On Utility

The Mighty DC-8s at retirement. Roswell, NM.

Wasting time online the other day, I got sucked down a wormhole of aircraft boneyards. As an airplane ends its time of usefulness, it is typically flown to the desert where it might be mothballed for a period of time, slated for possible reactivation. Eventually, when it becomes clear (or the decision is in any case made) that a particular jet's flying days are done, the airplane will become a parts mule, cannibalized to keep similar machines of the fleet going, and / or it eventually gets chewed up into a pile of raw materials to be melted down and made into something else.

Unlike your old car, which likely will make its way to a junkyard by a flatbed truck, virtually every airplane that goes to the boneyard is flown there. A final flight. When it makes its final trip it is fully functional and could presumably be called back into active service the very next day. Someone has deemed it to be used up, but in many cases there is no hard and fast line for an airplane between a utile existence and a death sentence. Some kind of spreadsheet is used and a line is crossed. Such a momentous thing--the end of a very expensive piece of equipment--that in fact is arbitrary and inscrutable. An olympic runner sprinting a four minute mile to the gallows. That is something maybe unique to this industry.

Like the equipment, so too the people.

I have been present in my career for two final flights. I acted as copilot on a captain's final flight on the DC-8, and again a few years later on a different captain's flight on the MD-11. There are circumstances where a pilot may arrange for his / her final flight to be with a specific crew, but in these cases I was just assigned to the flights by the usual bidding or reserve call-out processes, a random assignment to assist someone else making the final entry in the logbook of their life's work. In neither case were the pilots in any way verklempt about the momentousness of the occasion, though on the MD-11 flight I believe we were met in Louisville at our parking spot by a chief pilot and the retiring captain's family--the one time non-pilots might be allowed up into the cockpit to see how he made his living all these years.

But I couldn't help being a little verklempt myself, as I was nowhere near retirement at the time and the idea of the career's end seemed momentous. At the end of the process, once hands are shaken and cake is eaten (and maybe after the water cannon salute through which some guys taxi on their final trip to the gate), the pilot's ID and associated company materials are quietly confiscated, and the departing employee is kindly escorted thru security and off the property, never again to be allowed access to this rarified world.

If one is ready to retire, as both these gentlemen were, there is probably on the prospect of sunny skies ahead. But just like an airplane's final flight to the boneyard, our newly-retired pilot arrives at the finish line in complete possession of all the arcane skills and knowledge needed for the job, fully capable and current to execute this complex job. Like the airplane, he could be called the next day (or the next week or month) to come back in for emergency fill-in. Some folks do this, opting to take another flying job in retirement.

As my own finish line comes into view, I find it's the scrutiny that I seek freedom from; the medicals and recurrent training and check rides, the regulatory burdens of almost every aspect of the job. These are simply an integral part of what this career entails, but I'll be glad to see the backside of this aspect of the job. But there's plenty else I'll miss. I'm aware on layovers and for airport operations that each instance may be the last time I see X place or do X job, and my love for the machine itself, the magic inner sanctum of the cockpit, remains undiminished all these years later. And though I'm current when I turn in my ID, I'm aware that these skills will fade with each passing month until one day I realize I'm quite out of the game. 

Thus does the world pass us all by eventually.

Dubai

Here’s another post from some years back that I never hit the ‘publish’ button on. I actually had a Dubai layover about a month back (we were caught on our way out by historic rainfall and flooding and were very lucky to have gotten out without a days-long delay. But reading this October, 2019 draft reminded me that I still agree with what I wrote then.

***

Dubai.

This is my first time back to this place in at least three years—since I left the MD-11 and went to the 767 as a copilot. And I’d forgotten how intrigued I am by it.

But I’ve always been taken by it. I’m trying to figure out why.

I think there are a couple of reasons. First, it’s a long way from home. If one likes to travel—and I think I’m really taken with the romantic aspects of my job to a degree unusual among my coworkers—you feel *very definitely* not in Kansas anymore. But not in a bad way. Flying from the East, we cross the Indian Ocean and make landfall on the Eastern shore of the Arabian Peninsula below the Straits of Hormuz. It’s not very far across this spit of land (maybe 80 miles), and the entire body is desert. And not Western-US-style desert, but Great Dune Sea desert. Because of the heat, even on a cloudless day it’s hard to see detail from above through the haze. Everything appears to be exactly the same color, as though all structures are made from the same native sand.

