Category: Philosophy

Builders:

Our home has a large sunroom for a back porch, and one wall of it is bookshelves. Most of this space houses Grace’s aviation magazine collection, containing nearly every Sport Aviation ever printed, a lot of pre WWII journals, and an original set of Flying and Glider manuals.  About 25 feet of shelving hold my textbooks from Embry Riddle, which I still look at for reference material on tasks I do infrequently like messing with prop governors and fuel injection. At the end of the last row is a thin blue binder, which has my diploma in it, and a picture of my parents and I the day I graduated. The last sheet of paper in the binder is one I keep to remind me of a path not taken. It is a letter from the 1980s, my acceptance to a legendary aviation school that is now only a memory: Northrop University. 

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Above, a photo of a young Jack Northrop, borrowed from Northrop-Grumman’s website. He was a brilliant visionary, much more interested in cutting edge research than production. He worked for Lockheed, Douglass and founded two different companies named Northrop. He is publicly known for his pursuit of flying wings, but his contributions were much greater, he pioneered many techniques in Aeronautical Engineering which radically advanced stress analysis and design. One of his lesser known achievements was one of the things that mattered most to him: He founded one of the greatest aviation universities. It lasted 50 years, it outlived him, but today it is gone, its remaining impact solely rests with it thousands of graduates, and the people they in turn educated.

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After high school I worked many mechanical jobs for a few years, went to night school, and eventually moved to Florida to finish a degree in Political Science from St. Leo University. I went back to the world of drag racing, toured on motorcycles, but knew I eventually wanted to do something in Aeronautical Engineering. I was first focused on Schools in California, and I rode out from the east coast and toured the state on my Z-1. After visiting Northrop, which was just on the south side of LAX, I decided I had found my place. I spent a few days there attending classes. The place wasn’t fancy, but it was serious. The Composites class I sat in on was taught by a B-2 materials engineer on sabbatical. I returned to NJ, and in a few weeks I opened the letter I still have on the porch.

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Jack Northrop was something of a renaissance man, and the school he founded reflected this. It both a hard core Aeronautical Engineering program and a first class A&P program. In the 1970s they added a Law school. To Jack Northrop, the aviator who was going to make a difference in industry was the guy who could conceive it, design it, build it, patent it and negotiate a contract for it, by himself if required. The school was never big; it wasn’t there to fill the ranks of industry, it was there to provide the individuals that would make a difference, just as Jack Northrop had.

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I am well known as an Embry Riddle graduate, but that was actually a last minute plans change, driven by something outside of aviation that seemed very important in my 26 year old mind, but not so much today. When Jack Northrop passed in 1981, the school lost it prime supporter, and it was on borrowed time, but there was no hint that it would close when I was visiting. Had I elected to attend, I would have graduated with the last class of Engineers.  The school closed in the early 1990s, and today the grounds are used by an unrelated tech school that uses part of the original name. I don’t think about it often, but had I chosen to stay at Northrop, I would have likely had a very different path in aviation. I keep the acceptance letter to remind that life has a lot of paths, you always have options, and you should choose them carefully.

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A quarter of a century later, I have a much better understanding of Jack Northrop’s motivation to build a school.  Essentially, all the real value of my work is educational. I could earn a living working on planes or restoring them, but my heart wouldn’t be in it. The part that always is rewarding to me it sharing what I have learned, it makes more of a difference than just putting the machines back in order.

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In the back of my mind, I have always had the remote dream of building a modest school which would teach A&P work, manufacturing techniques, and good stick and rudder skills, with the goal of generating instructors of these subjects, so they could further pass along the learning. Northrop wanted to generate industry leaders in the high end of technology, but I would aim for the most fundamental part of flight. If it all worked what would be my version of Jack Northrop’s law school? A degree program in Philosophy of course, because the renaissance man of experimental aviation should be able to build his own plane and engine, fly them with solid stick and rudder skills, and when he lands at sunset, pull up a lawn chair and a beer and savor the hour of his achievement in the context of aviation’s practical philosophers like Lindbergh, Bach, Saint-Exupéry and Stockdale.

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Builders:

A few days ago I made a two sentence public comment expressing “disappointment’ at a single position taken by a public servant. This provoked a verbal attack from a person who felt his hero was to be followed dogmatically. The verbal attack was trying to label me with names of groups which he is emotionally driven to dismiss without any consideration of argument nor logic.

