gardez was quiet and the wife reported no sorties beyond the wire, as it were. So no news to report from that quarter.