Warning: Cape Does Not Enable User to Fly

The cold this last week has been brutal, with temps in the minus 40s with the wind chill. Even on a calm day, it was in the minus numbers.  Not unheard of in Chicago, but it's been about 3 years since we had a January this cold.  The streets are empty but for the occasional passing car, only one brave dog walker out, stopping for a moment in the bitten shadow as a little dog in a Cubs dog hoodie stops to leave a message for a White Sox fan on a frozen tree. 

I grew up in a very small town near the Washington coast (in reality, we could be in Oregon in a few minutes by just driving across a bridge). Snow in the lower elevations was unusual; if there was any at all, school would be canceled.  I don't remember any days below 30, but we would have been out anyway. Snow was not cold; it was not working or worrying. It was a divine benediction that spread itself out onto the world where we waited with glee. Grabbing an inner tube to ride down the cleared foothills, shoving a couple of cookies in our pockets, we would head out into the dazzling white, heeding the siren call.

There, I would simply wait my turn with my tube on a small slope at the lake we called the "widow maker", content to just sit and look up into the wonder as we waited our turn. That tube was not my transport to the stars; it was a defiant gesture against the mortality that grew closer to the edge of our vision every year.  It wasn't a simple inner tube.  It was a defiant shout.  It was my superhero cape and my shield. 

Then, I'd launch myself with abandon out into it, flinging my form down onto an inner tube that was traveling downhill much faster than my dad would ever approve. There was nothing but movement and emotion, snow in the amber fire of my hair, my cheeks flushed, body arching up into the air, trying to maintain the moment that I knew would come crashing down much too quickly. At the bottom of the hill, chest heaving, I'd simply look up into the sky and say thank you, for that moment, as time gathered itself back up and started ticking again.

Face flushed with anticipation, I'd pat my pocket to make sure my cookie was secure, and I'd trudge back up the slope again to join my brother at the top.  As I peered down into the void, I'd say, "I probably shouldn't do this." Then we'd launch ourselves off yet again into space, remorseless and laughing, flying down the slope, potent, strong, as free as an eagle, not knowing yet as a child, that even for the eagle, all space can still be a cage.

Then we'd come inside for hot cocoa and maybe a little TV. My brother loved The Rifleman; I loved The Adventures of Superman, which was in syndication at the time. Mom even got me a Superman costume for Halloween once, and I was so disappointed when I saw the little warning tag that said "Warning - Cape Does Not Enable User to Fly. I loved the show, but the junior scientist in me probably wasn't the first nerd to notice that Superman's home planet was Krypton, and the fictionalized mineral from that place, kryptonite, was his undoing in many an episode, as it rendered him weak.  I knew Krypton was an inert mineral. Inert bodies do no harm, seek no revenge, provoke no hostilities. They shouldn't be of any concern. Yet sometimes those inert things, those small things, are the ones that hurt you the most. For lurking out there for Superman, Kryptonite was just waiting, biding its time (or another episode) until it would weaken the hero. 

Once adulthood hit, snow days were simply known as "work days". My flying had me based in Los Angeles on the West Coast for the most part. I do NOT miss flying out of LAX. The layout of the airport was so large and discombobulated the first time I landed there; my copilot told the tower we were "student pilots and needed progressive taxi instructions to the United Gate". He laughed and got us there, but it was never my favorite airport. But just being able to sit outside by the pool on a layover when it was snowing somewhere in the Plains was magic.

But it was no surprise that people actually get on airplanes to go places OTHER than LAX, so it wasn't a surprise that I spent too many nights flying into airports in Montana, Idaho, Colorado, and Nevada when it was brutally cold and snowy. You'd start out thinking "oh this won't be so bad", then the sky would go from clear to a menacing outburst of fury, as if all the air had turned on you in confrontation, the tenuous earth only a memory beneath you.  Superman managed this with just a cape - we had computers and radar and jet fuel, and the weather was kicking us to the curb. In what seemed like just minutes, the wind would pick up further, the ice would start hitting our windshield as the copilot hurriedly told the flight attendants to be seated, and we'd look at each other with that "I could have been a mild-mannered reporter" look as Mother Nature whacked our backside with a stick.