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We live in the ‘information age’ but ironically, a great number of people much prefer labeling people to learning anything from them; These people prefer the mindlessly shouted slogan to any consideration of opposing thought.  These people have long been conditioned, the first thing to do when encountering a different thought is Label it with a pre-provided name, so it can be dismissed without any further consideration.

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This is the stock and trade of political parties and the 24hr media, and it works like magic to generate rabidly loyal fans of their home team, standing on their sidelines shouting at the other side, which they have long been told to label, dismiss and hate. They do this while seeking the cocoon of comfort provided by social and media sources that always affirm their every preconception.  It is pointless to speak with a person who must label everyone who doesn’t agree a “liberal.” It is an equal waste to speak with the numerous people who have accusingly labeled me just the opposite. Both of them are afraid to think and consider, and have to come to the conclusion I am an American who doesn’t need to agree with them. They are much like a 12 year old boy in an Islamabad madrasa, conditioned to dismiss and hate anything that is labeled ‘infidel.’  The only difference being the boy has no choice, and adults in this Country have to willfully chose the path of lazy ignorance.

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Your Aviation Connection:

I have written a number of very frank stories, like this one: ERAU – models of integrity #2, that explain why every aviator has a moral and ethical responsibility to learn everything he can from any knowledgeable source, not just ones he ‘likes’ or hold the same social opinions as he does. This is not a small point. Aviation is far too serious a task, and it has no room for people who’s knee jerk emotional reaction when encountering different experiences and perspectives is to label and dismiss them.

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The branch of aviation which this most applies to his homebuilding. Building your own plane and learning how to fly it requires so much learning that is preposterous for anyone to expect success while dismissing opportunities to learn.  I was 27 years old when I came to understand this, and I have been willing to devote my entire working like to this subject. If the average age of a new homebuilder is 55, and he works outside aviation, he must decide now, to consider and learn, as the time line is not in his favor, and this task doesn’t generate second chances. If he is building a plane with a passenger seat, he has a moral and ethical obligation to put away the lesser parts of his ego and get on with the task of becoming a better, more thinking aviator.

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 Sadly there are many people in aviation who will not learn from, or even listen to sources of information they can dismiss by labeling. Your best defense against them is to give them a very wide berth….and make damn sure you resist the human weakness to prefer the company of people that just reinforce perspectives and opinions you acquired without inspection or consideration. Be open minded to learning from any source, like your life depends on it….. because it does.

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I have no issue nor conflict with any person who thinks differently than I do, I operate under the assumption that most people do. The only conflict I have is with people who somehow feel that not thinking at all, just living in an artificial world of labels, slogans and judgments is better than considering each person they meet as an individual, each with the right to see things differently. -ww.

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“The representatives of predatory wealth are guilty of all forms of iniquity from the oppression of wage workers to defrauding the public.”

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If you told the general public that a candidate for the presidency made the above statement, I am sure that 90% of them would guess the words above would be from social progressive Bernie Sanders, and dismiss them. In reality, these were actually said by Teddy Roosevelt in the 1904 election, and he was very proud of calling himself a social progressive. For those who need to label and dismiss, finding out an American hero on Mount Rushmore doesn’t fit in a neatly labeled box causes stress. To the open minded, it is a chance to expand one’s understanding.

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Above Teddy Roosevelt and Booker T Washington.  People who like their history to fit with neat labels will have a very hard time reconciling Roosevelt to their mythology.  TR was never supposed to be president, the power brokers of the day recognized his popularity, and hoped to benignly store him in the Vice Presidency. A single 6 gram bullet from a pathetically weak .32 S&W was just enough to change the course of American history.  Within weeks of being sworn in, TR began a long series of radical reforms and actions, starting with having Booker T Washington to dinner, an act that outraged southerners. He went on to draw the hatred of the wealthy and powerful, the connected and corrupt, and every other group that thought they were more important than the American people.  He was far more of a political radical than any candidate running today, including Sanders.

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Anyone who has been to our home can tell you that it is lined with floor to celling bookshelves, that even extend onto the porch. Much of it is very old, like my great aunt’s period collection on the Spanish American war. I spent 11 years in college including earning a degree in political science because I like learning. I have never bought a TV set in my life, for the same reason. One shelf in the living room has 4 feet of books just on TR, maybe 20,000 pages, I have read it all. Perhaps saying this might dissuade the next Fox tv news viewer who hasn’t read a book in years from trying to label me an “Ignorant Liberal” just because I will not blindly kowtow to his or anyone else’s dogma, but I doubt it. Neither will writing stories like Thinking of Mike Holey, an Aviator and a friend. have msnbc viewers change their views on ‘guns.’ You can’t communicate with people who have labeled and dismissed you, only people who are willing to read, think and consider. This also happens to be the people who get something out of building and flying.

