Monday, June 20, 2005

Let's Go Fly a Kite

I was trying to think of a good birthday present for Crystal, looking out my office window and watching the blustery winds blow as they often do here in Durham. Then I remembered how she had enjoyed flying a kite in Vancouver. So I started doing my research and decided if we were going to get a kite ('we' because I knew this wasn't only for her) we might as well get a good one — a stunt kite. I settled on the Prism Nexus and placed the order.

What with trying to figure out life with Ellie and waiting for the rains to go away, we hadn't gotten a chance to go flying until just Saturday. Wow, I can see why the predecessor to this kite was called the "Adrenaline"! Click on Crystal's picture above to watch her show off her stuff.

  

We went flying on a recently harvested hay field that's up on a hill overlooking the cathedral. It gets pretty undisturbed winds (though they were come and go a bit today when we went back for session #2). When the 30 mph gales hit, it's going to get pretty exciting around here.

By the way, notice the short sleeves, shorts and sandals. Summer has hit just in time for the solstice -- count 'em: 82 degrees!!

And since I know you came here to see Ellie and not her parents, here's her reaction to her daddy's sky acrobatics.



Let's go fly a kite
Up to the highest height!
Let's go fly a kite and send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Oh, let's go fly a kite!

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Reminds me of another great kite poem, written by a member of my church in Seattle in response to a sermon Earl Palmer preached that used the illustration of a kite:

I Am the Kite

I am the kite:
Red and orange,
Fire in the sky,
Stunt Kite,
Cutting loops
And gashes in the blue,
My skin vibrates
On my frame with power.

I cut the cord
To fly yet higher still,
To show the rest
What freedom's all about.
I turn and twist
My fanciest curl
And set my course
For distance.

But, my mistake
Was not
To take the wind for granted,
But the cord
That tensioned me
To one I did not see
So far below.

The flyer is not me.

Lord, give me the anchor. Give me pause.
Let me know in freedom's limited flight,
The kite's first cause.

Bruce Barton Bailey
Sunday, May 29, 1994

from http://www.upc.org/download/664.pdf

7:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This looks suspiciously similar to a poem about a kite written by John Newton many, many years earlier.

4:17 PM  

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