The Northward Contrail

Not the same

We spent Thanksgiving with my family.  My brother and his family hosted the day, and we had a nice lunch with them.  It was much the same as ever -- not as big as last year's extended-family get-together, but nice and cozy this year.

But this year brought the feeling that, from here on, something will be missing.  We'd normally have at least a token appearance from our grandparents, who live next door to my brother and his family.  This year, we didn't see them. 

For many years, my grandmother has had all kinds of ailments.  Some of them came with age.  Some of them came from being under medical care of questionable quality.  It's perhaps best that I not go into details about that, but let's say that she's had ailments on top of ailments.  My mother has tried to do things to help her mother receive quality health care, but it hasn't always worked out.

Last year, my grandmother ended up in the emergency room.  I can't figure out if she had a small stroke, or what happened.  The net result is that, since then, my grandmother's mind isn't what it was.  The doctors don't think it's Alzheimer's (and given that we cared for my Alzheimer's-stricken paternal grandfather in his final months, we can say that was far different).

Still, the stories are heartbreaking.  One moment, she's reasonably aware of a moment or what's going on.  The next, she's in 1965 or somewhere else.  My mother will drive her home from a checkup, and my grandmother will believe that the front and the back of the house in which she's lived for 60 years are two different houses.  Her body works okay for 82, and it's not like there'd be anything that wrong with her brain.  It's more like somebody went up in there and scrambled up all the wiring so that her mind doesn't work properly.  She sees and perceives just fine, but just can't put the pieces together.

My grandfather is 86 and is as sharp as he ever was, still has that sort of gentle, good-humored John Glenn demeanor to him, hasn't lost a step.  But what kind of heartbreak he must endure with each day, with a wife to whom so much in the world is now uncertain and strange, I can't begin to imagine. 

I was never that close to my father's parents.  My father came from a broken family; his parents divorced after his father returned from World War II.  He spent his childhood in the care of various relatives until his mother remarried (to a stern, somewhat abusive man).  He didn't reconnect with his father until I was seven.  We had a few wonderful years of knowing him, visiting him at his summer home in North Carolina and seeing him at a great aunt's house at Thanksgiving, before the Alzheimer's began to take him away from us. 

My father's mother remained nearby.  I believe that deep inside she was a sweet person, and I saw enough kindness from her to reveal a good heart.  But her life was never easy, and she was flinty to the end.  My relationship with her was always awkward, to say the least, and at any family get-together I could count on at least one episode of being teased a bit too sharply.  I always got the feeling I never lived up to what she expected.  At the end, we were estranged.  When she died, I hadn't seen her in three years (and even then, the last time we saw each other, we didn't speak).
 
In contrast, my mother's side of the family was always closest.  That set of grandparents lived just across town, and we'd always have lunch there on Sundays after church.  When my parents wanted a night out, they'd take care of us.  They were always kind and loving, and my memories are, almost without exception, such sweet memories.  I can remember so many Sunday afternoons on their front porch, in their swing, eating banana pudding or ice cream out of a Dixie cup.  Family Christmas parties, and all the fun and chaos we could cram into the rooms of their tiny house.  Mornings when I'd be too sick to attend school, so my mother would leave me with my grandparents while she went to work.  The weekend when my grandmother had me spend the night with her while my grandfather was away, and even though I wasn't yet a teenager, we had this unusually deep conversation about what life may await us beyond this one.  Christmas nights, when my grandparents would come over to see what my brother and I had gotten, and we'd give them their gifts and they'd have something to eat with us.  It didn't seem like Christmas was official until that quiet little nightcap on things.

You always know the day will come when those things you loved, and took for granted, will no longer be there.  That's always in the back of your mind, because that's how life works.  But it doesn't make it any less stark when it does happen. 

We had fun last Thursday, don't get me wrong.  Two young nieces, full of life and enthusiasm, mean you never have a dull moment.  And, for all our superficial differences, my immediate family is incredibly close.  Still, you have no idea how much I would love, if even for just one more Thanksgiving, to hear my grandmother's familiar voice coming from the kitchen. 

A grand day off

Right now, I'm in the midst of a glorious few days off.  They are much needed. 

Why?  Because I tend to get a little too Type-A when it comes to work and my responsibilities there.  So much so that the last few weeks, it's eaten into my sleep.  There have been a few nights when I've awakened, it seemed, every hour on the hour because I was worried about oversleeping and being late (being late, no less, for my early arrival at the office). 

I think this is one of my biggest character flaws, especially in the line of work I'm in.  I very much have a technician's mindset: identify the problem and solve it, and keep the shenanigans to a minimum.  Give me a task and a deadline and leave me alone, and I'll move mountains.  (And, as much as I grumble when it happens, some of my best work comes against close deadlines, when my back's to the wall.) 

