Category Archives: Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap

Up, Up, and Away – – –

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Jack scrapes in once again – –

Regular readers will know of my fascination with all things aeronautical, so, when Wendy posted a message a couple days ago on FaceBook asking (on behalf of a friend!), about insurance for a 75 year old man bent on going up in a glider – – –

While I’ve made many, many trips all over the world in airliners, there really just two flight experiences that really stick in my mind.

glider

When I was about 19 years old I went on a week long gliding vacation in Yorkshire. It was held at Sutton Bank which is a very high straight cliff near Thirsk and a beautiful area. We were a small group and all stayed in a lovely old pub/inn at the foot of the cliff. Every morning an ancient ex-army land-rover would ferry us up to the airfield up on top of the cliff. Then the excitement started!

Our instructor was a Polish ex fighter pilot who’d flown Spitfires in the Battle of Britain and he was a real character. Each morning he would address us in the clubhouse where he told us nothing about gliders and everything about flying Spitfires during WW2! Then we’d go out with him in turns, get hooked up to the winch and rocket up to five hundred feet or so. That put us over the edge of the cliff where our height suddenly became over a thousand feet and with an up-draft that pushed us up even further.

But my strongest memory is the complete tranquility of sitting silently in the sky with no sense of motion and no engine – like being in an armchair!

The second experience was much more recently –

low wing

During the 1990s I organized a student exchange between my college in Scotland and one in Herning, Denmark. My opposite number there was the head of the engineering dept. and he owned a light plane (and a half share in another one). I went over for a week to set things up and he took me up in his plane (a low wing monoplane with a side by side open cockpit). We visited some of his flying buddies who lived out in the country with their own grass landing strips.

morgan

At that time I was the owner of a Morgan sports car and I remember thinking as we took off for the first time that this felt like my Morgan had just sprouted wings! We had a number of magical flights and never more than a few hundred feet up, navigating around pylons and factory chimneys and with no maps.

Coincidentally both our colleges had a link to one in Wilhelmshaven in Germany and he wanted to fly us down there. The ‘high-ups’ didn’t approve as it would involve traversing part of the north sea, so we ended up driving. When we crossed into Germany the autobahn had no speed limit so we drove at over 100 MPH!

I’m sure it was much safer – – –

 

Easy to Get, Hard to Keep

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A woman I worked with years ago, a lovely bastion of traditionally built good hard common sense with an Israeli accent, used to say “It is easy to get a thing. The test is in keeping it.”

too hard to keepMiriam had permutations of this saying. “Easy to get, hard to keep” referred to high maintenance people in relationships. “You can get it, but can you keep it?” referenced programs we wanted to write grants for in the organization (the American Red Cross, back when they were kinda still respected). It was her way of asking “Are we chasing the dollar at the risk of mission drift?”

Sometimes she’d just rotate her hand up and down at the wrist and say, with that eyebrow-tilting smirking sparkle in her eye, “Easy, hard.” In other words, happened next was so up in the air it could flip six times before coming down. How it would land was anyone’s guess.

But my favorite was when she waited until pompous people had left our offices, having single-handedly mansplained to us how to save the universe, end poverty, bring justice to America. She’d wait until the door closed, lean in, and say “He can get things, but he can’t keep them.” Meaning there was no sustainability to the empire-building this person was doing, and it would all fall down if it ever even got to the heavy lifting they’d need atop their smoke-mirrors-and-faulty-paperwork foundation.

I think of Miriam, who has probably left this Earth by now, often these days. The divisions in our country, the tight election result last night, the strange rule-lifting and civility-ending moments when anything goes in our effort to keep (or acquire) that which is best for us at the expense of everyone else. (Republicans, Democrats, Christians, pagans – at this point it feels like a free-for-all for all; good behavior knows neither creed nor party.)

It is easy to get something, hard to keep it. Maybe that’s good advice for us to remember as we go into this season of acquisition. In the abstract world as well as the concrete one, some things aren’t worth holding on to, while others aren’t worth trying to get in the first place.

Heh. Does this make arguing politics on Facebook the equivalent of parents on Black Friday duking it out in the mall over a hatch-a-mole?

Anyway, Miriam’s advice is something I’m keeping in mind these days, not unsolicited advice for the universe – or the dozen people who read my blog. :] It can be easy to get a thing but hard to keep it. Have a sustainability plan. And a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanza, and/or Cheerful Solstice.