December 2016

Early this morning my phone chimed with an alert usually reserved for “Breaking News”. I set this up a while ago. The chime has sounded for earthquakes, tsunami warnings, mass shootings, things that are happening in the world that can be quite concerning. This morning, the Breaking News was that Time Magazine had announced their Person of the Year for 2016.

Abuse of “Breaking News” notifications results in the deletion of that app (name intentionally withheld) and my ignoring of anything further spewed from that “news organization”. It’s almost as bad as talking about the lives of the Kardashians on Twitter. Instant deletion in my book.

Time Magazine has named President-elect (PEOTUS) Trump as their Person of the Year.

The caption under Mr. Trump’s name is “President of the Divided States of America”.

At first I was angry that Time was pandering to PEOTUS. I felt like they were trying to get in good graces for his upcoming dictatorship Presidency. Mr. Trump has mentioned, in a backhanded way, that he doesn’t like the media and his actions have historically indicated that he enjoys punishing journalists. This Breaking News announcement felt like an olive leaf of sorts.

But then I looked closely at the photo.

First of all, this is not a flattering portrait of the President-elect. He looks menacing. The lighting is dark. The shadows are stark. Mr. Trump’s head is placed squarely under the “M” in TIME. The first thing I saw was a pair of horns. All that was missing was a graffiti quality to the lettering. There’s also the “President of the Divided States of America” byline.

This is not a flattering cover. This is a portrait of a man who sees himself as Big Brother. And I’m not talking about Julie Chen.

Upon further study and reading on the Internet, I began to wonder if the chair featured in this photo was a reproduction of a chair used 78 years for a similar Time magazine cover.

It was then that I remained irked by the abuse of a “Breaking News” alert for this announcement but my displeasure about Mr. Trump being named Person of the Year seemed to be not so bad. Time stroked the PEOTUS’s ego, albeit in a backhanded way, but they deftly conveyed the current mood of the nation. We are a divided nation. Many of us do feel that we have entered dark times. Many feel that Trump has no understanding of the role of President and that he has confuses it with a dictator-like role. 

Honestly, if anyone has impacted the United States in this seemingly dismal year of 2016, it would be Trump. So now when I see this cover being, er, trumpeted across the web, newsstands and television, I smirk a little bit. Kind of like when this crazy eyes photo was featured a few years ago.

We are in for some crazy times in these here Divided States of America. We might as well make the best of the situation and smirk while we can.

It’ll keep us from becoming weeping alcoholics.

During our travels today Earl and I wandered around the quaint downtown of Lambertville, New Jersey. I walked through a large antique and such type of store (though the name escapes me at the moment). The owners were out on the front sidewalk having some sort of lover’s/owner’s quarrel/cat fight. It was a bit of a spectacle.

I went inside and looked around and found a couple of items of interest. I didn’t buy anything but I enjoyed the memories.

When I was a teenager, my grandmother used to type up all of the correspondence and the billing statements for the family business on a manual typewriter. In the early 1980s her typewriter was upgraded to an electric Smith-Corona typewriter (though it still had a manual carriage return).  At the time I brought home the RC Allen manual typewriter and in 1986 I typed a couple of term papers on the old manual typewriter. I guess I was hipster several decades before it was fashionable to be hipster.  The RC Allen typewriter in question looked exactly like this.

While walking around the antiques and such store, I found a couple of ceramic Christmas trees that were identical to the one I inherited from Grandma City. I know that my uncle’s first wife painted the tree for my grandmother, so this must have been some sort of ceramic kit. I found one tree the same color as the one I have, another with white paint representing snow on the branches, though it was the same ceramic tree mold. The trees in question are in the photo below are the one in the middle with the blue star  and the one in the lower right hand corner with the red star.

 
I was also excited to see a genuine 50s or early 60s silver tinsel Christmas tree. If our next house is of the proper vintage I plan on picking up one of these trees for the season.

I really like the village area of Lambertville, New Jersey. It doesn’t fit anything that I picture to represent New Jersey, though the accent is the same. It’s always amazing to me that the native accent seems to be considerably different from what’s heard just 30 miles away in Bucks County, Pa.

Earl and I climbed to the top of Bowman’s Hill Tower along the Delaware River today.

The elevator was out of service so we made the climb along the narrow, winding staircase.

The view from the top was quite impressive.  Not a bad jaunt for $6.00 a person.

My Dad passed away five years ago today. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a half decade since he passed during his last flight, the second flight in his second homebuilt airplane. He was test flying his Wittman Tailwind W-10 when he crashed on the left downwind to Runway 33 at KFZY Oswego County. I’ve flown over the spot many times. I think of him more often than that.

I consider myself a very lucky man to have grown up around airplanes. My dad earned his pilot license when I was still in elementary school so I spent many hours with him in the right seat of a Cessna or a Piper Tomahawk and later in the backseat of the Piper J-5A he restored. As an adult I flew with him a few times in his homebuilt Acrosport II. That’s the airplane in the pictures on this blog post. Passengers ride up front in that airplane. My first blog post was about flying with Dad in the Acrosport II.

I once asked my Dad why he was building a second airplane, after having restored the J-5A and later building the Acrosport II from scratch. He told me that he liked the Acrosport but flying it was sometimes like driving a car with the hood open. He wanted more visibility.

I had always wanted to be a pilot but kept putting it off while he was still alive. If I wanted to fly I could just go with him. It was while standing in line at the funeral home, hugging visitors as we exchanged pleasantries, that I realized I would not be able to fly in a small airplane again unless I continued the family tradition and became a private pilot. I could not imagine being earthbound for the rest of my life.

Once I became a private pilot I was able to fully understand what happened five years ago today. Carb icing resulting engine issues at pattern altitude, so he most likely stalled into a spin. Having less than one hour in a brand new experimental airplane his familiarity with how the airplane would handle in a stall would be cursory at best. Knowing my dad he read everything he probably could have on the subject but I don’t think he ever flew another W-10 before flying the one he built. His death probably made me a more conservative pilot but that’s not a bad thing; it’s my goal to be a very old pilot.

My dad was my inspiration. You could always tell what he was thinking when he was gazing skyward. Even though he has passed on, he still inspires me everyday.