Flying Lesson

In 1992 I flew a plane and a helicopter. Actually had the controls in my hands. It was a gift from my wife at the time. This was my recollection after the event. Tomorrow, I will dig up my recollection of paragliding over the Alps.

FLYING LESSON

Jan. 22, 1992
Well, I did it. I flew. No, I didn’t go see Peter Pan and run down the center aisle yelling, “I’m flying, I’m flying!” No, I really did fly. I soared up into the sky and conversed with the clouds.
I climbed, with some difficulty, I must add, into the cockpit of a Cessna and settled into the pilot’s seat with a very brave instructor in the passenger seat.
After showing me all the instruments, dials, levers and whatevers, he handed me the keys and said, “Turn it on.”
I did and that began a half hour of an incredible experience — the simultaneous feelings of fear and exhilaration.
Then the plane began to taxi toward the runway.
Actually, my instructor — Bob — took the plane to the runway, demonstrated how to steer by using his feet, revved the engine up to its pre-flight foreplay and then positioned it on Our Runway — 34 something or other. He then told me how to increase speed and showed me what to look for on one of the dials and we started moving down the runway with both my hands on the wheel, watching until the speedometer reached that magic number and then I pulled back on the wheel and that sucker started to leave the comfortable confines of Earth, well, lower-cased earth. I mean, we’re not that advanced yet.
What a thrill to actually have that plane in my hands and the nose heading up into the sky. (Thank God for small favors, eh) and watching the altimeter climb.
I was satisfied at 1,000 feet, but Bob said we would level off at 2,000 so we kept climbing and I looked down and my stomach was talking to me, but only slightly because I was concentrating on everything Bob was telling me.
We finally hit 2,000 and Bob talked me through leveling and then we did some gentle banks and I saw the Blue Ridge Mountains in front of us and a setting sun through scattered clouds and I was really enjoying myself.
Well, I was really enjoying myself until, as I was doing a gentle bank to the left, we hit turbulence, the wings shot perpendicular to earth and I thought we were going belly-up and my stomach was in my feet while a million little needles shot through my entire body.
But WE got the plane settled in and level again and I was so glad Bob had great survival instincts.
We flew around in very large circles for a while and Bob talked me into climbing some more and I pulled back on the wheel and the nose went up and I couldn’t see the horizon anymore and there is something just a little scary about not seeing the earth anymore so I leveled again and then Bob said, OK, descend for a bit and I pushed the wheel in and we nosed down and picked up speed, which was exactly what Bob wanted me to experience. And that was a little scary.
And he showed me and I did steer the plane with the foot pedals to yaw instead of banking. And then he convinced me to take my right hand off the wheel, using my left hand to steer and my right hand to work the throttle and increase and decrease speed.
Now, I gotta tell ya, sitting up there with little houses 2,000 feet below me, with one hand on the wheel and one on the throttle and doing all those wonderful things can really do something to your psyche and it did. But not enough to get cocky because we still had that turbulence up there and it didn’t take any convincing at all to hug that wheel with both hands again.
Then we had to go home and, funny thing, I could not see the damn airport. Fortunately, Bob knew the area pretty well from up there and he guided me in as I banked and descended, but when it was time to really slow down for the landing, it was time to stop playing pilot and give that puppy back to Bob, who brought us in all the time showing me how to lower the flaps for the drag and come in for a perfect landing.
The first thing I thought when I got out of the plane? I want to go up again. Soon.

I haven't been up again. I did return for a lesson in a helicopter. Again, we went up 2,000 feet. Now, talk about scary. I was sitting in a seat surrounded by a glass bubble. It was as though there was nothing between me and the outside. Then there was the mechanics of it -- working both hands and both feet, the big blades over my head and the blades behind us and moving forward and stopping and hovering and turning. Bob had me bring the chopper down and then rise and hover about ten feet above the ground. Now, you can't do that in a plane.

I have been up in two hot air balloons and parasailing in the Bahamas, but never wrote about those experiences. In one ballooning trip, we were the only ones up. It is amazing to be up so high in a gondola that only comes up to your waist. When it was time to descend, the pilot thought he had a place to land, but it turned out to be a golf course and he had to bring it up quickly and the gondola brushed the top of a tree giving us a bit of a bounce. Then he brought us down near a road and when the follow truck arrived, he blasted the jet and lifted the balloon up into the bed of the truck. Now, that's piloting!
Tomorrow, sailing 3,000 feet over the Alps strapped to a sail.

car talk

OK, I love Car Talk. But I also loved to watch CSPAN. Go figger. Today’s show had some terrible puns. That’s why I am going to share them. If you want to hear them yourselves:
http://www.cartalk.com/piplayer/cartalkplayer.html?play=07smil.xml

1. A guy had his entire left side cut off. He’s all right now
2. An invisible man married an invisible woman. Their kids are nothing to look at either
3. I had dinner with Kasparov, the international chess champion. The table had a checkered table cloth. It took him two hours to pass the salt
4. A kid was in the hospital after swallowing a bunch of coins. His grandmother called to check on him and the nurse said, “No change yet.”
5. I was wondering why a baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.
OK, that explains my conditioning.

