The Northward Contrail

When you opened the window, the gasoline ran out

Been in the office less than 45 minutes this morning, and...yeah, it's a good thing I skipped the costume.  I'm not in any trouble, but the ceiling metaphorically collapsed on me after I opened Outlook this morning (sorry, we have a very Windows-oriented IT department and we have no alternative).  If part of a costume is feeling fun, well, that would have gone out the window first thing, what with everything I had to take care of early on.  Oh, Coke Zero, please soothe me....

:: Bass-o-Matic  Shaking that one off, let's press forward.  Keeping in line with the Lou Dorfsman and William Golden thread from a few days ago, here's a site dedicated to the work of another famous graphic designer, Saul Bass -- specifically, the cool title sequences he designed for motion pictures.  I wish we still had this kind of thing in movies, just as I wish we still had the same sort of epic motion picture scores we had back in the day, too.

Halloweenie

Halloween is coming up.  Each year, there's a few people who show up for work in costume.  It's a cute idea; there's something sort of Southwest Airlines about it, and you have to admire that kind of mindset where you feel you can do that and have fun at work.  The place I work is one where you could do that, so long as it's nothing really outlandish.  I've seen a few of my colleagues do it, and it looks like fun.  The students often do it, and they really have fun with it.

But I can't seem to get in the spirit of it.  There's something in me that feels silly doing it.  It's hard to tell you why.  Part of it is that I'm too self-conscious, and if I do something like that, I hear my inner voice (which, for whatever reason, sounds like a chuckling Bob Eubanks) telling me I'm so full of crap.  And there's also the fact that, while it's something fun to do, what if you end up having to do something difficult?  To me, the clothes I wear to work are almost like the armor I wear to deal with the day's parries and thrusts (that also has something to do with why I don't wear the same clothes when I relax).  How weird would it be for me, in costume, to have to be firm on something with a student?  Or what if one of the higher-ups needed to see me?  What if some sort of crisis came up, and I was in a costume?  I keep thinking about that Bob Newhart movie, First Family, where Newhart plays the President of the United States.  In the middle of a fancy-dress ball at the White House, there's an emergency Cabinet meeting, and all these various Cabinet officers and staff members are sitting in the Cabinet Room around the big table, still in these silly costumes.  I can't get away from that image.

When I was a kid, I dressed up for trick-or-treating. But I outgrew it.  For a few years, I did a witch get-up to hand out candy to the local kids (mostly as a dig at some really conservative people in my hometown who started up the whole "Halloween is devil worship" stuff, forced our church to rename its annual "Halloween carnival" we'd been having for decades to "Fall festival" or something equally toothless).  Then I fell out of doing it.  A couple years ago, a colleague had a Halloween party, and we were required to wear a costume.  A friend lent me this Renaissance maiden costume, which was really neat.  But I spent the evening being chatted up by someone who, seeing my costume, kept asking if I was a pagan and if I went to Renaissance faires.  And that's been it.  Since we live out in the sticks, there's no parties out there, and no trick-or-treaters.  I spend Halloween nights now at home, going about my business.

Oh, sure, each year I play again with the idea of showing up for work in costume.  This year I'd given some thought to tying my hair back, wearing my glasses, wearing some really nice clothes and showing up for work tomorrow as Aunt Sarah.  But that just wouldn't work, for several reasons; it's too topical, too close to Election Day (and I'm already on record as being way sick and tired of the campaigns), I couldn't quite pull it off convincingly, and...well, only about half a million other ladies out there will have the same idea for Halloween, won't they?  (Sort of the same way that a lot of guys will show up as The Dude.  It seems to be the thing this year.)  Then I had some thought of coming to work tomorrow as Liz Lemon.  Problem is, aside from some superficial differences, how far would that really be from me on any given day?  I'm acerbic, and I always look like my clothes are an afterthought.

Ah, I'll just show up for work tomorrow as plain old me.  Most days, the students find that scary enough.

(One of these days, though, I'll finally call in some favors and come to work dressed like this.  That would be memorable, wouldn't it?)

:: And, speaking of Liz Lemon, 30 Rock returns tonight, at long and blessed last.

:: Oh, and tonight marks 70 years (can you believe it?) since this happened.

As refreshing as a pre-moistened towelette

I'm almost completely caught up on things now.  Since I didn't have to go to a meeting yesterday, I took the projects home and worked on them there.  Three intense hours later, everything was done.  Like a good technician, I was left alone and could concentrate on what I needed to get done, and it was over.  There's one set of tasks left to get done, and that's waiting on me to have a chance to get over to the IT office after my first session this morning to pick up a new print cartridge.  Those tasks won't take long, once that's done.  And I will be happy.

There's more ruminations, but I'll save them for tomorrow.  I'd like to enjoy the lull a little bit; soon, it'll be time to make the doughnuts again.

:: Keeping with the discovered items thread, here's a commercial for Eastern's then-new 727.  That paint scheme (the 720 and 727 delivery scheme) is probably my favorite of all Eastern's liveries. 

