21st Century Hardships

We’re clearing out the home office prior to repainting and reflooring it. Besides my desk, there’s an L-shaped wall unit consisting of desk, shelves, file drawers, and the Murphy bed we use for overflow guests. It needs to come out, but we don’t have to do it … our insurance is paying a contractor to disassemble and remove it, then put it […]

Down Mexico Way

We have an old tri-motor freighter at Pima Air & Space Museum. It’s a YC-125 Raider, one of 23 built by Northrop for the US Air Force, which flew the type from 1950 to 1955. After they were declared surplus, most were purchased by bush operators in South America, Central America, and Mexico. Ours flew […]

Do I Feel a Draft?

Those assholes in khaki Dockers and white Polos we saw chanting “blood and soil” in Charlottesville? Had they spent a few years in the military, working alongside the rest of us, they never would have been carrying those torches in the first place.

Air-Minded: Soesterberg Photoblog, April 1961

My friend Peter van ____, who was the 32nd Tactical Fighter Squadron’s Dutch military liaison officer when I flew F-15s at Soesterberg Air Base from 1978-1982, just sent me a batch of NATO archival photos taken there on 5 & 6 April 1961. The occasion was either a NATO exercise or possibly the production of […]

Wednesday Bag o’ Sit

Or Shack o’ Sit, if you prefer. Cleverly vulgar signs and business names are funny the first time you see them, but the humor wears out fast. Used to be, I’d see photos like this on Facebook and instantly share them with all my friends. These days I try to exercise restraint … and yet here I am leading […]

Attack the Enemy When He Is Unprepared

Wasps love our pool. They light on the water, float on surface tension for a few minutes, then fly off to their nests. They’re drinking, as anyone would in this heat, and I suspect storing a little extra water somewhere to deliver to the nest. It’s normally live & let live at Woodford Manor, but […]

Air-Minded: the Golden Age

The golden age of air travel dawned with the advent of pressurized commercial airliners that could fly above the weather and turbulent air closer to the surface, flourished under FAA control, and ended in October 1978 when the Carter administration deregulated the industry.

Air-Minded: Influencing the Future

In 1979, when I was stationed at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands, Prince Claus and two of his boys came to visit. I was on air defense alert that day with Jim Kellogg. We were pretty sure the Dutch would arrange a scramble for the royal family. Sure enough, the klaxon went off and five […]