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People comforted by labeling all Democrats weak on defense have to conveniently ignore that the only person in history to order the use of nuclear weapons in combat was Harry Truman. He did so without hesitation. When at the conference table at Yalta, he was told project Trinity had worked. From that moment forward there was no question he would use the bomb, as it might remove the need to give concessions to the USSR in Europe to gain their participation against Japan.

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People comforted by labeling all Republicans warmongers have to conveniently ignore Eisenhower’s open and bold warning against the “Rise of the military-industrial complex”  in his 1960 speech to the nation. The impact of these words from a president who was also a 5 star general can not be overstated;

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

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“If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it–the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.”

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William Clifford, The Ethics of Belief – 1877.

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Builders:

Six months ago I wrote this story: Comments on aircraft accidents, and I would hope that builders who missed it then will take 5 minutes to read it now. It includes important perspectives I would like builders to stop and really consider, like this:

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“Even if a builder had a god’s eye view of what went wrong in every accident of the type of plane he is building, this still doesn’t tell him anything about what is right, only what is wrong. Study success at least as much as failure.”

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One of the elements of the story is how often I am called to provide information on experimental aircraft accidents, and the strong restrictions on disclosing any information about ongoing investigations before the final report is issued. To give you some idea about how long a process is, I spent some time last week working with the feds on an accident from the middle of last year. The investigation is now done, but the report isn’t out yet, so there isn’t much I can say about it, but here are a few things:

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None of the things speculators said on the net were even remotely close to the probable cause, and that includes what the pilot initially thought the issue was. Like the great number of experimental accidents. it would have been prevented if the pilot had just exercised better judgment. The one fortunate thing about the accident was the pilots injuries were low. Most of the people looking at the accident were very surprised he lived. Even people who have seen a great number of accidents, and know the damage can appear random, made comments about how lucky this guy was in light of the choices he made.

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On this last point, I made the comment in the title of this story. I can share it now because it was not put in the official record. Over the years I have supplied background information and test data for a number of accidents, and you can see it in a number of older final reports. While there isn’t a section for philosophy in final reports, maybe there should be one day. I would certainly like reader of the report to understand that if they replicated the decision making of pilot, they would likely not live.  No one should take this mans survival as an endorsement of his choices, skills or even the strength of the airframe design. When I have to consider it in comparison to a number of very skilled pilots I knew who did not survive their own accidents, (Risk Management reference page),  I can only conclude that “God has a sense of humor I am yet to understand.”

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Above, the 1894 Paul Gauguin Painting “Day of the god.” It was inspired by his first visit to Polynesia, today it is in the Art institute in Chicago.  I have long studied the work and life of Gauguin. He was a French impressionist painter who worked beside many of the greatest artists ever; he was close friends with Van Gogh.  He spend almost all of his life without success, in poverty. In 2015, one of his paintings broke the absolute record for highest price ever paid for any painting, $300,000,000 dollars. When negative people criticize your choice to build a homebuilt aircraft, reflect on how many people must have told Gauguin to give up painting.

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Take a moment to consider that Gauguin thought Paris in the 1890’s, the worlds art and pleasure capitol, was too pedestrian, predictable and moralistic; he spent most of the last decade of his life exploring his primitive side in Tahiti and the Marquesas. The academic description of the painting above is a number of long paragraphs on themes, influences and movements.  I tend to think it is better understood after considering Gauguin’s affections for Drink, Morphine, Laudanum and  Native women.

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In the last year of his life, Gauguin wrote:

“No one is good; no one is evil; everyone is both, in the same way and in different ways. …
It is so small a thing, the life of a man, and yet there is time to do great things, fragments of the common task.”

He died in 1903 at age 54.

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Please note: The title of this article is said in jest, It is not a serious comment on Faith, not intended to be offensive to anyone.  It should be considered in the same category as A.E. Houseman’s poignant observation: “Ale does more than Milton can, to justify Gods ways with man.”