But soon, we'd be on the ground, using differential power to SLIDE into the gate as thundersnow growled in the distance, the ramp a growing ice rink, while, once stopped, the passengers lined up like cattle trying to get inside to the barn where it was warm. But we got out and made sure our aircraft was safely in for the night, knowing we'd be back in 8 hours (yes, back in the day, your time spent traveling to and from the hotel to sleep was part of your legal "rest"). The airplane wasn't any warmer in the morning, but that was our job.

So, winters in the Midwest were not the surprise for me that many thought they would be. When I bought my first home here, my family said, "Oh, she'll move back out here in a year". But 30 years later, I'm still here, waiting for yet another major winter weather system coming down from the north with a lofty and mighty sigh. Like death and taxes, you are not exempt. Winter will arrive, not with a whimper, but a howl. It’s usually preceded by a trumpet of doom from the news channels, which are often wrong. I usually just check the radar on my computer to see what the weather is actually like out there. At least that way I could see the severe weather coming while Accu-Hunch was predicting another six inches of sunshine, while on sunny days, they’re predicting doom and gloom.

Sometimes the weather was boring, and dressing it up with doom and gloom might have boosted ratings. I don’t think it does the unwary any good when an unreality was made a possibility, probability, and then a matter of fact, for no other reason than fear becoming words. Perhaps it's just from all my years aloft, but I've learned to read all the markers in the sky. When this last system came in - it did not look comforting. The summer storms, I've learned to predict. You might get a heads-up in a monotone voice on the radio that warns of “rotational potential” in a tone that could just as easily be saying, “We’re going to have to break that bone again.” Other times it was simply “surprise!” as the sky became an angry mob of clouds. The radar usually gave you a pretty clear forewarning. But winter here was nature's crapshoot, and I learned to prepare.

This last storm, there was de-icing salt by the back steps in a pet-safe bucket, and shovels for both the front and back porch. The flashlights were set out in easy reach, the beeswax candles available in each room, and an extra blanket was out for the bed and the dog's crate, should the power go out. Night soon descended, and the snow began to fall in heavy drifts. As it did, the sounds around me changed. I couldn’t hear it within the house, but from the porch, as I let the dog down the steps to the fenced yard, the town’s main street a block away went almost silent. What few cars are still out are enveloped by the snow, their sounds muted to a few ponderous thumps as they drive over what was either a Village road repair or a trap set by Wile E. Coyote for the Roadrunner.

The freshly shoveled driveway had a patina like an old wall plastered by hand. The trees were bare but for a brace of foliage that clung on with a death grip, screaming into the wind without words, plucked with a cold hand that tosses their cries to the ground like colorful scraps of paper.

After shoveling, salting, tending to the house and the dog, I'd like to think I was Superman, but inside the house, I know there will be those reminders of things that have flown far away - three small wooden containers with dog toys or collars resting on them, my brother's favorite mug for hot drinks, photos of so many I've had to say goodbye to, and a house empty tonight but for myself and a pile of books. A good night to read something; to savor the fire that flowed from a writer’s mind through fingertips to be burnt upon the page, then doused with the water of laughter or tears and wrung out again. My mom always said there was no interrupting me when I was immersed in a book I loved. The house could burn down around me as I embraced the words even among the flames. I remember Mom saying, “She’ll love everything that hard. That will be both her blessing and her curse." My own personal kryptonite - I'm not quite sure why, standing out in temps that would cause frostbite in 20 minutes, I'm thinking that, but I couldn't help it.

