Journal, April 1, 1994: I got checked out on the Piper PA28 Cherokee 160 this afternoon. I flew it just great, start to finish. The instructor said he “really enjoyed” flying with me. It wasn’t a perfect day. The wind was at 220 at 20, and it was quite squirrelly on final, all cross-controlled.
It weights about the same as the Cessna 172, but the wing (the infamous Hersey-bar wing) is very different, so when you pull the throttle to idle, it comes down!
On the other hand, it was docile in the stall in all configurations, showing no inclination to drop a wing. In slow fight, we were surprised that it required full “up” trim. It only buffeted mildly in the stall, and only with full flaps.
I was very happy to be in the air again.
Journal, April 2, 1994: The Cessna 152 I rent in Shawnee made a forced landing in nearby Tecumseh after the pilot ran it out of fuel. The pilot told the newspaper the right tank’s gauge read half-full. What a moron.
Journal, April 6, 1994: I made a great flight to Holdenville and back this evening. It was rough at all altitudes, but I made a smooth approach and landing.
Journal, April 16, 1994: I started with four landings: short, soft, no-flap, forward slip. I’m still sharp.
It was an absolutely perfect night for flight. After flying northwest for a bit to check out a grass fire, I headed into the setting sun. I called OKC approach. The controller was confused – she gave me three different squawk codes. But we worked it out. I made a touch-and-go at Wiley Post, then got vectored downtown, then to Norman, where I did another touch-and-go, then headed home.
Journal, April 23, 1994: Flew today. Visibility in haze was no better than about six miles, but it was enough. I got N172FJ at Shawnee and flew it over to Seminole at 6500 feet. I had a great time, but my landings in the Skyhawk need work.
Journal, August 11, 1994: I shot seven of the best landings of my life this evening on runway 12. The wind was right out of 120. Normal, short field, soft field, no flap, forward slip, everything.
The radio is playing chants. I curl beneath my electric blanket on the floor and listen, thinking about the day, my friends, my body and soul, my past and future, illusions and reality, and this very perfect moment.
“He who yields to fear or pain or anger is a fugitive slave.” ~Marcus Aurelius
“I really enjoy your writing,” the Ultimate Waif told me. Later, for some reason, she ghosted me.
MAP told me that I can turn a phrase as well as anyone she’s ever read, but that I lack a “sellable” cohesive structure. She says I don’t take the reader into account.
I’m thinking about you, all the moments we shared and who we are to each other now. I’m thinking about what it would be like if you walked though my front door right now.
I remember she wanted to go to church with me, but when it came time for Communion, she shrank away and said, “I’m not a member here.”
“It’s okay,” I told her. “All Baptized Christian are welcome to take the Sacraments.” It was the last time I took Communion.
Quote I read somewhere today: “Sour sixteen, when I was cooler than God.”
Later: I wasn’t ready to stop punishing myself for the cruelty of others.
All humans have weakness, but we don’t have to be weakness.
Brocimole. Don Spankenburger. Cowpotamus. Chili with Irish potatoes: chili con Blarney!
Please note: this entry contains descriptions of violence and death that some readers might find upsetting.
I read this at Open Mic Night Monday, October 7, 2024…
There’s something about seeing freshly-dead, burned-up bodies that puts an air of frivolity around the day’s business.
The lives of four people, on a business trip, were rather suddenly and terrifyingly turned to charcoal.
Yes, there’s something about it. There’s something about being rendered unrecognizable by fire.
There’s something about being stiff and frozen in the position in which you must have had your last thoughts.
There’s something about being hauled into a crash bag and tossed into the back of an ambulance.
I know it happens every day, all over the world, but when it happens just north of Sandy Creek, it somehow means more to me.
It reminds me that I am in that plane or that car or that building every day, and there, but for the grace of blind luck, go I.
I wonder now if they had their affairs in order. I wonder whose heart was broken this afternoon as I watched, from outside my newspaper, the first plumes of smoke rise from the ground north of town.
Do I have my affairs in order? Am I ready to leave my body behind, heavy and stiff and helpless?
And is that what life is about? Do some business, get a bite to eat, go down in flames?
Is this another one of those “make every moment count” speeches? Sure, I guess. The four people in that plane today might have been saints or satans, but now they are simply dead.
Last year I mused about my second year of grieving the death of my wife Abby. I noted that it seemed harder, somehow, than that first year. You can read that entry here (link).
Now, in the third year of grieving, it seems even harder.
One of the cruelties of memory, at least in my case, is that I am playing back so many bad memories right now. Three years ago, Abby’s health was failing, and although I tried to take care of her, I didn’t always succeed.
Marry that to the even crueler idea that she and her health also failed me… it’s hard to admit that, because it makes me seem selfish, even to myself.
Odder still, the weather in my part of Oklahoma has been very beautiful the last few days, and while you would think it would cheer me up, it has the opposite effect of acutely, stingingly reminding me of all those gorgeous, sunny fall days Abby and I would load up the truck and head west for our annual anniversary vacation.
One thing I found out recently is that our favorite restaurant in the world, a place called The Hollar in Madrid, New Mexico, went out of business in December 2023. We both loved it there, and having lunch at The Hollar became one of our regular destinations when we travelled out west.
“I could live here,” Abby told me more than once in Madrid.
I know I’ll be okay, but these thoughts and feelings are on my mind right now.
This fall has been cool and dry, so I’ve been taking every opportunity to work outside.
One of my oddest chores has been efforts to remove chicken wire from the back yard fence. Abby had originally installed it to keep in her Chihuahua Gabby, but we reinforced it when we had goats. The problem with chicken wire is that you can’t run a string trimmer on the grass at the fence, since it will shred the string.
As time passed, grass and vines grew between the fence and the chicken wire, and since I don’t have goats or small dogs in the back yard, I decided to rip out the chicken wire and pull up the vines and grass.
It’s been a lot of work, and that equals a lot of movement, a lot of fresh air, and a lot of steps.
It is a task, and it has purpose.
Tonight I felt bad for people who run on treadmills while lawn care companies cut their grass. I felt bad for the wealthy, who drive giant SUVs to the gym while housekeepers clean their homes.
I know those are all choices, and I also know some of those choices are made for us. Tonight, though, and many nights, I work hard, and thrive on task and purpose.
Here is an overview of scanner frequencies in and around Ada, Oklahoma, which is in Pontotoc County. Some agencies use OKWIN, a growing Project 25 Phase 1 system, in some parts of Oklahoma, which can be monitored with a digital-capable scanner.
Many other radio systems still use conventional, non-digital signals that can be monitored with most programmable scanning radios sold today, or in the past 30 or so years. Some very old scanner radios use crystals to define the frequencies they monitor, and conventional two-way systems can be monitored with the correct crystals.
Most systems use repeaters, duplex radios with antennas located on hills or towers, which listen for mobile radios on an input frequency, and retransmit those signals at a higher power level on an output frequencies. Modulation is frequency modulation (FM), and frequencies in this list are in megahertz (Mhz).
Sidebar note: one misapprehension about repeaters is that if you transmit more power into them, they radiate more power. Repeater output power is always the same (usually 25 watts) whether you are transmitted to them with a 1-watt handheld or 100-watt mobile radio mounted in the truck of your car.)
These systems are listed with their code squelch tone or number in parenthesis.
Pontotoc County Sheriff’s Office analog dispatch:
154.65 (151.4), 156.15 input, used for Allen Police dispatch (which is out of range of OKWIN), multi-agency storm spotting, and occasional special operations.
Pontotoc County Firefighters Association, paging and dispatch:
155.325 (151.4), 153.77 input. East fireground: 154.965. West fireground: 154.355. Country firefighters also use any of the nationwide VTAC frequencies, which Emergency Management can designate on the scene; used often when multiple counties are involved.
Ada Fire Department, paging and dispatch:
154.175 (162.2), 155.295 input. They supposedly use a discrete fireground frequency, listed as 154.01, but I seldom hear anything there (even when I am on a scene), and often hear fireground communications on dispatch.
Byng Fire Department:
154.25 and 151.1525. Byng is paged out on Pontotoc County dispatch, but uses 154.25 for fireground, talk-around, and tornado siren activation. I don’t hear anything on 151.1525.
State fire:
154.13. I often hear AirEvac Life Team helicopters on this frequencies as they approach crash and fire scenes, but they often do not get a response.
