Short Pilot Quotes

My name," I tell Wilbur in the most dignified voice I can find, "Was inspired by Harriet Quimby, the first female American pilot and the first woman ever to cross the Channel in an aeroplane. My mother chose it to represent freedom and bravery and independence, and she gave it to me just before she died." There's a short pause while Wilbur looks appropriately moved. Then Dad says, "Who told you that?" "Annabel did." "Well, it's not true at all. You were named after Harriet the tortoise, the second longest living tortoise in the world." There's a silence while I stare at Dad and Annabel puts her head in her hands so abruptly that the pen starts to leak into her collar. "Richard," she moans quietly. "A tortoise?" I repeat in dismay. "I'm named after a tortoise? What the hell is a tortoise supposed to represent?" "Longevity?

Our perceptions take on richness and depth as a result of all the things that we learn. The eye is not a camera that objectively takes a photo of the “world out there.” Rather, what the eye sees is determined by what the brain has learned. This suggests a short mantra: learn more, see more.

I’d always hated cocktail parties. And this one was worse than most. Overdressed pseudo–people smiled plastic smiles, told one–upmanship stories with phony self–deprecation, then half–listened with painted–on sincerity to the one–upmanship rebuttals. Mannequins. Robots. Androids. Pseudo–people laboring in the vineyards of pseudo–intellectualism to gather the bitter grapes of self–aggrandizement.

In Hollywood, a young cartoonist named Walt Disney was inspired to create an animated short feature called “Plane Crazy” featuring a mouse who was also a pilot. The mouse was initially called Mortimer but soon assumed a more lasting place in the nation’s hearts as Mickey.

Gate C22 At gate C22 in the Portland airport a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed a woman arriving from Orange County. They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking, the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island, like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing. Neither of them was young. His beard was gray. She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish kisses like the ocean in the early morning, the way it gathers and swells, sucking each rock under, swallowing it again and again. We were all watching– passengers waiting for the delayed flight to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots, the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could taste the kisses crushed in our mouths. But the best part was his face. When he drew back and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost as though he were a mother still open from giving birth, as your mother must have looked at you, no matter what happened after–if she beat you or left you or you’re lonely now–you once lay there, the vernix not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth. The whole wing of the airport hushed, all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body, her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses, little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

We piled aboard the small chopper and after a bit of map pointing to the pilot we lifted off. "I love the RAF," said Jed. "I love them too, sir," said I. After a short flight the chopper landed. We all got out and waved our thanks and farewells to the crew and Major Jenner checked his map. After a quick examination he announced that we had been dropped in the wrong place. "I fucking hate the RAF," said Jed. "I fucking hate them too, sir," said I.

You could pretend that Guenever was a sort of man-eating lioncelle herself, or that she was one of those selfish women who insist on ruling everywhere. In fact, this is what she did seem to be to a superficial inspection. She was beautiful, sanguine, hot-tempered, demanding, impulsive, acquisitive, charming - she had all the proper qualities for a man-eater. But the rock on which these easy explanations founder, is that she was not promiscuous. There was never anybody in her life except Lancelot and Arthur. She never ate anybody except these. And even these she did not eat in the full sense of the word. People who have been digested by a man-eating lioncelle tend to become nonentities - to live no life except within the vitals of the devourer. Yet both Arthur and Lancelot, the people whom she apparently devoured, lived full lives, and accomplished things of their own. She lived in warlike times, when the lives of young people were as short as those of airmen in the twentieth century. In such times, the elderly moralists are content to relax their moral laws a little, in return for being defended. The condemned pilots, with their lust for life and love which is probably to be lost so soon, touch the hearts of young women, or possibly call up an answering bravado. Generosity, courage, honesty, pity, the faculty to look short life in the face - certainly comradeship and tenderness - these qualities may explain why Guenever took Lancelot as well as Arthur. It was courage more than anything else - the courage to take and give from the heart, while there was time. Poets are always urging women to have this kind of courage. She gathered her rose-buds while she might, and the striking thing was that she only gathered two of them, which she kept always, and that those two were the best.

When I came to myself again, I said — ‘When I get so that I can do that, I’ll be able to raise the dead, and then I won’t have to pilot a steamboat to make a living. I want to retire from this business. I want a slush-bucket and a brush; I’m only fit for a roustabout. I haven’t got brains enough to be a pilot; and if I had I wouldn’t have strength enough to carry them around, unless I went on crutches.’ ‘Now drop that! When I say I’ll learn {footnote [‘Teach’ is not in the river vocabulary.]} a man the river, I mean it. And you can depend on it, I’ll learn him or kill him.

I was sorting stamps in the slotted drawer at the post office when Garnelle Fielding came in to send a little package to Wilbur. She said she’d gone and signed up for the WAFS, and her mother and daddy drove her down to Sweetwater to take a test at Avenger Field, where the government was training hundreds and hundreds of women to be pilots. Trouble was, she didn’t pass her physical because they said she was too short and too thin for the service. Her mother rushed her to a doctor in Toullange the next day and tried to get him to write her a letter so she could join the navy instead, but he wouldn’t do it. He told her the service was no place for a girl, and she’d be better off to wait home for someone brave to come marry her. Garnelle hung around until four o’clock when my hours were up, then walked with me to my house. “You should have seen my mother,” she said. “Better yet, you should have heard her. She fussed and fumed the whole way home about how women in her family had fought in every war this country has ever had, right up from loading muskets in the Revolution to she herself driving a staff car in North Carolina during the Great War. I tell you, she would have made a better recruiter than any of those movie star speeches I’ve ever heard. My mother doesn’t sell kisses in a low-cut basque. She preaches pure patriotism like an evangelist in a tent revival. If she’d had a tambourine, we could have stopped the car and held a meeting.” We laughed. “I’m still mad, though,” she said.

At once the senior pilot arose in his mighty bulk and began to struggle into his coat, with awe-inspiring upheavals. The stranger and I hurried impulsively to his assistance, and directly we laid our hands on him he became perfectly quiescent. We had to raise our arms very high, and to make efforts. It was like caparisoning a docile elephant. With a "Thanks, gentlemen," he dived under and squeezed himself through the door in a great hurry.

We arranged to spend the next day, a Sunday, looking at apartments together, followed by a round of tennis, since we both played. Before Nancy left the Pilot that night, I said to her lasciviously— I don’t know what possessed me—“Have you ever tried a comedian before?” Which was either very sexy or very creepy, depending on your opinion of me. She just stared at me, betraying no emotion, and said, “I hope you have a racket. I’m pretty good.” Our

Business would be staying in California and celebrating a deal I’d worked a year on instead of rushing back to see you,” he finally said, his voice low and loaded with gravel. “Business would be completing my D.C. trip instead of waking my pilot up for a last-minute flight home. In all my years as CEO, I’ve only cut a work trip short twice, Vivian, and both those instances were because of you.” A wry twist of his lips. “So no, it’s not just fucking business anymore.

