At age 95, with his remarkable mental and physical faculties largely intact, Ed Grauel of Rochester has died of a heart condition. A national treasure of American kiting, Grauel spent 40 years in retirement researching, designing, building, flying, collecting, exhibiting, lecturing, and writing about kites.

A calm evening, not even a car anywhere, clouds sailing high up in the sky. Sun shining on the melting stretches of ice. There is just me and my kite gliding from one cloudy pillow to the next. The soil is warm. The sun shines kindly on me. I am just lazily lying on the ground. And up in the blue there is the happy little kite.

Two intrepid Belgian explorers conclusively proved the worth of kites while transiting the White Continent, Antarctica. Their 99-day trek is documented in a fine new book titled In the Teeth of the Wind: South to the Pole published in England by Bluntisham Books (bluntisham.books@btinternet.com). At $45 postpaid, the hardback is good value not only because of the crackling text but also its superior photographs, 54 of them.

If you want to protect your new idea for a kite or a kite accessory, should you apply for a patent, trademark, copyright, none of these, or all of them? A patent protects the basic idea embodied in the new creation, a trademark protects the name of the product, and a copyright protects the words and style used in presenting the idea.

A former Dutch astronaut with the euphonious name of Wubbo J. Ockels has come up with an unusual, even unlikely, wind energy invention. Best described as a looped kite “ladder” in the sky, Dr. Ockels’ inspiration is to use the stiff breezes at high altitudes as an energy source.

My admiration for the female of our species is increasing every day. At the Thailand International Kite Festival with the Mega Ray, Clyde Cook and I were being our usual obnoxious selves about attending the opening and closing ceremonies, and about getting up for breakfast at 7:30 (so as to be ready to leave for the field at 9:30 so that we can sit there and wait for the wind to arrive at 11:30 and the public at 1:30), and things like that. Well, we met our match this time. A young lady from the Thai Tourism Authority soon had …

Traveling. There are lots of tricks. One of the requirements of going to international kite festivals from New Zealand is that the baggage allowance of 140 pounds (64 kilos) is for kites alone—-that is, no superfluous things like anchors or little tents to store gear, beer, and hide in. And definitely no room for clothes and personal things, which have to all fit in a carry-on bag along with a few heavy but non-metallic things like 200 yards of flying line.

A couple of vintage car enthusiasts arrived with a very interesting challenge one weekend. They had secured the rights to make an official replica of the first motorcar, Carl Benz’s single cylinder three-wheeler of l886—from 15 pounds of plans duly received from Mercedes-Benz. It took 14 months to build. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t run.

In an experiment, C.W. Post, the breakfast food millionaire, once tried to produce rainfall on his Texas ranch by using 20 kites to hoist 150 sticks of dynamite into the air, where they were simultaneously detonated. The arid blue sky remained blue. No rain fell.

In order to widen the audience for its collection of French language kite material, some of it rare and unusual, the Drachen Foundation hired Rebekah Pape of Seattle Pacific University to survey and organize the holding. Over the course of several months last year, she indexed books, journals, magazines, photographs, and drawings.