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Builders,

Here is a companion piece to Thought for the Day: “12 O’clock High”.  The Best Years of our Lives is a 1946 movie, an unflinching look at the lives of three men returning home from WWII. It was widely hailed as a masterpiece, winning 9 Academy Awards, but today 70 years later, it is gone from the national awareness.

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If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it. It really isn’t just a WWII film, the messages in it are timeless. The craft work of the film, the direction, the shooting and sound stand up decades later. Many people consider it Dana Andrews finest performance, but the film is captured by Harold Russell who had never acted before. He was a WWII veteran who lost his hands in an explosives accident. In the film he offers a brutally honest look at a disabled veteran returning to his home, family and fiancée, now a young man without hands. It is very difficult to watch.

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Opening scene of the film, where the three men are flying home in a B-17, to an uneasy welcome in the town they left. It turns out that it hasn’t changed at all, but the men are changed and can not find an easy path ‘home’.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scXCe1i_hJQ

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Above is a YouTube link to the best remembered part of the film. Dana Andrews, who has returned to find his marriage gone, his job meaningless, and outspoken civilians who mock his service, wanders out into an aircraft graveyard and questions why everything has happened.  He walks past hundreds of  B-17s and P-39s being scrapped. Sitting in the nose of a B-17 he dissolves into a flashback of being under attack on a bombing run.  Listen to how effectively the sound track supports the somber film.

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Your Aviation Connection: At Oshkosh, our booth is just 100 yards from the Warbird area. We are so busy during the day that I hardly leave the booth, but it stays light very late in the summer months in Wisconsin, and long after the crowds fade away I often walk over to the warbird area and quietly look at the planes. I find it a better setting to consider the struggles their crews faced, both in combat and coming home.

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If you have the emotional fortitude, read the chapter “Speaking of Courage” in Tim O’Brien’s 1990 book The Things They Carried.  Norman, the central character in the chapter, a young Vietnam vet returning to his small Midwestern town is destroyed by his inability to find anyone to listen to a bitter truth he knows. In some of his other writings O’Brien explains the genesis of the chapter, and how post war stories are a different set of experiences. It is the same relationship 12 O’clock high has to The best years of our lives.

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Builders

Since the topic of Feminism has been bantered about on the election circuit this week, I thought I might share a perspective from rural Florida. While celebrities and urban national media try to claim the right to define the word, perhaps some consideration should be given to women, many of whom live in rural settings, who see Feminism as self reliance.

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The internet is filled with fake photos of people without names, but this isn’t one of them. Above is my friend Suzanne, in a picture taken in our small rural town last year. For perspective, Suzanne is 5’3″, weighs well under 100 pounds. The gator is 10’6″ and weighs well over 500 pounds. Suzanne is a very independent, experienced hunter. She caught this gator on a snare, and finished it with single, well placed thrust of a 6″ sheath knife. She abhors waste, and the majority of the gator was prepared and preserved as food.

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Suzanne is very knowledgeable and accomplished in hunting fishing, and field craft. Unlike most people, her supermarket is the great outdoors, and she is particularly healthy, at attributes this as a major factor.  While the depth of her skills is respected, her values and choices not considered unusual in our small town.

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Suzanne is a regular neighbor here; She works at the auto parts store, she is a grandmother with accomplished kids, she has a number of friends who would all attest to her being kind and thoughtful. If you asked them to define her with one word, I am pretty sure almost all of them would choose “Independent.”  She often hunts alone, the company of others being a choice, not a requirement.  At the very core is Suzanne’s self reliant nature, she doesn’t rely on any man for support nor protection. She doesn’t need to, she can count on herself. In my view, this is what makes her a real feminist, and frankly, American.

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While that is a pretty simple definition, it is far more inclusive than litmus testing women by requiring they always vote their gender and have a subscription to Cosmopolitan.  But what do I know, I live in rural Florida.

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Your Aviation Connection: Behind all my work on learning, building and flying, what I am really seeking is the independence and freedom that comes with self reliance. This is intrinsic to homebuilding, and combined with the expression of craftsmanship, is the essential core of Homebuilding.

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About a week ago, a woman I know who lives in an urban location and perhaps mindset, shared a post on Face Book that was purported to be a set of instructions for women, to avoid being sexually assaulted or raped. These included cutting one’s hair short, always being in the company of men after dark, etc. As I read these I thought merely following them, altering ones appearance, demeanor and mindset, was already being the victim. The predators got to dictate behavior of the women. Living in fear isn’t winning.