This, of course, does you few favors in academia.  Your entire life is about having to be patient: with students (at least half of whom, no matter how you try to persuade them to do something the right way, will happily do the opposite much of the time), with colleagues, with higher-ups.  Some folks adapt to it better than others.  In my case, I'm better than I used to be, but old habits die hard.  I have a troubleshooter's tactical mindset in a world that's more about a thinker's strategic philosophy.  I have to be, in part, a psychologist who gets inside the minds of my students in order to figure out how best to motivate them.

And I'm also a bit of a perfectionist, too.  I want things to go well.  But the classroom is a place where anything can happen.  I'm up there wanting to do my best.  The students just want to get it over with.  And, yes, sometimes comedy does ensue.  That makes things difficult for somebody who's not really a people person.  I'm not the most patient person when somebody tries to keep me from accomplishing what I have to get done, and it's probably where I have the most problems.  I'll be working on it, I guess, for the rest of my life.

The weekends are the only time I can really unwind.  The alarm clock isn't staring me down.  The noise of the office isn't awaiting me.  I'm not distracted by the "ping!" of my e-mail alert or the chirp of my telephone.  I can actually read things and give them my full attention.  (Well, more or less.)  And I don't have to put on the sociability for a good, long while. 

Monday, and the return to work, will be here too soon.  For now, at least, there's time for another cup of coffee. 

The Rodney Dangerfield of holidays

Today's Thanksgiving, and we're spending part of it with family.  Because of the Orgy of Consumerism that officially kicks off tomorrow (but really started several weeks ago, with the onslaught of the holiday commercials and with at least one station starting an all-Christmas format the second week of November, for crying out loud), Thanksgiving gets no respect.  I think it's one of the most underrated of holidays, and as the years have gone on, it's troubled me to see it get more and more lost in the shuffle with each year. 

That's sad.  There's something about Thanksgiving that would be enjoyable, if we'd just let it.  It's got this red/brown motif to it: roasted turkey, fallen leaves, pumpkins and pie, the bounty of the harvest as the circle of life starts to come back around for another cycle in another month or so.  It's getting cooler, the days are getting shorter, and it's a wonderful time of year.  If we'll just shut the racket up and enjoy it, that is.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.  Enjoy it.

Your DC-3 doesn't count as "legal counsel"

The other day I found this disturbing story.  Now, whether the authorities had a beef with this guy, or the nature thereof, isn't the issue, and you can argue all day (as some have) about the merits, or demerits, of code enforcement or serving someone on airport property. 

That's not the issue. 

What is the issue is any situation where an airplane might even remotely be used that way.  And I don't care what the authorities are there for: you stop what you're doing and you interact in as civil a manner as you can muster. If you want to contest what they're trying to do, and you're not getting anywhere with them, you don't pull a "tough guy" act.  Even if you're right and they're wrong, you're gonna lose if you get confrontational with the authorities.  Even if it is code enforcement.  Instead, shut your bleepin' mouth and get a lawyer.

This guy could have done that, and we'd have never heard of it.  (And if he could afford his own DC-3, he could certainly have afforded to seek legal counsel.)  Instead, he did something very ill-advised.  Not only did he get on the news for it, but I'd imagine there will also be career implications, and he's probably also jeopardized his pilot's license. 

I often hear or read stories of people with licenses and airplanes, and the money/ability to use them, doing ill-advised things.  And I don't know whether to laugh or cry.  I have all the desire in the world to fly an airplane and finish my license, but at the moment I don't have the spare time, or the means, to carry it through.  Meanwhile, I often hear of people who have the means and ability, and who often make a living in aviation, doing things that do nobody any good: risking themselves needlessly, jeopardizing careers without any forethought, giving aviation a black eye.  

None of this is good for anyone.  It's not good for the perception of aviation at all, not when everyday airline operations have lately become the stuff of late-night monologues.  It's like every time a professor does something ill-advised, it makes it just a little bit harder for the rest of us.

I don't know if I feel more like laughing or crying when I read something like this.  It'd be funny on some level, except that this guy has flushed everything I'd love to have worked toward myself. 

Instead, I just want to dope-slap him.

Keep watching the skies

Some things I've found while ambling about the aviation photo sites:

-- This picture is interesting for several reasons.  Yes, it has alternate-universe symbolism and all that good stuff.  But, on another, it's one of those little vignettes from life, that you think of some world or some position of responsibility being glamorous and exotic, and yet it's really no different and it has its own little bits of dirty, familiar work.  I remember sitting in a restaurant at Salt Lake City a few years ago, watching an MD90 crew at the adjacent gate doing this, and I found it a little more fascinating than I should have. 

