Awakening A New Life For Seniors

I can't remember a time when I was putting the newsletter together and got an email that same day which turned out to be the lead article in the newsletter.

Thank you Chris Mohr, Sr.

Hi Reg, I am an 85 year old retired photographer. I live in Homeland, California, where we have as many quad pilots as we get rain. NO, I have to take that back. We get a little piddling rain maybe once or twice a year, but we have absolutely no quad pilots whatsoever for as many as 50 or more miles around, as near as I can tell.

And I wouldn't dare narrow it down to Phantom pilots because I know there ain't any of those around, except for me. Where the heck are all the new retirees who don't want to sit on a park bench and feed the ducks? All those who want a challenging and satisfying hobby like aerial videography.

How About A Little Magnetic Attraction?

I often use magnets to hold pieces of ship model ribbing vertical and exactly 90 degrees to the surface.

The idea is simple enough. Just lay a sheet of thin steel over your modeling surface. In my case it is the Crab where I do my rigging and deck furniture construction for ship models.

They are readily available at Michael's or AC Moore in rectangles like these, circles and even adhesive tape.

The magnets provide a uniform holding power, they are easily moved and will keep the lines taught.

I am sure there will be many more uses for this addition.

Your wife Can Help Your Modeling Budget

Nail polishing boards that have multiple levels of roughness are half the price of a similar product sold as track and wheel cleaners. Emery boards are another must have item much cheaper as a cosmetics item than has a hobby tool. In the next aisle, you’ll find Q-tips also essential in many forms of modeling.

When you take a break for lunch, go Oriental and hang onto the disposable chopsticks. They are excellent paint stirrers and can be notched on one end to handle a multitude of ship model rigging tasks.

And to return the favor, you’ll find her nail polish remover comes in small bottles and is pretty expensive when you compare it to paint thinners that can do the same job If you want to create detailed and imaginative flying machine sculptures that look like they’re about to take flight, cardboard is hardly the material to use. Unless of course you’re artist Daniel Agdag (previously), who has been toiling away creating a series of new works each more detailed and fascinating than the next.

Fighting The Shakes

It is often referred to as senile tremors or the “old age shake”, you’d think there was no recourse and that sooner or later…

I have noticed in my own performance as a model builder that once in a while, I develop the shakes in my right hand. I have a similar infliction in my right leg.

More often than not each is accompanied by lengthy periods of just sitting like in extensive TV viewing. I have found it abated by keeping busy, even if I am just typing on my computer. Another contributing factor is what I call “negative living”.

Every time I get the woe is me attitude or get caught up in if-only type thinking, When I start thinking I’ll never have enough money, or why can’t the doctors cure my problems I find myself prone to the tremors.

But this is a malady that can reach out a grab those in their 20s, or 30s. It is intermittent at this age and usually only when arguing. It is usually so brief we ignore it at this age or ascribe it to an emotional reaction.

I am not a medical doctor and neurology never was a field I tried to get into. I did try what both offered and nothing seemed to resolve the situation like activity and positive thinking.

Beyond age 65, serious modelers will quit, slow down or shift to a much larger scale.

Instead, I have chosen to stick with N Scale in model railroading and 1:426 is plastic ship modeling for the challenge.

Yes, I have scrapped ruined models and let others make a major contribution to my junk box, but I have found a few work-arounds that are part of a new article about hobbies for Seniors on my web site. Its right

Once Again With Gusto

I've never been really happy with the outcome of my scale model of Noah's Ark, it was out of scale, and frankly look pretty simple. In my mind simply awful.

I recently read "Noah's Ark, Thinking Outside The Box", it seemed a lot more realistic in terms of what God would have commanded.

I decided on a do over.

What's this got to do with our country? I was flipping through what's available to watch on Netflix and I came across a video called "Monumental", by and starring Kirk Cameron.

When I got into it I became enthralled, everything I knew about this country seemed to get off on the wrong foot.

Cameron went so far as to go back to England and learn the true beginnings of those we've come to call Pilgrims at the time they were known as Puritans.

It's wonderful to see laid out in film that runs about an hour and a half what must have taken months of research and interviews. Monumental will change your thinking of what Thanksgiving is all about and how this country actually came into existence. Did you know there exists today a 70 ton statute in Plymouth Mass. which spells out a recipe for liberty, just in case we forgot how it was done.

Cameron does a wonderful job of laying out the truth of history and how this country actually came into existence. There is so much we can learn from our history book which impacts us even today. History does repeat itself.

But getting back to my Noah's Ark revamp there were things I did not consider during my original modeling effort.

I believe the Bible version of the earth encompassing flood and God's plan to use high-speed winds to dry the earth. The impact of those winds on the ark would have been tremendous striking the vessel side-on.

Tim Lovett in his ...outside the box book surmises such wave action could serve to help steer the ark if the bow was equipped with a wooden obstruction on the surface of the ark's bow to catch the wind And prevent an overturning.

Coincidentally, certain aspects of this design appear in some of the earliest large ships depicted in pottery from Mesopotamia, which is not long after the Flood. It makes sense that shipwrights, who are conservative as a rule, would continue to include elements of the only ship to survive the global Flood—Noah’s Ark.

In the final analysis, The Bible gives clear instruction for the construction of a number of things, but it does not specify many aspects of the Ark’s construction.

Until Next Month