What Would Jimmy Do?

The first Earth Day in 1970 mobilized millions of Americans for the protection of the planet. On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans — 10% of the U.S. population at the time — took to the streets, college campuses and hundreds of cities to protest environmental ignorance and demand a new way forward for our planet.

Boy, how times have changed… as you may have gathered, today is Earth day. Actually, it’s the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day. It’s intent was, and is, the goal of raising awareness about mankind’s role in protecting our natural world. 

I never intended that this blog would become, even a little bit, political. That’s still my intent, but it seems that everything is becoming politicalized these days. Earth Day brings to mind a number of things proposed or endorsed or enacted by the current administration that will absolutely impact America’s land, air, water and wildlife. I’m certainly not aware of all that is going on in Washington, but  it appears that the tone for this administrations approach to the environment was set when the U.S. pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

The Clean Power Plan (an environmental policy of the previous administration) required the energy sector to cut carbon emissions by 32 percent by 2030. In 2017, it was rolled back by the EPA because of unfair burdens on the power sector and a “war on coal.”

Five companies have been approved to use seismic air gun blasts to search for underwater oil and gas deposits. There were a lot of concern about the deafening blasts, including the fear that they disorient marine mammals that use sonar to communicate… they were approved after NOAA found that they wouldn’t violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

When the current President took office, cars made after 2012, would, on average, have to get 54 miles per gallon by 2025. In August, 2018, the Department of Transportation and EPA capped the target at 34 miles per gallon by 2021. (This has created legal conflicts with states like California that have higher emission caps.)

Companies installing large wind turbines, construction power lines, or leaving oil exposed are no longer violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act if their activities kill birds. 

Unlike national parks, national monuments can be created by an executive order and don’t have to be approved by Congress. The President’s says this means they can be dismantled just as easily. He opened Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante in Utah for mining and drilling companies.

These are only a few things that readily come to mind… there are many, many more actions that pose serious damage to the Earth. Franklin Roosevelt said, “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purging the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”
The Earth moves without us and it’s apparent that it would be better off without us. Even as the coronavirus invades our world, we can still walk into nature and see the spirit of new life among the old life all around us. We should breathe in the air and ask how we can save this glorious space. Then we should just do it. Maybe Gandhi said it best — “The good man is the friend of all living things.”
— 30 —

Not much happening here today. I didn’t listen to the presidential “update” yesterday. Probably won’t listen today… as of Sunday, I think about one or two a week is all I can handle.
Sunday was painful — here’s a couple of exact quotes:

“But a lot of good things are happening. Some very good negotiations. I just got off the phone with the Secretary of the Treasury, and we have some very good negotiations going on right now. And I think you could have a nice answer tomorrow, but we’ll see.”
And…
“That’s — somebody said to me, ‘President, you look tired.’ I said, ‘I should be tired.’”
And
“We continue to procure millions of swabs, test collectors. I have something here. Just happen to have it. It’s a swab. It looks innocent. Not very complicated. Anybody like to see what it looks like? Should I open it? Does everybody? I will. I will. This is what it’s about. Right? Is it — does it remind you of something? It reminds you of this, right? One is a swab and one is a Q-tip. It’s actually different. It’s very sophisticated, actually. But it’s a little bit like — so this is the swab.”
Actual quotes from the President….

Reminds me of another quote…. ” I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.”
— 30 —

Yesterday, Claire asked for help with a spreadsheet that someone had sent her. It may not have been the worst spreadsheet I’ve ever seen, but it was easily in the top two. It was written in some version of Excel — the acknowledged “king” of spreadsheets for personal computers. I personally never liked Excel — since I’ve retired, I like it even less. When I was working, I had to use it fairly often and I tolerated it then. Since I’ve been retired, I’ve used Numbers — a Mac spreadsheet. For my purposes, it far exceeds Excel — in every way that matters to me. 

But that’s not what this blog is about. After a lot of work to make the spreadsheet Claire received useable for her, I got to thinking…. Electronic spreadsheets are relatively new — a spread sheet was probably the first “useful” program that I remember for a personal computer. 

As far as I know, VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet computer program for PCs. It was originally released to run on the Apple II computer. (VisiCalc got it’s name because it acted like a “visible calculator.”)