I looked up before letting the dog back in. A snow-charged mass of clouds hung unbroken over Lake Michigan, darkening the sky.  By contrast, the air around the house's lights held a crystalline clarity, the sheen of a glass dome, which the merest movement of air might shatter.  Another light is seen through this starry night, a night of wonders and far-away mysteries revealed for just a moment as the clouds break, a low crevice in the glittering, ice-cold that was space; a place where the earth was just one tiny fallen leaf whose cries only God could hear.

I couldn’t help but think that I’m in some kind of cosmic snow globe, and as the porch shuddered slightly in the wind, I wonder if heaven had tilted the earth just a little to watch the flakes swirl around the lone form of one of its humble creations. I wonder if God could look down through that tiny fissure in heaven and see me down here, wearing my brother’s old coat, pulling it around me for warmth that was beyond fabric or insulation.

I squeezed the salt out of my eyes as the light disappeared. For just a moment, there was no snow, no wind at all, just a single star that sparked from the break in the clouds, like a single spark expelled from a soul's fire. A lull had come, the holding of a stormy breath, and I knew I had better get in the house now, the door now only a beggar’s prayer against the incoming cold and wind.

The warmth is but a memory, as are most treasured things, but I no longer resent or reproach it for its passing, for I hold in myself the imprint of something so rare and precious, that of the experience. For all that I have lost, I have memories of so many adventures, and God willing, more to be made.  

Back inside, I shook the snow off my boots onto the entryway rug, the warmth wrapped around me even as the wind outside began to howl. I heard a sound outside the window as the neighbors two doors down let their dog out before the worst of the storm. I heard the bark of their dog as it was released, then the shouts as it was called back in from the yard, tattered shreds and remnants of voices snatched past the ear, followed by silence. 

As water heated for tea, I picked up a book from the stack, the black cover well-worn with use, the simple title imprinted in gold.  I read as I waited for my husband to call while the dog snored happily on the couch. Just as I did as a child, I looked upwards and said thank you, for this moment, as time gathered itself back up and started ticking again. 

Today, the cold seems omnipotent, but soon there will be warmth, new life, and new memories. I can' help but think back to the words Superman said of the letter displayed on his chest - "It's not an S, on my world it means hope". 

 - Brigid

Musings from Chiberia

  "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer". - Albert Camus

Minus 32 here today with the wind chill - a good day to make soup, bake bread, and keep near the stove.  Northern Illinois has only an inch or two of snow forecast, no freezing rain or ice, for which we are grateful.  Be safe out there.  Brigid

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Chapter 53 - Things That Go Bump in the Night - From True Course - Lessons From a Life Aloft.  Independent Author Network Book of the Year Non-Fiction

An aircraft engine has as many variances of sound as a human.  There are satisfied hums, deep-throated snarls, and the incessant whine of someone who is never satisfied, no matter what you do for them.  Then, there is that sound, in and of itself, the sound of an aircraft engine over the ocean at night, when there is not enough fuel to turn back, only to go forward to a faraway shore.

The sea is a broad expanse that neither the eye nor voice can span, and when it's calm, it lulls you into a false sense of comfort as the engines hum, and you gaze out the window with a clear, unconscious eye. You are not pondering thoughts that come to you poignant and silent, the order of your conscience, the conduct of life, and if there really is a proper way to die.  You are not thinking of the operational capacities of a BKM hydraulic pump or your own limitations.  No, you are thinking about the really cold beer you will have at the end of a day and the laughter of companionship.  That is when you hear it, or think you hear it. That sound.

“Oh, that's not right,” you think, and then you hear it again, that asthmatic thump.  As you check EPRs, pressures, and temperatures, somewhere in your head are the words: “An engine-driven, two-element (centrifugal and gear) fuel pump supplies high-pressure fuel to the engine. Loss of the gear element of the fuel pump will result in a flameout.”  You feel no fear, only annoyance, at the callous outcry of machinery and cold water that have caught you unawares, making you give up your daydream of cold beer and warm skin and confirming, unreasonably, your fondness for narrow escapes.

