I believe the structure might have changed some over the years I’ve been going by this place. Back in the 1990’s, I use to travel this road almost every day of the week while I was going to college at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, and I lived in Rosevine. This is a pretty stretch of highway that just seems to seep with history. Some folks know it just as Hwy 21. The locals know it as, the Old San Antonio Road. George Louis Crocket, a resident of San Augustine, TX, born there in 1861, was most likely the known authority when it came to Texas history during that time. He knew it as a trail called the Camino Real. The King’s Highway, the Royal Road. To me, it’s the highway home. To Rosevine.

According to G.L. Crocket, it is a traditional belief that Sier Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, a French explorer, was declared to be the person who laid out the trail, back in 1714. He was hired by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, the governor of Louisiana at the time. La Mothe wanted to develop trade with Mexico.

Crocket said that, in those days, during the time of St. Denis, the people who mainly lived in the area between the Sabine River, that now forms part of Texas’ eastern border, and the Neches River, were called the Texas Indians. The word Texas, among these people, meant “a friend,” an ally. As opposed to the wild indians who lived west of the Neches, like the Apache and Comanche, for example. The Spaniards knew the area by this term, and called it the Great Kingdom of Texas. The land of the Hasinai confederation, made up of twelve tribes, and their brothers, the Caddo. It was the trails between their villages, heading west, that St. Denis utilized, and formed what we now call, the King’s Highway.

It was down this road, people like John Salmon Ford, also known as Rip Ford, would travel. He came from Tennessee, like many other people that came to Texas around the 1830s seeking their fortune. And men like Davy Crockett, the famous frontiersman, soldier, and politician, who came out of eastern Tennessee, and fought at the battle of the Alamo, against Santa Anna, during the Texas Revolution. Sam Houston, who came down this road, was once the governor of Tennessee, U.S. Representative from Tennessee, and distinguished soldier. He would later command not only the Texian Army during the Texas Revolution, but personally commanded the Texan forces at the Battle of San Jacinto, where Santa Anna was defeated. Sam Houston went on to become the first, and third, President of Texas. After Texas entered into the Union, he served as the U.S. Senator from Texas. Then, he was elected to serve as the governor of Texas. But, for a while, he served as a member of the Texas House of Representatives, from the San Augustine district, a little town on the Camino Real. This was during the same time John Salmon Ford practiced medicine in San Augustine, for eight years, before he later went on to become one of the Texas Rangers who was most feared by the Comanches. He would fight the Comanches with the same ruthless spirit, with their own tactics, and with men who had the same determination. During the Civil War, he raised troops and defended Texas against Mexican invaders. An in May 1865, he led Confederate troops in the last battle of the American Civil War, on south Texas soil, against Union troops, and defeated them. Ford was also responsible for scouting out, and mapping, the Ford and Neighbors Trail, between Austin and El Paso. An important trail that could be traversed in twenty days on horseback, and would later be used by thousands of emigrants headed to the California gold fields.

And a little over 100 years ago, it was just a few miles from the Camino Real, about five miles down Highway 1, in Sabine County, that my grandmother, also from Tennessee, came to live in Texas. My father is the youngest of her ten children. At last count, Granny and Papa have well over 300 descendants, maybe 400 now. Like me, most of them have moved off to places elsewhere. San Augustine and Sabine counties are still low key when it comes to economy. But, my Mom and Dad still live there. A little place called Rosevine. And one day, I hope, it will be down that road, the Camino Real, that I travel again. Back to my childhood home.

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What is the Earth’s equatorial plane, and ecliptic plane?

Imagine if the Earth were cut completely in two at the Equator, and then a large piece of paper were inserted between the two halves. That flat surface would be considered the equatorial plane. If the Sun were cut in two at the center, along the line of the Earth’s orbit around the it, and then a large piece of paper were inserted, that would be considered the Earth’s ecliptic plane. The difference in the two angles is approximately 23.5 degrees. You can see the lines representing the equatorial plane, and ecliptic plane, shown on the picture attached to this article. The angle between these two lines stays the same all year long.

How do we know the angle between the Earth’s equatorial plane, and ecliptic plane, does not change throughout the year?

During an entire year (Earth’s complete orbit around the Sun), the North Star will always be in the same place in the sky, when observing it from the same place. Anywhere along the Equator, which is zero degrees latitude, the North Star will always appear to sit right on the horizon. At the Tropic of Cancer, it will appear to be 23.5 degrees above the horizon. At the North Pole, it will be directly overhead. Whatever latitude  you are on in the Northern Hemisphere is how far above the horizon you’ll see the North Star. And this is true all year long. If the axis our Earth rotates on wobbled throughout the year, this would not be true. And if Earth moved up and down on its axis throughout the year, as if it were bouncing as it moved along its ecliptic plane around the Sun, then the Sun would not be directly overhead on Summer Solstice along the Tropic of Cancer latitude (23.5 degrees), consistently, every year. Also, the amount of daylight at the Equator would differ every day. Which, it does not.

So what is Spring Equinox, and Fall Equinox?