GOP scare tactics is their only game

AP story in today’s local newspaper, the Times-Standard here in Eureka, CA, says the Republicans now have a new scare tactic. They are saying that the Democrats would deny Republicans health care. According to the AP, the Republican Party has mailed a fund-raising appeal with a questionnaire that says the government could check voting registration records, "prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system." Katie Wright, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said the question was "inartfully worded," but she said people should worry because government officials would have access to personal financial and medical data. She said the RNC “doesn't try to scare people. We're just trying to get the facts out on health care. And that's what we do every day."

Well, it isn't "inartfully worded;" it is flat-out wrong. Instead of trying to work up a health reform package that will benefit all Americans, these people spend all their time yelling, screaming, name-calling and throwing around totally misleading information. The scarier part is there are people out there who believe them.

Good Night

How many ways are there to express love? Fires are lit at the moment and years later you may want to smile or grimace, but there it is.

Good Night
By Henry David Rosso

It is cold and raining.
I even got the comforter out of the closet and put it on the bed.
It is time to go to bed.
But I don't want to even though I want to.
I want you here with me.
I want you under the comforter with me.
I want your body up against me.
I want to spoon you and feel your tight American ass up against me
and my arms around you and my hands cupping your breasts
and my lips on your neck.
I was watching television
-- the end of Law and Order, one of my favorites –
and the Olympics
and a real live ER docudrama
and a special on NASCAR
and the original British version of "Whose Line is it Anyway?"
Normally, any one of them would have kept my attention.
But nothing did tonight.
And now I am in front of the computer
our link to each other in times of separation
listening to Saint Saens organ symphony, one of my favorites.
I have the windows open in my room
so I can listen to the rain and the cool air will come into the room
and I can escape under the comforter.
I want you here to talk to -- with.
I heated up leftovers for dinner and had a salad.
I always ate salad when I was with you.
That's healthy.
You are healthy for me.
I'm really missing you
(as opposed to not really missing me or pretending to miss me?)
your ring is around my neck and I like it there.
It feels like it belongs there.
although I don't think I have ever worn anything around my neck
except for dog tags during Vietnam.
I like working and getting e-mails from you.
It's almost like you are here
with me and we are both doing our things
and looking over each other's shoulders
and saying hi to each other as we work.
I'd rather be in the same room at different computers,
looking up at each other occasionally.
Now we talk to each other from 4,100 miles apart.
And there is always the time difference.
I'm up for breakfast and you are going out for lunch;
I am taping Judge Judy and you are getting ready for bed.
I am wrapping up a day of work and you are having drinks
with an ex lover and a current would-be lover.
And I am wondering how the evening is going for you.
And then you get an e-mail from a wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper
who wants to tell you he is having wet dreams over you.
And I am waiting for the time we are together again
and I can hold you very close and feel you hold me very close
and I love you and miss you
and wish you were here
and life is good with you even when I am without you.
Now maybe I will go to bed and sleep.
I love you,
Must I tell you everything?

Autographs

I wrote this after flipping through my autograph book, wondering why I was flipping through it.

AUTOGRAPHS
By Henry David Rosso
Autographs.
They tell a story
A collection of friends
A collection of memories
As you pass through life,
Give thought always to the
Good friends you make along the way.
Cherish them,
Because they will always
Be your prized possessions
Daddy, Dec. 1954

Syracuse Nationals basketball team – 1954
To David my pal,
(Whom they have never met before tonight)
Can't read their writing this many years later.
Al Ceri? Bill Gabor?
Red Rocha? Paul Seymour?
Dick Farley, George Bing, John Kerr
Wally Ostroika, Dolph Schayes

Where are those school chums from so many years ago.

When your married and have twins,
Don't come running to me for bobby pins.
Al Cody.
Hi, Al. Where are you?

Best wishes to you, David
Can't read the first name, but remember the last
Turner. Father of my friend Gary.
Where's Gary? How are you, Gary?

Dear David: When evening draws the curtain back,
And pins it with a star,
Remember that you still have friends,
Although they may be far. Best of luck, David!
That was Marguerite Turner, Gary's mother.
Nothing from Gary.
How are you Gary?
Gary was not well, but he was my neighbor and friend.

To Dave, The best of everything, Sincerely, Bill Nelson.
I know I should remember Bill Nelson.
That's what these books are for -- memories,
Friends we'll never forget. Sorry, Bill. I've forgotten.

Dear David
Be true to your teeth
Or they'll be false to you,
Your dentist, Verdi F. Carets.

Dear David, Best of luck, David,
For a whole future filled with happiness.
Sincerely, V. Gene Clark.
I don't remember, but thanks.

To Dave,
All my best wishes for a useful
And worthwhile life.
Dewitt, our preacher.

We have had a lot of fun together
In Catalina, Pat Hanlon
My cousin's friend whom I had just met.
Thanks for the memories, Pat.