Insha’Allah translates as ‘If God wills it’, and I heard it everywhere. On my first trip to Pakistan, as the plane descended to Islamabad, the pilot addressed the cabin: ‘Insha’Allah we will be landing shortly,’ he announced, somewhat disconcertingly. The phrase was hardwired into the national psyche – a code, a philosophy, a comfort blanket to get through tough times. Sure, things were hard, people admitted. But Pakistan would stumble through, as it had always done – Insha’Allah. Were they right? About three years into my stay, things really began to fall apart.

Every now and then, a small plane arrives from nowhere – as tiny as the head of a match-stick – it flies around my head, buzzing, like a pesky little fly, then disappears into my ear. Later, it lands on my throbbing heart. Excited tourists get out of the plane, constantly clicking their cameras, watching the narrow chasms open-mouthed. After some time, the pilot tells the passengers to get back on the plane. The storms are unpredictable here, he warns. So the small plane flies out of my ear, and as I watch them leave, I wish I could go with them. But I know that's impossible. My fear of heights keeps me in the deep.

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Do you remember that movie we saw when we were little?” I begin. “The Great Escape—we watched it with Dad at least seven or eight times. It was about these American pilots in a German POW camp who dig this long, long tunnel that runs the length of the compound. But, on the night of the escape, when they reach the end of the tunnel, they realize they’re six meters short of the forest. Their calculations had been off by six meters! They’ve got no choice but to risk their necks and make a run for it, in plain view of the guards. Do you remember?” “No,” she says indifferently. “Whatever. What I’m trying to say is: Being with a woman is like sticking your head out of the tunnel and discovering that you’ve actually dug through those last few meters.

In a matter of sixty short minutes, that thing could whisk Neil away to civilization, I thought. Hmm. My goodness, that was a beautiful prospect. Somehow I had to get on that chopper with him. I packed in thirty seconds flat, everything from the past three months. I taped a white cross onto my sleeve, and raced out to where Neil was sat waiting. One chance. What the heck. Neil shook his head at me, smiling. “God, you push it, Bear, don’t you?” he shouted over the noise of the rotors. “You’re going to need a decent medic on the flight,” I replied, with a smile. “And I’m your man.” (There was at least some element of truth in this: I was a medic and I was his buddy--and yes, he did need help. But essentially I was trying to pull a bit of a fast one.) The pilot shouted that two people would be too heavy. “I have to accompany him at all times,” I shouted back over the engine noise. “His feet might fall off at any moment,” I added quietly. The pilot looked back at me, then at the white cross on my sleeve. He agreed to drop Neil somewhere down at a lower altitude, and then come back for me. “Perfect. Go. I’ll be here.” I shook his hand firmly. Let’s just get this done before anyone thinks too much about it, I mumbled to myself. And with that the pilot took off and disappeared from view. Mick and Henry were laughing. “If you pull this one off, Bear, I will eat my socks. You just love to push it, don’t you?” Mick said, smiling. “Yep, good try, but you aren’t going to see him again, I guarantee you,” Henry added. Thanks to the pilot’s big balls, he was wrong. The heli returned empty, I leapt aboard, and with the rotors whirring at full power to get some grip in the thin air, the bird slowly lifted into the air. The stall warning light kept buzzing away as we fought against gravity, but then the nose dipped and soon we were skimming over the rocks, away from base camp and down the glacier. I was out of there--and Mick was busy taking his socks off.

It wasn’t easy at first. He had expected difficulties with his parents and he wasn’t mistaken. His mother had a terrible fear of the bush—which had developed in the weeks when he had disappeared and she had had to believe he was dead. They talked many nights before she relented. He was older now, more seasoned, and she knew that. He had done well the past summer, when he had returned with Derek. With Caleb’s help, his mother came around. “How will you find the Smallhorns?” she asked. “The pilot, the man who flew me out, will know where they are.” Brian had kept the pilot’s name. The man had a one-plane operation working out of International Falls, on the Minnesota-Canada border, and Brian called. “The Smallhorns? Yeah—they’re up in the Williams Lake area in a fish camp but I’m not due to go up there until fall. I’m booked solid all summer with fishing charters. I can’t take the time to run you up there.” “How about getting me close? I can make my own way in a canoe.” “Just a minute.” Brian heard papers shuffling as the pilot went through his records. “Yeah, here. I’m due to take a couple of guys fishing in ten days. We’re going to the Granite Lake area and with my fuel I can take you maybe another hundred miles. That’s still a hundred miles short of the Smallhorns’ camp but it’s all chain lakes up there and you can do it without any really bad portages. I’ll give you a good map. How heavy is your gear?” “Maybe two hundred pounds, plus me and a canoe. Can you haul a canoe?” “Sure. On the floats. We’re taking one canoe and I can fit yours on the other float. When are you figuring on coming out?” “I’m not … sure.” “I’m due to make a supply run to them in the fall before trapping

In a matter of sixty short minutes, that thing could whisk Neil away to civilization, I thought. Hmm. My goodness, that was a beautiful prospect. Somehow I had to get on that chopper with him. I packed in thirty seconds flat, everything from the past three months. I taped a white cross onto my sleeve, and raced out to where Neil was sat waiting. One chance. What the heck. Neil shook his head at me, smiling. “God, you push it, Bear, don’t you?” he shouted over the noise of the rotors. “You’re going to need a decent medic on the flight,” I replied, with a smile. “And I’m your man.” (There was at least some element of truth in this: I was a medic and I was his buddy--and yes, he did need help. But essentially I was trying to pull a bit of a fast one.) The pilot shouted that two people would be too heavy. “I have to accompany him at all times,” I shouted back over the engine noise. “His feet might fall off at any moment,” I added quietly. The pilot looked back at me, then at the white cross on my sleeve. He agreed to drop Neil somewhere down at a lower altitude, and then come back for me. “Perfect. Go. I’ll be here.” I shook his hand firmly. Let’s just get this done before anyone thinks too much about it, I mumbled to myself. And with that the pilot took off and disappeared from view. Mick and Henry were laughing. “If you pull this one off, Bear, I will eat my socks. You just love to push it, don’t you?” Mick said, smiling. “Yep, good try, but you aren’t going to see him again, I guarantee you,” Henry added. Thanks to the pilot’s big balls, he was wrong. The heli returned empty, I leapt aboard, and with the rotors whirring at full power to get some grip in the thin air, the bird slowly lifted into the air. The stall warning light kept buzzing away as we fought against gravity, but then the nose dipped and soon we were skimming over the rocks, away from base camp and down the glacier. I was out of there--and Mick was busy taking his socks off. As we descended, I spotted, far beneath us, this lone figure sat on a rock in the middle of a giant boulder field. Neil’s two white “beacons” shining bright. I love it. I smiled. We picked Neil up, and in an instant we were flying together through the huge Himalayan valleys like an eagle freed. Neil and I sat back in the helicopter, faces pressed against the glass, and watched our life for the past three months become a shimmer in the distance. The great mountain faded into a haze, hidden from sight. I leaned against Neil’s shoulder and closed my eyes. Everest was gone.

