She’s a wild thing
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.
Portrait
Fly me to nome
Oh fly me to nome, bring around that beechcraft 1900 and fly me to nome.
Wyatt Earp
Ten miles east of nome, there’s this old fallen apart cabin, roof sagging, where Wyatt Earp used to live.
Hello, you beautiful thing up there
Gray daybreak as we arrived
Big summer
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.
Nunam izzua
In Inupiaq, nunam izzua means ‘land’s end.’
Superhero
Well, I used to think that there was nothing like a great day of teaching to make me feel like a superhero, but alas it has been matched. While cruising over beautiful terrain in a helicopter, it’s easy to forget that I am not superman. And I get to cruise over beautiful terrain in a helicopter to go to the school where I teach. How am I this lucky??
Pops and the cook inlet
Sunset over tomorrow isle
How old is this path
