Arkansas Visit

May 31 - June 4, 2016

On Tuesday, May 31 we made the drive to Arkansas. As usual, Rod enjoyed the farmland after we had crossed the Mississippi River into Arkansas. We had the privilege of watching an airplane spraying a rice field just west of Payneway, Arkansas. We stopped and Rod walked to the edge of the field and watched several passes before the plane landed at a small hanger in the next field over. Bobby's thoughts about the spraying were that he was probably spraying a grass killer to work against the grass among the rice. Even though rice seems like a grass to me, he said that poisons had been developed that wouldn't affect the rice.

We enjoyed three relaxed days with Bobby and Suzanne and got to visit with Dorothy at the Lindley Health Care facility. After her recent bout in the hospital, she seems to be doing well - was certainly clear-headed and we enjoyed visiting with her. On one day she had to be transported to Jonesboro for treatment of an ulcer on her heel, so Brenda and Suzanne accompanied her on that trip.

With Bobby we walked up the hill by Dorothy's house and visited Brent's state-of-the-art hanger and office complex for his ProAg business. We also got to visit with Mandi and made trips to see her chickens - and Bobby has also started raising chickens.

We were certainly impressed with the office and hangar building. It neatly holds two planes and a boat, and I understood there was sometimes a 4-wheeler in there as well. There are offices for Brent and a partner as well as for Mandi and another office and conference room.

On one wall is a three-generation tribute to the military service of the family with Brent's grandfather Jimmy Boggs, father Bobby Lassiter and brother Bryan (Will) Lassiter.

On Thursday night we went to Eli's baseball game with the family. It was a game of Newport vs Bradford in the under-14 league. We were amazed at how much Eli had grown since we saw him last May. He was probably the youngest player on the Newport team, but was about as big as his teammates.

Whether in the dugout or on the field, there seemed to be a good camaraderie on the team. The two teams knelt in a circle for prayer after the game.

Brenda, Suzanne and I drove down to Benton for Shirley's wedding at St. John's Chapel by the Creek. When we arrived, I was immediately struck by this fairly vivid rainbow which is still a mystery to me. As we were standing there looking at it, a lady helping with the wedding drove by on a cart and commented "Look, there's a rainbow but it's upside down!". Indeed it is curving upward rather than downward, but the red is on the top just like an ordinary primary rainbow. That made me think immediately that it was a reflection rainbow from sunlight reflecting off a large body of water. But we were looking westward! Or slightly south of west, but certainly toward the sun rather than away from it where you normally see rainbows. The time for this picture is 2:43PM CST so the sun was still fairly high.

This is a view of the Chapel setting from Google Earth. It shows the approximate direction in which we were looking from the grass parking area about at the base of the arrow showing the rainbow direction. Interestingly, you can see the direction of the shadows of the trees pointing north-northwest, so coincidentally the sun direction for this GoogleEarth image is not too different from what we were experiencing.

My impression is that when you see a reflection rainbow, you are dealing with reflection of the sun off at least a sizable body of water, so I looked for candidates on Google Earth.

There were no large bodies of water west of the chapel location, and I had a look at this dam and reservoir about five miles east of our location near the I-30/Hwy67 expressway we had driven in on. But this water surface was in the wrong direction to produce a reflection!

I have to admit that I am stumped. It is possible that the reflection comes off one of the ponds you can see in the picture of the chapel area above, or even off a point on the creek. It was threatening rain and there was a lot of moisture in the air, so perhaps conditions were very favorable for a rainbow. The light from the reflected image of the sun has to be directed so that the effective antisolar point is high in the sky, forming the center 42 degrees away from the arc that you can see. Uh oh! If you are looking at a primary rainbow, the red is on the outside of the curvature relative to the antisolar point, so we should be seeing red on the bottom. If we are dealing with an effective antisolar point high in the sky, then that would make this a secondary rainbow! But secondary rainbows are much dimmer than primary rainbows, so if a secondary reflection rainbow were this bright, it would be truly extraordinary. This is crazy!