Then it is gone if it ever occurred at all except in your mind, the engine only emitting a steady, slow hum, like somnolent bees.  But your senses are back on red alert, that seeming malfunction that the mind hears on such overwater trips, ministering to boldness as forged as its own pretense of fear. What is it to fly such a vast distance, one youngster asked me once. I replied, “It seems like five hundred minutes of boredom and one minute of stark terror.”

You either loved or hated your ship.  Aircraft, in general, are easy to fall in love with, with their ever-present potency and mysterious uncertainty.  Even as a child, I dreamed of them, watching them fly overhead, the contrails a heroic thread, the sun glinting on their promise. But they varied even within the same make and model, twins from different mothers.

Then there were the mornings when you went out to the flight line and there, on the tarmac, perched four large birds, three of them bright, shining, and gleaming, perfect in form.  And the fourth, older than the dirt upon it, with a stain of fluid on the ground underneath, the Scarlet Letter of hydraulic fluid (old airplanes didn’t leak fluid, they just marked their territory.)  Even if you got a good aircraft, there would be days they could be as unruly as a mule, refusing to start, to move, and occasionally willing to give you a swift kick.  It is sometimes the smallest of things that can be your undoing.

But it's not just your own craft turning on you that you have to be concerned about on such trips.  The weather over the ocean is its own continent.  Perhaps not so much now, but twenty-five years ago, when I was a pup with four stripes on my delicate shoulders that were not yet tarnished, weather planning for ocean crossing was less meteorology and more alchemy. I think about many long flights, our course drawn out with paper, not electronic blips of a satellite fix, a small x marking a fuel stop, a small cross marking our destination, a line marking the path—where we as pilgrims sought out that holy place, that grail of a full night's sleep.

I remember one flight that would have a stop on an island, a piece of land in the middle of an ocean, just big enough for a tourist's fat wallet and the occasional aircraft.  There was a great oceanic storm brewing off in the distance, but it was to have no impact on our flight path, according to all of the aviation weather experts.  Still, as the craft pitched ponderously in the air that was to have been still, even if the sky was clear, there was this nagging tickle at the back of my neck that said: “should have stayed in bed.”  As we passed the calculated point of go on or retreat back to the mainland, the controllers telling us it looked good ahead, the clouds began to build and form, not so huddled we couldn't easily pick our way through them with the right tilt of an antenna, but building nonetheless, and rapidly.

As we got within fifty miles of our destination, the clouds built themselves into 

full-blown thunderstorms, releasing their energy in broken bursts that boomed like the barrage of heavy artillery firing at a very small enemy. The air was full of flying water, heavy sheets of rain that extended well past the individual cells, landmines with updrafts and downdrafts I was trying to avoid.  It was supposed to be clear and sunny, with no alternate landing site required; our biggest concern was what food we could get before taking off again.

My copilot was very young and relatively inexperienced, not with the craft, as he was fully trained, but to this whole oceanic environment.  I could sense him getting pretty nervous.  I just smiled and said, “We're almost there.” There is no quitting in this sort of thing, and often there is no going back. You endure because you have a conviction in the truth of what you are doing.  Duty was not just a thing, but a name, that establishes the order, the mortality of conduct and the outcome.

“Skipper?” a gentle voice from my right.

We checked the weather for our landing destination. The wind was very heavy but not beyond the limits of my skill or the aircraft's proven handling, but it was going to be Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.  What concerned me more was the torrential rain, barely enough ceiling and visibility to land, “barely” being optimistic, but enough to make the precision instrument approach and hopefully see the required lighting. There were no other options when the nearest bit of land is hours past the fuel you have.

My copilot, upon hearing the terminal weather, gently stammered, “What are we going to do?”

We were either going to succeed, or we were going to be scorched by a flame that fate would flick at us without pity, with no time to utter any last words of faith or regret.  But I wasn't going to tell him that.