On August 18, 1941, Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr. of the Royal Canadian Air Force took a new airplane, the Spitfire Mk I, on a test flight. Magee had received his wings as a pilot only two months earlier. As he flew the Spitfire up to new heights of 33,000 feet, he felt inspired to write a poem that has now become the official poem of both the Royal Canadian Air Force and the British Royal Air Force. Short films have been created with this poem as a basis. In its entirety or in part, the poem can be found in songs, on headstones, in presidential addresses, in museums, and in eulogies. Some have even used it as a prayer. High Flight Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things You have not done—wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up the long, delirious blue I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or even eagle flew. And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod The high, untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

10/10/10 provides distance by forcing us to consider future emotions as much as present ones. • A 10/10/10 analysis tipped Annie toward saying “I love you” first to Karl. 4. Our decisions are often altered by two subtle short-term emotions: (1) mere exposure: we like what’s familiar to us; and (2) loss aversion: losses are more painful than gains are pleasant.     •  How many of our organizational truths are ideas that we like merely because they’ve been repeated a lot?     •  Students given a mug won’t sell it for less than $7.12, even though five minutes earlier they wouldn’t have paid more than $2.87! 5. Loss aversion + mere exposure = status-quo bias. • PayPal: Ditching the PalmPilot product was a no-brainer—but it didn’t feel that way. 6. We can attain distance by looking at our situation from an observer’s perspective. • Andy Grove asked, “What would our successors do?”     •  Adding distance highlights what is most important; it allows us to see the forest, not the trees. 7. Perhaps the most powerful question for resolving personal decisions is “What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?

Throughout the war, officers were routinely sent narcotics through the post by loved ones. Many pilots – with their pitifully short life expectancy – used morphine, and other members of the armed forces became addicts after morphine treatment for wounds

You could have confused me for a robot, or a zombie if you saw me. I was on automatic pilot, like life was happening but I wasn't in control.

Unfortunately, life is too short to learn as much and do as much as we would like. ~Schuyler Jones, 2011

FriXion by Pilot in blue. It writes so smoothly, and being able to erase it gives me a sense of power and delight. I often use the pen with a “smart” notebook (like the Rocketbook Everlast smart notebook)

Planes will never have the final, perfect model because their idea is all about the infinity.

Soon after the Gordons left, Frank and Joe gave Aunt Gertrude a final hug and set off for the airport with their father. Their route included Toronto, then over a vast, lonely, region, splashed with lakes and carpeted with spruce. The plane landed briefly at Sudbury, where the boys glimpsed the white domes of a radar station standing out against the night sky. Two hours after leaving Toronto, they set down near the rugged mining town of Timmins. They registered at a hotel for the night and arranged by telephone for a bush pilot to fly them on to Lake Okemow. At daybreak the two sleuths were up and breakfasting on a hearty meal of Canadian bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes. Then they taxied off in a four-seater amphibian. The flight proved to be bumpy. Below lay a dense wilderness of black spruce, poplar, birch, and tamarack. Glittering lakes and snakelike streams slashed the forest. Farther north came barren patches, frosted white with snow. Then again they were flying over heavy timber. “Here we are!” the pilot said at last. He brought the plane down to a choppy landing on the not-yet-frozen lake and taxied to a wooden pier. On the shore lay the stout log hunting lodge. Smoke feathered from its chimney.

On my first trip to Pakistan, as the plane descended to Islamabad, the pilot addressed the cabin: ‘Insha’Allah we will be landing shortly,’ he announced, somewhat disconcertingly. The phrase was hardwired into the national psyche – a code, a philosophy, a comfort blanket to get through tough times. Sure, things were hard, people admitted. But Pakistan would stumble through, as it had always done – Insha’Allah. Were

And finally, apartments for the most part fit the bill as “short-term temporary housing,” just a notch above a hotel or motel. Yes, we can find folks who live in an apartment for years; but most tenants are short-termers and move more frequently than those who take up residence in a house.

Both suppliers and buyers tend to be powerful if: They are large and concentrated relative to a fragmented industry (think Goliath versus many Davids). What percentage of an industry’s purchases/sales does a supplier/buyer represent? Look at the data and map out how it is trending. How painful would it be to lose that supplier or that customer? Industries with high fixed costs (e.g., telecommunications equipment and offshore drilling) are especially vulnerable to large buyers. The industry needs them more than they need the industry. In some cases, there may be no alternative suppliers, at least in the short term. Doctors and airline pilots, to cite two examples, have historically exercised tremendous bargaining power because their skills have been both essential and in short supply. China produces 95 percent of the world’s supply of neodymium, a rare earth metal needed by Toyota and other automakers for electric motors. Neodymium prices quadrupled in just one year (2010), as the Chinese restricted supply. Toyota is working hard to develop a new motor that will end its dependence on rare earth metals. Switching costs work in their favor. This occurs for a supplier when an industry is tied to it, as for example, the PC industry has been to Microsoft, its dominant supplier of operating systems and software. Switching costs work in the buyer’s favor when the buyer can easily drop one vendor for another. The ease with which customers can switch from one airline to another on popular routes makes it hard for airlines to raise prices or cut service levels. Frequent flyer programs were intended to raise switching costs, but they have not been effective. Differentiation works in their favor.