And, of even more personal significance, here's the Columbia, SC Metropolitan Airport in 1975.  I remember visiting the old observation patio there in about 1980 (after my family's first visit to the Florence Air and Missile Museum) and seeing views like this one.  My parents bought me a kid-size pilot's hat from one of the gift shops there.  It had an emblem on the front that read "Future Eastern Air Lines Pilot."  So much for that, I guess!

My seven labors

It's a crazy week, and I wish I knew why it is it pours like this at the end of the month.  The newspaper is due today at the printer (thankfully, it's 95% done).  But that coincides with an entire string of meetings, almost all week, that I must either attend or chair -- and, in my line of work, there's no such thing as a concise meeting.  Plus there's a thing on Saturday that requires my participation.  Since our department is one of those with a lot of neat toys and gadgets in it, they like to show it off, so I'll have to be here all afternoon and do my salesperson schtick.  I really hate selling, and I feel like a huge phony as I'm doing it, but I have to do it.  It's part of my job. If I don't want to have to do it, I'll have to find another line of work, and I don't want to do that right now.  (Still waiting on a callback for that job I applied for as a billionaire, so I'll stick with the teaching gig for now.  Sure is easier than other things I've done for a living.)

The one good thing about having to stay around all day and wait for meetings is that I'm in my office, and it will give me plenty of time to dig out of the four tons of stuff on my desk that needs to be dealt with.  There's assignments the students turned in last week, and they're some of those assignments that aren't that complicated, but are still time-consuming.  The hours in the afternoons between the end of class, and the start of the meetings, will come in handy for helping me dig out.

[UPDATE: The meetings for this week have been cancelled.  Yippee!  But the Saturday thing is still on.  Oh, well.  You take what you can get, right?]

:: For today's time travel, try this 1951 film, taken at Miami's airport.  If the sight of those lovely old propliners in the colors of the Great Silver Fleet doesn't get you going, see a doctor.

:: And for the ultimate Christmas gift, try this one-of-a-kind item.  It's funny, and sad, on more levels than I can count.

More tears in the Eye

Lou Dorfsman died last week at age 90.  Along with William Golden, Dorfsman was one of the most important figures in the establishment of the corporate identity of CBS.  As others have observed, you may not know the name, but you definitely know the work he did.  Know that really classy-looking CBS lettering (CBS Didot, it's called)?  That's Dorfsman's.  Those special-edition books CBS once issued to commemorate coverage of special events?  He oversaw those, too.  Everything from the network's letterhead to the stuff you saw on-air, to the amazing wall decor that once lined the CBS cafeteria, he had a hand in. 

Dorfsman and Golden, and the teams they oversaw under the patronage of Frank Stanton and company, lent an air of class and distinction to the image of CBS.  They were as much a part of the CBS identity as Cronkite at the news desk, or Bill Gilliand's voice or Harry Kramer's voice from the announce booth.  Their cool, restrained work is quite the contrast to the in-your-face corporate identities we see today.  (Their work was also a definite influence on me, when my work requires me to design something.)

For more, check out this MP3 interview with Dorfsman.

I hope it gets better from here

Came in the office today, only to find no end of technical glitches.  Our radio station was knocked off the air (we had carrier but no programming).  I was able to fix that easily enough.  And the e-mail server is down.  That's beyond my control.  I hope that gets fixed soon, as there's a couple important things I have to take care of via e-mail.  I seriously hate voice-mail and the telephone (a good day for me is a day when the voice-mail light on the phone isn't lit), so having my e-mail up and going is always a good thing.

Today's going to be busy, not only with the usual stuff, but with getting the newspaper layout reasonably done.  I'll be able to get a lot of that done, assuming people leave me alone today.  But it's the way of the world that right when you are trying to get something done, the wheels come off everything else and you're pulled in a hundred different directions.  No wonder I have the attention span of a gnat.

:: Today's linkage fun  Since I gave you the link to the WCCO archive yesterday, here's a really cool tribute page to WCBS Radio, including a huge collection of sound files.  (One favorite from that page is the clip of Charles Osgood trying to read the recipes written by schoolchildren.  Not to be missed.)

It begins again

Not much time to write today.  It's again the time of the month when the tasks swarm like killer bees -- stories I must edit, newspaper layout to be done, along with all the other stuff I have to do on a given day. 

Instead of a post, I offer this link, which will let you burn up bandwidth at a rate of knots downloading archival stuff: this collection of airchecks from historic events.  A lot of them are from WCCO.  Most of them are from bad events, disasters and what all.  A selection of events from more "normal" occasions may be found here. 

Epic

Something pretty epic arrived in yesterday's mail: two DVDs with a pretty good selection of network coverage of Apollo 8, the first time humans flew to the moon.  Most folks recognize Apollo 11 as the really big historic event, but I've long felt Apollo 8's importance has been underrated.  NASA was sending people around the moon in a spacecraft that had been test-flown by man only one time before.  It was also sending humans to the moon on only the third flight of a Saturn V (and after a second flight that had problems on ascent), and on the first manned flight of that huge rocket.  It was a huge roll of the dice.  But it worked, and it provided some of the most unforgettable images from a really troubled year.  The lunar module still needed to be wrung out, so the last little bit was not yet proven, but Apollo 8 showed definitively that a manned spacecraft could go to the moon and return safely. 