Ada Police: 158.775 (114DPL), 153.875 input. Ada PD tried to go digital in 2011, and again in 2018, but remain analog as of early 2024. At one time, they used 158.73 as their talk-around frequency, referred to as “Channel 3.”
Ada Emergency Management:
151.73, 159.81 input, but they only routinely use it as a back up for Ada PD. EM also lists 155.9325 as their digital option, but I don’t know if they use it. There are statewide repeaters on 155.235, including in Ada, but all I hear on it is the weekly check-in.
Mercy Hospital Ada EMS: 155.385 (151.4), 153.77 input. Ambulances call the emergency room on 155.34 to give patient reports. Mercy Hospital security is on 154.505, and housekeeping is on 153.3875.
AirEvac Lifeteam Ada, Okla., dispatch:
158.4. This frequency isn’t listed locally, but AirEvac is loud and clear across Pontotoc County on this frequency. AirEvac can be heard on 160.155 in Garvin County.
Other services I hear all the time on analog FM are…
Call-a-Ride, 151.0025 (223DPL). Holcim Cement, 462.2, 467.2 input. Maybe City of Ada: 155.49, DTMF tones only. The City of Ada lists 158.3 as their street maintenance frequency, but they mostly use cell phones and text messages instead.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol:
They mostly use OKWIN, but they operate car-to-car on 855.9875 analog, and in rural areas I still occasionally here them using the old VHF-low channels 44.7 and 45.22 for car-to-car, but my guess is that they are no longer installing low-band radios, so when the existing ones die, that will be the end of low band. At one time, area police could call other agencies on 155.67 “state net,” but that frequency has been mostly silent in recent years.
Surrounding counties:
Hughes County Sheriff and EMS, 151.0775. Coal County Sheriff and Fire, 154.04 and 154.415. Murray County EMS, 155.205. Garvin County Sheriff 151.085, Stratford Fire and Police, 153.935.
Other areas to monitor are aviation, 108-136Mhz.
Amateur radio spans the entire radio spectrum. A good place to start listening to amateur radio might be 146.52, which is the nationwide simplex calling frequency.
There is a clever saying that goes, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today.”
That’s how I feel and act all the time. When I bought new tires for my Nissan Juke this week, it inspired me to hand-wash the car, which I finished around dark, but I decided that I wanted to do more, so the next morning, I took advantage of the morning cool and vacuumed, Armor-alled, Leather-alled, and Rain-Xed both the Juke and my Nissan Frontier.
It certainly wasn’t going to happen by itself, and since I am always happy with my vehicles when they are clean, it seemed pretty straightforward: get to it, and get it done.
Another thing on my mind this week has been my weight. Anyone who saw me this week would argue that I was off-base, and my weight was fine. But when it the best time to watch your weight? Before you get heavy.
Managing my weight is unfairly easy, since I tend to have a taste for foods that are inherently good for me, like fruits and vegetables. I actively dislike processed sugars like those found in cake, candy, and doughnuts, and I ever prefer – yes, actually prefer – to snack on fruit. I haven’t had a soft drink of any kind since, hmm… I guess I drank a coffee-flavored Coke left behind after Abby died, since the alternative was throwing it away.
So there really isn’t a better time than right now to do something, get something done, help someone, eat more nutritious foods, let someone know you are glad they are there, even something as simple as holding a door open for someone with a smile.
As some of you might know, I am a licensed amateur radio operator. My FCC-assigned call sign is kc5tfz, which is also the custom license tag on my Nissan Juke. I have several friends who are licensed “ham” radio operators. Almost universally, we use our amateur radio privileges less and less. I got my license originally to aid in storm spotting, but like most communications in the 21st century, amateur radio has been, or is in the process of being, replaced by the Internet, or more fundamentally by the “datastream.” Even our personal two-way radio needs are better met by Family Radio Service handheld radios available everywhere. Abby and I each carry one when we hike.
I have made a few antennas in my day, like the occasional j-pole or quarter wave, but I was never all that into it. I am actually pretty good at identifying antennas on towers and vehicles.
As I was driving to Utah a few years ago, I had lots of time on my hands, so I decided to make a list of all the police scanners I have owned. It was no small number, due in some part to improvements in technology and changes in the scanning environment, but also due to scanners wearing out and dying. Sometimes even boredom takes a role, and I’ll pick up a scanner as a bargain from a pawn shop or a garage sale just to play with it.
I have a vague recollection of picking up some scanner traffic on an analog multi-band radio I got as a birthday gift when I was a young teenager. I was 15, because I noted it in my journal. “Does this subject want to breath or bleed?” I quoted in my writings. The question was asked to determine if a DUI suspect wanted to take a breathalyzer test or a blood test. I suspect this was on an unpublished frequency, since my radio didn’t pick up the UHF band used at the time by Lawton police. That was my first experience with listening to public safety communications.
In 1982, I got an internship in a newspaper in Lawton, and there was a scanner in the newsroom, and one in each of the cars the paper owned that we photographers used. I recall that one of the scanners was the venerable Bearcat III 8-channel crystal-controlled units, and the other a 16-channel programmable. They were getting long in the tooth even then, with the emergence of better microprocessor-controlled scanners, but they got the job done, since Lawton only used about four frequencies on a regular basis.
I was so enamored of the notion of “spying” on the police and fire departments (which prior to that I thought was illegal) that for my July birthday I asked for a scanner, and my parents obliged. Thus began a hobby that has lasted to this day. The list of scanners I owned throughout the years goes something like this (red ones are dead):
Bearcat BC-150, 10 channel (birthday gift 1982.)
Realistic Pro-21 4 channel crystal scanner (scanned VHF great, but very poor for UHF, which it was supposed to do. I had the front end readjusted a couple of times, which didn’t really help.)
Bearcat III, 8 channel crystal (garage sale, installed in my first car, a 1973 VW.)
Bearcat BC-100, 16 channel, the first ever programmable handheld scanner (bad battery setup, bad antenna design. I later got one from Ebay just for kicks.)
Fox BMP 10/60 10 channel, died decades ago, replaced with a half-working copy from Ebay for$20 in 2023; red LED display plus red LEDs for each channel, with Service Search (installed in VW and later Renault Alliance.)
Radio Shack Realistic Pro-2001, 16-channel, acquired in 2023 for $30 from a guy who called it “untested,” but it works fine. Interesting hybrid of crystal-controlled-style LEDs for each channel plus red LED display on the face.
Radio Shack Realistic Pro-31, 10 channel handheld (big radio that uses six AA batteries, hard to carry, but nice and loud.)
Realistic Pro-37, 200-channel handheld. Regarded as one of the best handheld scanners in 1987, I got one from Ebay in 2022. Uses six AA batteries.
Realistic Pro-2006, 400 channel base station. Regarded as one of the best base station scanners in late 1980s, I got one from Ebay in 2022. Sticky keys meant I had to open it up several times to spray with tuner cleaner, but it mostly works. Electroluminescent display is sketchy.
Realistic Pro-2004, 300 channel base station. This was regarded as the base station scanner to own in 1986, so I got one from Ebay in 2022. It turned out that bad soldering during production meant none of these work any more. It looks good in my stack, however.
Radio Shack Pro-2021 200 channel. I bough this radio new in 1986 when it got marked down and discontinued, but despite the fact that it scans too slowly, it receives well and is loud and clear. I had it my car for a short time in the early 1990s, and it currently resides in the garage. In early 2024, I saw one in mint condition on Ebay for $25 and bought it, so I have two of these.
Cobra SR-15 100 channel handheld (with leather case, one of the best handhelds I ever owned.) Update: in 2020, I found one of these for $10 on eBay and bought it for its nostalgia value. It looks great but doesn’t run well.
Regency MX-3000 80 channel (slanted front, blue display, worst receiver circuit of any I owned.)
Uniden BC760XLT 100 channel mobile. Good audio, good form for car mounting. But mine forgets all it’s frequencies when power is interrupted, so I have relegated it to single-channel listening and band searches.
Uniden Bearcat BC560XLT 16-channel with 2-digit display x2 (very cheap, good speaker – one was destroyed in a crash in 1990.)
Sporty’s Pilot Shop A300 aviation band transceiver.
Icom IC-A3 aviation band transceiver given to me by a ham radio buddy.
Uniden 500 UBC9000XLT 500-channel (most expensive scanner I even bought, died within three years.)