Life’s too short to be a shithead—the cruel kind, not the take-care-of-yourself kind—and you never know who you’re going to need tomorrow

very short battle lasting less than 24 hours,

There is only one unsolved case of hijacking in US aviation history - that of DB Cooper. A man, actually going by the name of Dan Cooper (it was later reported incorrectly by the media) bought a one-way ticket for flight 305 between Portland International Airport and Seattle, Washington. Shortly after take-off, Cooper whispered to an air stewardess to take a note from him, and that he had a bomb. The note requested she sit next to him and that he was hijacking the place. She did as told, and with some trepidation asked to see the bomb. Cooper opened up his briefcase enough the stewardess to see eight red cylinders in two rows. He gave her his demands - $200,000, four parachutes (two main and two reserve) and a fuel truck standing by in Seattle to refuel the aircraft as soon as it landed. This was communicated to the pilot, who in turn made the authorities aware of the situation. When the plane landed in Seattle, Cooper let all of the passengers go in exchange for the money, which the FBI had quickly assembled from nearby banks. As the plane was being refuelled, Cooper discussed his intended flight plan with the cockpit crew; he made a number of requests about altitude, direction, and even the position of the aircraft’s wing flaps. He also requested that the aircraft take off with the rear staircase deployed, however the captain refused - yet Cooper said he would lower it himself once they were airborne. Eventually, the aircraft took off, Cooper politely asked the remaining flight steward to join the crew in the cockpit and close the door. He did so, and at around 8pm the pilot saw the warning sign that the rear stairs had been lowered, and he and the rest of the crew felt a change in air pressure, indicating that the rear door had been opened. Dan Cooper - or whoever he was - had parachuted out with the money. He has never been found, and no additional information about the case have ever since come to light!

The two-point rhythm of walking's stride clears the mind for thinking. (N.B.: Perhaps, after telling the spinal circuits to "take a walk," the forebrain shifts to automatic pilot, so to speak, freeing the neocortex to ponder important issues of the day.) Many philosophers were lifetime walkers, who found that bipedal rhythms facilitated creative contemplation and thought. In his short life, e.g., Henry David Thoreau walked an estimated 250,000 miles--ten times the circumference of earth.

When World War One broke out in 1914, planes were initially used for intelligence gathering. The machines, which moved faster than any man made device had ever, flew at approximately 80 miles per hour. No plane in WWI flew faster than 145mph, and that was at the very end of the war.               Of course, neither side wanted the other to spy on its troop movements, so within a very short period of time, pilots were trying to bring each other down. Initially, the first dogfights, strange as it may seem, were fought with grappling hooks hanging below the plane, grenades, and ramming. This was both highly inefficient and highly dangerous (for everyone involved). The first plane-to-plane combat was on the Eastern Front where a Russian pilot, who probably meant to graze his enemy, crashed his plane into an Austro-Hungarian machine. He and the two man crew of the Austrian plane were killed.               Soon, pilots began shooting at each other with pistols and the single shot rifles of the time. You can guess how effective this was.

Drake’s hand snatched at his mic, what felt like a day late and many dollars short, to warn the pilots – that they had basically just brought a knife to a dogfight.

I made a date with her for the following week.  Mid-week, I went for a ride in a T-28.  The engine failed, the pilot slid the plane into the sand of the Mojave out near El Centro, and I slid into a hospital bed for about ten days at North Island Naval Air Station.  While I was in the hospital, the CARDIV left for WestPac.  I called Marguerite and told her what happened and that I wanted to see her again.  I’m not sure she believed me, but agreed to another date.  Unfortunately it had to be a short date because I had to head for Norton Air Force base to catch a flight for Hawaii, to meet up with the CARDIV.

Agustín Parlá Orduña was among the early Cuban aviation aces. He was born in Key West, Florida, on October 10, 1887, and received his early education there. After Cuba was liberated from Spain, the family returned to Havana, where he continued his education. On April 20, 1912, he received his pilot’s license at the Curtiss School of Aviation in Miami. On July 5, 1913, when the Cuban Army Air Corps was formed, Agustín Parlá was commissioned as a captain in the Cuban Armed Forces. On May 17, 1913, Domingo Rosillo and Agustín Parlá attempted the first international flights to Latin America, by trying to fly their airplanes from Key West to Havana. At 5:10 a.m., Rosillo departed from Key West and flew for 2 hours, 30 minutes and 40 seconds before running out of gas. He had planned to land at the airfield at Camp Columbia in Havana, but instead managed to squeak in at the shooting range, thereby still satisfactorily completing the flight. Parlá left Key West at 5:57 in the morning. Just four minutes later, at 6:01 a.m., he had to carefully turn back to the airstrip he had just left, since the aircraft didn’t properly respond to his controls. Parlá said, “It would not let me compensate for the wind that blew.” When he returned to Key West, he discovered that two of the tension wires to the elevator were broken. On May 19, 1913, Parlá tried again and left Key West, carrying the Cuban Flag his father had received from José Martí. This time he fell short and had to land at sea off the Cuban coast near Mariel, where sailors rescued him from his seaplane.

Makani (a fledgling Albatross) ...kept going....until solid ground reached an abrupt end. She splashed into the ocean and bobbed with a flotilla of hundreds of her fellow fledglings...Suddenly one of her fellow fleglings disappeared in a terrifying commotion of white water and shark teeth. Talk about incentive. Makani ran on the surface, webs slapping water, never skinking, a Jesus bird, flapping with all her might until she got liftoff...She was really and truly the pilot of her own craft. Makani followed her nose, using wind and gravity to propel her forward. She had to teach herself to forage for food, and over the weeks and months she got good at it. Wherever she went, she flew solo. For years she explored an enormous region of the North Pacific, from Japan to the Aleutian Islands to British Columbia, landing only on the surface of the sea. She forgot what land felt like. Her to-do list was deceptively short: Fly far. Find squid. Then, when she was four years old, two more items were added: Go home. Find love.

I haven’t seen you in a couple of days. Are you avoiding me again?” “I should, but I haven’t been. I’ve had stuff going on. Does the general know you’re doing this?” he asked. “Of course. They’re his horses.” “Aw, Shelby,” he said, sounding a little miserable. He took off the tool belt and buttoned up his shirt. “What did he say?” “He said, ‘You be careful of that Black Hawk pilot. They have a reputation for abusing women.’” He shoved his shirt into his pants. “God,” he moaned. “Why don’t you go away and leave me alone before you get me shot.” She laughed. “He didn’t say that. He said, ‘Be sure to tell Luke that Plenty nips and bolts.’ So—Plenty, short for Plenty of Trouble, nips and bolts. You’ll have to pay attention.” “Bolts?” he asked a little nervously. “Not usually with a rider. But if you get off, keep the reins. She can be a handful when she acts up, but she’s a pretty good ride.” “Aw, man. I have a feeling this is going to be humiliating. Where are we going?” “How about upriver a ways to check out the turning leaves?” she asked. “Think you can handle that?” “I’ll give it a go,” he said.