The nice thing about the DVDs I got yesterday is not only the scope of the coverage (more than 10 hours), but also that what's there is pretty much intact.  You get the opening billboards (see at left for a sample) and the commercials for Western Electric ("the manufacturing and supply unit of the Bell System," as part of its ongoing presentation of important events -- back when these kinds of companies would do these things partly in the name of prestige).  There's plenty of Uncle Walter, and you can positively overdose on Harry Kramer's dulcet voiceovers on the IDs and billboards (you can get an idea from this clip from Apollo 15's coverage; you can hear Kramer at 1:02 and 2:20).  I love when the period ephemera, such as these commercials, remains; you can really get a feel for the era when they're there.  What was it like back then?  How do you sell telephones and telephone network systems to a public that, at the time, couldn't purchase them?  Watch these and see.  Immerse yourself in 1968 for a few hours.

Both ends of the flight are nicely covered.  It's neat seeing a Saturn V countdown, launch and ascent in real time.  The recovery is also presented in real time, too.  That's especially long, because Apollo 8 splashed down before daybreak and the recovery forces had to wait for daylight.  There's a lot of Dallas Townsend and Ron Nessen aboard the Yorktown, just vamping while waiting for conditions to improve (and a lot of Uncle Walter having to jump in when the satellite signal from the Pacific breaks up).  There's even coverage of the astronauts leaving the ship via a C-1 Trader the following morning; just before they leave, the communications relay ship Arlington comes alongside and renders honors to the astronauts, and some of those pictures are priceless.

I'm pretty happy to have this.  There's so much there; I watched it for a couple hours yesterday, hitting the stuff I really was excited about, and I've only scratched the surface of what's there.  Plus, there's so much coverage you can find on the tape-trading circuit related to assassinations and other sad events.  It's refreshing to find coverage of something that represents a triumph.

No matter where you're going, you'll have to change planes in Atlanta

I don't have much to write today, as there are work-related things that must get done (the less said about those, the better).  Instead, enjoy some nostalgia:

-- This look back at the evolution of the Atlanta airport.  (Click "next photo" to proceed through it.)  This nifty Google Map will help you put the images in context.

-- To go with that, here's a wonderful film, shot from the old terminal's observation deck, of Hartsfield not long before the new Midfield Terminal (the present-day terminal) opened in 1980.  If you love airplanes and that doesn't bring tears to your eyes, go see a doctor.

-- Finally, here's a 1971 commercial for United's brand-new DC-10.  That's actor Robert Fuller, best known for playing Dr. Brackett on Emergency!

A box full of widgets

We had an intense weekend, and though the events were awful compressed, it was still fun.  The last few years, there's been an airliner collectibles show and swap meet in Atlanta, and we like to go there.  This year, as with last year, it was held at the Delta museum.  In some ways, getting to see the museum is worth the trip and the admission.  There's some neat exhibits in the hangars, notably Ship 41 and Ship 102.  The museum store is also housed in the salvaged forward fuselage of the L-1011 prototype, and you can go in the cockpit and sit in the pilots' seats and at the flight engineer's console. 

You can find some great deals at this show, if you're savvy.  What's interesting is that Delta sells off an awful lot of stuff, particularly stuff with discontinued logos or that, for whatever reason, is surplus to the company's needs.  You can buy everything from a bag of 100 plastic spoons ($2) to amenities packets (a box of 100 for $5) to a set of airliner seats ($50 for garden-variety economy-class seats, $250 for those removed from Ship 102).  You can find the most interesting stuff there, and it's like a flea market for commercial aviation geeks.  Bring plenty of cash.  You'll be glad you have it.

 In a fifty-cent box, I found a copy of Air Line Pilot magazine from April 1985.  The cover image was arresting enough -- an L-1011 at its Palmdale birthplace -- but I took a closer look, and I had to have it.  The TriStar on the cover is Ship 729, and I flew on that one just before she was retired.  There are some scratches and other signs of wear on the cover, so I'm trying some Photoshop magic and hope to print out a high-quality version suitable for framing.  It really is a gorgeous picture, and it evokes a lot that makes me miss some things that are long gone. 

I guess Delta in and of itself makes me a little verklempt.  If Eastern was the airline I grew up wanting to fly for, Delta was the airline that meant travel once I could go places.  I've flown thousands and thousands of miles on all kinds of Delta aircraft, and I know the company's history well.  That's made the troubles of the last few years all the more painful.  The company that once meant pure stability seemed to have one crisis after another.  Now the company's more or less back on its feet (or at least as best it can, given the turmoil in the airline industry, and the business world in general).  Delta's an airline that's working its way through things (though I have my concerns about how this Northwest merger deal's going to work out). 

But, still, I go to events like the one at the museum, and I see things like this cover.  I also think of the people I know who work for Delta, and that a couple of the docs who helped me through my medical certification worked for Delta's medical office before going into their current practices.  I think about all those good people.  And I think about what I miss.  I miss the days when I saw that red and blue widget logo and, above all else, it meant stability.

Oh, well.  It's all a business, isn't it?  And life goes on.