The Northward Contrail

Boeing Boeing 707

Found online, in six parts: a wonderful look back at the Boeing 707's first year.  Start here with Part 1 and work your way forward.  Not to be missed in Part 3: a segment about President Eisenhower's historic trip aboard a certain beloved aircraft.

Enjoy!

Glass houses

I grew up surrounded by trucks.  Not just pickup trucks, but big trucks.  Our dad drove trucks as part of his work, so my brother and I were riding on 18 wheels from the time we were, as they say, knee-high to a grasshopper.  (If I had a dollar for every mile I spent in the cab of an R-600, I'd never have to work again.  Man, those were fun days.  And, yes, there's another Jim Rockford parallel with my life: a dad who drove trucks.) 

It was also the 1970s, the heyday of Smokey and the Bandit and Movin' On and Convoy (the song, and then the movie) and what not, when CB radio was the big thing and "10-4, good buddy!" and "What's your 20?" were commonplace.  It was everywhere: in the music, on television, in the toy stores (care to guess how many of these types of things my brother and I built?) and elsewhere.

So whenever there was something truck-themed on television, we'd watch.  Movin' On was a staple, and we liked it in our home.  (We never did warm up to B.J. and the Bear, I think because it was a bit silly and because it was a bit too pretty-boy for our tastes.  Though I think we did watch Sheriff Lobo when it became its own show.)

Back then, the trucking movie that was most widely seen was when ABC's prime-time movie series would show White Line Fever with Jan-Michael Vincent.  Back then, it seemed ABC would show it two or three times a year.  We'd watch.  But a couple scenes would terrify me as a kid.  One was when Slim Pickens would get killed.  But nothing could match the stark raving terror I'd feel when this scene played.  Now I can watch it and laugh, but back then, it scared me to death, and I'd have to turn my head and close my eyes.  Go figure.

Perspective

I was looking for something the other day and happened across this (it's in six parts; the link takes you to the first part, and you can find the rest there).  It's a long-form interview, conducted by a famous documentarian, with Capt. Denny Fitch.  If you don't know the name, Fitch was involved in the United 232 accident in 1989.  He happened to be aboard the aircraft and volunteered his help to the flight crew.  It's a deeply moving film, in unexpected ways. 

If you've had a bad day, it's excellent viewing to help you put things in perspective.

Lurching toward completion

Last week I had a series of gift cards to use.  The time after the holidays is a good time to do this, too, since there's usually no shortage of sales, special deals and so on.  It also helped that a certain bookstore was running a special on DVDs, too.  So I'm now the proud owner of the Studio One collection, the Golden Age of Television set, and the Preston Sturges box set.  (If you've read this blog for a while, you'll know these selections are completely in character.  And, yes, at some point before too much longer I plan to blog about some of these things -- especially the Studio One DVDs, which contain commercials, station breaks and a bunch of other neat surprises, including a great panel discussion with some of the participants.  I'd forgotten how totally awesome Betty Furness was, but this panel discussion sure reminded me.)

While I was at it, though, I took care of some completion tasks.  For the past several years I've been collecting the Saturday Night Live complete season DVD sets.  This has been harder than it may seem, because there's two different styles of packaging.  One style, the "limited edition" style, comes in a stiff case with a hinged front that opens like a book.  There's another style that comes without that outer case.  The problem with ordering it online is that you don't know which one you'll get until it arrives.  This has resulted in some detective work, some of it frustrating at times.

One more collection that needed work was my SCTV collection.  I had the first two sets, but since they were so expensive it required time and luck to find them affordably.  However, a little online sleuthing and comparison shopping resulted in some good luck there, too, and I now have the third and fourth sets.  It may not be a complete set just yet, but it's still a relief, one less thing for which to look.

Let's just say it's a good thing I had those gift cards.  Being a completionist can sure be a pain in the neck sometimes.

For whom the blog rolls

We had some time the other day for movies, and we watched Julie and Julia.  If you haven't seen it, you really owe it to yourself; it's a delightful movie, and Meryl Streep could not have better inhabited the role of Julia Child.  (And the scenes with Jane Lynch as Julia's sister are nothing short of a hoot.)

The premise of the story, based on something that actually happened, is that a young woman decides to cook her way through Julia Child's cookbook in 365 days, and she writes about her experiences in a blog that steadily gets a following and media attention.  Throughout, there's her wish that she could meet Julia Child, and her wondering if the great one had read her blog.  (I'll leave it at that so I won't spoil the story, if you don't know the outcome.)