Neil’s feet were still numb from the frostbite. Long exposure up high, sat waiting in the snow for all those hours at the Balcony, had taken their toll. At base camp, we bandaged them up, kept them warm, and purposefully didn’t discuss the very real prospect of him losing his toes. He didn’t need to be told that he was unlikely ever to feel them again properly. Either way, we realized that the best option for them was to get him proper medical attention and soon. There was no way he was going to be walking anywhere with his feet bandaged up like two white balloons. We needed an air-evacuation. Not the easiest of things in the thin air of Everest’s base camp. The insurance company said that at dawn the next day they would attempt to get him out of there. Weather permitting. But at 17,450 feet we really were on the outer limits of where helicopters could fly. True to their word, at dawn we heard the distant rotors of a helicopter, far beneath us in the valley. A tiny speck against the vast rock walls on either side. In a matter of sixty short minutes, that thing could whisk Neil away to civilization, I thought. Hmm. My goodness, that was a beautiful prospect. Somehow I had to get on that chopper with him. I packed in thirty seconds flat, everything from the past three months. I taped a white cross onto my sleeve, and raced out to where Neil was sat waiting. One chance. What the heck. Neil shook his head at me, smiling. “God, you push it, Bear, don’t you?” he shouted over the noise of the rotors. “You’re going to need a decent medic on the flight,” I replied, with a smile. “And I’m your man.” (There was at least some element of truth in this: I was a medic and I was his buddy--and yes, he did need help. But essentially I was trying to pull a bit of a fast one.) The pilot shouted that two people would be too heavy. “I have to accompany him at all times,” I shouted back over the engine noise. “His feet might fall off at any moment,” I added quietly. The pilot looked back at me, then at the white cross on my sleeve. He agreed to drop Neil somewhere down at a lower altitude, and then come back for me. “Perfect. Go. I’ll be here.” I shook his hand firmly. Let’s just get this done before anyone thinks too much about it, I mumbled to myself.

Kennedy’s influence was cut short by the assassination, but he weighed in with a memo to LBJ. The problem, Kennedy explained on January 16, was that “most federal programs are directed at only a single aspect of the problem. They are sometimes competitive and frequently aimed at only a temporary solution or provide for only a minimum level of subsistence. These programs are always planned for the poor—not with the poor.” Kennedy’s solution was a new cabinet-level committee to coordinate comprehensive, local programs that “[involve] the cooperation of the poor” Kennedy listed six cities where local “coordinating mechanisms” were strong enough that pilot programs might be operational by fall. “In my judgment,” he added prophetically, “the anti-poverty program could actually retard the solution of these problems, unless we use the basic approach outlined above.” If there was such a thing as a “classical” vision of community action, Kennedy’s memo was its epitaph. On February 1, while Kennedy was in East Asia, Johnson appointed Sargent Shriver to head the war on poverty. It was an important signal that the president would be running the program his way, not Bobby’s. It was also a canny personal slap at RFK—who, according to Ted Sorensen, had “seriously consider[ed] heading” the antipoverty effort. Viewed in this light, Johnson’s choice of Shriver was particularly shrewd. Not only was Shriver hardworking and dynamic—a great salesman—but he was a Kennedy in-law, married to Bobby’s sister Eunice. In Kennedy family photos Shriver stood barrel-chested and beaming, a member of the inner circle, every bit as vigorous, handsome, Catholic, and aristocratic as the rest. By placing Shriver at the helm of the war on poverty, Johnson demonstrated his fealty to the dead president. But LBJ and Bobby both understood that Shriver was very much his own man. After the assassination Shriver signaled his independence from the Kennedys by slipping the new president a note card delineating “What Bobby Thinks.” In 1964, Shriver’s status as a quasi-Kennedy made him Bobby’s rival for the vice presidency, but even before then their relationship was hardly fraternal. Within the Kennedy family Shriver was gently mocked. His liberalism on civil rights earned him the monikers “Boy Scout,” “house Communist,” and “too-liberal in-law.” Bobby’s unease was returned in kind. “Believe me,” RFK’s Senate aide Adam Walinsky observed, “Sarge was no close pal brother-in-law and he wasn’t giving Robert Kennedy any extra breaks.” If Shriver’s loyalty was divided, it was split between Johnson and himself, not Johnson and Kennedy.

Thirteen million Negroes in America have never known three of the “Four Freedoms” which America is supposedly spreading to the rest of the world. “Freedom from want” is a mockery to Negroes when they are last to be hired and first to be fired; when so many usually obtain only domestic work of short duration: when their wages are the lowest and their rents and food prices the highest. “Freedom from fear” is a myth to Negroes when they have no recourse against the “righteous” Southern citizenry who periodically find excuses to hold lynching parties; against the Northern citizenry who magnify every petty theft into a crime wave; or against those military police whose trigger fingers itch to soil a Negro soldier’s uniform with blood. “Freedom of speech” is meaningless to millions of Negroes who are kept in enforced ignorance and illiteracy by the most meager educational facilities in the South and who are sent to the most crowded schools in the North, so that throughout the country, 2,700,000 Negroes (or more than twenty per cent of the total Negro population) have had no schooling beyond the fourth grade. “Freedom of religion” is the only one of the “four freedoms” for the Negro which the ruling class has encouraged. The latter has hoped to keep Negroes satisfied by sky-pilots, saturated with spirituals, shouting for peace and security in another world and therefore content with their misery in this world. 47

Our only landing aid was a human T made up of Royal Marines lying on the flight deck holding torches.  The theory being that if, as the pilot, if you got the descent angle correct, then the visual aid would look like a lighted T on the flight deck.  The correct angle would be about a 3 degree glide slope and the aircraft should arrive just short of the T in a hover.  Once in the hover the pilot would detach the under slung load, or land vertically to discharge passengers.       This didn’t work real well on the first couple of tries because our human T didn’t have quite the confidence in the pilots that was required for this, and as we drew close, and were at the very critical stages of our approach, our human T landing aid would appear to move or disintegrate completely.      We shut down for a while and after a “quiet word” from either the Commando Sergeant Major or one of the Colour Sergeants, our human landing aids quit moving and things worked out well.

The Hammer was a hard man, a smart man too, and he took pride in always having a plan ‘b’. For those troubling occasions when plan ‘b’ didn’t work, he would strive to also have a plan ‘c’ in place. In short, he was the kind of man who always had something up his sleeve besides his funny bone. The pilot, his trusted second man gave him a worried look. “What do we do now?