Radio Shack Pro-2026 200 channel
Bearcat BD144XL 16 channel (pawn shop, gave to a friend.)
Radio Shack Pro-23 50 channel handheld (bought for next to nothing from a coworker.)
Radio Shack Pro-94 1000 channel handheld (confusing “trunk” radio programming, terrible battery performance, tinny audio), in 2024 I gave it to Jamie and Ian.
Radio Shack Pro-2035 1000 channel
Radio Shack Pro-2039 200 channel
Alinco DR M06TH 6-meter amateur (not really a scanner, but will scan 30-50 Mhz in addition to 6m; at home, fed by Cushcraft AR-6)
Cherokee AH-50 6-meter amateur handheld (not really a scanner; 6m; not in use.)
Radio Shack HTX-202 and HTX-404 handheld 2m and 70cm transceivers (not scanners)
Icom IC-2820H, great, very capable dual band amateur radio with full scanning ability, including tone squelch; my primary news-gathering radio in my Nissan Juke
Icom IC-2350H amateur dual-band + public safety, installed as a second radio in the Nissan Juke
Icom IC-207H amateur dual-band + public safety, currently in my stack in the house
Icom IC-V8000, a high-wattage 2-meter radio mounted in the Nissan Frontier
Kenwood TH-79A amateur handheld + public safety
Kenwood TH-22A amateur handheld + public safety
Uniden BD175XL 16 channel (given to me by Abby’s late father)
Radio Shack Pro-2030 80 channel
Radio Shack Pro-2028 50 channel
Uniden BC72XLT “Nascar” handheld 100 channel (one of the best handheld scanners I own because of its small size and good audio.)
Uniden BCT75XLT 300-channel handheld scanner, given to me by Robert Stinson, who bought it and two others at a thrift store, giving one to Scott and one for himself as well.
Radio Shack Pro-2055. After installing an additional quarter-wave on the roof, I poked around a couple of pawn shops and found this radio for next to nothing.
Radio Shack Pro-163. This radio is very similar to the Pro-2055.
Radio Shack Pro-2020 20-channel scanner of 1978 vintage, bought from Ebay for its nostalgia. I took it apart and cleaned it out with contact cleaner, which was a chore, but which worked. I paid about $10 for it. It is the heaviest and largest scanner I own, maybe 10 pounds and the size of a cassette deck.
Radio Shack Pro-2002, a 50-channel radio, also as a bargain from Ebay.
Icom IC-2200H. I got this from a pawn shop for $80.
Baofeng UV-5R multi-role transceiver. This tiny radio is all the rage, so I bought one in June 2019 for next to nothing to see what the fuss was all about. Read it’s review here (link). I had three of them, but the red one seems to have disappeared.
Uniden Pro501HH Citizens Band radio. I got this recently after patiently scouring garage sales, estate sales, and used equipment websites like Ebay, with no luck at all finding anything CB at all. I don’t expect to use it a lot, but the tipping point for me was learning that Jeep events still use Citizen’s Band.
Radio Shack DX-394 all-mode communications receiver, bought on eBay in 2023 as a replacement for my long-dead DX-400, which got done-in by corroded batteries.
Radio Shack HTX-212, 2-meter mobile, bought from “silent key” auction from the Pontotoc County Amateur Radio Association.
Radio Shack Pro-2052, 1000-channel scanner, bought from “silent key” auction from the Pontotoc County Amateur Radio Association.
Radio Shack Pro-91, 150-channel handheld scanner, Pontotoc County Amateur Radio Association, won’t power up.
Tram 1400, 5/8λ over 5/8λ UHF collinear, silent key auction; put it up outside.
Diamond NR790A, three-section dual band (2-meter and 70-cm) collinear; put up outside.
I had a few Citizen’s Band (CB) radios over the years, and found them to be just as useless as most of the internet is today, littered with vulgar, ignorant, undisciplined chatter.
My wife was annoyed by the daily chatter of the scanner, but I am able to filter it very effectively, and my ears perk up every time I heard a code that corresponds to something that might be newsworthy, like an injury accident, house fire, missing person, high-speed chase, severe weather, and more. The best example of my brain filtering scanner traffic was one night in March 2000. I kept the scanner on at a very low volume level, so that I could barely hear the routine comms, but sirens or urgent voices would wake me, as did, that night, the very urgent words, “The roof of the Ada Evening News is on fire!” After hearing that, I was downtown covering one of Ada’s biggest fires, of the Evergreen Feed Mill, in about three minutes.
To celebrate, I flew, of course. First, I flew the 150 alone to the practice area and did some spins. It had been a while, and guess what? Spins are still a huge rush.
At 9 p.m., I flew two short field landings on runway 12, the second one short enough that I got the airplane stopped before the intersection with runway 17.
I had asked my young friend Amber if she wanted to fly with me. I picked her up at the terminal, and we flew to Seminole and back, about 30 miles, in the gathering darkness. It was an absolutely beautiful flight.
Almost back to Ada, we followed Dr. Chad in N5434E on five mile final. The approach was so beautiful that I didn’t want it to end, so I flew the missed approach. Both times I flew the VASI all the way to the numbers perfectly.
That birthday with my shy friend Amber in the right seat was perfect.
Right after I got my pilot certificate in May 1993, I got checked out to rent airplanes at airports in my area.
N2870Q, a Cessna 172, belonged to Dub. Dub and I were the first students to graduate from Phil’s class at the Ada airport. That was Saturday morning, May 1, 1993. Dub took his check ride in his airplane, and I took mine in the rental, N6059G, a really nice Cessna 150.
That 150, named Old Gomer, was apparently involved in a September 2023 crash in Huntsville, Texas that killed both occupants.
In April 1997, I ferried Dub’s Cessna to Tulsa, where he was having work done on a Piper twin he had recently bought. It flew like every other Cessna 172. I was surprised to learn that in November 2005, someone (I don’t think it was Dub) crashed this airplane after running it out of fuel in Rock Springs, Wyoming.
Another Cessna 152 I rented pretty regularly, including to fly with Abby in the spring of 2003, N6202M, was demolished in a fuel-exhaustion crash in 2018 at Horseshoe Bay, Texas.
For a while I was renting a Piper Cherokee 160, N5422W. It was easy to fly, but had a couple of oddities I didn’t like, such as the Johnson bar flaps, and the overhead crank for elevator trim.
I took it to Tulsa a couple of times. The most interesting Tulsa trip involved a stubborn thunderstorm directly over my destination, Tulsa International Airport, which happened to be close to where a friend lived at the time.
I dutifully listened to the ASOS, but instead of weather and NOTAMS, all I heard was, “developing situation; contact ATC.” Weird. On the other radio I heard an American Airlines flight asking to return to Oklahoma City. Weirder. I called ATC and they told me a thunderstorm was parked right over Tulsa International, and hadn’t moved in an hour. I told them I would land at Riverside, which was reporting VFR. The Riverside controller had me do a right downwind for 17, and said he would call my base turn. The thunderstorm was right in front of me. I slowed the airplane down and waited for what seemed like forever before he called my base. The landing was uneventful.
A few months later I called to rent that plane again, but no one seemed to know where it was. Word on the street was that someone had flown it to Mexico and left it there.
The airplane finally found it’s fate in August 2000 when the pilot reportedly “encountered a gust and lost directional control while attempting a go-around, resulting in an in-flight collision with trees and terrain.”
Possibly the weirdest fate of any airplane I flew regularly was a Cessna 172 with the tail number N172JF. An accident report from October 1998 states, “Witnesses observed the airplane roll into a steep bank and descend vertically into the ground… the accident site was located adjacent to a church where a friend of the pilot was attending services. The friend had reportedly declined a marriage proposal from the pilot the night before the accident. The medical examiner classified the pilot’s death as a suicide.”
Yesterday was “one of these days,” as in, “One of these days I’m going to get around to burning that brush pile.”
My north brush pile began 13 months ago when a severe thunderstorm tore down some large limbs in two of my maple trees and Abby’s 100+year-old walnut.
I had built this pile in the north pasture, quite far away from anything it might threaten, like houses, sheds, other trees, and so on, but I still wanted to burn it in a no-wind condition, and last night was perfect.
I had attempted to burn this mountain of everything from full-sized tree trunks to twigs and leaves, but found on two previous occasions that it was too wet.