I watched this film with delight, of course, but I also watched it from the standpoint of someone who keeps an online journal.  Unlike Julie's, mine doesn't chronicle an ongoing adventure or project (unless you count "living one's life" as an ongoing adventure or project).  There's really no mission here, as you've probably noticed.  I have thought it would be great to have an ongoing project I could chronicle and share online, because it's neat to check in on projects and watch progress be made.  Once upon a time, I meant to do that with my flying lessons, but you know what happened there.  I could do it with my models and gadgetry.  But, there, you run into the same problem I have with the projects I do in the workshop: I work on them at a glacial pace, and I really hate having to stop at certain points to take pictures, and then download them from the camera, Photoshop them...you get the idea. 

And, aside from that, none of the projects I do are really that interesting.  There's only so many posts, for instance, you can get out of degreasing and cleaning a surplus Enfield.  Once you've cleaned and refinished one, they're all pretty much the same after that.  Could I do the same with a Selectric?  Well, I could sure take it apart, but getting it back together and working properly again...let's not talk about that.

For whom do I write the blog?  For me.  I know there's a few folks who read it (even a famous person or two have stopped in), and I appreciate it, and I hope they get something out of it, even if nothing more than an occasional laugh (for the right reasons, I hope).  But, if no one else but me ever read it, I'd still do this.  It's good for me.  It helps me keep my writing skills at work.  It also lets me get some thoughts and feelings out that I couldn't easily get out elsewhere.  (Few things are less romantic than a quiet evening at home in which I turn to hubby and say, "I had the greatest day cleaning my Selectric II today."  Yeah.) 

Would the Julie Powell thing be interesting if it happened to me?  Perhaps.  I'd love a book deal, for one thing, even though I really have nothing worth putting in a book (though Heaven knows we could use the money).  But, even if the blog remains forever the way it is now, I'm happy.  I have enough going on to be content, and I like having my own editorial direction.  It's one place where I know I'm in charge, and I like that.  

Gifts to myself

I've been doing a bit of Christmas shopping the last couple weeks.  Happily, most of it's completed now.  There are a couple of gift cards I still need to get for a couple people, and one or two smaller things, but the big stuff is either in hand or on the way.  I'm a firm believer in the wonder of e-commerce, and I'd much rather wait in line at the post office or wait for the delivery truck than risk life and limb in a retail store.  (Maybe that explains why some of my clothes don't fit so well.  But, I digress.)

In the process, I've picked up an item or two for myself.  Why do I do holiday shopping for myself?  For one, my likes and wants are obscure and close-held, and I can't drop hints to save my life.  Aside from that, it makes me feel clumsy when I do.  Why ask someone else to do something I can do for myself?  The other factor is that some of the things I like are a trifle dear -- not prohibitively expensive, but I feel less guilty when I'm the one paying for them.  So here's what Santa is bringing me this year:

:: The movie poster for Four Days in November.  I've been wanting this for a long time.  My office has needed a movie poster in it, and this is nice and understated. Plus, as you remember, the film is a favorite of mine.  

:: The Disney "Tomorrowland" DVD set.  Something else I've wanted for a long time (I have some of them recorded long ago on VHS off the Disney Channel, but I couldn't find them if you gave me all day to search), and if you know anything about the history of American space exploration, you know why these are historically significant.  It's an interesting glimpse into our memories of what the future would be like, and you watch these and can't help feeling a little cheated that 2010 doesn't look too terribly different from the 1980s and 1990s.

::  And, I've been a good girl, I guess.  (Or tried to be, at least.)  So I threw caution to the winds and treated myself to the Model Factory Hiro/Barchetta kit of the VJM02.  It's pretty in that orange and green, isn't it?  Tip of the hat to the always dependable folks at Strada Sports for their wonderful service on that one.  (Don't miss the adorable picture at the bottom of that page, by the way.)

Why we fight

Yesterday was Pearl Harbor Day, and as part of a Frank Capra marathon Turner Classic Movies was showing several of the Why We Fight films.  As some of you know, the War Department asked Capra to make the Why We Fight series as a crash course for new recruits during World War II.  It was figured new inductees didn't have the detailed knowledge behind why the United States was at war, so Why We Fight was meant to inform and motivate.

I've often talked about the Why We Fight films in some of my classes, but I'd never really sat down to watch any of them, so I watched War Comes to America.  I have to confess, I wasn't prepared for how powerful they were.  Capra's style of filmmaking -- the triumph of the decent, honest, upstanding little guy against all odds -- is well-known, and applied to the story of good vs. evil on a global scale, it's powerful.

Capra's films are often derided as "Capra-corn" because they have this quaint, almost naive faith in decency and in things working out in the end.  Life, of course, is seldom like that.  (I've found my own life is far from Capra-esque.  It's more like something Preston Sturges would have made.)  All that said, I can still get choked up by a good piece of Capra's work, and that's what worked on me as I watched last night.  Capra's idealized retelling of American history really got to me, and there's a reason.

