Field Guide to Flying Death: With Gunships, Slower is Better

 

AC130 Gunship in the air and on the ground 

Air support for troops in the Vietnam War began with the latest and fastest jets of the 1960s. Whether they we land-based or carrier based, these jets could swoop in with bombs, missiles and guns. But then they were gone.  High performance jets can't hang around. And they are not made to go slow. 

F4 Phantoms would lower their landing gear on close-support missions to get their weapons on target.  

The first solution to the problem was to go retro:  The Douglas A4 Skyraider.

Developed during World War II, the Skyraider first flew in March 1945. The war ended before it could be deployed in significant numbers.  By 1967 the design was far out date in the jet world, but the A4 could fly for more than six hours with its basic fuel load. 

The single-engine propellor-driven aircraft carried four 20mm cannons with 200 rounds of ammo for each gun and could carry 8,000 pounds of bombs, rockets and any other ordnance that could be hung on its wide wings.  In a ground support role, the Skyraider could attack a target and wait in the area to see and respond to the enemy's next move.  

In the same way, the C130 Hercules can stay over the target area carrying tons of ammo for miniguns and cannons up to and including a 105mm howitzer.  The newest model reported in Task and Purpose now has a laser capable of disabling trucks.  

This four-engine tortoise in a world of supersonic hares can loiter of hours over a battle supporting the troops on the ground long after jets have sped away.  

 

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel: The Book and the Musical

 

Two weeks ago I saw the musical "Fun Home" an adaptation of a memoir of the same name by Alison Bechdel.  A week later, I started reading the graphic memoir which the musical is based on.  I finished it this morning.  

This sad, compelling story presents the pain and mystery of the suicide, or maybe not, of Bruce Allen Bechdel, Alison's father.  Bruce was gay. Alison finds out her father was gay only when she discovers she is a lesbian while at college.  Bruce's suicide or accidental death happens soon after Alison comes out to her family.  

Though presented in a musical and graphic format, the memoir is serious and deeply revealing.  I felt the love Alison had for her father, the tension between her parents, the confusion Alison felt throughout her childhood about herself and her family, and the isolation each member of the family lived in.  

In the graphic book, Alison uses maps to show the small area in which her father lived his life: a circle of a few miles covers his birth, life, work and death.  Alison notices on recordings of her father's voice she heard after his death that he had a local accent.  And yet, he aspired to the world: loving beautiful things and teaching great literature.  

Alison is 20 when her father dies.  She goes on to become as notably out as her father was closeted.  She created the comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For" which is where she introduced the Bechdel Test: a measure of the representation of women in fiction. It asks whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added.

I have read many memoirs. They are among my most and least favorite books.  Truth, unvarnished truth, must be at the center of memoir, because we readers will sense when we are being served the public relations story rather than reality. This memoir is among my favorites. The struggle of Alison finding who she is had me from the first act and the first page.  

Thinking and Feeling: The Inside, Outside Difference

 

The past and the future are infinite and meet at the moment we are thinking. 

Our thinking can reach into infinity.

A friend recently posted a question asking about the difference between thinking and feeling.  The French poet Paul Valery said:

"Sometimes I think and sometimes I am."

[Tantot je pense et tantot je suis]

When we think, we leave the world of feeling.  Valery says we leave the world altogether.  We engage in a dialogue within ourselves. In this inner conversation we examine an idea, weigh it, try to find its worth, but all of this is done within our minds.  

When external reality intrudes we stop thinking and return to living in the present, to sensing or feeling the world around us.  When we feel we take our world through our  five senses and act or react. We can take in that information and react immediately, or we can, as the expression goes, stop and think.  

Modern English usage hardly makes a difference between the words think and feel, but they are different to the point of being opposites in how they inhabit our lives.  

From the outside, the difference is just as big.  A person who is feeling, who is reacting to the world, will show that reaction.  We see a friend and smile: see an enemy and frown.  When we think, especially when we are deep in thought, we look like someone in a daze, or half awake.  We say a person is "lost in thought." The metaphor is right. The person lost in thought is not fully present in this world.  

When I think, I may sit and stare and not notice someone entering the room.  When I ride in traffic in Philadelphia, I am looking, listening in every way sensing my environment and reacting to multiple inputs every second.  

The graph above of thinking is especially evident in those who create. Whether art or science, thinking remains hidden within the thinker until the painting, or story, or building, or equation, or breakthrough formula expresses the thoughts hidden inside the mind.  

For more on thinking, The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt is fascinating.