But as we descend into DXB things become clearer. The sand is shaped in literal waves, like an ocean—though a stationary one. And roadways are cut through these dunes like a child scratching a stick along the beach. I remember even seeing remote areas which had clearly been maintained with a plow, the waves drifting onto the roads and having to be removed. Out in the middle of the desert, miles from anywhere, there appear to be habitations. The roads to them are really just tracks across the desert, and every place is surrounded by a cement wall. Are these for security? To keep sand from drifting? To keep critters out? There are no plants to be seen anywhere. Until one reaches the city where plants become a kind of status symbol, it seems—clearly some wealth is required to acquire and plant them and to keep them watered. It’s just the occasional tree or modest landscaping at the margins, but becomes bigger, grass-covered estates with big groves of trees as one moves into the city. These are conspicuous because there’s nothing like them for miles in any direction.

All this is because the climate is shocking, at least to our sensibilities. As we descend to the airport, one begins to feel the heat seep through the skin of the airplane. And when we open the door upon landing the heat hits you like a fist. It’s shockingly, laughably hot. And especially with the midday sun, which feels like a physical assault. It’s a cliche, but 90 desert degrees when the sun is not out is really quite pleasant. It’s the sun coming up that makes it scary hot.

And in that setting, the lavish plantings around big hotels and fancy condo complexes seem a little frightening. The landscaping only survives with elaborate watering (one can see the vast network of tubes in the sand in many locations where construction is going on / is abandoned or where a building has fallen into disrepair. And the land is surrounded by salt water, so having this fresh water for landscaping seems beyond ostentation. It’s literally trying to beat back a violent and deadly nature, like being underwater in a tinfoil bubble. So there’s this violence and danger underpinning everything. I can imagine how folks from a warm climate look on a Minnesota winter in exactly the same way: All our houses, our cars, our pets, our food; everything has to accommodate a climate which would kill surely and quickly if not countered. But I’m used to the cold; the desert heat is something new to me. (The temps when we arrived yesterday were only in the low 100s, which is not especially hot for the region, nor for the deserts of the Western US. So I wonder how much of my impressions rest on my being a Northerner.)

Then there are the people. Even more so than NYC, Dubai seems completely multicultural and multiethnic. The native Emiratis are seen only in public places, mostly in leisure. One does encounter well-dressed natives working in the airport, say, but even then I don’t know that these workers are not imported from elsewhere. Certainly, most of the people we deal with—the airplane load / unload crews, the mechanics, the security people, the hotel staffs, most any worker in the gigantic malls—are not natives. They come from all over the region: India and Pakistan, numerous places in Africa, some Europeans, people from China and other parts of Asia.

There’s a favorite chestnut observation about personal hygiene with men from the Middle East, but there’s certainly a kernel of truth in it. Some of it is just different standards of what constitutes “clean.” Having an odor is of course a completely natural state of affairs. And there are degrees, a scale that might have “odor-free” on one end, and pass thru varying degrees of fragrance to arrive at “rancid.” Most all Americans seek to live on one end of this spectrum, but I actually find a bit of masculine odor a not unpleasant thing. Riding the Dubai train is more fragrant than anything in normal American life. But I can see how up to a point this can be a cultural thing. Of course, for those having to work out doors in this intense heat living odor-free is out of the question. Some of the guys who come in and out of the airplane as we go about our preflight are conspicuous. But they’ve likely sweated out more in their 8 hour shift than I sweat in a week. And I’m a sweater.

Of course, this mix of people of a zillion nationalities and languages only adds to the international mystique. The scene in any restaurant in Dubai is utterly, fundamentally different from what you might experience in Dubuque (though not necessarily in NYC). Again, this contributes to the sense that you’re *traveling,* as does the prevalence of Muslim culture.

