Come fly with me…

I love to have a window seat when I fly so I can look out and take photographs of the world from that perspective. I have pictures of farmland looking like a tidy patchwork quilt in greens and browns and yellows. I have photographed the peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains cloaked in snow. I have a catalogue of cloud formations. On my most recent trip I was able to photograph the distant Statue of Liberty and the skylines of both lower and midtown Manhattan. I had clear views of the Brooklyn and Queensborough Bridges. Once I changed planes at LaGuardia, I took off on another flight and was able to capture images of the bridges of my childhood connecting Long Island to Westchester County and serving as the gateway to New England, a favorite family vacation destination.

I wish I had taken to pulling out my camera much earlier in my flying days. I would love to be able to look back at the tops of the Alps, the outline of Greece, the North Central coast of Africa, where blue water meets the vast shoreline that curves just as it appears on a map. Then onto the Sahara for hundreds and hundreds of miles, finally catching up with the Nile and the swath of green on either side of the river: a stripe amidst the khaki color of the surrounding desert. Oh, how I wish I had taken pictures of the vast frozen north as I returned from Amsterdam by way of Minneapolis, or the view of Hawaii from miles above the Earth while traveling to Australia. All of these represent spectacular scenery on a grand scale.

Once, when I was flying at night, I sat next to a man who worked for Phillips Electric Company. As we crossed the country and saw pockets of light scattered throughout the darkness, he made the comment that seeing all those lights down below made him feel so good about his work. Sometimes one has to take a big step back, or in this case, up to appreciate one’s role in the world.

Escape to Alcatraz

The heat has been so intense in the Midwest these past few weeks that I was delighted to have a good reason to leave it. I had a meeting in San Francisco and left town on Sunday, just before the daytime temperatures rocketed even higher into triple digits. Apparently it reached 105 degrees on Wednesday before a minor cool front came through the area. I returned in the early evening on Thursday to a slightly more bearable 90 degrees.

San Francisco was both uncharacteristically warm at 65 degrees for a high, and amazingly clear with beautiful blue skies. The fog banks that sit offshore just west of the city held back just enough to allow San Francisco to be lovely and not too cold. There is some debate as to whether Mark Twain really said: "The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco", but when the fog does roll in it is nice to have extra layers to wear. In any event it was a most welcome break from the oppressive heat at home, and whatever the weather in the Midwest, it's always delightful to have an excuse to visit the city by the bay.

The Dog Days of Summer

It is early August and the heat is on here in the Midwest. Last night we left the air conditioner on all night. I usually turn it off after the 10 o'clock news, open all the windows, and then switch on the ceiling fan when I head to my room for the night. However, last night the air outdoors was thick and hot and still, even at 10:30 at night. Clearly the ceiling fan would not have been enough to keep the room from becoming a humid, hot chamber in which sleep would have been filled with much tossing and turning and frustration. Unfortunately it looks as though the air conditioner will get a workout this week, as we expect temperatures in the 98-100 range, with high humidity for at least the next five days. May it please hold up as it is rather old! St. Louis in the summertime!

My mother told me stories of her youth in Baltimore, another steamy city, long before the days of air conditioning. On the hottest days she and her sister would spend much time in the bath to keep cool. How did other people manage to bear such intolerable heat? Last night I saw pictures of men in Baghdad, where it is over 120 degrees, sitting on the floor of a shop, fanning themselves. They did not have power, and for that matter, don't on a very regular basis. How do they bear it?

Last summer we had a strong storm that knocked out power in much of the region, and we lost electricity at my house for 4 days. The first day was tolerable because a cool front (cool being a relative term here) had passed through with the storm. The basement, always the center of operations in the summertime, remained comfortable for the first day and a half. As the heat outdoors rose quickly towards 100 over the next couple of days by the final day without power, even the basement was barely a comfortable refuge. That memory alone is enough to make me call first thing on Monday morning to have the air conditioning checked. Note for the future: make sure to call in the experts during the spring to ensure reliable cooling during the dog days of summer.