Fire Department Doors Donated

Archived in the category: Announcements, General Info, Organizations
Posted by Joyce Rhyne on 19 Jun 14 - 0 Comments

Pictured left to right: Richard Salinas, Jerry Xinil, Tim Bahm of Overhead Doors, Troy Beaudry, Chase Hummel, Assistant Fire Chief Nathan O’Neill, Fire Chief Cale Hummell.

When approached by POC Assisitant Fire Chief Nathan O’Neill, for a bid on much needed garage doors for the Station, representatives of these companies graciously donated the doors, openers, windstorm bracing and labor the Fire Station needed:

Windsor Doors of Arkansas, Liftmaster of Chicago, Garage Door Services of Houston, and H&H Overhead Door of Victoria.

The Port O’Connor Volunteer Fire Department and community thank these companies and individuals for their generous donation.

Island Life… By Clint Bennetsen

Archived in the category: Featured Writers, General Info, Island Life
Posted by Joyce Rhyne on 19 Jun 14 - 4 Comments

Clint & Barnacle

Gardening Is Good, Snakes Are Bad

Greetings from the island everyone. Hope all of you are doing well and enjoyed a great Father’s Day with dad this past Sunday. I called my dad, Henry, in Brazoria and had a nice conversation with him, the talk as usual turning to gardening and whatever planting/growing advice that I can get. Even though I MIGHT hold a slight edge in melon growing over the old guy, my goal is one day to be as accomplished a gardener as he is.

Speaking of gardening, it is in full swing for me out here on the island right now. Several different varieties of tomatoes I’m trying, Campari and Tycoon (developed by Texas A&M), are doing very well. A good friend, Kimberly Bennett, told me about a delicious store bought tomato that she and her husband found, the Campari. She just raved about this golf ball size tomato, so I finally found some seeds on EBay and gave it a try. This variety is a hybrid (cross between two tomatoes), so saving and planting the seeds from a tomato you buy at the store does not guarantee the same quality results when you grow it. It’s a complicated genetic equation, one of which I don’t fully understand, but I always just purchase my seeds for any hybrid fruit or vegetable. It’s a very small price to pay for better results. Anyway, several of the Campari are just beginning to ripen, so I’ll soon know if the effort was successful.

The watermelons and cantaloupes are doing only fair this year, even though I do have a few nice watermelons and one HUGE (25” in circumference), cantaloupe right now. It appears that I’m having a problem with pollination on my melon plants this season. Unlike tomatoes, which are self-pollinating (having both male and female parts), melons basically require bees to transfer pollen from the male to female flowers. The male flowers outnumber the females about 7 to 1, and the female blooms are only open for one day, primarily in the morning. So if this pollination window is missed, no melon will develop and successfully grow to maturity. I’m trying to hand pollinate them myself, taking the male flower and rubbing it onto the open female flower, but bees/insects do a much better job.

So given this fact, next Spring I will take on yet another title out here, as beekeeper. I’m already researching the ins and outs of keeping honeybees, and will place one hive in my melon patch area. I really don’t care about harvesting the actual honey, even though I guess that I will, but only want them for melon pollination purposes. I’ll be looking for the most gentle and docile honeybees available, and will order a “package” of them, which is three pounds worth or approximately 10,000 bees. Always a project going on with me out here, always.

The chickens and kittens are doing just fine, all of them getting so big almost overnight it seems. The chickens have adapted to their move to the permanent pen/coop area, and the kittens are constantly getting into everything. Those little energy devils would make coffee nervous!

The one thing making me a little nervous this Spring and into Summer, is the unusually large number of rattlesnakes that are out. In the freezer waiting to be skinned right now are nine rattlers that either myself or other islanders have killed since February. Just last week at 9:30 p.m., I killed a 46” one on the front porch deck not twenty five feet from my front door! Now that’s way too close, especially at night when you wouldn’t expect to see them out. A bright flashlight is a MUST when walking around at night out here, and you just gotta be very careful and observant.

Well that’s it from the island for now, everyone take care and have a great day.

El Gordon Cantaloupe

 

Campari Tomatoes

Kite Contest

Archived in the category: Events, General Info, Organizations
Posted by Joyce Rhyne on 19 Jun 14 - 0 Comments

The Memorial Weekend Kite Contest was a huge success once again. The wind was perfect this year and quite a few people were flying their kites at the King Fisher Beach. We are thankful for the Port O’Connor Chamber of Commerce for the wonderful trophies they provided for the event again this year. Fortunately all participants were able to get a trophy this year. There was a variety of wonderful kites and everyone had a great time.

