>Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 20:58:12 -0700
>To: [log in to unmask]
>From: dogyears <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Got CALICHE ?
>
>Got CALICHE ?  http://ww.swanet/org/caliche.html
>
>
>AVIATION TIME CAPSULE PART OF STATE HISTORY 01/13/99 01:25AM OKLAHOMA CITY
>(AP) _ It looks almost like Billy Parker just left. A coffee pot sits on a
>single-burner hot plate beside a stand-up telephone and an early-day
>example of a two-way radio. An incomplete letter, being composed by Parker
>himself, is still in the ancient typewriter. Historic pictures of Parker,
>Wiley Post, Will Rogers and Art Goebel, who won the Dole Pineapple Race to
>Hawaii in 1927, adorn the walls. The former office of Parker _ Phillips
>Petroleum's first corporate pilot and sales manager for aviation fuels, oil
>and lubricants _ stands as a time capsule of when aviation was in its glory
>days, when newspapers worldwide were heralding astounding feats recorded
>almost daily by pilots in their fragile flying machines, especially the
>one-eyed Oklahoman Wiley Post and his Lockheed Vega, the Winnie Mae. That
>office, used by some of the greats of early-day aviation, is inside the
>pristine example of the earliest service station architecture. ``People
>tell me that most of the great people of aviation history were in this
>building at one time or another,'' said Jim Edwards, who sort of manages
>the building. ``(Charles) Lindberg was here, Amelia (Earhart) was here and
>of course Wiley (Post) made all his high-altitude flights from here, doing
>a lot of his planning in this office. I've even heard that Marlene Dietrich
>stopped by here and was in the office.'' It's only fitting, for the
>building that looks like a service station, but was used for aviation, sits
>on Frank Phillips Field in Bartlesville, location of the Bartlesville
>Municipal Airport.  Phillips built and owns the building as well as the
>field. The company also manages the airport for the city, with Phillips'
>corporate aviation department the airport's biggest customer. Another
>Phillips division operates the fixed base operator, a sort of airport
>service station itself, selling Phillips 66 aviation fuels, oils and
>lubricants. Plans were recently established to build an industrial park
>around Frank Phillips Field in an effort to attract more industry here, but
>there has been no announcement on when work would start. ``Right now, the
>plan is to use some of that space out by our old sod (landing) strip,''
>Edwards said. That strip, recently developed, is used for two major events
>as Bartlesville Municipal Airport _ the annual International Biplane
>Association fly-in in June, which attracts pilots and planes from all over
>the world, and the Tulsa regional fly-in in September. ``Those are our
>really big events that we plan for all along,'' he said. Recently, the
>airport was expanded 500 feet to make it more acceptable to corporate
>aviation. The runway now is 6,200 feet long and 100 feet wide. ``We wish we
>could make the runway a little longer, because we can't get any commercial
>operations, not even charters, in here without a 10,000-foot runway,''
>Edwards said. Even so, there are about 17,000 to 20,000 operations _
>takeoffs or landings _ recorded annually on the airport. The majority of
>those are done by Phillips' aviation department and those of corporate
>executives coming in to do business with Phillips. Considering the history
>of the field and some of the buildings, it's only natural that mention of
>the ``old sod strip'' would evoke memories of trail-dragging fabric covered
>biplanes landing there. ``We built that as a cross-wind runway, but when we
>started bringing in the biplanes it turned into a lot of trouble,'' Edwards
>said. ``Now we just use it for the biplanes.'' It seems that every year
>when the biplanes come in, rain also comes in. So, when the heavy fuel
>trucks would be driven out to the biplanes to refuel them for takeoff, ruts
>would be dug into the sod. That caused extra expense in filling them in, so
>the sod runway is no longer used for modern aircraft. Combating that
>disappointment, the original landing strip is still evident between the
>main runway and the taxiway. It hasn't been paved over because of
>historical reasons. The historic building that resembles a service station
>almost was lost. There are not many of these buildings remaining, so the
>Oklahoma Historical Society convinced Phillips to donate it for a Route 66
>display in Clinton. After workmen dug out along the east side of the
>building, in preparation to putting support underneath it to move it, a
>heavy rain flooded the ground. ``The whole east wall fell in and we had to
>completely rebuild it,'' Edwards said. Now, airport users _ along with some
>Phillips employees _ are watchful to head-off any other attempt to take the
>building. ``Phillips has spent a lot of money on this building, but we
>(volunteers) have put a lot of time on it keeping it the way it is,''
>Edwards said. ``I don't know how they (Phillips) got talked into donating
>the building to be moved to Clinton, but I feel it's a bad idea.''
>
>
>http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/088-5012.html The Arizona Historical
>Society's ``Quickie Courses in Southwestern History'' are at the society,
>949 E. Second St: Mammoth Hunters, Canal Builders and Cliff Dwellers,
>Storytelling of Southwest Indians, Priests, Soldiers and Settlers, The Real
>Old Tucson, From Frontier to Statehood. For more details, call 628-5774.
>
>
>http://deseretnews.com:80/dn/view/0,1249,30005941,00.html? The Madrid Codex
>is made almost entirely of bark paper. However, a section of European
>paper, with 16 lines of 17th-century Latin text, is embedded in the codex.
>Michael A. Coe of Yale University believes the European paper may have been
>used to make the codex. One line of Latin seems to contain the partial word
>" . . . riquez." Houston points out that a Spanish missionary named Fray
>Juan Enriquez was killed by Mayan Indians in 1624. If the fragment refers
>to him, and the paper was used in making the book, the codex could not be
>as old as once believed.
>
>
>http://deseretnews.com:80/dn/view/0,1249,30005852,00.html? Utah Geological
>Survey will soon be offering a CD-ROM that will allow anyone to create maps
>showing the state's natural resources, along with detailed information
>about the location of each item. The disk should become available by Feb. 1
>at the Utah Department of Natural Resources Map and Bookstore, 1594 W.
>North Temple. http://www.ugs.state.ut.us/
>
>
>http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/education/specials/bett_99/newsid_25400
>0/254933.stm Ticking down to a May launch, the 24 Hour Museum Website will
>allow visitors to assemble their own private collection of favourite
>exhibits from Britain's 2,500 museums and galleries.
>http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/
>
>
>http://nt.excite.com:80/news/pr/990111/oh-toy-fair The game is based on an
>ancient Greco-Roman game known as TABAS, kids used to play with game pieces
>from dried sheep-knuckle bones in the village squares 2,000 years ago.
>http://www.crazybones.com/
>
>