I gave him my sweetest smile and said simply:

 “We're going to land.”

And we did, dropping our nose and descending down into that somber wall of rain and gray that seemed the very stronghold of that small place we were trying to breach, picking up the runway there through the rain at the very last moment, the wind pounding us like surf. When we landed, my copilot wanted to kiss the ground. I simply gave my aircraft a grateful pat on the nose, like the trusty steed it was, as it stood there, trembling in the wind as if it had just run a great race.

I'd never quite seen weather change so violently and rapidly outside of the forecast. Apparently, Mr. “Giant Rotation of Water and Air” took a sharp bend in the hours we were aloft, pushing some weather up our way.  Not yet hurricane strength by any means, just the nasty stuff you generally try to avoid.

After that, I think I was owed my five hundred minutes of boredom and just wanted to go perch on a bar stool somewhere dry.

There have been many other storms, ones with premeditated gales of wind that seemed to have a fierce purpose all of their own—such a furious attentiveness in the howl and rush of air that it seemed to personally seek us out. But that did not summon in me a feeling of fear, but rather, a deep sense of awe in the power of our planet, though I was tempted to say a quick prayer to the Patron Saint of ailerons and rudder, if indeed, there was one.

There were days we left the ramp to launch into that deep sea that is the sky, no one to see us off, as in days of old, where the ships left port while some quiet mothers and anxious maidens cried and waved lace handkerchiefs as they dreamed undrowned dreams. We were on the move so much, most of us had no time for such ties, and our connections were brief sparks from cold stone, unexpected and as short-lived. For now, at least, we just had our crew and crew chief, who, while immensely competent, usually ate tacks for breakfast and was typically as excited to see us arrive as my house cat was when I came home.

There were days of fierce delights, of sunlight that bounced off the nose, like some weaponized ray of an alien craft, its power deflected by mere sheet metal, and more relays that anyone knew (seriously, when they built this craft, SOMEONE was having a sale on relays.) There were nights we hung motionless in the air, with no sense of motion, ourselves a futuristic craft that flew beyond a brace of suns into the darkness, awaiting the kiss of imminent adventures.

It was also long and hard work.  It was machinery that would break in a place of isolation requiring repairs, with a manual you wished you had brought with you, which was like trying to explain the order of the universe with one brief, hazy glimpse of truth. It was heat and cold, pain, and pressure. It was learning to trust equally providence and the immutable laws of physics.  But its reward was great.

I understood the conjured diplomacy of the relationship between earth and sky, alive to its looming dangers and measured mercies.  I bore the power of the atmosphere and the criticism of others, the levy of duty, and the common severity of the tasks that build a backbone and enable you to break bread.  It's a life that will check the edge of your temper and the point of your command; that will affirm the character of your fight and the hidden truth of your fears. It's a life that beguiles as it disenchants, a life that frees you even as you willingly let it enslave you.

Our world was long drawn-out days, a future that disappeared moment by moment into history, and days that fell forever into the arms of the sea or drifted down upon deserts or mountains where they caught and hung on the landscape like clouds. Our world was one aircraft that fired up with a belch of smoke, then hung there, lonely under that smoke, till we were released with a quick salute.

It was an orderly world that revolved around a specific, precise, and measured way of doing something, while working in an environment that cared little about either precision or order.  You were trained in every possible outcome, only to find that one circumstance that wasn't like you were trained for.  Then you discover the most unyielding of haunts of man's own nature, wrapped up in a question like rolled steel, more chilling than your brief mortality.  And that is the distrust of the absolute power consecrated in an established standard of conduct. You can go off the path, right? Boldly go where no man has gone before.  It works out in the movies, doesn't it? Then, in that instant between heroism and insanity, you realize what you are made of, for the only thing that will save you is that trust, and you take off your cowboy hat, get out that checklist, and do what is expected of you.