Dan Bricklin dreamed up ViciCalc while watching a presentation at Harvard Business school. Dan teamed up with Bob Frankston and they formed the Software Arts company. Together, they developed the VisiCalc program in two months — during the winter of 1978-79. Both Dan and Bob were familiar with many row/column financial programs. These programs were really no more than report generators — some of the better known were Business Planning Language (BPL) and Foresight. However, none of the programs were completely interactive and they were used prior to the personal computer era.

VisiCalc was marketed as “a magic sheet of paper that can perform calculations and recalculations and allows the user to just solve the problem using familiar tools and concepts.”

VisiCalc hit the market in mid-1979 and sold for under $100. It required an Apple II computer with 32K of RAM and supported saving files to a magnetic tape cassette or to Apple’s Disk II floppy disk system.
The program was unusually easy to use and came with excellent documentation. By 1982, VisiCalc’s price had risen from under $100 to $250 and competitors, like Super Calc and Multiplan had come on the market. 

In 1983, Lotus Development Corporation came up with Lotus 1-2-3. It was designed to be as compatible as possible with VisiCalc, including the menu structure — to allow VisiCalc users to easily migrate to 1-2-3.

Lotus 1-2-3 was more powerful than VisiCalc and was almost immediately successful. By 1984, sales of VisiCalc were declining rapidly. The magazine InfoWorld wrote that VisiCalc was the first successful software product to have gone through a complete life cycle, from conception in 1978 to introduction in 1979 to peak success in 1982 to decline in 1983 to a probable death in 1984.
By 1985, Lotus Development acquired Software Arts and ended sales of VisiCalc.

So another trip down memory lane… after struggling with Claire’s spreadsheet, I guess I was longing for the good old “simpler” days. Of course remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were….
— 30 —

For better or worse, in sickness and in health… these are the things you say when you get married. Today is Husband Appreciation Day. Now you may be asking, What?? Do men really need to be told they’re wonderful? Most of us think we’re wonderful… or maybe all the bluster is just a smoke screen masking a super sensitive, needy human being? 

Anyhow, today is Husband Appreciation Day — celebrated every year on the third Saturday of April. I suppose wives should appreciate their husbands every day — just like husbands should appreciate their wives. But what the heck — seems like Husband Appreciation Day is a day worth celebrating. (Yes, there is a Wives Appreciation Day, too.)

The role of husbands (like everything else) has changed over the years. Years ago, the husband was probably the only one of the family to earn money to put food on the table… today, the husband and wife typically both work to meet the family’s needs.

For all our shortcomings, wives apparently think their husband do some stuff right. A recent survey listed the top 5 things that wives appreciate about their husbands: being a hard worker, making their partners feel comfortable around them, making them laugh, being smart, and supporting their partner’s goals and desires. 

It’s interesting that reasons connected to money or household duties were far down on the list. So I guess that means that it’s most important for us to just be smart and funny…. and work hard.
Anyhow, I’m sure Claire has a big celebration planned for me tonight….
— 30 —

The dealership where we bought our cars and where we have them serviced is located in Chantilly, Virginia — about an hour’s drive from our house. A couple of days ago, they delivered a new car to us and took ours in for service and returned it the next day. There was no charge for this service… many years ago, I wouldn’t have thought much about this, but today — even in the current environment — this falls into the (very) good customer relationship category.
— 30 —

I just read an article about what a hard time all the airlines are having because everyone is locked-down and no one is traveling. I got to thinking…. for a lot of years, it seemed like I pretty much lived on airplanes. Now, even if we weren’t all locked down, I wouldn’t particularly like to fly. I guess there are a number of reasons, but air travel probably won’t ever return to what I refer to as the “good old days.” 

I was trying to remember how many different airlines I’d flown on over the years… some are still around, a lot are not, some — if they are still around — you couldn’t pay me enough to get on one of their “airplanes.” 

Off the top of my head, I remember flying Air France, Air India, Garuda, Allegheny, JAL, KLM, Lufthansa, Cathy Pacific, British Airways, Egypt Air, Nepal Airways, Emirates, Philippine Airlines, Quantas, SAS, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, Virgin Atlantic, China Airlines, Turkish Airlines, American Airlines, Aeroflot, Delta, TWA, Frontier, Air Mali, Kenyan Air, Tanzania Airways, Iberia, Korean Air, Ethiopian Air, Air America, Air Vietnam — I’m sure I left out some of my “favorites.” The memory just isn’t what it used to be. 

