When I was young, taking a scheduled airline flight was always novel and exciting, and with none of the security theater we have today. Now it has become at best a chore and at worst personally humiliating.
Then I had the privilege of learning how to fly in my 40s. I still feel it is the most exhilarating feeling of freedom I have ever experienced. And whenever you get up close and personal with the weather, as you sometimes do in instrument flight, you can really sense the power of Mother Nature like nowhere else, knowing it can flick you off like a fly if you push the envelope just a little too far.
I only fly to visit the grand-children - and I agree about the humiliating security nonsense — it’s one reason why I stopped flying for 5 years and took the car & ferry - but it’s a long hike.
Some of us are pretty earthbound in these last days. Airplanes are/were passing phenomena in so many ways. Pretty soon though, the circus is leaving town for good. We can then all settle in to our parched geoengineered earth and our diet of chemicals, since there won't be any more actual food available. It was all pretty interesting while it lasted, but all good or bad things, I suppose, must eventually end. The wonderful vignettes, Linh, are a good drug for the dying, more wholesome I think than the shreds of food that we have been able to preserve.
my only fave airport was in LA and was a crappy legally mandated undeveloped grassy suburban experience I used to visit/haunt for its fast food expertise and culinary excellence, but then I'm from Norn Ireland, drawn to the shaggy down at heel & limited diet. Besides the true LAX was a terrifying experience...I still deam about it, and I got to it via Montreal...too repeatedly for enjoyment
My first visit to LAX was in the 70s, and I have often passed through there since. I don't know how long it's been since you last experienced it; it was kind of a zoo even in its better days back then, but those were truly LAX's halcyon days compared to what it has become since. It is truly incredible to see how many billions have been spent there only to make it even more chaotic and confusing than it already was.
It seems to be a reliable rule that when our overlords are presented with a problem, the "solution" they will plunk for will always be not the best one, but the one that can produce the most profit for the well-connected.
You are reduced to self-publishing, Mr. Dinh because, generally, people don't want to hear the truth. Tell them fairy tales and nonsense. Keep them diverted from reality and amused. That's where the money is.
Have you tried South End Press in Boston? I don't even know if they are still viable but they used to publish some smart, anti-establishment authors.
Being too smart and too insightful will get you nowhere. It is trite to say but "bread and circuses" is where it's at.
For the last two years, very likely a by product of pot, birds have become a bit of an obsession.
Seeing a bird at dawn with white stripes on it's wings sent me to the silicon Oracle to learn about the common Nighthawk. Last week, it was the White Breasted Nuthatch. I was attacked by Red Wing Blackbirds several times last spring and consider it an honor, their call is one of my favorites.
I simply pay more attention to birds than I used to. The Grackles are back below the kitchen window where I'll toss seeds and nuts, so much better than tv.
The physical sensation of flight is something that I've been pondering for awhile. I know that it's juvenile and imbecilic, but if I could just fly, fly, fly!
Watching a flock of birds in a field last year, I remember telling Mike, another co worker with a few loose screws, "I dig birds, but they piss me off. They can fly and I can't." I'll have to settle for voyeurism, but one can still dream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFYXNs8sZL8 I'm not much of a fan of popular music. Generally too chaotic for me not to mention that exhibitionist loose cannons like Mick Jagger made half a billion dollars pacifying young Westerners into an apathetic stupor when they should have been fighting the system. (Some of them did.) But Dean Wareham was an exception to the rule. This is his "If I Could Only Fly."
Like yourself, I too have taken an interest in birds in my later years. I am often reminded that they are living dinosaurs even the smallest of the small. Which reminds me, there is one [species of] bird I have seen everywhere I've lived; in Connecticut, California, Baja Mexico, and the Philippines; the sparrow. Like the ant, very small but everywhere.
Thank you for the Dean Wareham video. The song and the accompanying video are beauties.
I'm a Stones fan, but you are right, I don't think Mick Jagger's affected rebellion, preening and prancing moved popular consciousness in a better direction. Their mishap performance at Altamont in December 1969 was the definition of a clusterf*"k where one can see a visibly frightened Mick tell the crowd to just "Cool out". Charlie Watts was a class act.