Never kiss by the garden gate,
Love is blind, but the neighbors ain't.
Good luck at Manlius,
Judy Friedenberg
Ahh, I loved Judy Friedenberg, I thought.
Why did she add:
2 good + 2 be = 4 gotten
2 young + 2 drink = 4 roses.

To David Rosso – 1954
Always remember that David
Was the greatest giant killer of all
Be good - Joe Cumminsky.

My teacher: Good luck always
Vida J. Lyke.
How many do they write in a year?
How many do they remember?

School chums
Have fun at Manlius-Dave Stillman
2 in a car + 2 little kisses = 4 days later
Mr. and Mrs. - Robert Kessler
When your in the kitchen sipping tea
Burn your guts and think of me
Only kidding - Steve Herr
Glad he was only kidding

To kiss a miss is very simple
To miss a kiss is simply awful
Kisses spread germs, so it’s stated
So kiss her kid, she's vaccinated.
That was Marlene
And she wasn't finished:
When you get old and live in a tree
Send me a coconut C.O.D.

To my pal, Dave Rosso
Best wishes always, Carmen Basilio
Just before the end for the fighter.
Go get 'em. You brutal tiger. I saw you at ringside.

And sitting so lonely on pages by themselves
No "best pal," no "best wishes,"
Just the names, scrawled in a hurry:
Roddy McDowell, Pat Boone, Leslie Caron
On another page is a picture of Jim Brown
The Syracuse University star - hero to us Pop Warner players
He came to our awards dinner in 1955
And his signature is above Otto Graham's

Scrawls on pages in books, slips of paper
High school yearbooks.
Great thought goes into some,
No thoughts in others.
They say, Remember me,
Or get out of my face and leave me alone.

Leslie Caron had no pen, neither did I
Her publicist said shove off.
She told him to give her a pen.
I'll always remember that.

I sat across the aisle from Andrew Lloyd Webber and didn't ask.
I sat at the next table from Martha Ray in Vietnam and didn't ask.
I sat at a cafeteria table across from Billie Jean King and didn't ask.
They need their privacy. I know I saw them. Don't need anything else.

William Golding signed my/his Lord of the Flies

My UPI colleagues Bill Mead, Arnie Sawislak and Helen Thomas
Signed their books.
One of them got my name wrong; thought I was somebody else.

I signed books - other people's yearbooks.
Will they remember me?
Parts of our lives are in those books
Best wishes for them, high hopes for us?
Something we can share in our later years.
Something we can use to prod our memory
Something we can use as justification
Something we can stick on a shelf, in a box, to be forgotten.

Ted Kennedy

Ted Kennedy is gone. He has joined his brothers -- Joe, John and Bobby -- in the history books. Joseph Kennedy died in a plane crash during World War II in 1944. I was one year old. John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. I was 20 years old in Munich, Germany. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles while campaigning for president in 1968. I was 25 years old serving my final year in the Air Force in Michigan. Now Edward M. Kennedy is dead. They were all in my lifespan and they all contributed in some way to my life as it is today.
Obviously, I was unaware of Joe Kennedy. John Kennedy was my awakening to politics and the world around me. I read Theodore White's Making of the President 1960. I visited the Berlin Wall where he made his Ich bin ein Berliner speech, I mourned his assassination while living in a foreign country and read Theodore Sorenson's Thousand Days about the all-too-short Kennedy presidency. I saw Bobby as the new JFK. I had such hopes for him as president. He was the last person I truly believed in as a potential president until Obama. I thought Ted Kennedy would have been a great president, but Chappaquiddick destroyed his chances.
But, while Ted Kennedy never made it to the White House, his stature and work in the Senate accomplished as much as if he had been president.
His absence in the Senate has been felt as Congress works on the health reform legislation. He truly knew how to reach across the aisle. He truly knew how to work for what was right for the country and average Americans. He knew how to pull all the forces together to reach the goal.
Now is the time for all Democrats and all Republicans who want to do right for this country to pull together and engage in intelligent, thoughtful, dedicated debate free of animosity, free of screaming, free of name-calling and scare tactics and draft and pass a meaningful health reform bill. Do it for America and do it because it is right.

wars we don't need to fight

I wrote my poem Iraqnam a few years ago. We are still in Iraq and Americans are being killed in increasing numbers in Afghanistan. In today's New York Times, Bob Herbert questions the futility of these wars and especially of the one in Afghanistan, which is now in its ninth year.
In his column (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/opinion/25herbert.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print) he makes a couple of points that should (must) awaken Americans.

He noted Obama told the Veterans of Foreign Wars that less than 1 percent of this country's 300 million citizens wear the uniform.

"If we had a draft — or merely the threat of a draft — we would not be in Iraq or Afghanistan. But we don’t have a draft so it’s safe for most of the nation to be mindless about waging war. Other people’s children are going to the slaughter."

Quoting President Obama as saying that the war in Afghanistan is "fundamental to the defense of our people," Herbert asks:
"Well, if this war, now approaching its ninth year, is so fundamental, we should all be pitching in. We shouldn’t be leaving the entire monumental burden to a tiny portion of the population, sending them into combat again, and again, and again, and again ..."

We really are slow learners.