I don't miss it, and I do, there on those nights, when the golden blaze of sunset bites into the rim of the earth and the night casts its shadow upon me.  On such nights, I see the form of an aircraft overhead, not the modern airliner, but a craft that's seen some battles, one with ancient radios and tired rigging, visible there in the last remnant of light.  I don't see them often, but when I do, I simply stand there in that slant of light, the form moving away to the heart of a sky that is its own vast enigma. Only the moon now watches me, hanging in the sky like a slender shaving of pale wood. I watch that aircraft until it's only a flash of a strobe, one that captures all that last bit of light in the sky, disappearing into the darkness, gone, even as it's forever contained in the center of it.

The sky is an incomplete story and for that I am grateful. -  L.B. "Brigid" Johnson

Letting the Music Out

You can't teach an old dog new tricks.  I've heard that old saying a hundred times, often when trying to train an old dog as our home has been home to 2 senior rescues since we lost Barkley.

It's not so much that being older makes one less able to learn, short of cognitive issues.  It's just that we get used to a certain way of doing things and don't wish to change.  My teenage grandchildren would be mortified to know I still have a flip phone.  It's not that I can't use a smartphone; the cockpit of an A-320 makes a phone's technology look like something Fisher Price built.  But this brick of a phone has survived being kicked, dropped in a puddle, run over by a bike, mawed by a medley of dog teeth, and it just keeps working and has done so for less than $50 plus the monthly fee to keep it connected.  It has "the ringing app," the only one I really need, as when the desk computer shuts down, I wish no further electronic leash to the world.

But I notice now that I'm retired, I do tend to get into a routine.  Up before 7 each day, the dog out for some exercise with me, coffee and a bowl of hot cereal (the pancake breakfasts are for Saturdays, the rest of the time it's "Honey Bunches of Gruel").  Then, outside of the volunteer work I do 3 days a week and the occasional consult for someone in a suit who will pay big $$ to pick my brain to prep for a trial, my time is my own. 

But am I going to take up knitting, put my feet up, and watch my hair go grey? (Something that my hair so far seems reluctant to do, red hair apparently being as stubborn as the rest of me?)  No.

I couldn't do that at 30; I'm definitely not going to do it now. No, I will leave my comfortable chair and head out, as inconsequential a move as a bird leaving a trusted branch.  Something just draws me out of my solitude, a whisper, the sound of a train, the wind in the trees, and I'm heading out, be it on foot or wheels.  Just as it was when I was working, I'm constantly looking all around me, noting the people rushing about, their eyes disregarding the sun, their shadows unaware of the branches that wave over them, chattering with the tweets and calls of life.  Rushing about until the days are gone until that last one, where all the words of hope and defiance, of great joy and great risks, which take wing so easily into the free immensity of a living sky, fall wearily into that newly dug grave.

Then I will go home and make some music because that special intensity of existence we think is reserved for the young is calling.  For you see, long after my "youth" was gone, I went out and bought a violin.

I was always good on the piano and the clarinet, but as far as the violin was concerned, I had the musical gift of a dyslexic tree sloth, but I tried. My fingers were a bit stiff, but the music was still in me, even if only Barkley was around to be the music critic. 

Oh, please tell me you're going to just set fire to it.

The first step is always the hardest. Trying something new. Embracing something long forgotten that, at one time, you loved. Learning to do something you've never done but wanted to. Tiny leaps upward propelled by longing and only held back by the gravity of timidity.

It's not much different than taking that first solo in an airplane. You have been given the tools, you have the capabilities. But it's the fear of what you don't know that holds you back, while upward, a huge unknown, the sky, beckons. You've learned through your experience, through your lessons, that the sky is sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes frightening, never the same two days in a row, almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its quiet, and almost divine in its vastness. And you're just a little afraid of it at this point.---But it calls to you, and you know you are going to go forward. It's time.

