THANKSGIVING GREETINGS from Ohio and the COLD!

We have arrived! Yikes, snow! We would rather have had sun and beaches, but wouldn't trade the visit with our family and friends! Our grandson has been to visit us at his uncle's house and wanted to stay all night. We will spend some time baking cookies, but I am sure that what he will enjoy most will be playing games with his uncles! Our trip through the mountains was very different scenery ! No leaves this time . But at least there was not any snow on the roads! We got into snow flurries about an hour from our destination, and were glad that was all. Don't know what is wrong with our memory, but we have forgotten to take the camera with us anytime we have done anything here! We will catch up with it and will post some on the next Blog. We were pleased that our timing was right for the dedication of the addition to our home church, First Friends of Salem . There was a great service in addition to the dedication and the house was packed! I also got to attend the Thanksgiving dinner Monday night with the scrapbooking group at church and surprised them. Had a wonderful visit. We are looking forward to more visits, parties and nights out! We will share with you again soon. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. We sure have plenty to be thankful for!

Leaving South Carolina

Greetings from our house to yours!

This is a view across from our park entrance.

We really have not been doing any sight seeing for weeks as the weather has not been very pleasant. However, we did finally have a sunshiny day and took a drive to Greenwood, SC to Park Seed Company to see their gardens, only to find that they were pretty well cleaned off for the winter. I took close ups of what few blooms they had left and will share those with you at the bottom of this Blog.

The best pictures of the trees in fall colors , we took right here in Barnyard RV Park . Then the rain came on again and the leaves all started to fall big time. We have been surprised how many live in this park full time. I ran into a young lady today at the laundry who said they have been here six years. They are afraid to pull out for a weekend trip as they don't want to loose their prime spot! I really haven't seen any mobile home parks, though there probably are some of those also.

Since we are leaving this area tomorrow morning, we took pictures today of the Church of God in Lexington after our last visit there. It has been a wonderful four weeks with them, actually five Sundays. This included their Home Coming Sunday Service and Dinner. They had a full house that day! We also attended their Fall Fest. We sure have had our share of dinners while in Lexington. Our new friends, Sandy and Mike have made sure of that! We have had such a lovely time visiting with all of the new acquaintances including John and Mary. Sandy and Mike had us to their home and what a cook Sandy is!

No, this is not snow! It is just the sandy road in the country to Sandy and Mike's home as we were driving along. They also introduced us to Grecian Garden's Restaurant. What a treat! And we helped Sandy celebrate her birthday there. Another day Sandy and I went for lunch at Vegetable Medley near the park here. We also found that we have scrap booking in common. So we will get together to do that next time around. We ran out of time this season.

We have been invited back by many and I am sure that we will, as we have made too many friends never to see them again. But we can't be sure just when we will be down I 26 again, except next week when we travel through from southern Georgia to Ohio for Thanksgiving.

We do want to do the east coast in NC and SC as we missed that area on this trip. But we have many years ahead, right?

And Pastor Mark, your sermons have been such a blessing to us. So I made sure we have some DVDs! And John does such a thorough scripture study for Sunday School. It is the first church on the road, where we have made an honest effort to be there early enough for class. And it was worth it! We do miss our Sunday School Class from back home!

We hear that you have snow in Ohio! Ugh. Maybe we will stay south??? I know that they got it in Maine right after we left there. It sure seems to be early this year.

Oh well, enjoy the flowers and we will see you on down the road!

Leonardo da Vinci, engineer

Leonardo da Vinci (Leonardo from Vinci) was born out of wedlock, in spite of this, he was a man ahead of his time. He was a true "Renaissance Man" skilled in many disciplines, sculpture, as an artist, engineering, anatomy, geometry, music and inventing. This blog is dedicated to his engineering expertise, and how these designs were ahead of his time. The following pictures are reproductions of his designs, most of which were not built at that time. They were only put upon paper in at least 15000 pages of manuscripts, many which have since been preserved in museums around the world. This exhibit is a traveling exhibit and is currently in the South Carolina State Museum where we viewed it. I will attempt to show a few of the reproductions that are on display, it is a must see! As Leonardo expressed it in his designs, all elements are constantly changing and were based on air, fire and water. He used these forces in his designs. As this picture shows his interest in flight in the 1400's way ahead of the first recorded flight. He designed a parachute of approximately 24' at the bottom and 24' to the top. When we consider moving objects by crane, this reproduction is quite interesting. It will lift but rotates by rollers placed in a circle. The lifting mechanism is block and tackle with a ratchet type lever to hold the load at a desired elevation.

A number of his designs had to do with warfare, because the noblemen of his time had the funds to support him in his engineering endeavors. He designed a tank with mounted cannon and a mechanism of motion by crank to rotate the wheels that are mounted inside. Each wheel was articulated individually by at least 4 occupants.

Leonardo designed a mirror manufacturing machine to create concave mirrors to concentrate light to set ships on fire. As you can see the grinding wheel is rotated as the glass disc is rotated in a horizontal movement using water to create the ideal grinding condition.

This is a mechanism to raise columns in the building trade. As you rotate the geared wheel you turn a screw that will bring a sled with the column base forward and the column is raised. This is quite a complex machine.