Here’s the scene: The three of us are by the Olympic-sized pool. The Latina with the thick waist is hovering in the shade of the veranda up by the house, her eyes on Frank in case he might want something, but so far he doesn’t and he hasn’t offered anything to me. If he did, I would ask for sunblock because standing here next to his pool is like standing on the sun side of Mercury. Gotta be ninety-six and climbing. Behind us is a pool house larger than my home, and through the sliding glass doors I can see a pool table, wet bar, and paintings of vaqueros in the Mexican highlands. It is air-conditioned in there, but apparently Frank would rather sit out here in the nuclear heat. Statues of lions dot the landscape, as motionless as Joe Pike, who has not moved once in the three minutes that I have been there. Pike is wearing a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, faded Levi’s, and flat black pilot’s glasses, which is the way he dresses every day of his life. His dark brown hair is cut short, and bright red arrows were tattooed on the outside of his deltoids long before tattoos were au courant. Watching Joe stand there, he reminds me of the world’s largest two-legged pit bull.

As the throbbing plane warmed up Charlie silently prayed, or, as he referred to it, conducted "a short briefing with my third pilot.

I turn around to see the playboy soldier sporting a pair of shorts and a tight navy-blue shirt.

Lesson 2—SAVE ALL Correspondence—It's Your EVIDENCE or Proof Just like Judge Judy on The People's Court, she begins the case allowing each party to tell a short story. After that, she wants proof. It doesn't really matter what it is, as long as it is not noise coming out of their head. It could a phone log, a note with a date stamp on it, a chronological record or a notepad, in addition to receipts and other things. The point is to have SOMETHING other than “He said, she said” to make your case.

Go ahead and invest a tad bit more and get a good quality, high-rise toilet. It will pay for itself in short order because they can flush bricks and gravel.

After nightfall, when most of the American planes had been taken aboard, a new formation of planes arrived over the task force. First, the drone of their engines could be heard above the cloud cover; then they slipped into view, at about the height of the Lexington’s masts. “These planes were in very good formation,” recalled Lieutenant Commander Stroop. They had their navigation lights on, indicating that they intended to land. But many observers on both carriers and several of the screening vessels noted that something was awry. Captain Sherman of the Lexington counted nine planes, more than could be accounted for among the American planes that were still aloft. They were flying down the Yorktown’s port side, a counterclockwise approach, the reverse of the American landing routine. They were flashing their blinker lights, but none of the Americans could decipher the signal. Electrician’s mate Peter Newberg, stationed on the Yorktown’s flight deck, noticed that the aircraft exhausts were a strange shape and color, and Stroop noted that the running lights were a peculiar shade of red and blue. The TBS (short-range radio circuit) came alive with chatter. One of the nearby destroyers asked, “Have any of our planes got rounded wingtips?” Another voice said, “Damned if those are our planes.” When the first of the strangers made his final turn, he was too low, and the Yorktown’s landing signal officer frantically signaled him to throttle up. “In the last few seconds,” Newberg recalled, “when the pilot was about to plow into the stern under the flight deck, he poured the coal to his engine and pulled up and off to port. The signal light flicked briefly on red circles painted on his wings.” One of the screening destroyers opened fire, and red tracers reached up toward the leading plane. A voice on the Lexington radioed to all ships in the task force, ordering them to hold fire, but the captain of the destroyer replied, “I know Japanese planes when I see them.” Antiaircraft gunners on ships throughout the task force opened fire, and suddenly the night sky lit up as if it was the Fourth of July. But there were friendly planes in the air as well; one of the Yorktown fighter pilots complained: “What are you shooting at me for? What have I done now?” On the Yorktown, SBD pilot Harold Buell scrambled out to the port-side catwalk to see what was happening. “In the frenzy of the moment, with gunners firing at both friend and foe, some of us got caught up in the excitement and drew our .45 Colt automatics to join in, blasting away at the red meatballs as they flew past the ship—an offensive gesture about as effective as throwing rocks.” The intruders and the Americans all doused their lights and zoomed back into the cloud cover; none was shot down. It was not the last time in the war that confused Japanese pilots would attempt to land on an American carrier.

The plane was in a climb again. “Yourrrowrrrourrrrrr. Pilot to bombardier. Got the A-bomb ready?” “No, no, no!” begged Earl. “Mother, please—I surrender, I give up!” “Not the A-bomb,” said Harry, aghast.

The battle of Leyte Gulf was short, lasting only from October 23–26, 1944. But don’t let the duration fool you. The Philippine Sea, around the chain of islands where the battle was fought, was a roiling cauldron for those four days. On the morning of the 23rd, that sea held the largest assemblage of ships, in terms of tonnage, the world had ever seen. By the evening of the 26th, Leyte Gulf had taken more tonnage to its murky depths than in any other naval battle in history. The Japanese lost four aircraft carriers, three battleships, six heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, 12 destroyers, one destroyer escort, over 600 planes, and 10,500 sailors and pilots. The Allied forces, on the other hand, lost one light carrier, two escort carriers, two destroyers, one destroyer escort, around 200 planes, and a little more than a thousand men. As a result of this devastating blow, Japan never again launched a major naval offensive.

Whatever anxiety crew members on the Arizona and throughout the Pacific Fleet felt about the future would have been heightened had they known that on this same Thanksgiving day, the War and Navy departments in Washington issued what came to be called their “war warning” to all commands: “negotiations with Japan looking toward stabilization of conditions in the Pacific have ceased and an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days.” At Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, met with Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., the commander of his carrier forces, and Army Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, commander of land forces in Hawaii. Kimmel and Halsey had already organized task forces of cruisers and destroyers around the three aircraft carriers then operating in the Pacific: Lexington (CV-2), Saratoga (CV-3), and Enterprise (CV-6). To guard against a concerted attack or sabotage, they adopted a general protocol that only one carrier task force would be in Pearl Harbor at any one time. At the moment, this meant alternating between Lexington and Enterprise because Saratoga had yet to return to Hawaiian waters after a lengthy overhaul at Bremerton. A similar alternating routine was supposed to be in place among the three battleship divisions. Of the nine battleships in those three-ship divisions, Colorado was currently in Bremerton undergoing its own overhaul. With the war warning in hand, Admiral Kimmel and General Short concerned themselves primarily with the outer boundaries of their commands and not with Hawaii itself. The chief topic they discussed with Halsey was the delivery of aircraft to reinforce garrisons on Wake and Midway islands. Short wanted to deploy Army squadrons of new P-40s, but Halsey quoted an arcane regulation that Army pilots were required to stay within fifteen miles of land and asked what good they would be in protecting an island.

During the Decolonizing Mars event, as we sat in a smaller group discussion circle, I learned that short women with larger thighs do better at not passing out when they pull high numbers of g’s as fighter pilots; their brains are closer to their hearts, so the additional blood flow helps them remain conscious, and their larger butts/ thighs seem to absorb some impact.

These young pilots acted as if they were playing football,” Admiral Halsey later said. “They’d fight like the devil, then take a short time-out, and get back into the fight again.