Some of my experiences on various flight are memorable, to say the least. Now they seem funny and make for a good story, but when they happened, they were irritating and inconvenient — I don’t remember them being scary at the time, but maybe they should have been.

Two of us flew out of Phnom Penh on Cambodian Air one time — it was a small plane with just a few people on board and we sat together in the back of the plane. We were made to move… we had to sit  where they placed us, spaced out in the cabin. They told us that they had to “distribute the load” so the plane could take off.

I sat in the “co-pilot” seat on an Air America flight out of Danang, Vietnam and we had to fly “around” Monkey mountain because we couldn’t gain enough altitude to make it over the top. 

Lots of airlines allowed the passengers to bring animals on board — in Vietnam, I regularly sat with chickens and ducks and pigs next to me on Air Vietnam… and that was one of the better airlines, believe it or not. An airline in Turkey (Turkish Hava Yolari) known by their initials, THY got the reputation that THY stood for “The Hate You.” Other airlines earned similar reputations — Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) came to mean “Pray It Arrives.” I can remember a couple that we referred to as TACA  — Take a Chance Airlines. When flying Aeroflot, we often called it Aeroflop. 

I only flew Air Mali a couple of times… the first time I flew one of their planes, there was a crack in the floor by my seat that you could see the ground through. Luckily, they didn’t fly very high, I’m sure the cabin couldn’t be pressurized. On both my Air Mali flights, all the passengers cheered and applauded when we landed — apparently they all had the same opinion of Air Mali that I did. When I was in Liberia, an Air Mali flight on it’s way to Monrovia, lost an engine, and all the passengers jumped out. The plane did manage to land safely, but the passengers were all killed. 

One story that I’ve heard several times involved Nigerian Air. The flight was apparently oversold in Lagos — they made the passengers run out to the tarmac and then around the plane. The first passengers that made it back to the mobile stairs, were allowed to board. I’m not sure this is a true story, but I’ve heard it a few times from unrelated sources. 

So after being on lots and lots of airplanes flown by lots of airlines, I guess I don’t really have a favorite airline — I have a few least favorite airlines and I do have some favorite flights or trips… maybe another good topic for discussion one of these days. 

It would be nice if air travel got back to being as much fun as it was when I was young — the prevalent attitude then was that a good landing was one you could walk away from; a great landing was one after which they could use the plane again….
— 30 —

I always look forward to this time of year — I’m not a big fan of cold weather and usually, by now, the weather is getting consistently warmer around here. Of course this year is a “different” year, for lots of reasons — many of them having nothing to do with the weather. 

Even though the first three or four months of this year has been a few days of unseasonably warm weather, followed by several days of very cold weather, the trees are beginning to get leaves and the grass is growing — the picture is our back yard after the last cutting. 

It would be nice if the weather always offered the ideal conditions for lawns to thrive — 60 degrees at night and 80 degrees during the day, and two-inches of soft, steady rain every week… but that doesn’t happen, and the grass still manages to grow. 

I don’t look forward to cutting the grass, but I really don’t mind it either — given the choice, I’d rather cut grass than shovel snow. Someone once said that grass is the cheapest plant to install and the most expensive to maintain. I guess that may be true, but it’s nice to look out and see that nice green carpet all around the house. Of course, there is one good thing about snow — it makes your lawn look as nice as your neighbor’s…..
— 30 —

I have been extremely fortunate to have met and worked with a lot of very interesting people over the years. One of those people was Tommy Thompson. I worked with Tommy, or as we always called him, Mr. Thompson, in my early years working at FAA. Mr. Thompson was a veteran of World War II and had a lot fascinating stories.

One story that I remember was that he helped assemble the first “helicopter” that was procured by the U.S. Army air Corps. Unfortunately, I don’t remember all the details of the story, but I always thought it was pretty cool…. 

The world’s first practical helicopter was designed by Igor Sikorsky and built by the Vought-Sikorsky Aircraft Division of the United Aircraft Corporation. It’s first flight was made on September 14, 1939 at Stratford, Connecticut. That flight was “tethered” and lasted only a few seconds. The first free (un-tethered) flight took place on May 13, 1940. The machine (the word helicopter wasn’t used until much later) was called the VS-300. 

