Air-Minded: PASM Photoblog XIII

I included an image of Pima Air & Space Museum’s Curtiss F6C-4 Hawk in a recent Air-Minded entry. At the time it was still in restoration, and the photo wasn’t mine. The Hawk is now on display, just inside the main entrance, and I’m able to share some of my own photos: The Curtiss F6C Hawk was […]

Air-Minded: Air Force One Folklore & Fact (Updated 11/16/18)

I’m a docent at Pima Air & Space Museum, where I conduct tram tours of our outdoor display aircraft. When welcoming visitors at the start of the tour, I ask if anyone wants to know more about any particular airplane. Nine times out of ten, the one people want to hear about is our former Air Force […]

Air-Minded: Literary Influences (Wait, What?)

A friend sent me a link to astronaut Scott Kelly’s New York Times op-ed, “How Tom Wolfe Changed My Life.” It’s a wonderful tribute to a great writer, but if, like me, you aren’t a subscriber and are limited in how many NYT clicks you get each month, here’s the part that grabbed me, where Kelly describes […]

Air-Minded: PASM Photoblog XI

If you follow me on Facebook and Instagram you know I post Pima Air & Space Museum photos every Monday. That’s the day I work at PASM as a volunteer docent, driving and narrating tram tours. Between tours there’s often time to take photos, and if I get enough bars on my iPhone I’ll post […]

Air-Minded: Sabre vs MiG

A few years ago, restoration staff at Pima Air & Space Museum parked a USAF F-86E Sabre and a North Korean MiG-15 next to one another in an exhibit hangar. As leader of the museum’s walking tour team, I was asked to write a background paper to help bring the other docents up to speed on the jets and […]

Post the First

As in first post of the new year. Hooray! If I have resolutions—and I’m not saying I do—one would be to finish writing the memoir I started last year. Others would be to keep posting to my weblogs, perhaps setting up a separate blog for Air-Minded posts, while continuing to send out Paulgram newsletters. Perhaps I’ll try to climb out […]

Killing the Messenger

From an article titled State of Terror, written by Keith Gessen and published by The New Yorker on November 6, 2017: Stalin soon began to receive warnings of an imminent German invasion. Despite the ravages of the Terror, his anti-Nazi spy network was still the best in the world. Hitler issued a top-secret order for […]