I am a space-race child. I was an Elroy. From a very young age I was aware of the sky. The television and radio were filled with spacecraft and astronauts seeking unknown planets.... read more
When you fly at a thousand feet, you see the world differently. Commercial planes fly at an anonymous altitude, so far up that houses become invisible. General aviation flies lower. We are able... read more
“Pay attention, boy! Get on the other side so we can push her out.” I skittered under the belly of the darkened airplane and grabbed her strut. My father and I had just... read more
Life-searching questions arise at night, after sunset, and not just on park benches along river banks. Watching rushing water, reflecting upon its cleansing qualities, can soothe. If only I could have been near a... read more
When I read that Thomas Mann likely chose the name Tadzio because it held the word Tod, which means death, I felt satisfied, but then I noticed a gauzy cloth had fastened itself... read more
I’ve been flying all my life; in fact, I even flew in utero, when my mother was pregnant with me, when all I’d ever known at that point was complete nothingness and the... read more
It’s simulation day at Atlanta’s new Maynard H. Jackson Jr. International Terminal. Fifteen hundred people with nothing better to do have volunteered to come down and try it out two weeks before opening... read more
I could tell you about the time that my family and I had to make an emergency landing in Colorado, amidst silver-suited firefighters and then had to suffer through a series of flights... read more
“You go first, Nana, to break a path.” These are my instructions from six-year-old Josh. I plunk onto a sled in the sub-zero Canadian air with eight-year-old Rachel bundled in front of me.... read more
Communities can be drawn, created, discovered, inferred. But communities can also be overlooked. There is a community of people who are all in airplanes at the same time. At any one moment there... read more