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I am no expert on martial arts, my limited pugilistic understanding solely derived from teenage years spent in a high School where fist fights were very common.  I will plainly state that people who tell women a few hours of training will allow them to thwart a determined attacker with 2 or 3 times their body weight are selling a sick fantasy.  Many people may be uncomfortable with this, but the only reliable way a 100 pound person defends themselves against a violent 250 pound assailant is with a handgun. I am not suggesting that anyone must own one, I am only commenting on the low odds of small or older people defending themselves in hand to hand fighting.

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I understand statistics well, and there is little case to say that suburban and rural men will ever need to defend themselves. Sadly, when one factors in sexual assaults, the most under reported violent crime, the same can not be said for women. Looking at how some sports celebrities have been given a pass,  and how we tolerate having the same person who waved his finger and said “I didn’t have sex with that woman” now on a national stage as the arbiter of what disrespecting women is, unfortunately tells me that the issue will not be taken seriously any time soon.

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In such a reality, the individual should retain the human right to refuse to be physically victimized, by whatever means necessary.  It is not my right to question anyone who chooses to seek their protection from a husband, a police officer or a judge.  It is just my observation that my friend Suzanne is a free spirit, and I believe that much of this is derived from the inner knowledge that ultimately she can count on her own skills and judgment, and she will not have to beg the indifferent for protection nor beg the evil for mercy.

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Builders:

Although I will still have the same traditional email, I am making a concererted effort to move all of my work with Corvairs to a new email address, which is integrated with our new products page /web store  and our new ‘Communications Network’, which I will describe in a longer story next.

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New address:

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Support@flyCorvair.com

 

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Blast from the past: Oshkosh 2013.  6’5″ Pietenpol builder Mark Chouinard and myself, in the booth on Sunday setting up. If you look closely, you can see the face of a tiny white dog hiding in the trailer.  Mark finished and ran his Corvair at CC #32 in Texas last year, his plane is closing in on completion.

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Builders:

I had not seen the film in 30 years. In the middle of the night, fighting a round of insomnia, I stumbled over the beginning and watched it start to finish. It was much more powerful film than I had remembered. It dealt with a lot of uncomfortable topics for a film made just 4 years after the war ended.

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Dean Jagger and Gregory Peck. The film contains a particularly disturbing scene where Jagger is drunk and he says he can no longer remember the faces of all the men from the squadron who have perished, and to him they have all blurred to just one face and “it looks very young”. Jagger won the academy award for his performance. The film was well reviewed, Including by Curtiss LeMay, then head of SAC. LeMay said that he “couldn’t find much wrong with it.”, for him, it was a rave review.

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If you have not seen it, it has little flying in it, it is instead focused on the human element and cost of flying daylight bombing missions into Germany. It isn’t ‘nice’ nor uplifting like John Wayne movies. It is a harsh look at the brutality of command, navigators pressured to suicide, cowardice, fear, ptsd and many other unpleasant aspects of the work done by the 8th Air Force.  People who like simplistic flying movies with lots of CGI action and uplifting moral messages, and story lines that have enough survivors to allow a sequel or franchise opportunity, 12 o’clock High will disappoint. If you like thinking films, make sure you see it.

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When watching, I kept thinking about the B-17s and other war birds that come to Oshkosh and do the flyby’s and pyro shows for the general public, and how this is billed as a ‘tribute’ to WWII aviators. Yes it is nice to see the hardware, but I suspect that the men who actually fought in those planes might rather have everyone watch this film to better understand the human costs of flying these planes on their intended missions, it might be a far better tribute to those men, to invest 2 hours to see something of how emotionally cruel the actual missions were, something the war bird show at Airventure does nothing to capture.

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Builders:

I am a well known advocate of American made products, because this is my country, and for both moral and economic reasons, I want jobs to stay here. It is my personal belief that lives of adults are physically, mentally and spiritually richer if they have a chance to do meaningful and productive work. I was born into a good family in the richest country the world has ever known. As an element of being grateful, I try to have every part we can made in this country, at shops that respect to human dignity of the workers and pay livable wages.

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If I was driven by greed, I could simply have most of our sub-components made in places like China, by workers without rights or freedom. When you buy a part from us for your plane, you can be assured that I put every effort into making sure that all hands that touched it before you were fairly compensated and worked in an environment that I would have a member of my own family work in.