A special thanks to Shirley’s Small Fries Daycare for the nice cold drinking water and to James and Shirley Harper and Roni Ragusin for doing a great job of putting on the event this year. We had two very special judges this year, Pat Ekstrom and Sherry Roberds. They were fantastic with such short notice. Fun was had by all.

Kite Contest Winners

Sherry Roberds and Pat Ekstrom

Brown Pelican nesting in Lantana bush. Photo by Peggy Wilkinson

On May 23, 2014, Warden Tim Wilkinson headed out with two boats and fourteen volunteers to count the nesting birds on Chester Island. It was a gorgeous day to be on the island! Biologist Brent Ortego, from Texas Parks & Wildlife, led the team during the count. Because of the shoreline erosion plus the failure of the pier on the east side of the island, the volunteer counters had to wade in from the boats.

The count this year was stupendous! While Chester Island continues to suffer from serious shoreline erosion in the year of 2014, its current 65-acre size supports an impressive total of 16,070 nesting pairs of all species of Colonial Waterbirds. The total count this year was greater by 2,850 nesting pairs (+22%)—compared to the 13,220 nesting pairs from the 2013 census. The island’s signature Brown Pelican seemed to be literally everywhere, with the total number of 3,274 nesting pairs similar to last year’s record number. The pelican chicks observed were of all ages—just hatched and fledglings alike. But the pelicans had to share space with an even greater number of nesting terns—mostly Royal and Sandwich Terns. The total number of all tern species jumped by an amazing +66% to 5,619 nesting pairs in 2014. Tricolored Herons also showed a solid +22% increase to 774 nesting pairs. Most other numbers held steady.

Species numbers go up and down from year to year. Even though census counters try to count at the same time of year and as accurately as possible, dramatic differences in the numbers may occur. These changes can be caused by quality and quantity of available habitat and available food, weather (here and elsewhere if the species is migratory), the presence of predators, or species site selection preference.

Juliet Lamb, a PhD candidate, has been working on a Brown Pelican tracking project to obtain baseline data on their movements in relation to offshore development in the Gulf of Mexico. Last year Juliet and her team tagged 10 Brown Pelicans from Chester Island with GPS backpack units—and at least two of those are believed to have returned to nest here again this year. However, others of the 10 tagged on Chester Island have decided to nest elsewhere this year— including Florida, Louisiana, and Galveston Bay. Apparently the individual Brown Pelicans have a mind of their own. Undoubtedly, we will learn much more about the interesting behavior of the Brown Pelican from Juliet’s research. Read more about her project here: https://sites.google.com/a/g.clemson.edu/jlamb/brown-pelican-tracking-project.

Thanks to all of the volunteers who helped make this census count a success!

Census takers:

• Tim Wilkinson, Audubon Coastal Warden of Chester Island
• Amanda Hackney and Vanessa Shanahan (Texas Audubon)
• Brent Ortego (Texas Parks & Wildlife and Coordinator of the Colonial Waterbird Surveys)
• Trey Barron (Texas Parks & Wildlife)
• Donna Anderson and Amber Miller (US Fish & Wildlife Services)
• Bill Ward and Steve Goertz (The Nature Conservancy)
• Volunteers: Lynn Travis, Peggy Wilkinson, Nancy Posey, Dora Ann Baass
• Brown Pelican Tracking Project members: Juliet Lamb and Yvan Svetge.
• Transportation to the island: Nancy Posey generously captained a boat to transfer one group of volunteers to the island. Tim Wilkinson, Warden, brought the other half of the group in Audubon boat, the Egret III.

The 2014 Census chart is at right. You may view census data comparisons (2014-2002) by visiting the website at http://www.chesterisland.org. To learn more about the Audubon’s Coastal Stewardship Program, please visit this site: http://tx.audubon.org/coastal-stewardship-program.

For more information about the island or to volunteer, you may contact the Chester Island Sanctuary Warden, Tim Wilkinson, by e-mail: twsword1@gmail.com.