I was a bookish kid who spent so much of my childhood reading biographies of historical figures.  To me, history was full of great heroes.  The libraries of my schools had these 200-page biographies of great Americans, written for schoolchildren, and I'd constantly have one of those checked out.  They were the stories of great leaders who rose from ordinary childhoods.  I could sympathize with the stories I read.  Henry Ford, the endless tinkerer whose father called his first automobile a fool contraption.  Young, weak, asthmatic Theodore Roosevelt being bullied by older and stronger kids, only to grow up and become President.  I read these books, and they were the stories of people who seemed no more special than I was, going on to do great things, fighting great battles and make history. 

I almost envisioned history as this sort of Camelot, full of these great figures who rose from simple beginnings and overcame the obstacles of life to become noble warriors who fought great battles.  As I grew older, I graduated from the junior biographies to books like Walter Lord's Day of Infamy and A Night to Remember, narrative history as a series of vignettes, and was captivated by those almost innocent images, almost straight from a Johnny Horton song.

Of course, I grew older and wiser, and I found things out.  Every great historical figure has a dark side.  I held American presidents high on a pedestal, only to learn as I grew older just what goes into attaining and maintaining office, and to learn that every President and every public figure had lesser qualities.  There's the line attributed to Pappy Boyington: "Show me a hero, and I'll show you a bum."  Having grown from an enthusiast to a trained historian, I know exactly what he's talking about.

Still, I see certain things in history, or from history, and I choke up a little.  I can watch Howard Hawks' Sergeant York, for instance, and though in some ways it's a very corny movie, oh, how it drills right to that part of my heart: the day is saved by a quiet hero who does the right thing when the moment comes to act, because it's the right thing to do.  It's the same chill that went up my spine when I visited Queenie a few months back: The cynical, grown-up me knows all the dirty political stuff that likely took place on board (and about her planned role as spy aircraft), but the more innocent part of me absolutely reveres that aircraft because I read stories of her in books when I was younger, and I know about all the history she made, and it absolutely humbled me to be aboard. 

The cynical, grown-up me knows the stories are a little corny.  But the seven-year-old me, nose in a book, doesn't need it explained to her.

"Four Days in November"

Friday was a blessedly quiet day, and I spent it inside getting various things done.  I've been busy souping up some things for a course I'm retooling for next semester, and while I'm at it, I'm also making overdue tweaks on the rest of my courses. 

I also took some time Friday to continue a tradition this time of year, my annual screening of Four Days in November.  This just seems like the right time of year for it.  Aside from the obvious chronological reason, it's a movie that feels right to watch when it's late November, when the shadows are long and the weather's brisk.  That's because it's a film about the sunset of an era.

If you've never seen it, Four Days in November is a feature-length documentary about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and its immediate aftermath.  It was released in 1964, and is composed of a great deal of footage shot by television stations, newsreel cameramen, amateur filmmakers, and so on, edited in with careful recreations filmed in the actual locations not long after the events took place.  It was directed by Mel Stuart -- yep, same guy who directed Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Four Days in November hasn't been released in a long time, and I don't believe it's available on DVD.  (You can watch it here, though, in multiple segments.)  The copy I have was recorded off TNT about 11 Novembers ago, when my buddy Joe Bob Briggs featured it on one of his lost, lamented late-night movie series.  I transferred it to DVD about four years ago, and though it's kind of a ratty copy, it's still great to watch because during the breaks, Joe Bob interviews Mel Stuart, as well as Sixth Floor Museum curator Bob Porter.  (Plus, I mean, it's Joe Bob.  How can you go wrong?)

Four Days is one of my favorite films of all time, not just as a documentary but as a piece of filmmaking.  That's a highly subjective thing, I know, but this one is such a piece of work from its era.  It has dramatic narration by Richard Basehart (thereby gratifying Gypsy from MST3K), elegant writing by Theodore Strauss, and a beautiful, expressive score by Elmer Bernstein.  (I think it's a shame the soundtrack hasn't been released by itself.  There are so many pieces of music from it that I love.) 

It's a lovely, wonderful, dignified, sad film.  Because it uses so much archival footage, and because such care went into the re-creations in the original locations (and because it was made so soon after the event, very few of the locations had changed appreciably), you really do get a feel for how things looked, sounded, and felt.  As Joe Bob said to Mel Stuart in one of the interview segments, the first part of the film establishes this sense of "normalcy," of this world that's torn asunder by the foul deed to come, of the era that comes to an end.  It was also shot on film (or shot on videotape that was transferred to film), so it gives it a feel of an older movie.  You really couldn't make a movie like this one now.

It's an odd tradition to have, I know, and I also know that by some standards Four Days in November is kind of a clunky, overdone piece of filmmaking.  Still, it's a film I never tire of watching, and on those occasions when I've done some filmmaking, it's a documentary that has influenced me.

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.)

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.