Last night I tried to light a bundle of grass and hay kindling under it, but it wasn’t until I stuffed a couple of editions of The Ada News under it that I was able to get it going, after which there was no stopping it.
Now I need to vow that I will burn brush before it gets high and wide, maybe once a month.
Ever since my late wife’s daughter Chele and her family moved to Anna, Texas, I’ve wanted to visit Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport’s Founder’s Plaza, which is about 45 minutes from Chele’s home.
My readers know that I have always been a big fan of aviation in all forms, and I became a pilot in 1993. I love air shows, military aviation, commercial aviation, anything.
Built in 1995, Founders’ Plaza is an observation park dedicated to the founders of DFW Airport.
I was a little afraid I might bore Chele, her husband Tom, and their 13-year-old son Paul, but they ended up loving it too. We saw lots of jets, some arriving from or departing to locations across the globe. We had a great time, and vowed we would return, possibly at sunrise or sunset, maybe in the fall.
I recommend this attraction, which is free, for anyone who loves airplanes.
I recently had the opportunity to fly in the camera plane to photograph a Douglas A-26 Invader, a fast medium bomber of late World War II. The aircraft was fueled with Ada-based General Aviation Modifications, Inc.’s new aviation gasoline, G100UL, the first-ever 100-octane unleaded aviation gasoline.
I sat on the floor in the back of a Beech Bonanza A36, N59CT. I wore a harness, which I mention because people who saw pictures of me kept asking if I was “strapped in,” not, I guess, realizing the straps of the harness I am visibly wearing in the photos are holding me safety in the aircraft.
The Commemorative Air Force owns and the A-26, and only flies it when they can afford it, and when they have a pilot with the type rating to fly it. I wrote the story for my newspaper when the aircraft moved to Ada in January 2022 after losing the lease for its hanger in Guthrie.
At one point a four-foot piece of trim came un-velcroed from over my head. I didn’t want to lose it or pitch it overboard, so I pinned it to the floor with my right foot.
The flight was reasonably smooth, but we didn’t get sunshine, and the CAF has a 500-foot minimum air-to-air formation rule, so, though I shot with my 300mm f/2.8, a lot of my frames were trash, and overall they weren’t as beautiful as some of the commercial air-to-air work I’ve seen.
It was a lot of fun, and I hope GAMI and the CAF call on me again to do this kind of work for them.
Today Ada Sunrise Rotary presented the 2023-24 President appreciation plaque to me, which was an honor to receive. And while I did serve as Sunrise Rotary’s President for a year, it was fun and productive, and, for anyone familiar with civic clubs, another chapter of, as the Rotary International motto says, “Service Above Self.”
I feel that we accomplished many of the goals we set out to achieve, including this year’s better-than-ever Fireball Classic 10k/5k/Fun Run. I also feel that our new President, Christen Puckett-Smith, is poised to be a great leader in the coming year.
In the past year, the duties of running the meetings left little time for what had become one of my favorite reasons for joining Ada Sunrise instead of Ada Rotary (which meets at noon), breakfast at The Aldridge.
Anyone who knows our town knows that breakfast at The Aldridge at 12th and Broadway is more than just a meal, it is a meal full of tradition. If you want to taste Ada, get a bite at the Aldridge.
I know I’ve made this point before, but civic clubs in general are worth your time and support, and if you have ever considered doing something fun with a sense of purpose and belonging, Rotary, Kiwanis, or Lions might be right for you.
I visited a friend on the local college campus recently. When we stepped out into the cool late-morning air, I was struck by the memories it summoned.
Many college memories center around the start of college, the start of semesters, the start of the school year. Those are often associated with the excitement of the potential ahead of us, wearing sweaters and walking to class among the falling leaves.
But that late morning moment this spring: the humid, hazy look in the sky, the green grass with fresh clippings lightly littering the sidewalk, that odd silence after classes were done for the year as students and teachers readied for exams, summer plans, graduation… where was I when all this was happening to me years ago?
It would be another summer of scraping by selling news photos to the Daily for $3.50 each, trying to make rent, trying to eat cheap, trying to imagine the future of my photography, a career.
It had the smell of loneliness, the smell of failure. When did I devolve from arrogant freshman to lonely senior? How did my bright future turn so dark and dusty?
I could blame guidance councilors and college advisors, but I won’t. I could blame the company I kept, but I won’t. I could blame high school and college curriculums, but I won’t. Parents, friends, enemies, society, academia, nutrition, the threat of nuclear war, television, sugar, fat, salt. None of those.
That pretty much leaves the mirror.
I failed myself. To posit otherwise would be to admit that we aren’t sentient, that we aren’t people.
A tenth grade English teacher once wrote to me, “You. You. You are the master of your fate and the captain of your soul.” At the time, I thought it sounded like nonsense. I was so busy acting like I understood everything, I missed out on actually understanding.
I see myself in that mirror in that ratty rooming house, looking at a dreamer. I dreamed about money, cameras, cars, airplanes. But I didn’t plan. I waited.
In my journal, it became The Summer of Private Drama. By July, I found myself wondering if I meant anything at all. The girl I adored with the Zeta Tau Alpha socks and the hazel eyes had told me off, again.
In my journal, I wrote, “Right now I’ve got fear, pain, and boredom. These are good ones, because they can get so real, so sharp, so clear. I have blurred visions. Blurred by what? The telephone line. Honesty. Your presence. The realness. History. Ghosts. The sky on fire. Silence.”
What was I writing? Why was I writing? I hadn’t been discovered as the next Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus?
Wasn’t that supposed to happen if I wrote in my journal?
Then I wrote, “If I kept a journal for other people… the concept sounds ridiculous. Every night, there is a blank page, just for me. Create an image with words instead of creating an image with suffering.”
That was my turning point. I realized the journal was for me.
I just finished watching both parts of the newest motion picture iteration of Dune, and I had fun.
I got to thinking about the spice melange, what it was and how it worked.
Sidebar: if you read the Frank Herberts Dune books in high school, please go somewhere else. I’m not up for a “but in the book” debate.
In The Underestimated Importance Diagram, I wrote, “27th century dynamic Third Eye is saturated with a powerful psychotropic drug (PPD) that yields perfect perception.”
Wow. “Perfect perception.” Am I a genius?
Dune’s spice melange is a reddish, sparkling powder, but I had in mind that PPD would be clear, contain all flavors, all scents, and is so complex that it actually contains a couple of substances that only exist in the future, even it’s future. It is so transparent that you actually can’t see it, and that wouldn’t matter anyway, since you are looking into the future.
CBS turned this on his head in a show called Limitless, when a professional douchebag named Brian takes NZT-48, a miracle drug that gives him access to every neuron in his brain. The series wasn’t great, though Abby and I watched the whole thing and had a lot of fun. (Abby and I could watch grass grow and have fun if we did it together.)
NZT was dangerous and would eventually kill you, but PPD does not. Like the spice melange, it extends life and health, though unlike melange, it doesn’t make you trip, doesn’t color your eyes, and cleans up your terrible grammar.
The most beautiful thing about PPD is that it never wears off. This is because perfect perception is completely transcendent of time.
There is a song by This Mortal Coil called A Single Wish. The lyrics to it are difficult to hear, and neither the liner notes nor the internet seem willing to define them. So I decided to write them down as I hear them.
I wonder, alone here
The sound
The living now
The longing’s end
It’ll end in tears
And now as follows
Let’s hide a single wish
The living love, forever
Oh, no, it’ll end in tears
It’ll end in tears
Sometimes flying on a Saturday is the most fun you can have, and sometimes factors as fickle as the wind and the weather bring that all to a halt.
Today was one of those Saturdays.
I was invited by General Aviation Modifications Inc. President and fellow pilot Tim Roehl to be the photographer for a high-visibility demonstration of their newly-certified G100UL unleaded aviation gasoline.
The plan was to fuel up the Douglas A-26 Invader that lives on the field here at Ada Regional Airport, an aircraft I wrote a news story about in January 2022 (link), and fly it in formation with GAMI’s Beech Bonanza A36 with the right side door removed so I could photograph the Invader as it flew from Ada to Chickasha, Oklahoma for an air show.
Right around our planned departure time, Tim got a text from the A-26 pilot that he needed to go to Florida unexpectedly, and at that same time, dense fog rolled up all around us.
We finished the last of the prep work, including fitting the new safety harness on me and testing it, so we will all be ready – hopefully – when the pilot and the weather are good to go.