(By the way, I know that some of the comments on that photo are depressing.  Believe me, I know about some of the attitudes out there about women in aviation, and I've suffered firsthand a time or two.  Here's another, more recent, example.  Notice the one commenter who mouths off about how he'd feel better with a male in the cockpit, and another who wants to see pictures of this captain -- would he make the same request if this were a male captain?  Holy crap.  Sometimes I feel that no matter what women manage to do in aviation, there's always going to be some jerk mouthing off about it.)

-- If you've ever seen a Boeing 777, you know it's just plain huge.  It especially looks huge if it's next to a 757 or 767.  But this neat picture somehow makes that big beast look nimble.  (And this one looks all mysterious, and it captures the airplane in mid-motion.  Nice and atmospheric.)

-- Similar gorgeous shot of a 747 freighter.

-- Part of why I love Alaska: I remember being up close and personal with this DC-3 when she was sitting lonely and seemingly forgotten at Palmer many years ago, chained to an old Ford pickup truck.  Now she flies again, and works for one of the most honest livings an old airplane can have.  

-- This picture is only 10 years old, but it's from another time.  There's so much in it that makes me wistful: TriStars (including one I flew on), 727s, Delta airplanes in the "widget" livery...(sigh)

-- And, from another site, an airplane and a place that make me very happy.  Ship 762 was never one of mine, and I never got the chance to ride the TriSaurus out of Anchorage, but I'll always wish I could have.  Oh, how I miss those beasts, and how sad it makes me to see what's become of some of them.

:: Yeah, I know the ol' blog's look has changed.  It's been a while, and I thought it needed something new.  I still don't have it the way I really would like it (there's a spiffy banner image I created long ago, with considerable effort and at great personal expense), but it's a little closer, anyway.

I'm on the list

A couple weeks back Roger Ebert posted this entry about one of the most well-known, yet least-known, gatecrashers out there.  It's fascinating reading, as are some of the comments.  (I especially like the one about the guy who won the baseball player's uniform and sneaked into the dugout at old Memorial Stadium.)

I don't know what grips me more about these stories: the astonishment that people will do this, or secretly wishing I had the guts/foolishness/the-heck-with-consequences attitude to try something like this myself.  It's part of the thrill of watching something like Catch Me If You Can or even an episode of The Rockford Files: watching and wondering if your roguish "hero" (well, Jim Rockford is always a hero, especially in my world) will stay one step ahead, or if he'll get tangled up in his own story.  And, if he does get caught, how he gets out of it.   

Could I do it?  Nope.  I am incapable of lying with a straight face.  It's all from my upbringing, that you never, ever lie.  And when I do tell one, I feel stupid.  There was an incident at a Starbucks a couple years back.  They always ask your name so they can write it on your cup.  I have one of those names that's frequently misspelled.  So I gave them another name.  When my drink was ready and they called "my name," I felt like such a schmuck, as if all of eternity was going to crash down on me because I'd lied to a barista.

(But, hey, at least it was a good drink.)

I'll get back to ya

I'm lucky to have friends all around the world.  Some of the best ones understand the art of correspondence, too; they are people with ideas and enthusiasms, and I enjoy sharing stories, experiences and ideas with them.  The problem?  What goes well in conversation, the give and take you have in actual face-to-face meetings, seems to take forever in e-mail.  Worse, you don't want to just dash something off to them; you want to give them a lengthy e-mail that befits what they've written to you.  They obviously put care into their missive, and you owe them the same care not just to respond in kind, but because those people mean something to you.

But then the days, if not weeks, pass.  The e-mail sits in the inbox and glares at you when you're using the computer.  You know you really should respond.  But you're busy.  Or you're not in the right frame of mind.  Or there's something else going on and you don't have the time you'd like.  Or, sometimes, you just don't feel like doing it at the moment.  Maybe you're tired, or maybe you've been at a computer all day at work, or whatever.  The flip side is, do you want to write when you're not quite in the mood?  You owe them the best you that you can offer. 

Fortunately, just about everyone with whom I correspond understands this.  I try to be a good friend, the best I can be.  It's just that sometimes I take a little longer.  I try to be worth it, at least.

Keeping a hand in the trade

There's a risk you run in academia that you'll fall out of practice, especially if you come to academia from a trade or a profession.  I got where I did in part because I had the ability to string words together and amaze people.  I don't think there's anything special about what I can do with words, but over the years it's impressed enough people to keep a supply of income headed my way. 

It would be tempting to crawl into the womb of academia and never again emerge, just rest on what you've already done and never do anything new.  Some folks do that.  To me, that would feel unhealthy.  I'd feel even more like a phony than I already do.  Yes, there were things about my reporting days that I hated, but I need to keep my hand in it, if for no other reason than to keep myself honest.  I look at it like my daily run: I hate doing it, but while I'm doing it, the old instincts return, and when I'm done, I feel I've done something worthwhile.  It's the getting started on it that's always the catch.