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If the above two paragraphs sound ‘new age’ or ‘liberal’, let me assure you they are not. I am very well read on the subjects of US history and Ethics, and the ideas above are directly taken from President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1902 philosophy, “The Square Deal.”

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I do not expect advantaged Americans who compulsively buy imported products, often people who don’t have a single friend who works in a factory or a blue color job, to understand the above values.  They may never have spent a minute to consider that our country was not built by wealthy consumers employing workers in 3rd world countries, but it could end that way.

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Above, my 1986 C-20 pick up, sitting in my yard. Thirty years ago this month, it was made on GM’s Truck assembly line #2 in Flint, Michigan.  In the three decades since, Flint has lost 60,000 good manufacturing jobs. The media and politicians can spend all day playing the blame game over Flint’s lead drinking water health crisis, but none of them have spoken of the root cause of the demise of the city: The loss of jobs. 

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Workers pay taxes, and taxes fund cities. Take away the jobs, and the cost of operating any city goes up, just as there is no more revenue. Broke cities make stupid decisions like trying to save $100/day on water costs and creating a health crisis that might cost a Billion dollars to fix, not to mention the moral crime of potentially poisoning several thousand children.

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My mother is from a once thriving manufacturing city named Newark NJ. The 1967 riots did not destroy that city, the damage was done in the decade before when the manufacturing jobs left. In the 50 years since, the city has remained impoverished. Nothing any politician says will return any once great American city back to life, only manufacturing jobs with wages that allow the dream of home ownership and sending one’s children to college will ever change these cities, and that will only come when Americans wake up to understand that the real cost of our addiction to imported goods includes such things as paying for fixing a few billion in damage to a city called Flint.

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Why this matters to homebuilt aircraft: Go back and look at all the EAA magazines from the 1950s-1970s. You will find that the backbone of the EAA, it’s builders and particularly its volunteers, were very heavily represented by people who had good, stable, middle class jobs in manufacturing. These people were “In the Arena” not spectators. As our country has given these jobs away, we have lost a critical base in homebuilding, one that can not be replaced by spectators admiring the toys the 1% can afford. The very core of the EAA was the principle of having an avenue where creative middle class Americans were not economically excluded from exploring flight. Homebuilding has actually done a reasonably good job at keeping the opportunity there, unfortunately our economy has done a poor job at maintaining a stable middle class in this country.

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The median age of the very poor in Florida may be as low as 12 years old. You can’t wave a magic wand and make that go away, but if you want to attack it, you do something that provides a good job for that kid’s parents, preferably in manufacturing. You don’t need a PhD is sociology to understand that domestic violence and substance abuse go down when employment goes up. People say the family is the fundamental element in the country, and I agree, but a family where people can’t work, take care of themselves and have basic dignity is a disfunctional family, and your fellow countrymen deserve a better shot in life than that.   Employment is a moral issue. There is no discretionary consumer good I need enough for a 12-year-old American to go hungry so I can save a buck on it.

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These are my personal values, and they matter to me. I don’t think of them as political, to me they are a question of ethics. I am not responsible for others choices, nor do I wish to be. I have many friends who choose to buy imported products, as is their right. I am only concerned with living as close to my personal values as I can. However, if a person chooses to spend 75% of their disposable income on imported products, I will have limited patience for his opinion of “what is wrong with this country.”

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The average, skilled US aircraft mechanic with 15 or 20 years experience gets paid about $35K/year. This includes the people who build the planes our military Airmen and Aviators fly in combat, and the mechanics who work on the airliners your family flies on. The myth of an “A&P shortage” is created by schools trying to fill student rolls at overpriced institutions. Wages are low because much of the work has been sent overseas, while the workforce here has actually grown. It is simple supply and demand.

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Last nights debate reveals that a candidate for leader of this country thought there was absolutely nothing wrong with accepting $675,000 from a wall street firm for three hours of talking, glossing over the potential conflict of later having to regulate their industry. This is revealed as three of hundreds of speeches, which averaged over $100,000 and hour. I don’t believe this was done to represent the interests of working Americans.

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Even if you don’t agree with me that this is absolute corruption, bribery and prostitution, please just take a moment to acknowledge the person who took the money with a smile, claims to understand all the working people in this country, including all the aircraft mechanics, to the point of once claiming to be ‘broke’ themselves, in spite of her husband collecting $200K/a year for life from taxpayers.  They find nothing wrong with taking the same wages for 3 hours of speaking that a skilled aircraft mechanic makes in 20 years of labor on the job.