In 1996, at a meeting of the local chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association, a fellow pilot, one of the guys I learned to fly with, told us he departed Guthrie, Oklahoma to fly to Ada under low ceilings and visibility, without any charts. He tried to “scud run” under the clouds until he passed under the top of a television broadcast tower. He urgently climbed into the clouds without a clearance, but couldn’t remember any of the Oklahoma City approach/departure frequencies (I know them by heart: 124.4, 120.45, 126.4). He called Fort Worth Center, who handed him off the Oklahoma City. When his transponder wouldn’t work, even on 7700, they gave him a vector based on primary (not transponder) radar contact.
In early 1993, when my pilot class and I were doing our flight work, a fellow student did his long cross-country flight to Stillwater, then Enid, then back to Ada. When he returned, one fuel tank was almost empty, and the other tank was completely full. Since the fuel selector in the Cessna 150 is either “off” or “both,” he must have simply forgotten to fill one of the tanks when he stopped.
The pilot of one of the airplanes I rent made a forced landing in it near Tecumseh, having run it out of fuel. He told authorities the right fuel gauge indicated he still had half a tank left.
The same week I got my pilot’s license, May 1993, a 30-year pilot made a forced landing about 10 miles north of the airport after his engine ran out of oil and failed. The pilot was notorious for getting in and flying his airplane with no preflight checks of any kind.
Readers probably know now that tornadoes struck across Oklahoma Saturday night into Sunday morning. I listened to non-stop amateur radio and public safety communications, and when tornado warnings were issued for my location, I brought Hawken, my Irish wolfhound, inside, and sheltered in the center of the house with him and my Chihuahua, Summer.
Those storms passed us without causing any damage, but nearby Sulphur, Oklahoma, wasn’t so lucky, and late Saturday my notes from the radio traffic say, “11:17 p.m., Murrah County is requesting help, houses leveled.”
Knowing I could do little until day break, I planned to go to Sulphur first thing Sunday morning.
At the time I left my house in Byng, the water and the electricity were both off. I got a text from the power company saying it was back on at 12:13 p.m., but got home an hour later to find that it was not, so I went to the office to work my photos, video, and the storm story.
Home around 5 p.m., the power was back on, but the water was a muddy trickle. My neighbors said their water was back on. I tried all the faucets inside, but it seemed the pressure was near zero. I decided I need to be able to flush, so I grabbed a bucket and started toward the pond, but quickly checked the outside faucet, which, much to my surprise, was flowing like a waterfall.
Hmm. No water inside, full pressure outside, all connected to the same pipes.
I summoned a buddy of mine, who looked around with me and was just as baffled. We found the tub ran full flow, but the sinks and toilets did not. He then got the idea to remove a screen from the bathroom faucet, where we discovered it was fully clogged with tiny, yellow plastic balls. It looked like resin from the water softener, which shouldn’t be able to make it into the flow.
We concluded that when the house was re-pressurized after the outage was repaired, the shock must have dislodged resin, which traveled to the screens, clogging them.
Neither of us had ever seen this before.
I thanked him, then set out to clean all the screens in the house, with an unexpected result of improving the flow from all the faucets, which is a sign that I should clean them out regularly.
As we all wind down from the excitement of Monday’s total solar eclipse, I thought I would weigh in on what worked, what didn’t, and what was fun and what wasn’t.
For more than a year, Tulsa photographer Robert Stinson and I planned to travel to the Moon.
The drive from Ada to Moon, Oklahoma, a town that is little more than a wide spot in the road and a mark on the map, took about three hours, about what we expected.
We got an early start, so we were just the second vehicle to arrive in Moon, but as the time of totality got closer, more people arrived.
As some had predicted, we had clouds for most of the day in Moon, but that didn’t squelch the mood at all. In fact, the crowd at Moon grew and became more festive, almost like a block party.
A Native American woman held a sage smudging ceremony.
A man played a quartz chakra bowl, telling me, “this is a chakra bowl for the third eye chakra, for balance and harmony.”
A family showed up with blankets, then played baseball on the gravel road to pass the time as we waited.
As the totality arrived, we had cloud cover, so the experience of the moment became the sudden, profound darkness and quiet. The clouds parted briefly, so we did get to see the totality for maybe 30 seconds.
All that, rather than the actual eclipse, ended up being the best part of the day, and on a bigger scale, the shared experience of millions of people became the most memorable part of the Great North American Eclipse.
On the drive back to Ada, we experienced a 45-minute traffic stoppage south of Antlers, which was exactly what happened to Abby and me on the drive home from the 2017 eclipse. It was the only negative thing about the whole day, and it really wasn’t a big deal.
Overall, the trip to the moon was a great experience.
I just returned from a trip to Arkansas, the central purpose of which was to attend a memorial dinner for Pam Hudspeth, a fellow journalist and one-time girlfriend who died in November at age 58.
I will have much more to say about her, especially the things she wrote, later.
I made a few notes about the dinner, but my insights are tenuous at best when it comes to her life. I thought I knew her, and she thought she loved me, but those are black-and-white definitions of what could only be described as a dark grey relationship.
My romantic time with Pam was dark and difficult, and was shaped, as many parts of my life are, by music. Among other music I discovered in 1992 was k. d. lang’s album Ingénue, so that season ended up being called Season of Hollow Soul from the song from that album, and expresses very accurately how I was feeling at the time…
“Fate must have a reason Why else endure the season Of hollow soul The ground on which we leave on How strangely fuels the season Of hollow soul hollow soul”
I entered my romantic relationship with her feeling lonely and unhappy, but emerged from it feeling energized and optimistic, partially because I was learning to fly.
Dinner was hosted by Pam’s long-time supporter, caretaker, benefactor, housemate …there aren’t actually words to accurately describe their relationship… Dr. Bill Ashmore. We all met at Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Rogers, Arkansas. I was just two minutes late for the designated starting time of 5:30 pm, but was the last to arrive, which seemed odd to me.
Guests included Pam’s father Phil and his wife, Pam’s son Dane and his wife, Pam’s longest-time and best friend Stacy and her husband, and other friends and co-workers, for a total of 15 of us around the table.
We discussed her life, how we met her, our thoughts about who she was and what she did. It was cordial. Stacy talked about how she only ever knew her as Elo, but no one seemed to recall why. I told them that Pam told me it stood for Electric Lips Orchestra.
After I spoke, I said that I was really in love with her at the time she moved away in 1992, and more than one person chimed in that she felt the same way, but that’s very revisionist. If you could have seen and heard her at the end, she was very distant and ready to be done with me.
At the end of the night, her son Dane gave me a tiny vial of her ashes, which was thoughtful.
The next day, Dr. Ashmore invited me to take a tour of her room and her things, which was also very kind. It didn’t yield any pearls, but I saw a few interesting artifacts of her life. She had a couple of recent photos of me on her walls, which was flattering.
Those who know me know I have been cleaning and reducing my material footprint since my wife died two years ago, so I only took a couple of small souvenirs. One of them was the green and gold notebook she and I wrote in at the very start of the “Journal Project,” an idea of mine in which writers write something – the start of a short story, a few pages of poems, other creative ideas – in a note book, then send it to the next person. It can work as a group, or just between two writers.
Here is a little bit of something I wrote in it…
There was the smokey haze of late spring and early summer. There were Friday nights around tables with beer and cigarettes and pretentious poetry.
As winter had faded, four of us gathered to read what we had written.
What did we write? Whatever it was, it better be brilliant to impress the company.
One of them, Melany. She was a tomboy. She drank too much and smoked too much weed. Once when she was pretty wasted, she walked over to me and talked for a minute, then, as she started to walk away, reached up with one finger and brushed the hair out of my eyes. Oh. Melany.
Then, Hank. If Melany was too… hm. If Melany was soft and attractive and vulnerable, Hank was equally angry and volatile. His stories were full of symbolism from the Old Testament, full of fire and brimstone. Hank was on fire.
Hank and Melany cracked open another beer and blazed up another doobie, and argued about the motivation to write.
And then, Pam.
Through the smoke and the fire and the yelling and the endless theories about this voice and that structure and which simile, Pam.
Across the table from me she sat, and I was lost in her pearl-black eyes.
She replied at length, so it seemed like an excellent idea, though she only used it as a journal, and never made any effort to create a narrative from it.