So I still do that from time to time.  I've had occasion to write an actual piece or two of reporting for local newspapers in recent years, and a couple years ago I wrote a profile of a colleague for a local magazine.  I also do copy editing for that same magazine, and that's good as well.  It keeps me connected.

Where I haven't been as productive has been in matters of fiction and story.  That's because I'm more of a journalist than a dramatist.  I'm so oriented to reporting on the deeds and words of others that I can't put together a dramatic arc.  I can't string together dialogue that sounds convincing.  I come up with goofy ideas, but they're more like one-shot gags that I wish someone else would flesh out (while, of course, providing me with a generous percentage from revenues...but that's another story). 

A few years ago, as a dare to myself when I started having to teach screenwriting, I started to write a novel.  (Yes, like every other journalist and/or academic.)  I think over the following four years, I made it to 50 pages in, and then it just went kaput.  I knew where I wanted to take the story, and I knew where I wanted my protagonist to end up; I just didn't feel like going through everything that would take the story there.  I lost my enthusiasm.

Last week, just for giggles, I tried it again.  I gave my students an assignment to write the first act of a television sitcom.  Since I don't like assigning things I can't do myself, I gave it a whack.  This time, it seemed to work.  The dialogue's wooden, the jokes aren't very funny, but you can always go back and tweak that, I guess.  I think what surprised me most is that I wrote it so quickly, and that the first act flowed as it did.

The real challenge, of course, would be if I completed the script.  I bet it'd sink like a stone.

Other people's computers

One of the downsides of coming to work so early is that I can't always depend on my computer.  Oh, 99% of the time, I can.  But there's that diabolical 1% that snags me every time.  It happened twice last week: I'm sitting at my desk, clicky-clacking away on the trusty Model M, and then I lose control of the computer.  Every program automatically closes.  Then I'm staring at a sickly-smarmy Windows Vista status screen, informing me that system updates are underway and not to turn off the computer.  (Apparently, if I interrupt Windows Vista's sacred updating tasks, it sends a signal to Redmond, Washington and I'll be carried off by large men with no necks.)  Then the computer restarts itself, grinds its gears for a few more moments as the updates do their thing, and I'm prompted to log back in. 

I know why it does it at goofy hours (the IT people obviously want to do system updates at off-peak times, for it would cause serious hassles if it happened in the middle of a work day).  But it's left me feeling like the proverbial long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.  (Not to get off the subject, but isn't it time the animal rights groups considered the plight of proverbial long-tailed cats?)  And it's reminded me of my unease with other people's computers.  I like a computer that's all mine, that I don't have to ask permission to install anything on, that I can configure my way.  Yes, I know that IT departments clamp down on work-owned computers for good reason, but since I've been using these infernal devices for more than a quarter-century, I hate not being the one in charge of what's on my desktop. 

Take it a step further, and in some way I guess I don't like what's become of computing.  I have all this neat gadgetry on my desk, and I have all this neat stuff I can bring into my classroom to (theoretically) "enhance the learning experience."  On my desk I have a powerful computer, a color printer and a space-age VOIP telephone just like the ones they have at Dunder Mifflin.  But part of me wonders if work is really any more productive with all these electronics.  Would what I do really be any different if this were 25 years ago and my desk had a Weco 2500 and a Selectric II?  (Or, for that matter, if we were in 1963?)  It's easy to forget that back in the day I'd pound out entire reports and projects for school on typewriters, first an old Royal and then an amazing daisy-wheel machine from Sears that would let me correct my mistakes. Maybe, subliminally, that's why I love my Model M keyboard: it's a small, sad way of staying connected to yesteryear's technology, to make me feel like I'm actually doing this on a Selectric instead of on something running Vista.

We've got all this snazzy technology now.  So why don't I feel like I'm getting more done?  Maybe, as with so much else, the ease has taken away some of the craft.

More incredibly wonderful time killers

While stuck in my office between meetings and obligations last week, I came across a few wonderful websites that were amazing consumers of what little free time I had.  I pass them along to you for sharing and enjoyment.

First, there's this site, full of interesting stuff from all over the brain.  Two areas in particular really ate up my time: the section on astronaut health and the huge section about Presidential health.  In some instances, it'll be more than you ever wanted to know, but it's all fascinating.

Then this link, which I may have given you before but still bears repeating: the Johnson Space Center's Oral History Project.  Read about space history firsthand, not just from the words of those who flew in space, but also from the folks on the ground who helped them get there and who brought them back home. 

Finally, have you ever wondered what the real-world consequences would be of the goings-on at Dunder Mifflin?  Then check out this blog, which looks at The Office from an employment law point of view.  It's a little too interesting.