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As a capitalist, I don’t think there is anything wrong with profit, but I would like to remind people that the $675,000 came right from the same firm that collected a 10 billion dollar taxpayer bailout. Yes they paid it back, but did so by selling mortgage backed securities to the Federal reserve. This is the equivalent of getting a loan, paid in crisp $100 bills, but paying it back with a IOU note from an unemployed guy in a single wide mobile home. But you get to do things like that when you own the people who are supposed to regulate you.

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To Canadian builders: Please note that some of our subcomponents, like the very high quality CNC tubing kits in motor mounts, are made in Canada. I believe fair trade works between countries which have similar values about the value of human labor, working conditions and environmental preservation. I do not think the workers in either of our countries need to have their standard of living lowered to match those of China’s slave labor. PS, my blue 1986 Chevy truck was made at Oshawa Truck Assembly, and it lasted 310,000 miles. Thanks, it served us well.

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-ww.

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Take a moment to contrast the lives of two human beings, both living in New York City on Sunday, Christmas day, 2011:

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the 20 wealthiest people who has ever lived, is serving his third term. This was made possible because he spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying to erase the long established two term limit. His 2001 and 2005 campaigns each broke the record for spending for any elected office in the history of the state. While his net worth of 30 billion dollars allows him to consume any beverage he desires, he was the primary supporter of dictating a limit on the size of a soft drink people could drink in the city. He would set the limit for everyone. This was one of his dreams. Today he announced that being President of America is another one of his dreams, and he is willing to spend a billion dollars to buy the job.

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Donna Fountain, a 38 year old single mother from Brooklyn, one of the millions of working people in New York who struggle to stay above poverty, was walking to her job as a health care assistant at 7:30 Christmas morning. Her plan was to be home that afternoon and share it with her eight year old son Elijah.  She never got there, instead she was mortally wounded by a hit and run driver, and died at the hospital without ever seeing her son again. The car was found, but no one was ever charged.

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Looking for her identity, police found a simple hand written note in her purse, titled “My Dreams.” It spoke of working on getting a better job, buying a home, things she would like to do for others, falling in love, and ended with her fervent wish that her son Elijah graduate from college.  Friends later reveal that Donna carried this note everywhere she went, and, in spite of her very humble circumstances, was determined to see her dreams become reality.

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Above is a photo of Donna Fountain’s note. I find it very moving that most of what she worked for were things for other people.  She did not dream of wealth or power, nor using these things to control the lives and dreams of others.

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Your Aviation Connection: I highly encourage builders to actually write down their aviation dream. A dream written down is already being formed into a plan; a plan with a time line is a goal, and the building blocks are the defined achievements which are milestones along the path. The dream can be inspirational, but it really starts with a plan on a piece of paper in your pocket.

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I am often accused of being opinionated, mostly by people who have never spent a day with me.  In polite response, I point out there are nearly 1,000 stories on our two websites, and yet I challenge anyone to say what political party I belong to, what faith I hold, or where I stand on any social issue. I have never endorsed any cause, forwarded any story by any organization, nor approved of anyone’s claim of being exclusively right. I may sound opinionated, but in reality I never share much on typical topics, because I don’t see my perspective as being valid for anyone but me.

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All of the thought for the day stories include my wish that they be “thought provoking, not thought providing.” The first pages of my manual specify that I “reserve the right to get smarter”, and I not only promote that, I exercise it.

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The only belief that I will always openly champion, the belief that is at the central core of the story above, is my unshakeable faith in the goodness of common, decent people.  I have no interest in the people the media tells us to worship, the rich, the powerful, the famous, the celebrity.

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Instead, I choose to reserve my admiration for those people in our everyday world who quietly lead decent lives. If I have criticized anyone’s favorite celebrity, I apologize, I was focused on people like:

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The old man who lived next to us:

What the 4th of July means to me.

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A homeless man with two dogs:

A thought on Easter….

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A School bus driver who sacraficed his life:

Charles Poland Jr., An American of whom you could be proud.

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A very spiritual woman:

In defense of plain speaking……

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A man who abandoned popularity for personal ethics:

Risk Management, Experience vs Judgement.

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A simple friend:

Thinking of Mike Holey, an Aviator and a friend.

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-ww.