My rather inept comment to you -- when I re-read it -- sounds like I saw the same individual sparrow all over the world! How stupid of me. That's one small bird that gets around!
I was a kid when Altamont happened. I vaguely remember the Hell's Angels were in some way involved in the melee. And that someone was killed? I'd like to see Mick Jagger breaking his "cool" stage demeanor. I'll have to see if I can find that.
Many years ago I knew a security guard in California who informed me that the Hell's Angels were mostly dissafected veterans; don't recall if from WWII or Korea. In other words they had a legitimate gripe against American authority. Funny (in the non-comical way) how society pretends to care about soldiers and veterans but then ignores them when they come home. Is that some sort of collective hypocrisy?
I think you have it right about the Hell's Angels. My basic understanding is that they were where messed up guys from WWII, Cheap motorcycles and a burgeoning methamphetamine, etc.etc. trade intersected. Kind of a toxic mix I'd think.
The documentary Gimme Shelter covers the Rolling Stones 1969 American tour which ended in violence at Altamont speedway in December. I wasn't around then, but think it's fascinating considering that Woodstock had taken place that summer, the supposed moon landing, Vietnam and the rest of the mess. It didn't bode well for the seventies to ring out the year with beatings and a homicide at what was suppose to be a groovy rock n roll shindig. The best part of the documentary in my opinion is Ike and Tina Turner at the Madison Square Garden concert. If you want to see a visibly shaken, almost effete Rock and Roll band in the face of American psychosis, Gimme Shelter is something to see.
..and soon to be my last reader. I remembered this line last night. My mind would not shut off. Bits and pieces of someone else's words were going on, but mostly it was my own stuff. Most of the time, while laying still and waiting for sleep to overtake me, my mind will recall my day. And soon enough, without any notice, I'm asleep. But not last night. It was just on and on, over and over, my own stuff. I need to remember to skip that late coffee. One reading should be enough, maybe two. But on and on egad.
When I was young, taking a scheduled airline flight was always novel and exciting, and with none of the security theater we have today. Now it has become at best a chore and at worst personally humiliating.
Then I had the privilege of learning how to fly in my 40s. I still feel it is the most exhilarating feeling of freedom I have ever experienced. And whenever you get up close and personal with the weather, as you sometimes do in instrument flight, you can really sense the power of Mother Nature like nowhere else, knowing it can flick you off like a fly if you push the envelope just a little too far.
I only fly to visit the grand-children - and I agree about the humiliating security nonsense — it’s one reason why I stopped flying for 5 years and took the car & ferry - but it’s a long hike.
Some of us are pretty earthbound in these last days. Airplanes are/were passing phenomena in so many ways. Pretty soon though, the circus is leaving town for good. We can then all settle in to our parched geoengineered earth and our diet of chemicals, since there won't be any more actual food available. It was all pretty interesting while it lasted, but all good or bad things, I suppose, must eventually end. The wonderful vignettes, Linh, are a good drug for the dying, more wholesome I think than the shreds of food that we have been able to preserve.
I wonder if I will ever feel safe again on an airplane, what with all of the pilot heart attacks and strokes!
my only fave airport was in LA and was a crappy legally mandated undeveloped grassy suburban experience I used to visit/haunt for its fast food expertise and culinary excellence, but then I'm from Norn Ireland, drawn to the shaggy down at heel & limited diet. Besides the true LAX was a terrifying experience...I still deam about it, and I got to it via Montreal...too repeatedly for enjoyment
My first visit to LAX was in the 70s, and I have often passed through there since. I don't know how long it's been since you last experienced it; it was kind of a zoo even in its better days back then, but those were truly LAX's halcyon days compared to what it has become since. It is truly incredible to see how many billions have been spent there only to make it even more chaotic and confusing than it already was.
It seems to be a reliable rule that when our overlords are presented with a problem, the "solution" they will plunk for will always be not the best one, but the one that can produce the most profit for the well-connected.
You are reduced to self-publishing, Mr. Dinh because, generally, people don't want to hear the truth. Tell them fairy tales and nonsense. Keep them diverted from reality and amused. That's where the money is.