Several aspects of Islamic culture are quite captivating to me. I find I love the call to prayer, which crackles over loudspeakers several times per day. It’s a chant, rather like Gregorian chant, but with a distinctly Middle Eastern flavor, typically sung by (I assume) an Imam. I wonder if it’s always live and if the chants are known, or if there’s a degree of improvisation. I’m also very taken with the dress. The coverings for women threaten to distress—especially in rare cases where a woman is so fully covered that she cannot even see and must be led around by (presumably) her husband—but I try to just observe without needing to attach a judgment. I know so very little about customs, and in very many cases the women are not much more covered than the men accompanying them. Many men walking in the mall or coming in and out of our swanky hotel wear the traditional white robes (called, I believe, a Thawb) with sandals and a head covering. This seems very utile clothing for the desert, and they’re really magnificent to look at. I’ve never seen someone dressed this way who was not absolutely clean, and most men wear a cologne--subtle, but expensive-seeming--such that walking behind them is very evocative. There’s something in that smell that is absolutely characteristic, and some similar kind of perfuming of the air is in play in many public places. It just seems that people of this region are in a much different scent world than ours—and that very much informs one’s experience.

I also enjoy (perversely?) that as Americans we’re not *particularly* welcome. No one has been overtly rude to me, and in places of business I’m treated with deference and courtesy. But there’s a sense that one is an outsider and there’s certainly a vein of anti-American sentiment. I mostly sense this, or I think I do, in glances from people on the train or when I’m walking through neighborhoods. Not hostility, really, but notice. I’m a foreigner. (I do remember one instance a few years ago where a bunch of men smoking outside a bodega stopped talking and stared at me when I rounded a corner. Another time some guy in a car pulled over as I was walking along a back street and asked me out of the blue if I were American. “Canadian!” I said. “Ah. Montreal or Toronto?” he asked. I made something up and he drove off. I always had an uneasy feeling about that encounter. But that’s twice in a decade.) This hint at unfriendliness serves to make the place feel more real somehow. It’s not a Disney creation designed to bamboozle ME. It’s a place that exists very much apart from me; I’m no part of what they’re aiming for, so I really observe as an outsider.

All of this makes the desert memorable. When I bid a schedule that has a Dubai layover I’m always a little thrilled. The hotel (we stay at the Fairmont) is as nice as any property at which I’ve stayed, and the airplane catering is actually to be anticipated. That’s not something you say every day.

Japan

This was written a couple years ago—9/25/22 and not posted. Having just finished a nice walk thru Osaka, I guess I’ll post it now.

***

I'm on a weekend layover in Osaka.

(Every single person on their phone--one woman working 2 phones!)

During my years on the MD-11, we never visited Japan except to make an hour-long fuel stop on our way to Anchorage.  When I moved to the Boeing 767 six years ago I began to have layovers both here in Osaka and outside Tokyo at Narita. But I never managed a layover of any substance before Covid confined us to our hotel rooms. So this business of free time in Japan and approval to use public transportation is something still relatively new for me. Yesterday I took the train into central Osaka and spent a couple hours on the hoof.

I feel so privileged that I'm able to regularly visit these far flung places, but I'm not very food adventurous and I don't sit around a bar and talk to the bartender. So I never really get the inside scoop on any of the places I visit. I feel lucky to see all these things that are outside my comfort zone, and surely impressions seep in. But it's kind of standard practice to find myself struggling to integrate my observations of these places with my larger view of the world. This is especially true when the US is in such a tumultuous, dysfunctional state and when I hold such strong opinions as to the causes of it. Our meltdown colors everything I see elsewhere, I fear. And perhaps I'm a bit too eager to make my observations fit into a template that filters so much of the rest of my life's experiences.

That caveat aside, from my wanderings around Osaka here are a couple thoughts. 

1. The subway system is pretty extensive, and it seems heavily used by young and old alike. And maybe unlike any train system I've been on this one is clean and completely graffiti-free. They even have fabric-covered padded seats. Imagine that on the trains in NYC or Chicago! In Osaka, nobody has scratched their mark in the glass or defaced the advertising inside with a marker or tagged the outside of the trains with spray paint--let alone urinated in a corner nor taken a dump on the floor nor left their fast food wrappers strewn about. And the sense is that the folks riding the train would find that behavior insulting and infuriating--and self-immolating! They're riding the train to get around! Harming the train is like trying to hobble the horse pulling your cart in the middle of your trip. It's almost like the adults are actually in control here. (In America trains and buses are often trashed.) There are security / police in many stations, but they are not heavily armed (let alone carrying riot gear)--there to keep order and assist with directions.