This mortar is raised and lowered by a worm gear, and is quite a feat of design for the 1400's. We use this for raising and lowering many machines today. Such as a screw down in the steel mill industry.

This is a calculator of sort, it measures distance by putting marbles in pockets in the top wheel and as one moves the machine the marbles drop into the hopper at an precise distance. This could be used in road construction and in the building trade, etc.

As one can see this is a chain and sprocket design and today we have used this in many machinery applications.

This is a bearing design, with the bearings separated by a spacer that will keep them in a precise spacing and the design can be used in rotating a column set on the top of it or used around a shaft. What else is new!

This is a bridge design that holds itself together with no fasteners of any sort and can be used in building arches, etc. I find this one very interesting! In fact, Audrey and I found this exhibit very interesting because of the time line between his insight and the actual construction of most of these machine applications.

Enlarge this picture and read!

Revolutionary War and Plantation Life in central South Carolina

With hesitation at going through another house, last Thursday we went to see the Kensington Mansion in Eastover, SC southeast of Columbia. The construction of this mansion was completed in 1854. In 1996 the Kensington mansion was furnished with the Scarborough -Hamer Collection of decorative arts from the Victorian period (1830-1901). The mansion is now owned by International Paper and is open to the public for tours.

We are finding with many of the museums and mansions, they do not want any picture taking. So I will only be able to show you a few that I took of the exterior of the home. The attraction in going to more of these plantation homes is the history that they tell during the tour. Each plantation has it's own history and they are always interesting. I bought a copy of "My Life in the South" written by Jacob Stroyer telling his memories of plantation life and it's affect on the blacks in the south. He was one of the few slaves who were able to learn to spell and read during their young years of bondage. Because of this ability he was permitted to begin in the trade of carpentry. The belief of the owner and overseers as they permitted him to go into a trade, was by keeping him away from other slaves it would keep the others from thinking that they should also be learning to read. It was against the law at that time for a slave to learn to read. Stroyer had continued his education since the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Lincoln. And at the time he wrote the book he was an ordained deacon in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He had begun a course of theological studies at Talladega college in Alabama with the hopes of completing those studies through the sale of his book.

This is the front entrance of the house as you see it upon arriving from the intersection of Highway 601 and SC Rt 764 . After checking in with the tour guide in what was the summer kitchen in a separate building to the right of the house, I wandered around what appears to be the back yard and took a few more pictures. One of the pictures was of the back, only to find out from the guide that it was originally the main entrance as it looks toward the river which was one main means of transportation in those days. The grounds close to the house had magnolia and water oak trees which had been there for more than a two hundred years and are prevalent in this area. It was a beautiful setting and such a small portion of the original plantation which was 5000 acres. They had 485 slaves at one point in time and it mainly produced cotton and raised race horses until Col. Dick Singleton died. His wife found the plantation to be heavily in debt and to avoid loosing the plantation she diversified and sold the horses and some mules to settle some debt. She also began raising corn, sweet potatoes and cattle in addition to the cotton believing that diversification would be better financially. She later was known to be a millionaire. Mrs. Singleton turned out to be a harder task master than Col. Singleton was.

The house has 29 rooms and 12,000 square feet of floor space. No one is permitted to tour the second floor because of the open railing around the hall on second floor which lets light through to the first floor from the glass dome in the roof in the center of the house. They also feel that the closet style stairway would be dangerous for the public because of the tight angle to the steps. They did say that the decorating on the second floor was not as elaborate as on first, as the first floor was where the entertaining was done. It was beautiful!

A Robert Hamer purchased the Kensington Plantation in 1910 and the family lived there until 1941. It was later owned by the Lantham family. And much later when it not inhabited, it fell into disrepair and was used for storing small equipment, grain, and straw. In 1981, International Paper acquired the mansion and restored it to it's former glory. As I said, the benefit of continuing to tour homes with a tour guide, is the history learned during the tour.

Revolutionary War Reenactment:

Saturday Gary went so Camden, SC for a Revolutionary War Reenactment of the Battle of Stono Ferry. There were also military and civilian camps set up for viewing as well as weapon demonstrations.

When he talked with some demonstrators of the 1700 era, a frontier's man and a trader reenactor they presented several facts previously unknown to Gary. The frontier's man explained that the coat he was wearing was a rifleman's coat. The British considered them very deadly for they could shoot and kill at 100 yards with accuracy. Therefore, Gen. Washington had 250 coats distributed to his best shots. When the British saw these they would rather retreat because the rifle was more accurate that the round shot they were using.

The trader explained why South Carolina became an important colony before the advent of cotton. He said that in the 1650's there was a plague on European cattle with a disease similar to mad cow and that the British had an embargo on European cattle and leather goods. By the 1770's there was a great shortage of leather in England, therefore the importing of deer hides was important and created a large trade with the Indians of the South Caroling region. This caused local Indians to slaughter thousands of deer and trade for salt, guns and iron goods.

Gary was also able to tour the Kershaw-Cornwallis House . He also went throughout the main floor of the house and took some pictures. Though the trim is not as elaborate as the Kensington, it just is beautiful! Both homes used wood for heat and thus had fireplaces in the main rooms.