Have you tried South End Press in Boston? I don't even know if they are still viable but they used to publish some smart, anti-establishment authors.
Being too smart and too insightful will get you nowhere. It is trite to say but "bread and circuses" is where it's at.
For the last two years, very likely a by product of pot, birds have become a bit of an obsession.
Seeing a bird at dawn with white stripes on it's wings sent me to the silicon Oracle to learn about the common Nighthawk. Last week, it was the White Breasted Nuthatch. I was attacked by Red Wing Blackbirds several times last spring and consider it an honor, their call is one of my favorites.
I simply pay more attention to birds than I used to. The Grackles are back below the kitchen window where I'll toss seeds and nuts, so much better than tv.
The physical sensation of flight is something that I've been pondering for awhile. I know that it's juvenile and imbecilic, but if I could just fly, fly, fly!
Watching a flock of birds in a field last year, I remember telling Mike, another co worker with a few loose screws, "I dig birds, but they piss me off. They can fly and I can't." I'll have to settle for voyeurism, but one can still dream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFYXNs8sZL8 I'm not much of a fan of popular music. Generally too chaotic for me not to mention that exhibitionist loose cannons like Mick Jagger made half a billion dollars pacifying young Westerners into an apathetic stupor when they should have been fighting the system. (Some of them did.) But Dean Wareham was an exception to the rule. This is his "If I Could Only Fly."
Like yourself, I too have taken an interest in birds in my later years. I am often reminded that they are living dinosaurs even the smallest of the small. Which reminds me, there is one [species of] bird I have seen everywhere I've lived; in Connecticut, California, Baja Mexico, and the Philippines; the sparrow. Like the ant, very small but everywhere.
Hi Thomas,
Thank you for the Dean Wareham video. The song and the accompanying video are beauties.
I'm a Stones fan, but you are right, I don't think Mick Jagger's affected rebellion, preening and prancing moved popular consciousness in a better direction. Their mishap performance at Altamont in December 1969 was the definition of a clusterf*"k where one can see a visibly frightened Mick tell the crowd to just "Cool out". Charlie Watts was a class act.
Thank you, Mr. Skaggs,
My rather inept comment to you -- when I re-read it -- sounds like I saw the same individual sparrow all over the world! How stupid of me. That's one small bird that gets around!
I was a kid when Altamont happened. I vaguely remember the Hell's Angels were in some way involved in the melee. And that someone was killed? I'd like to see Mick Jagger breaking his "cool" stage demeanor. I'll have to see if I can find that.
Many years ago I knew a security guard in California who informed me that the Hell's Angels were mostly dissafected veterans; don't recall if from WWII or Korea. In other words they had a legitimate gripe against American authority. Funny (in the non-comical way) how society pretends to care about soldiers and veterans but then ignores them when they come home. Is that some sort of collective hypocrisy?
Hi Thomas,
I think you have it right about the Hell's Angels. My basic understanding is that they were where messed up guys from WWII, Cheap motorcycles and a burgeoning methamphetamine, etc.etc. trade intersected. Kind of a toxic mix I'd think.
The documentary Gimme Shelter covers the Rolling Stones 1969 American tour which ended in violence at Altamont speedway in December. I wasn't around then, but think it's fascinating considering that Woodstock had taken place that summer, the supposed moon landing, Vietnam and the rest of the mess. It didn't bode well for the seventies to ring out the year with beatings and a homicide at what was suppose to be a groovy rock n roll shindig. The best part of the documentary in my opinion is Ike and Tina Turner at the Madison Square Garden concert. If you want to see a visibly shaken, almost effete Rock and Roll band in the face of American psychosis, Gimme Shelter is something to see.
..and soon to be my last reader. I remembered this line last night. My mind would not shut off. Bits and pieces of someone else's words were going on, but mostly it was my own stuff. Most of the time, while laying still and waiting for sleep to overtake me, my mind will recall my day. And soon enough, without any notice, I'm asleep. But not last night. It was just on and on, over and over, my own stuff. I need to remember to skip that late coffee. One reading should be enough, maybe two. But on and on egad.