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2009-01-16, 7:58 a.m.:
I am very happy for the passengers and crew of US Air Flight 1549 - going down in the icy Hudson and not a soul killed. But I am remembering that other flight on a similarly snowy day - now it was 26 years ago - that went right down after barely making it off a National Airport runway, taking part of the 14th Street Bridge with it. It was Air Florida Flight 90, headed for Tampa, and all but five people died. I was 17 years old, had been home sick from school for weeks on end with mono, and the soap opera my mom and I were watching (probably All My Children) was interrupted and so we saw the whole thing live - captured for immediacy by news cameramen stuck in traffic on the 14th Street Bridge. The whole city was shut down by snow and ice. The day was gray and white. The camera showed the valiant rescue of the five by helicopter, by passers-by who jumped off the bridge or the river bank into the floe-choked water, trying to get to the people perched on top of the still floating tail section of the plane. The only surviving stewardess had given the only life vest she could find to the most injured passenger. She was 22 years old. The main remaining image: A man hanging on the helicopter tow line, and for a few good seconds he kept his grip on the arm of a woman in the ice. But then she slipped back into the water. There was a sluggish look to everything because of the freeze. The water was not water, but a gray viscous stuff that made you shiver to look at it. The so-called sixth passenger, the one who didn't make it, found the rescue rope in his hands again and again - but each time passed it on to someone else. Finally, he was the last. But when the helicopter (which nearly went into the water itself in the rescue attempt) went back for him, both he and the plane's tail had gone under. From time to time I think about the flight, the icy Potomac and the rescue. I never cross the 14th Street Bridge without thinking of it. It was the first truly 'live event' I ever experienced - the immediacy of media was not then what it is now. (I'm not counting Watergate, which we also watched - every day after school - and also kept us all glued to the set - we had just returned from Ethiopia, my dad has just died, and the world seemed crazy. My mom told me how she saw 'Archie Bunker for President' bumper stickers all over and wondered what state Archie Bunker was from. But circus though it was, a Special Live Televised Event, Watergate was still planned and programmed.) There were so many babies on the manifest for Flight 90. It is no exaggeration to say I still cry about them sometimes. For the woman who survived but lost husband and baby. The news is so seldom as good as it was yesterday. 0 comments
2009-01-11, 10:51 a.m.:
New acquisitions (from Red Letter Books in Boulder): Goodbye To All That (Robert Graves)
This is a really lovely clothbound copy from the Folio Society, London, clean pages and tight bindings. This is one of my favorite titles, by the way. I actually didn't realize it reached back to before Joan Didion. I think nearly everything should be entitled Goodbye To All That. History (Robert Lowell)
This book is totally new to me, but no wonder since I've long had a blind spot for Lowell. London Homes (Ralph Dutton)
The Londoner's Library, 1952, hardback with jacket. There are some lovely black and white drawings of grand residences in London. I really wish I knew London better than I do. This would help immensely with the reading of histories and biographies. I don't know any city well except for Duesseldorf. And yet so few books I read are set in D-dorf, I find. The Court Wits of the Restoration (John Harold Wilson)
(Princeton University Press, 1948) The former owner jotted in pencil on the frontispiece: Palm Beach, July 6, '49. This is exactly the book I was looking for without realizing it actually existed. Ladies in Waiting (Anne Somerset)
The cover is highly cheesy, like something from the romance realm. But the book is by an Oxford history professor, is recent, in HB and good condition. Another book I needed to have even before it was written. The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Monarch (Cannon & Griffiths)
I make no bones of the fact that I like illustrated histories. Lavinia (Ursula K. LeGuin)
Father forgive me, it's been a while since I read any new works by the Master (Mistress) of mind- (and gender-)bending fiction. 0 comments
2009-01-04, 10:09 p.m.:
I just want time to stand still. I am not ready for 2009 at all, which can only imply that I have developed Stockholm syndrome toward the annus horribilis of 2008. 0 comments
2009-01-04, 7:56 p.m.:
Ha ha ha. I just taught Ro the word 'mickle' and now he is using it in sentences, e.g. "Mama, I want mickle juice.' This improved my day by circa 110%. 0 comments
2009-01-02, 9:33 p.m.:
My resolutions before I forget: 1. Stop eating all this cake already. 2. Read all those books - you know the ones I'm talking about. 3. Yoga. Strength/cardio training. Doctor, dentist, etc. Enough said. 4. Be kinder, gentler, less frazzled. Also: Mean it. Also: Maybe anger management? Figure out how to be someone who is good with kids. 5. I will finish the writing of at least one book, TBD. 6. Acquire more little metal '50s-reproduction robots, THEN ... conquer Denmark. 7. Improve my Spanish and read some French. 8. Get married, learn to make paper, block-print and bind books. And begin learning Japanese. 9. 8 comments
2008-12-31, 9:37 a.m.:
Christmas through the lens of a five-year-old (i.e. what's important): 
Batmobile 
TV and tree 
Remote-control tank 
The mother figure 0 comments
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