I still remember the day I walked into that little family-owned music store - so many instruments of beauty, of power, love, lust, longing, faith, joy; so many ways to paint a picture on the silence of your life. So, after holding, feeling, and touching, I picked one. I had never played. I left, happily clutching the case and the name of a local teacher, the echo of the music from the store trailing like a contrail in the twilight sky. Did it go well?  I had expected, with a few lessons, to experience the joy as the music soared and spun, caught a breeze, then soared out into the night on a perfumed breeze. Actually, it was more the sound of someone strangling a set of bagpipes, but I didn't give up.

One is never too old to learn. One is never too ingrained in their habits to take up the instrument that, for them, will be the perfect blend of the joyous with the sublime, hands stroking a thing of beauty as it resonates with the sound of their dreams, the lingering notes of their need. Being married to someone who was a musical prodigy isn't going to stop me (he can't fly a jet OR make croissants), and it might be a pipe dream that I learn to play this thing well enough to play in public.  But I'm not going to ignore a desire because I feel that I'm too fixed in the routine of my life. So, be it an instrument, a new physical skill or endeavor, or simply learning to craft something with your hands, try it. And may the music of your longings fill up those quiet spaces within, as you curl up between the notes and breathe deep the dreams that are in all of us.

I'll never be 20 again. I can't bench press what I used to, run as far, or put on a pair of socks without dislocating a hip when the floor is really cold.  But my will is as strong and straight as the road to Glory, and that is something learned only by the years, even if you can't rewind them like a tape. The Roman Poet Ovid said, All things change, nothing is extinguished, everything flows onward. Learning new music would pull me onward, forward, calming me, soothing my mind, giving it rest, becoming the soundtrack of my life.

If I could have put some of my aerial adventures to music, what a song that would have been. Flying can be as mathematically precise as Bach, as fluid as Chopin, and as restful as Brahms. I've had landings that were as lyrical as Vivaldi, and I've had some that should have been set to the theme from Loony Tunes. There were days when there was no sense of motion, my craft seeming to hang upon the high, clear sky in a tranquil paradox of time and motion, held on the air like a sustained note. There were days in which storms crashed around me, a kettle drum rumble of thunder warning me away, ice pellets striking the windshield with the ringing truth of a bell.  It would have been my loss had I not experienced both, but it would have been, had I listened to those who said: “You shouldn't do that.”

Both brought me things worth every risk. Both induced in me a sense of the infinite and the contemplation of that which is unseen. Music and flying are both wonders or can be. What is a wonder to me may not be a wonder to you, but you may understand it, the passion, the yearning for something that's only yet a taste, the visceral connection between the soul and what elevates it to the heavens. It is what strikes in you, that same chord, the same spark that is embedded in some hearts. It is something that, in certain individuals, is simply part of our most basic inability to live with the lonesome gravity of silence.

Today, the house is empty, with the weather unseasonably warm for January. Perhaps I'll crack open the windows and let the music out. - Brigid

The Scone Ranger

The Quitter (1912) When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child, And Death looks you bang in the eye, And you're sore as a boil, it's according to Hoyle To cock your revolver and . . . die. But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can," And self-dissolution is barred. In hunger and woe, oh, it's easy to blow . . . It's the hell-served-for-breakfast that's hard. "You're sick of the game!" Well, now that's a shame. You're young and you're brave and you're bright. "You've had a raw deal!" I know--but don't squeal, Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight. It's the plugging away that will win you the day, So don't be a piker, old pard! Just draw on your grit, it's so easy to quit. It's the keeping-your chin-up that's hard. It's easy to cry that you're beaten--and die; It's easy to crawfish and crawl; But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight-- Why that's the best game of them all! And though you come out of each gruelling bout, All broken and battered and scarred, Just have one more try--it's dead easy to die, It's the keeping-on-living that's hard. - Robert Service

Good words to live by. Keep your revolver in good repair, keep on living, and freshly baked Scones in the morning with homemade blackberry jam. It's much preferred over "hell served for breakfast".

- Brigid