2014 Chester Island Waterbird Census
Nesting Pairs by Species
May 23, 2014

Species ———Pairs

Brown Pelican 3,274
Neotropic Cormorant 27
Great Blue Heron 140
Great Egret 206
Snowy Egret 158
Little Blue Heron 16
Tricolored Heron 774
Reddish Egret 115
Cattle Egret 30
Black-crowned Night Heron 25
White Ibis 205
Roseate Spoonbill 262
Laughing Gull 5,200
Caspian Tern 19
Royal Tern 4,550
Sandwich Tern 1,050
Black Skimmer 19

Totals 16,070

Dowsing For Oil by Jimmy Joe (JJ) Ault

Archived in the category: General Info
Posted by Joyce Rhyne on 19 Jun 14 - 4 Comments

dowse: verb \ˈdau̇z\ : to search for an underground supply of water by using a special stick that leads you to it; dows•ing: intransitive verb: to use a divining rod transitive verb: to find (as water) by dowsing Origin unknown; First Known Use: 1691 -Webster’s Dictionary

“I know very well that many scientists consider dowsing as they do astrology, as a type of ancient superstition. According to my conviction this is, however, unjustified. The dowsing rod is a simple instrument which shows the reaction of the human nervous system to certain factors which are unknown to us at this time.” -Albert Einstein

For scientists, examples of finding water by dowsing fall under the heading “anecdotal,” rather than proof or even evidence of dowsing’s potential. Nor can they be blamed for adopting that attitude. Part of their problem with dowsing lies in the fact that even dowsers don’t know exactly how they do it, and what they can explain of it sounds suspiciously like magic. Some of them refer to their skill as divining, a method that operates through some means other than the physical senses.

Water is not the only commodity dowsed for health and profit. The petroleum industry has used dowsing to locate oil wells. Dowsers are called Doodlebuggers. One of the most successful dowsers was Paul Clement Brown of California, an MIT graduate and electrical engineer, who used dowsing to successfully dowse oil wells for Standard Oil, Signal Oil, Getty Oil, Mobil Oil, and others. For years, he advised one of America’s most successful petroleum “wildcatters,” J.K. Wadley, on whether or not his proposed oil-drilling sites would be productive and how deep the oil would lie. His ability to dowse for oil was tested by an initially skeptical senior petroleum engineer. Chet Davis, on 35 proposed well sites. “He was right on all 35 wells,” says Davis. “I don’t think anyone in the oil business would believe it if they didn’t see it. I wouldn’t have.”

Brown’s main device was a hand-held pendulum. Asked to explain how his dowsing method works, Brown answered enigmatically, “You know, that’s a good question. As they say: The spirit moves me.

What I’ve done, any man can do with the right spiritual approach. And that approach is the truly scientific one. They’ll tell you dowsing isn’t scientific, but it is if you do it the way it should be done.”

Which doesn’t answer the question, but poses a couple of heavy ones that we certainly can’t answer here. However, it’s interesting to note that parapsychologists have done research that shows that people who believe in the possibility of a “sixth sense” perform better on tests for physical ability than those who don’t believe such a sense exists. We are reminded of Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, teaching Luke Skywalker that only Skywalker’s belief that some things are impossible prevents him from accomplishing them.

Here is a short bio on my uncle, Paul Clement Brown: He was born May 5, 1902 in Shaner, Oklahoma.

His mother (my grandmother) was a school teacher in Kansas. When my grandfather moved her to a homestead he acquired in the Cherokee Strip in 1893, there was neither a town or a school house.

When Uncle Paul was one year old, still too young to talk, Grandmother wrote the alphabet all along the wall. She would name one of the letters and he could point to it. When he was five years old they gave him a pocket watch. He took it all apart and spread the parts out on the table. Then he put it all together and it worked fine.

When he graduated from Canadian Texas High School, Grandfather urged him to take a job at the Bank. The teachers from his High School said “Oh no, he is not. He is going to the University of Texas in Austin.” The University in Austin kept him for two years then sent him to M.I.T. in Boston. There he got two degrees, Electrical Engineer, and Mechanical Engineer.
During WW2, they held up the bombing attack on Berlin so he could finish his weather balloons to be dropped over Germany. An Admiral asked him to develop a sonar that could work through rock formations to find hidden German Submarines. I was the executor of his estate when he died and I found the note from the Admiral. Uncle Paul told me he was unable to develop the sonar.

What he did manage to do was develop very sensitive instruments to read the electronic waves coming from the earth. When I asked him how it worked, he replied. “I use the band of frequencies that emanates between the elements like on the spectrograph. I call them my family of frequencies.

After that he became interested in Petroleum Engineering. Paul Brown developed a dowsing procedure which was difficult to understand and regarded as non-conventional by petroleum geologists and scientists. However, the recorded evidence proved his success There is no doubt that Paul Brown was held in high esteem by many major oil companies in the U.S.A.
In the 1950’s, Paul Brown and some scientist friends were asked to design a flying saucer. They did design one, but it could not be built as there was no metal on earth that could withstand the stress of movement.

JJ welcomes any aircraft or UFO enthusiasts to come by 2148 Monroe, POC and see the plans.

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