Imagine looking down at the Earth and Sun, as if you could see the imaginary line drawn by the Earth as it moves around the Sun counterclockwise. Well, if Summer Solstice were 12 o’clock, and Winter Solstice was 6 o’clock, then the Spring Equinox would be at 3 o’clock. Fall Equinox would be at 9 o’clock. At a specific moment in time, if you were looking at the Earth lined up with the Sun, the Earth’s axis would evenly divide the Sun, and so would the Equator. That exact moment is known as an equinox. That day, every place on Earth gets 12 hours of sunlight, and 12 hours of darkness. If you are right at the poles, you only have one day when the sun sets and rises. That is when an equinox occurs. Before, and after that, it’s either the Sun being visible all day, or the opposite. Hence, the name, Land of the Midnight Sun.

Now, for all you obsessive compulsive folks!

There are slight deviations in all of this. The Earth is not perfectly smooth. The Earth’s orbit around the Sun is elliptical. Our atmosphere bends light rays. Etcetera! What I’m trying to do is help folks be able to visualize how the Earth, Sun, North Star, and also the Moon, move relative to one another. And how they all impact one another. I was 40+ years old before I really thought about this a lot. The heavy thinking mostly set in one day when I was trying to figure out how to take photos of the Sun during a solar eclipse. But, that’s another story for another day! Come back and see me again. I plan to write about that, and a few other things I learned as a result of that. Like, how to figure out where you are (approximately) on a sunlit day, with just a stick, a few small rocks, and some time on your hands. See y’all then!

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Facebook allows me to connect with friends and family in ways I could not do otherwise. To see what’s going on in their lives. To communicate with them. And to share some of what was happening in my life with them. It also allowed me to share my interests, and views, that I thought might help make a difference in this world. To clarify, I’m not completely leaving Facebook. Just significantly reducing my time there.

So, this brings us to the “horse in front of the cart, so to speak,” part! Many folks who read this, who have been exposed to my long comments on Facebook, my many news articles I’ve passed on, and sometimes just long posts I’ve made about my thoughts at the time, will very much understand what I am fixing to say next. I tend to get long winded!

With my blog, I’ll probably continue to be long winded. But, unlike Facebook, maybe you can read my posts sort of like you read a book. Read for a while. Take a break. Come back and read if you want to hear more. And you can do it in an environment that is a lot less distractive, unlike Facebook. And, my “posts” will all be somewhere that even weeks down the road, you, or I, can still come back to them. They won’t be lost forever in the mass, almost unrecoverable, history of thousands of Facebook posts going into that deep, dark well, controlled by Facebook.

I plan to organize my posts in ways that readers can select from a list of blog topics. Or you can just browse. I’ll also have some pages that will display other interests I have. Such as, my photographs, maybe even some recipes that have meaning that carries beyond just taste. And of course, some sort of page, or tool, to continue carrying out my forever mission of trying to funnel people toward information I think will hopefully help us to learn, so we can make better decisions, and hopefully help make this “garden” a better place, to “dress it and to keep it,” in the words of the Jewish prophet, and writer, Moses.

So, here we go! The cart is leaving the barn. Hopefully, this time, the horse is in front of the cart!

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In truth, I don’t know how much world changing I’ll be doing. But, as most folks who knew me as a little kid will remember, “Did ya know?” was commonly one of the first sentences they heard spout out of my mouth. Well, in my own way, as you already know, I haven’t stopped saying that. I just do it in maybe a little less subtle way these days.

I find this world to be an amazing place. First of all, we all live on a rock that is traveling 67,000 miles per hour around the Sun. While this same rock is rotating on it’s own axis at a speed of about 1,000 miles per hour (if you are on, or near, the Equator). And, as far as we know, all of this, and the rest of the Universe, is made up of just 118 different elements. (I know this to be true, because when I was in school, I had to memorize the entire Periodic Table of Elements. To be fair, there were fewer elements back in those days. At least, as far as any anyone knew.)

Anyhow, getting back on track, and to try and get to the point, I just want a place where I can post my thoughts, get some feedback, and maybe interact with the world a little. Back in 62′, at a college in Mount Vernon, Iowa, a guy named Martin Luther King Jr said, “I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other, because they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other.” Well, now we have this thing called the internet, so we are not so separated from each other any more. As long as we don’t ignore each other.

So those folks who dare to venture into my website, might just get a taste of just about anything I might say on here. (I do promise to try and behave myself as much as possible though.) I’m already making a list (and checking it twice), on a daily basis, about what all I plan to say on here, for as long as I can keep this up. And I’m betting that if any of those folks interact with me on here, or in any other way, about this site, that I’ll probably come up with a bunch more to say than I already plan to say. And I’m going to post some of my photos too! Some of those will probably be of you, and other unfortunate folks whose light bouncing off y’all landed on the image of my camera sensor at one time or another.

So you’ve all been warned. Enter at your own risk! Seriously though, I do hope some of you folks out there will visit, and leave some comments, or shoot me an email, from time to time. Facebook isn’t the only game in town now!

(P.S. This website will probably change a lot over the next few months. I’m still a greenhorn when it comes to this website stuff. So if you show up to the party, and things look a little different, you can rest assured, you are at the right place. And leave me your thoughts, about what you see, and hear.)

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