Many of Torpedo Eight’s pilots were raw ensigns, barely out of flight school. When Ensign George Gay and his fellow newcomers joined the squadron shortly before the Battle of Midway, none had ever carried a torpedo on a plane before, let alone dropped one on a target. They were ludicrously unprepared, and they knew it. “Quite a few of us were a little bit skeptical and leery,” Gay later said, “but we’d seen Doolittle and his boys, when they hadn’t even seen a carrier before, and they took the B-25s off, [and] we figured by golly if they could do it, well we could too.

the runway end appears to be moving towards you, you will land long. Reduce your power, but maintain your airspeed by lowering the nose as necessary. If the runway end appears to be moving away, you will land short. Add power but maintain your airspeed by raising the nose as necessary. If there is no relative movement of the runway end you will touchdown in the landing

The term pilots use to describe this type of short-burst communication is notifications. A notification is not an order or a command. It provides context, telling of something noticed, placing a spotlight on one discrete element of the world. Notifications are the humblest and most primitive form of communication, the equivalent of a child’s finger-point: I see this. Unlike commands, they carry unspoken questions: Do you agree? What else do you see? In a typical landing or takeoff, a proficient crew averages twenty notifications per minute.

have a high percentage of fighter pilots, but there was no telling about the new crop of retreads. It was tough for them, with very little time in the airplane and the responsibilities of rank and leadership thrust upon them. The delicate balance between flying skill and tactical judgment was difficult to learn. Learning to subordinate your own fear was even more problematic. I knew now that everyone faced it in some degree. How you dealt with it determined whether you were a fighter pilot or simply someone flying fighters. The flow of retrainees from the short courses had begun to affect our losses. Filling the squadrons throughout Southeast Asia took a lot of manpower. We were getting the bodies, but we were no longer getting the skill levels. You couldn’t prove it, of course, but things were happening that didn’t bode well for the future.

Only six books from the age of the Roadmakers were known to exist: The Odyssey; Brave New World; The Brothers Karamazov; The Collected Short Stories of Washington Irving; Eliot Klein’s book of puzzles and logic. Beats Me; and Goethe’s Faust. They also had substantial sections of The Oxford Companion to World Literature and several plays by Bernard Shaw. There were bits and pieces of other material. Of Mark Twain, two fragments remained, the first half of “The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract,” and chapter sixteen from Life on the Mississippi, which describes piloting and racing steamboats, although the precise nature of the steamboat tantalizingly eluded Illyria’s best scholars.

Phobie de l’avion?’ said the man in the next seat. Marc shook his head, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the helicopter’s rotors. ‘No. It’s more like I have a professional sense of concern . . .’ Beneath them, cerulean-blue waters flashed past as the red-and-white EC130 followed the French coastline north toward the Ligurian Sea. The journey from the airport in Nice was a short one, but flying over the water was always enough to dredge up some of Marc’s more unpleasant memories. He had hoped it wouldn’t show on his face, but that clearly wasn’t the case. ‘I used to fly these things myself,’ he added, feeling compelled to explain away his reaction. ‘I don’t like it when someone else is the pilot.’ For a giddy second, he feared the sea was rising up to reach for them – it could be deceptive that way, easy to gauge your height wrongly if you weren’t paying attention – and he closed his eyes to banish the thought. It didn’t work. He remembered a stretch of ocean half a world away, and the heart-stopping impact of a Royal Navy Lynx’s canopy hitting the water. He took a deep breath before the recall could take hold and pull him under. ‘Backseat driver?’ Somewhere in his late fifties, deeply bronzed beneath a panama hat and an expensive safari suit, the man next to him studied Marc’s face. Marc gave a wry nod. ‘Yeah, you could say that.

I don’t mention him puking, because despite being a badass unafraid to call him a baby—which we both know he’s not—I don’t rub people’s shortcomings in their face. Life’s too short to be a shithead—the cruel kind, not the take-care-of-yourself kind—and you never know who you’re going to need tomorrow.

fire on the surface of the sea, and for all too many there could be no escape from that. Nor was the fire any accident, but a piece of calculated and cold-blooded callousness for which there can be no forgiveness. In addition to machine-gunning and killing unknown numbers of people in the water—the twenty occupants of one raft, for instance, were completely wiped out by a sustained burst of machine-gun fire—the Luftwaffe pilots began to drop incendiary bombs on the oil-covered sea, and set it on fire. Oil on fire is the most horrible, the cruellest death known to men. It is death by slow, agonizing torture, by drowning to escape that torture, by incineration of those parts of the body above water in a lung-gasping asphyxiation—for the flames feed on all the life-giving oxygen on the surface of the sea, and a man suffocates in the superheated and lifeless air. But drowning is quiet and simple and almost without pain, and where no hope of escape is left, only a madman would stretch himself out on the shrieking rack of agony

Instead, they came up with an ingeniously simple approach: they created a pilot’s checklist. Its mere existence indicated how far aeronautics had advanced. In the early years of flight, getting an aircraft into the air might have been nerve-racking but it was hardly complex. Using a checklist for takeoff would no more have occurred to a pilot than to a driver backing a car out of the garage. But flying this new plane was too complicated to be left to the memory of any one person, however expert. The test pilots made their list simple, brief, and to the point—short enough to fit on an index card, with step-by-step checks for takeoff, flight, landing, and taxiing. It had the kind of stuff that all pilots know to do. They check that the brakes are released, that the instruments are set, that the door and windows are closed, that the elevator controls are unlocked—dumb stuff. You wouldn’t think it would make that much difference. But with the checklist in hand, the pilots went on to fly the Model 299 a total of 1.8 million miles without one accident. The army ultimately ordered almost thirteen thousand of the aircraft, which it dubbed the B-17. And, because flying the behemoth was now possible, the army gained a decisive air advantage in the Second World War, enabling its devastating bombing

now and had a merry smile on his face. ‘Well, goddammit, boys! If I ain’t just remembered! There’s a whorehouse open all night long just outside Pens’cola! You’re sure you won’t come with me?’ We were sure. He dropped us at the main gate of the station with cheery shouts of farewell and drove off about 1.30 in the morning to ‘round off his evening’. We were soon to learn that certain ‘Southern gentlemen’ dropped in to the local brothel with the easy nonchalance Englishmen pop into their local pub—but without their wives, of course! Generally speaking, it was rare for us to leave the station other than at weekends. Our working hours were long and our leisure hours short; so we had to find our entertainment within the station. However, almost every day we found time to swim in the lagoon which separates the mainland from Santa Rosa Island, where the big flying-boats taxied in and out, the deep rumble of their Pratt and Whitneys music to our ears. We became expert with surf-boards—rectangles of wood about the size of a large tea-tray with a pair of rope reins, towed behind a fast motor-boat. Was it the fore-runner of water-skis? The technique seems to have been virtually the same. But, whatever one’s leisure activities, life

Pia taught fourth-grade princesses, superheroes and villains found at the Kshama Sawant International Elementary School near Greenlake. That building took up the whole block and had about five hundred students. She’d been teaching for a while. It was one of the few jobs that got a little extra salary because of the special training required. That list was short and included physicians and nurses, teachers, and pilots. Teaching also included a bonus of four hundred a month extra, which Pia spent on travel, and her cat. Others had hobbies they loved, or personal projects.

