Yeah, it’s been about twenty years because my first clear memory of wanting to fly helicopters was from when I was something like five. But somewhere in that growing and learning and forming infant brain of mine, I believe I knew. And so I have been waiting my whole life for this day.
:D
I add something that I have already done to my monday morning to-do list, lending it a benign and friendly aura.
Whenever I hear somebody say “darn it!” I think to myself “old socks!”
My science students have been practicing weather observation and some basic forecast. They check out the current barometric pressure and the predicted barometric pressure for the next day and they write a weather forecast.
Yesterday they predicted bad weather today. Right now, it’s foggy, rainy and snowy, windy, and some of the really big waves I can see hitting the south end of big diomede (southerly wind means the big waves hit the south sides of the islands) are crashing well over a hundred feet high.
Success.
It’s that time a year again to have my once-a-year rockstar.
we were lucky to have you around joe, and we still miss you.
The bread is almost ready for a second kneading. Another ten minutes should do it. It’s six in the evening, and I left work at 4:30, what must be a personal record. The kitchen is clean, I folded my laundry. I pull up my google news feed, and the first two headlines are:
Iran’s president calls for ‘constructive’ dialogue, end to ‘unhealthy’ rivalries
&
Pope seeks to shift Catholic Church’s priority from dogma to mercy
Maybe just for a little while today the world isn’t so bad.
So what now? Indubitably at this point I would begin to think of bad men in ties, mosquitos, war, or some other depressing thing. This must be staved off. I’ll think about flying. Flying is one of my favorite things in the whole world, and it is also a thing that no matter what technology or fable of creation we humans invent we will never truly experience. Ever. Except for in our dreams.
So here’s to mercy, constructive dialogue, bread, flying and dreams.
(…and jason for sending me this video)
Work is hard but wonderful. I love my job. Teaching earth and space science is totally a hoot, we’re making clouds in bottles and checking out 8-day pressure charts. Big storm rolling around in 8 days, pressure down to 960 by 10am next friday. More laughing then ever before in my classroom. As always, I have my grievances about standardized testing and big men in suits, but at the end of the day I remember it’s all about the kids, and everything is ok.
Breakfast report:
I tried something different for my weekday breakfast routine. For those who know me, this is a big deal. I ate a tube of oreos with a glass of milk instead of my traditional can of peaches / can of vienna sausages combo. Conclusion? No-go. It’s 11:26 and my tummy is rumbling uncomfortably, threatening to start making funny noises.
Vosa, as performed live by Fireball and Honza in the Czech Republic, 1998.
Amelia Earhart, you plucky hero you, I am glad that you went out doing what you loved.
Here are a few snippets from her book “The Fun Of It”…
Ruth Nichols always dresses with charm and distinction. Even in the air she is apt to be garbed in her favorite color, which happens to be purple, and she owns a specially made purple leather flying suit and helmet.
Orville is quoted as saying “When the world speaks of the Wrights, it must include our sister. Much of our effort has been inspired by her.” […] Katherine Wright helped pay for and actually helped build the first heavier than air plane ever flown.
Starting from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, on the afternoon of May 20, 1932, I landed near Londonderry in the north of Ireland the next morning, thirteen and a half hours after the take-off. That, briefly, is the story of my solo flight across the Atlantic. […] By the way, I didn’t bother much about food for myself. The really important thing was fuel for the engine. It drank more than 300 gallons of gasoline. My own trans-Atlantic rations consisted of one can of tomato juice which I punctured and sipped through a straw.
Oh fly me to nome, bring around that beechcraft 1900 and fly me to nome.
So I leave Diomede something like a month ago, maybe three and a half weeks, and between then and now there was so much. Lots of great things, like flying and big old boats. There were downers, too, but thankfully there were a lot more ups then downs. For now I’m happy. Well no ‘happy’ isn’t the right word, it’s more like content or glad, to be back on the island. It’s beautiful here.
So there is this pizza place in Nome. Well, to put it better: the pizza place in Nome. And the wall decorations are these giant 5′ pizzas, cut out of plywood and handpainted in any way: pepperoni, combo, veggie, et cetera. On one wall there is the ‘current’ pizza, and all are welcome to Sharpie their names, thoughts, and drawings. When the current pizza is full it is placed somewhere else in the restaurant. And the other day in Nome, while I was enjoying my pizza and beverage, I saw what was the best* thing of this whirlwind three and a half weeks. It was written on the ’97 pizza, if I remember correctly.
*Just in case you don’t know, Nome not only was a gold rush town back in the day, it is still a major center for gold mining–and more specifically, many of the people who live in Nome during the summer are one-man or two-man gold mining operations. They work incredibly hard, like the old miners of the tales, and they make a lot of money.