“Richard always wrote – never failed. It was part of his day, an important part. His words were opaque, and later, when he was just writing to me, his words – poetry, story, letter – each were like white feathers falling from the sky, landing gently in the palm of my hand. Scrolls, full of past, present, future.
“Richard, loaded with his camera and camera bag, would glide by and lean over, resting his head in his hands on top of my computer, and stare at me. His hair a soft red, eyes ice-cube-tray blue, small freckles running over the bridge of his nose, and always, ALWAYS with a huge smile.
“His photography was palpable, no matter the subject. God I loved looking at ALL of his pictures, feel what they conveyed to me. I would have filled the walls with every single photograph he took. I would have asked for the ones I could taste.”
Pam shared the Ella Henderson song Beautifully Unfinished with me a couple of years ago, saying it was her song about me…
“… ‘Cause every time I’m with you somehow I forget to breathe You got me like a rag doll, Now I’m dancing on your string And I keep trying to figure out who you are to me But maybe all that we are meant to be Is beautifully unfinished, beautifully unfinished…”
The song that ended up being about Pam the most comes from when she moved away in 1992, Don’t Go Away by Toad the Wet Sprocket…
“We’ve been sharing so many words and feelings Age is heavier, it seems, than years alone But, I told you things I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone Are we drying out, like flowers from a forgotten someone
Don’t go away I can’t feel the same without you…”
Really though, the song that best describe’s Pam life was, by her own admission, The Girl with the Weight of the World in Her Hands by the Indigo Girls…
” ‘Is the glass half-full or empty?’ I ask her as I fill it She said it doesn’t really matter, pretty soon you’re bound to spill it. With the half logic language of the sermon she delivers And the way she smiles so knowingly at me gives me the shivers I pull the blanket higher when I’m finally safe at home And she’ll take a hundred with her, but she always sleeps alone, The girl with the weight of the world in her hands.”
I know this all sounds dramatic and tragic, but I’m good with it all. It is absolutely true that I am thinking about her a lot right now, but not with regret. I think Pam spent much too much time with regret. I know so many people who can’t get out of that mindset. For me, today is the day, and tomorrow looks bright. I loved Pam for all the right reasons, and miss her now that she’s gone, but life, as they say, goes on.
I recently wanted to switch off, tune out, and relax, so I picked one of the least threatening movies in my DVD collection, Airport. As it happens, I own the “Terminal Pack” of airplane disaster movies, a box set of four of these films that also includes Airport 1975, Airport ’77, and The Concorde… Airport ’79, and I also own Airplane!, the parody of them all.
A quick word about these names: during that era, we lived in a world that thought the 1970s was so modern, and shows like Match Game sounded the coolest when it became Match Game 75! that year.
The senior film of the bunch is easily the one of the four that seems to have a legitimate story to tell, in which various intertwined plots (seven, in fact) flow around a busy fictional international airport in Chicago. It’s somewhat formulaic, but in many ways, it created this formula, the so-called “disaster” film.
Abby and I watched this film together, and typical of her, Abby fell in love with the elderly stowaway played by Helen Hayes. I loved the film for its campy self-importance and overblown drama, and, of course, for the aviation angle.
One of the best performances of the show (as Abby always called movies) came from Maureen Stapleton as Inez Guerrero, wife of suicidal passenger D.O. Guerrero. Her urgency and utter dismay that ends in learning her husband was dead is completely believable.
Air traffic controllers and pilots actually have some realistic conversations, including the tense, foreboding “PAR approach” near the end of the movie. A PAR approach, which is a type of ground-controlled approach using precision approach radar to provide both vertical and horizontal guidance for an aircraft, is never used any more except maybe by the military for combat training.
There are some charming and funny scenes, but none more that Dean Martin bullshifting a nosey young passenger…
Schuyler Schultz: [pointing out the window] Before, Virgo and Leo were right there, sir. Now I’m beginning to see Ursa Minor and Cassiopeia. We MUST be turning around.
Capt. Vernon Demerest: You have a young navigator here! Well, I’ll tell ya, son… due to a setslow wind, Dystor’s vectored us into a 360 turn for some slow traffic. Now, we’ll maintain this board and hold until we receive a Forta Magnus clearance from MELNIX.
Of course, some of the characters are flat, like the airport manager’s wife, who is monotonously hateful for most of the movie, and George Kennedy, who, well, is George Kennedy.
An interesting and tragic side note to this movie is that Lancaster’s romantic interest, Jean Seberg, killed herself in Paris in 1979.
Airport is the pick of the litter, but when I was a kid, I fell in love with Airport 1975. Sure, the writing, acting, and directing are clumsy and insincere, especially between Charlton Heston and Karen Black, but it has a 747 in it!
Okay, yes, you read that correctly. Heston and Black’s utter romantic miscasting remained unrivaled until the chemistry between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis made our libidos shrivel to nothing in Top Gun.
One direct effect of Airport 1975 when I was 12 was to immerse me even deeper into aviation, and I decided then, and kinda believe to this day, that the Beechcraft Baron is the coolest, sexiest airplane ever built.
The plot is pretty unrealistic: a giant airliner is flying across the country when ATC tells them the “entire coast is socked in, but Salt Lake is available.” Meanwhile, the gorgeous Baron (which doesn’t bear the tail number of the aircraft in the dialog) ends up wildly out-of-control because Dana Andrews’ pilot character has a heart attack.
Yes, I know. ATC has radar, and they would vector the jumbo jet away from the twin, but I guess maybe, uh, reasons.
Before I continue: if you thought the infidelity and womanizing in Airport is bad, Airport 1975 is absolutely appalling, especially the mercilessly sexist, demeaning “flirtation” toward the flight attendants by the second officer, played by Erik Estrada.
The twin crashes into the jumbo, with hilarious results! Okay, maybe not intentionally hilarious results, but between the crash-test-dummy first officer being sucked out of the hole in the cockpit, the ketchupy blood on Efrem Zimbalist Jr., the fact that we have a critical kidney patient (Linda Blair!), and Heston saying “damn!” every 40 seconds, it is a non-stop parody of itself.
My sister Nicole does a hilarious impersonation of Karen Black at the controls of the stricken 747.
So, yada yada yada, dramatic midair suspense, and we land in Salt Lake City. But, wait, “Damn! Brake pressure’s dropping!” Heston screams, and we crash into a utility shack at the end of the runway.
It really isn’t a very put-together movie.
Predictably, the next two in the series, Airport ’77, and The Concorde… Airport ’79, are even less watchable, to the point of being insufferably pointless.
It’s kind of a shame Jack Lemmon got connected to Airport ’77, because just a year later he was excellent in The China Syndrome. Watch this space for a review of that hidden gem.
But then, a new hope dawns on the airliner movie scene: Airplane! If you felt unclean after attempting to watch the Airport series, you will feel literal pain from laughing so hard at Airplane! It takes something from every Airport movie, plus a few others that take themselves way too seriously, like The High and The Mighty, even Saturday Night Fever, and crams it into 88 minutes of irreverent, and often inappropriate, humor that, if you can lower your offendable defenses for a bit, will have you pausing it just to catch your breath from laughing so hard. It makes fun of everybody in a way movie makers just can’t do today.
My wife Abby and I had only been married a couple of months when, for Christmas 2004, her daughter Chele bought us a subscription to Netflix. At the time, the Netflix model was to send you three movies on DVD to watch at your leisure, then each time you returned a movie in the prepaid envelope, they’d send you another based on a list you made on their website.
Among our first movies was Solaris, the 2002 version by Steven Soderbergh. (I don’t recall the other two). We based this choice on the idea that we would pick movies we thought we’d both like, and we had both liked Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape from 1989, and liked at least some of Ocean’s Eleven.
Solaris is beautiful film. The photography is spectacular, and, in most aspects, offers realistic depictions of an epic space adventure, and the score by Cliff Martinez is both off-scale amazing and definitely unusual.
The scene of Chris Kelvin, played by George Clooney, arriving at Solaris in the Athena is possibly one of the most elegant, beautiful, and engaging in the history of science fiction. I have watched that scene over and over, and it’s amazing.
I love all the actors and all the performances; George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Viola Davis, Jeremy Davies, and Ulrich Tukur. It was well-cast, and well-acted.
I wish I could say the whole movie is amazing.
We start with Kelvin, a psychologist, living in a bleak, unfriendly near-future city. He trods around in the rain and gloom, quietly, woodenly dealing with his patients, obviously unhappy. The only reason given at that point is McElhone’s voice saying, “Chris, don’t you love me any more?”