The next aircraft to appear were a pair of Mirages which attacked the anchorage at 9.45 am. Thereafter raids seemed continuous, except for a short break for lunch. The helicopter pilots, landing-craft and Mexeflote crews bravely continued with the offload. It was uncanny to see a Sea King helicopter, with a gun or pallet of ammunition slung underneath, purposefully flying to its appointed landing site, while a pair of jets flashed by pursued by missiles and streams of tracer. The scenery and the bright sunshine, like a glorious day in the Western Islands of Scotland, added to the air of unreality.

Strap yourself into the jump-seat, make sure your harnesses are pulled really tightly, and let Scott ‘Sunshine’ Gibson give you the flight of your life. Join him as he meets up with some old and new comrades, Ryan ‘shut-eye’ Davis, Lawrence ‘sticky’ LaBelle, Jack ‘crackerjack’ McCleary, Carson ‘sleepy’ Sandmann, John Edward ‘long john’ Silver, and Sebastian ‘Atlas’ Williams, aboard a Beech 18, Boeing B-29 Superfortress, Boeing 314 Clipper, and a Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneer and share in his adventures from Newfoundland to Mexico to Malaysia in the late 1960’s. Hang on to your hats boys. It’s time to fly. Extract from 'Short Finals

You’re going to let me drive the Rover? You sure you didn’t hit your head?” “I’ll be in the backseat, watching and judging your every move.” I open the back passenger door and awkwardly hop inside, trying to not knock my ankle against anything. The tightness of my boot tells me my ankle is swelling rapidly. Landon drives like an old woman while Easley gives him shit as his co-pilot. Every turn and bump in the road on the short drive from Buttermilk

Article F: Alternobaric Vertigo and Eustachian Tube Dysfunction. Charles D. Bluestone, MD; J. Douglas Swarts, PhD; Joseph M. Furman, MD, PhD; Robert F. Yellon, MD. Case Report: Persistent Alternobaric Vertigo at Ground Level due to Chronic Toynbee phenomenon. Laryngoscope 2012;122(4):868–72. The term “alternobaric vertigo” was coined by Lundgren in 1965 to describe vertigo in deep-sea divers, but also referred to aircraft pilots in 1966. It occurs during ascent and rarely descent and is a result of asymmetrical middle-ear pressures. Classically the vertigo due to this pathogenesis is transient but may last for several minutes. It is frequently associated with nausea and vomiting. It has been reproduced in pressure chamber experiments with some divers and fliers, but has not been reported spontaneously at ground level (Figure F–1). FIGURE F–1. Alternobaric vertigo can occur during ascent in an airplane or when scuba diving. We encountered a 15-year-old female with bilateral tympanostomy tubes who manifested persistent severe vertigo, at ground level, secondary to a unilateral middle-ear pressure of +200 mm H2O elicited by an obstructed tympanostomy tube in the presence of chronic nasal obstruction. She had had long-term tubes placed due to recurrent and chronic otitis media. Physical examination revealed achondroplasia, which is an autosomal dominate disorder characterized by abnormal bone growth, short arms and legs, short stature and a large head, which is associated with otitis media. The pathogenesis of otitis media in these individuals may be related to abnormal anatomy causing Eustachian tube dysfunction. Balance testing was abnormal, Eustachian tube function tests revealed dysfunction of tube. Surgery was performed to replace the obstructed tube with a patent one, and an adenoidectomy and bilateral inferior turbinate reduction to relieve the chronic nasal obstruction. Postoperatively balance testing was normal, Eustachian tube function remained dysfunctional, but she had complete resolution of her vertigo following the surgery. FIGURE F–2. Pathogenesis of alternobaric vertigo due to the “Toynbee phenomenon” One tympanostomy was obstructed and when swallowing, she developed high positive pressure in the middle ear, but in the ear with a patent tube, the pressure did not remain in the middle ear. We believed this was a previously unreported scenario in which closed-nose swallowing insufflated air into her middle ears, resulting in sustained positive middle-ear pressure in the ear with the obstructed tube. Swallowing, when the nose is obstructed, can result in abnormal negative or positive pressures in the middle ear, which has been termed the “Toynbee phenomenon.” We concluded that in patients who have vertigo, consideration should be given to the possibility that nasal obstruction and the “Toynbee phenomenon” are involved (Figure F–2). CHAPTER 7 PATHOLOGY The pathology of the ET may or may not be involved in the pathogenesis of otitis media, whereas the

Polly had come to LA when she was nineteen, a beautiful and hopeful girl with lots of charisma and even more talent, and then spent ten years nearly making it. If she’d never gotten anywhere she might have given up and been content to have given it a shot. However, in common with thousands of others, Polly would occasionally get a part in a commercial, or a pilot. She was always auditioning and getting called back, and would be frequently “on avail” (meaning that she was short-listed for something and had to keep her schedule free for a day or so while they made a final choice between two or three girls). It’s this occasional hit of success that makes for a real addict. The breakthrough was always imminent; there was always something about to happen.

During the years of solitary confinement we had communicated with other POWs using a tap code -- tapping on the walls. During the time I was tortured I mainly tapped on the wall with Howie Dunn, a marine F-4 pilot. I poured out my heart to him. We talked about what the Vietnamese were doing to us, we talked about food, we talked about women, we talked about our past lives and what we wanted to do in the future. We tapped for hours. At one point I said, "Howie, what do you look like?" He tapped back and said, "Actually, I look a lot like John Wayne." We were moved away from each other, and I didn't talk to him for about five years. Right before we were coming home the Vietnamese allowed us to all get out together in a big compound and "greet one another" as they said. So I'm standing there talking to some people and this guy walks up to me -- he's short and bald and nondescript, a complete and absolute stranger. I had never laid eyes on him before. He sticks out his hand and says, "Hi, I'm Howie Dunn." In a flash, there he was, my best friend. [Porter Halyburton, US Navy pilot POW in North Vietnam, 1965 - 1973]