The VS-300 became the model for all modern single-rotor helicopters and the U.S. Army Air Corps contracted with Sikorsky Aircraft (in December of 1940) to build an easily manufactured version of the VS-300.  The new version was designated the XR-4 and was demonstrated in January 1942.

Now here’s what I remember about Mr. Thompson’s story — The first delivery of the new machine was made to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio (I think) to be tested by the Army Air Corps. It was delivered by truck and had to be assembled. Mr. Thompson was one of the group of Army personnel that put the machine together. He said he had never seen anything like it and didn’t even know what it was supposed to do. People were calling it an aircraft, but it didn’t have any wings… I can imagine the skepticism from Mr. Thompson and his team. He said everyone was amazed that they apparently put it together correctly, and the thing did “fly.” You may have noticed that I used “machine” and not “helicopter” while writing this — the term helicopter wasn’t used until 1948. Mr. Thompson helped put the “thing” together in 1942. 

Not sure why I thought of this today, but it was nice to remember Mr. Thompson and his stories. You probably won’t ever see his name in history books, but if you ever visit the helicopter exhibits in the Smithsonian or the Edison Museum in Dearborn Michigan , think of Mr. Thompson.
— 30 —

Since we moved to Shepherdstown, every year we help make the Easter Candle for our church. Obviously, it’s become a tradition. I never realized how expensive these candles are, and with the church watching it’s pennies, it seems like a prudent way to save a little money. I not only didn’t realize the cost of the candles, I really never gave the candle much thought at all… however it is one of the most sacred and enduring elements in Christianity.

The Easter, or Paschal, Candle is lit at the Easter Vigil and used throughout the year in the church. 
The candle must be made of pure wax representing the sinless flesh Christ took on from Mary. The flame represents His divinity and the wick His humanity. The Candle itself is not blessed at the Easter Vigil, but the blessing is for the fire from which the candle is lit. 

At the beginning of the Easter Vigil, a “blazing fire” is lit outside the church. The fire represents the glory of Christ’s resurrection after the darkness of the church following the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy (Maundy) Thursday night. The priest first blesses the fire, praying that through the paschal celebrations, the people will be “inflamed with heavenly desires.”

The precise use of the Paschal candle has varied over the centuries. Initially it was broken up after the Easter Vigil and fragments were given to the faithful. But from the 10th century onward it was kept in a place of honor near the Gospel until the Feast of the Ascension, 40 days after Easter. By the 12th century, it was common to inscribe the candle with the current year. Over time the candle grew in size to merit the description of “pillar.”

The word paschal originally meant the “passing over.” The word took on a new meaning with christianity, referring to Our Lord’s passion, death, resurrection, and glorification. 

We didn’t see this year’s Easter Candle lit, but it’ll still stand in its place in the church, representing the death and resurrection of Our Lord — and — the faith, hope and eternal life for us all.
Happy Easter…..
— 30 —

Today is Good Friday — the ultimate misnomer. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it just never seems right that today should be called Good Friday. It seems it should be called Bad Friday… I think maybe the the Germans describe it better — in German, the day is called Karfreitag or Sorrowful Friday.

Again, as I’ve mentioned before, the term “good” as applied to Good Friday is an Old English expression meaning holy. It is also referred to as Holy Friday sometimes.

As to the question of why it’s called “Good,” we’re consistently reminded that Good Friday is always tied to Easter Sunday — a joyful celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. He could not have been resurrected if he had not died first. 

I read something from a Dean at Samford University (Timothy George) that summed it up nicely: “Theologically, we must keep Good Friday and Easter together. Good Friday without Easter is doom and despair. Easter without Good Friday is empty sentiment and sentimentality. We have to remember what Jesus did on the cross, which is the fulfillment of God’s eternal plan for the whole world. It has cosmic consequences. It’s a day to be silent, it’s a day to remember, to focus on who Jesus is and what He meant for humanity. It really was a bad Friday, a horrible Friday, but when it is seen as leading to the Resurrection, it was indeed a Good Friday.” 

So Good Friday it is — regardless of the name, it’s a very significant day, and maybe a reminder, especially this year, that things often seem darkest just before the light. Someone said that today marks the day when wrath and mercy met at the cross. That’s why Good Friday is so dark and so Good.
— 30 —