Early in the movie we seem to hear characters refer to the psychological fallout from 9/11 in a way that doesn’t age well, with Kelvin’s patients saying they saw something that “took them back” to that day, “like a commemorative t-shirt or something on the web.”
Mysterious representatives arrive to deliver a video message from Gibarian, a friend of Kelvin’s, in the fashion of a 1960s French espionage movie: they let us know that they’re not going to let us know much. Gibarian’s message is even less clear: “I need you to come to Solaris, Chris,” but at this point, we don’t yet know if Solaris is a galaxy, a code name for a new video game, or a brothel.
The representatives call it a “ship,” but we learn in the next scene that it’s a space station, not a ship.
Kelvin boards the station, finds a blood trail, and discovers his friend Gibarian is dead. He is then lead by the sound of Insane Clown Posse’s Riddle Box to a crew member named Snow.
Sidebar: when naming your characters, find a way to make their names clear. When someone says, “I’m looking for Snow,” is he looking for a ski lodge? Even when Kelvin finds him, all he says is, “Snow.” Is he asking for a line of blow? Maybe a better way to write would be, “Are you Snow?”
Riddle Box and the eccentric performance of Jeremy Davies bluntly suggest he has gone at least a little insane during his stay on Solaris.
Snow tells Kelvin that “security forces showed up” and killed a crew member named Coutard, but we never get any more information about how many in the security force, and what happened to them. Kelvin asks Snow point blank, “Can you tell me what’s happening here?” but Snow is completely evasive in his answer: “I could tell you what’s happening, but I don’t know if that would tell you what’s really happening.”
As we move along the slow-paced plot line, we see shots of the space station and out its windows showing Solaris, which looks more like a star than a planet. One of the trailers, obviously made early in the production schedule, shows it as ocean, but in the movie, it seems like a blue supergiant star with giant prominences.
We never really get an explanation about what Solaris is.
Kelvin finds the commander, Dr. Gordon, who, like everyone so far in the movie, is completely evasive about what is going on, saying, “Until it starts happening to you, there’s really no point in talking about it.”
And what is happening? I appreciate letting an audience uncover and figure out a mystery, but this narrative is just being difficult. Very gradually, we find out that each crew member is seeing and interacting with “visitors.”
We never get to see Dr. Gordon’s visitor, but based on the noises coming from her quarters early in the movie, and just who I am, I think it might not be a person at all, but a beloved pet.
From Kelvin’s dreams and memories, we flash back to a time when he was falling in love with and marrying McElhone’s character Rheya. All the scenes on Solaris are toned in cold blues, and all the flashback scenes are very warm-toned. Obvious, but effective.
Sure, okay, fine, we’re orbiting an enigmatic stellar body. But where the movie fails is (spoilers) that Solaris turns out to be a stellar or planetary dream weaver ad/or wish machine that lets, or forces, crew members to interact with their absent loved ones. Magic. Fairy dust. Feel good. As one of the trailers says, “How far will you go for a second chance?”
As the movie progresses and Kelvin interacts with Rheya, Solaris seems to turn from blue to pink. I know this is supposed to represent something, but the symbolism is nebulous at best. More dreams, more memories, more awareness? Or is Solaris expressing a change in gender? Maybe we’re just meant to think it is changing.
Misdirected scene: when Kelvin first wakes up to discover his apparently alive dead wife there in the room with him, he leaps up and runs to the other side of the room, facing away from her, slapping himself in the head, then slowly bracing himself with both hands and finally looking up at her. But no human in history has ever reacted to a potential threat or radical unknown in this manner. He might fight or flight, but the way he played it, it isn’t consistent with human reaction to surprise.
Martinez might be the real star of this movie. Between the way he is so gentle in the musical narrative of Kelvin and Rheya falling in love, to the urgency of the idea they need to hurry up and board the Agena and go home, it stands as one of the most unusual and convincing musical narratives ever.
Some of the “science” is just technobabble nonsense…
“Are they or are then not made of subatomic matter?” Everything is made up of subatomic matter.
“Solaris has been taking on mass exponentially.” From what?
And, of course, our characters use too much power, which leads to a crisis with a deadline.
And the punch line of the movie doesn’t live up to even the little hope we built as we watched. Loud noises, blinking lights, Solaris kind of swallowing the space station. Then, Kelvin is back at home, which is probably supposed to be in Solaris dream space, kissing his alive dead wife. The end.
Okay, okay, sure, I should read the book. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it’s even stupider than this movie.
But, I keep putting the DVD back in and watching it, despite all its flaws. The ultimate saving grace for Solaris is that it is beautiful. My favorite quote from the movie, which translates so well into real life, is, “There are no answers, only choices.”
It was my privilege to participate in an open mic night this weekend.
Longtime readers might recall that from 2017 through 2019, I participated in an open mic night on the first Monday of every month. I made some new friends, and saw many old friends, and got very comfortable reading my creative writing and showing my photos.
I was sad when that ended, and although I got a chance or two to participate occasionally in the years that followed, I really missed it.
So I was very enthusiastic when I heard of another open mic event in my area, hosted by Kind Origins Cannabis.
One reason I was sorry to see it go was that I used reading to my audience as motivation to polish my work.
As usual, and since it is my nature, I ended up making most of the photographs of the night. I made a point to shoot them in an entirely different style than my newspaper work, using my Lumix 4/3 mirrorless and a 1960s-era Minolta 58mm f/1.4 in black-and-white.
I was also very much reminded of a one-time open mic I joined in October 2020, The Esoteric Verse (link). I wish we had more of these kinds of events.
Every pilot remembers seminal moments in their flying careers, like their first solo, their first long cross-country, or the first time they carried passengers.
The day of my check ride was no different. Fellow student Dub and I were both getting our check rides that day. The examiner was about two hours late. He gave a rambling, three-hour oral “exam,” which was mostly him telling us to…
Stay out of the weather
Don’t fly at night
Don’t mis-load the airplane.
We plotted our cross-country flights. I knew my charts, numbers, and regs pretty well.
Dub flew his check ride in a Cessna 172 he had just bought. I flew mine in the Cessna 150 I’d trained in.
On my check ride, which is slang for Private Pilot Practical Test, he had me do a soft-field take off on runway 12 (the shorter crosswind runway), which I executed well. We turned east and practiced some slow flight, then climbed north for some steep turns, one (yes, just one) stall (straight ahead, power-on), and about five minutes under the hood (a view-limiting device) for unusual-attitude recovery and VOR navigation. Over the river north of town, we did turns around a point and half an s-turn, then headed to the airport. I set up for a soft-field landing. He told me to go around at about 50-feet above the ground. We climbed to pattern altitude and turned downwind for 17, where he pulled the throttle to idle to simulate an engine failure.
We taxied to the ramp, where he said, “You go tell Phil (my instructor) you flunked your check ride, and make it convincing. Then I’ll go inside and write your license. Congratulations.”
Dub went next in his 172. Phil was nervous like an expectant father. And since I tested first, I had the honor of being Phil’s first student to “graduate.”
I flew my first passengers just two days later, in a 1966 Cessna 150 I rented in Norman, Oklahoma.
A couple of days later, Dub and I flew his 172 north of town to find and look at an airplane one of our fellow pilots, we’ll call him “Frank,” had landed his plane in a wheat field after the engine failed. “Frank” was notorious for getting in his airplane and flying off without any preflight checklist or briefing of any kind, and on this occasion, it was rumored he flew it without any engine oil, causing it to fail.
It was also that spring when I found out I had won the AP’s Photo of the Year, and The Oklahoma Press Association’s Photographer of the Year awards, so I really was flying high.
Here are some items about flying to commit to memory.
Be humble, approachable, and credible.
Always, in order: aviate, navigate, communicate.
If you are lost, climb, communicate, confess.
And I can’t stress this one enough: put. the. nose. down. How many more tragic accident reports and YouTube videos (including four fatality accidents that I covered for my newspaper) before pilots stop being so incompetent with the elevator?
Just weeks after I got my license, I was flying with someone from my class who was still working towards his license. The cross-country went fine, but on final I saw his airspeed decay to something like 40 knots, and although I was a green pilot myself, I said, “my airplane,” and salvaged the landing. How? By putting the nose down!
Mackenzee Crosby invited me to have lunch with her at The Red Cup, a vegan coffee house and restaurant in Oklahoma City. She is hoping to move to New York soon, and despite her repeated invitations, I’d never managed to make it up there, so this was her last chance to share the experience with me.
Mackenzee and I have been friends since for more than a decade, since she was in junior high. She took my class in 2014. Right before the pandemic in 2020, she photographed Abby and me at home for a college project. In 2021, she spent her newspaper internship at my newspaper (you can read more about her internship here [link], and here [link]). During her internship, I wanted her to write a column. My column is called Picture This, so I wanted hers to have an appealing name. After bantering twenty or so names, she loved the sound of Ellen in Grey. Her middle name is Ellen.
One running photographic laugh between us is that she is very nearsighted, and as I get older, I need readers to see up close. As a result, when she puts my camera to her eye, everything is blurry, and when I put her camera to my eye, everything is blurry.
Mackenzee is also an aspiring poet and author, and I’m always glad when I get to read something of hers. She and I were part of the open mic scene in Ada, and during the pandemic, we both took part in an amazing one-night reading called Esoteric Verse (here, link.)
After lunch, we walked east toward a cathedral she admires, then over to a spot on Western with a couple of graphic features she knew would make pictures.
Early on her internship, Mackenzee invested in a Fujifilm X100V with its fixed 23mm f/2, a camera that has gotten rare and coveted since being introduced. I have a Fuji X-T10, which I brought with my 18mm f/2 attached, so we were both shooting in a similar set.
I am excited for her that she’s moving to New York, but I also know I’ll miss her being close by.
Seven Social Sins is a list by Frederick Lewis Donaldson that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi published in his weekly newspaper Young India on October 22, 1925. Later he gave this same list to his grandson, Arun Gandhi, written on a piece of paper on their final day together shortly before his assassination. The Seven Sins are:
Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Religion without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.
Engines: most science fiction depicts spacecraft with their engines running the entire time they are shown on-screen; Prometheus, The Martian, Star Wars, Star Trek, and on and on. This is probably because the graphic designers were in love with the deep blue glow they created in the engine exhaust.
Why this is a problem: aside from conserving fuel, the obvious problem with engines that run all the time in space is that it creates constant acceleration. Any time you move a vehicle, that movement requires Delta-v (), defined as change in velocity. If you had unlimited fuel, you certainly could continue to accelerate, but that’s not how it’s done. In space flight, Delta-v is applied, accelerating the craft to the required speed, followed by coasting in space until another change is required. Think about the Apollo Program. Once the vehicles were in Earth orbit, another force was required to push the vehicle toward the moon, Delta-v exerted by the S-IVB (the third stage), increasing the eccentricity of the orbit (not, as is sometimes asserted, to “leave Earth orbit”). This maneuver is called the trans-lunar injection (TLI), and lasts about 300 seconds. By then, enough Delta-v has been applied, the S-IVB is left behind, and the remaining vehicles coast into the moon’s gravity.
All the time in science fiction we see spacecraft depicted as arriving at their destinations with their engines, in the back of the vehicle, producing thrust, when, in fact, the goal is to slow down, which would require a different vector than blasting forward.
Important exceptions: Apollo 13, Solaris, 2001 A Space Odyssey
Gravity: this one is only a factor if you need actors to walk around as they do on earth. Various fictions are used to simulate normal Earth-like gravity inside spacecraft. Sometimes freefall (not “zero gravity” as is sometimes asserted) is simulated in practical affects (Apollo 13), or with computer graphics (The Martian). The most popular sci-fi explanation for artificial gravity is to have the crew on the inside of a spinning mass, like a hamster wheel, though Star Trek only addresses this a couple of times with some bullshift like having gravity plates, and it’s only a problem in one of the movies for about two minutes. Also for fans, one of the often re-used background voices in the original series is “gravity is down to point-8.”
As bad as The Midnight Sky was, props at least for the scene of the injured crew member’s blood floating inside her helmet.
Also, The Martian, Ad Astra: gravity on the moon is only 1/6 Earth’s, and Mars’ is only about 2/3 Earth’s, yet actors pounce around like they were in their back yards.
The difference between CO and CO2: this one is so aggravating to me because it’s so easy to understand. Carbon monoxide (CO) is deadly even in small doses, while carbon dioxide (CO2) is present in the atmosphere and in ever breath we exhale. I saw this error recently in Prometheus, in which a character compares the atmosphere to an “exhaust pipe,” at almost three percent CO2. Screen writers: figure this out!
Ignoring distances and the speed of light:Solaris really bugs me on this one, but Star Trek loves to change the rules based on the plot (“out here we won’t get a reply for weeks,” vs livestreaming via subspace). Solaris is set on a distant world in a distant solar system (unless my map of our solar system is missing a planet or small star), yet it seems to take George Clooney maybe six months (?) to reach it (and in the mean time, surely stuff must have changed on the space station in six months), yet if we acknowledge speed of light is the speed limit of the universe, the next closest star to our sun is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2465 light years aways. Thus, even if you could accelerate Clooney to just ten percent of the speed of light, it would take him more than 42 years to get there, and Proxima Centauri certainly isn’t anything like Solaris, so that’s not where he is going.
Related: distance, warp drive, and hyperspace. This one gets flattened into nothingness all the time by lazy screen writing. “We’re the only starship within range,” or, “at warp seven we can be there in ten minutes.” Star Wars goes one lazier in The Last Jedi by having the ships lope along at sub-light speeds on the way to Crait, but didn’t we just discuss the speed of light and how far apart stars are? Even in the tightly-packed star cluster, even travel at nearly the speed of light equals months. Don’t believe me? Light, which of course is at the speed of light, takes 13 minutes to travel from Earth to Mars. How far is Crait supposed to be?
Related: time, speed, distance. Pilots know all about time, speed and distance. In the Star Trek episode Tomorrow is Yesterday, the Enterprise flies toward the sun at multi-warp-speed to “break away” at the last second to re-create the time warp that got them to 1967 in the first place. Uh, Captain? The sun is just eight light-minutes away. Then, as we are flashing across the solar system at Warp Zillion, we see stars zipping by like fireflies. At one point, and Sulu says they are traveling at Warp 8. Spock says, “Since we have passed Mercury, the sun’s pull on us has increased greatly. From here, we’ll move even faster.” Mercury is just 3.2 light minutes away from the sun, and Warp 8 is 512 times the speed of light, so, there’s the … oops, splat.
And of course, the time paradox. You knew this was coming. If you go back in time and change anything, everything changes in the “present.” Sure, it was super-cool to let Joan Collins get run over by a car, but you still changed about a hundred things around you, like stealing those clothes? Huh? Maybe naked Audie Murphy decided not to join the army. What then?
Battles in space. Okay, I know, it’s only science fiction, but if energy weapons like phasers, blasters, and photon torpedoes move at the speed of light, and your ship can go faster than that, why don’t you just scurry away from the danger?
Also related: gravity in open space. This is one of the most glaring problems with The Last Jedi, when the rebellion sends in “bombers” to drop bombs on a star destroyer. Drop bombs in space? Drop bombs in space?
Text makes sound: spy movies also do this, but science fiction is the worst about it. When text appears on the screen, little blipping sounds accompany it. Why did anyone ever think this was a thing? Think I’m wrong? Create a text document right now and listen for the blips. No? Text is silent?
Propellers that stop: this isn’t directly connected to science fiction, but it’s an aviation fact: when an airplane engine stops producing power for whatever reason, the propeller almost always continues to turn, a process called windmilling. It’s actually hard to get a prop to stop on an airplane in flight – I’ve tried it a time or two, by choking the mixture to fail the motor, then pulling to nose up to an imminent stall, when airflow over the prop no longer forces it to spin. Some of the time, lowering the nose and letting the aircraft accelerate toward the ground will make the prop start to windmill again; in fact, this is the relight procedure on many aircraft after an engine failure.
Okay, yeah, the reason directors show this in movies is to tell the audience that the engine quit.
Growing potatoes on Mars: as I rewatch The Martian, and simultaneously look up how to grow potatoes, I realize the missing piece: there isn’t enough sunlight on Mars, especially indoors, to grow potatoes. It’s that pesky inverse square law: since Mars is twice the distance from the sun as the Earth is, meaning the amount of sunlight on Mars is eight times less than on Earth.
In conclusion, I need some really realistic science fiction to read. Ideas?