2. People are almost invariably quiet and non-disruptive. Even noisy children are rare. In several hours of train rides and walking around I saw nary a cross moment nor heard a raised voice. That is such a HUGE contrast with, say, New York or Chicago or L.A., where so many people act like they're engaged in a public performance. American airports are noisy and chaotic. Many Americans are loud and crass, and those who aren't are used to those who are. This is "rugged individualism" I guess. 

From a visitor's perspective, Japan feels like a much more functional place than the US. People seem responsible and civic-minded and not cripplingly stupid or addled by propaganda. That's as it looks from my distant perch. Not everybody has a big house or a nice car, but they're all scrupulously clean and everybody has their cell phone and nice clothes.

I intended to go to a baseball game over the weekend--both major teams here in Osaka are playing (the Hanshin Tigers and the Orix Buffaloes)--but decided that with Covid on the rise it may be inadvisable. But I watched a bit of last night's game on TV (where I understood nothing!) and did some reading about the differences between American and Japanese baseball. And those differences seem to slot into my burgeoning sense of the larger country. The teams are much more important to the sport than the individuals on the team, and nobody makes much money--because it would be selfish and greedy to look out for yourself when it's the team that matters. That seems maybe a metaphor for the whole country: it's the team that matters, and the individual's job is to support and assist the team. It's the Common Good in the entertainment sphere. 

And that seems what's conspicuously missing in America. I'm reminded of an Atlantic article I read a year or two ago by political theorist George Packer talking about how America has splintered into four distinct groups (which notion deserves its own post--indeed, the article was a condensation of a larger book on the subject which I bought and haven't had the stomach to actually read). But for our purposes, the takeaway is that NONE of the four groups holds their responsibilities as CITIZENS as primary--indeed, the whole notion seems to have fallen from our collective consciousness. We've stopped caring about each other, and have let our antipathy take the place of civic duty or any kind of social contract. (What does not align with my preconceptions is that most teams are named after a major company in the region--even if the team is the darling of a community. The local Hanshin Tigers are named after the electric utility company of this region. Also, one naturally wonders if the teams generate anything like the same money an American team generates, and where that money goes.)

Maybe the America of Leave It To Beaver was always an illusion. Certainly it was a racist, misogynist place where "good behavior" was a thin layer of cheap paint hiding the ugly mechanism. But we don't even have the pretense of that now. Republicans are hell-bent on harm and obstruction and grievance, and Democrats are consumed with damage control. Maybe this kind of stuff is hard at work here in Japan as well, but I certainly don't see it. As I walked around the city, and fully aware of all that I do not understand, I couldn't help thinking that this would be a fine place to live. The people I see appear to be living fulfilling, rewarding lives as community members and citizens of a vibrant, functional place.

I wonder if anything I learn going forward will support or weaken this impression?

This trip with its swirl of observations coincided with my listening to the audiobook of Richard Lloyd Parry's People Who Eat Darkness, a true crime book about a British woman in Tokyo 20 years ago who went missing and was found murdered. The investigation and the workings of the police and legal systems were all put under a microscope, which details added to my embryonic sense of the country. Serious crime--even petty crime--is really quite rare in Japan. It's one of the safest countries on the planet. But we're all still human beings after all, and the Japanese are not immune to bigotry and racism and misogyny and greed and strife--like all of us.

But from my vantage point it seems a more functional place than present-day America.

To Retire or Not to Retire

OK, it's not really the question. 

Retirement is coming within the next three years no matter what. But sooner if I choose. (As an aside, It's hard to imagine that I first posted on this platform nearly 20 years ago. In what seems the blink of an eye I have spanned the whole of a career. I had been at this job for about four years when I made my first post, and now I'm contemplating the job's end. Of course, it helps that I've done virtually nothing here for half that time. That certainly speeds things along. But still.) 

I'm currently on layover in Osaka at the start of a two week trip (a trip which, for technical reasons related to how our schedules are constructed, will really mean three weeks away from home). And I find increasingly when I'm away from home I chew on what life after the cockpit will look like. I had about five months off last year while the FAA fiddled with getting me certified to fly with a CPAP machine in tow. (This is another post, as I'm verified not to have sleep apnea and so the CPAP machine--which is quite instrusive--is something I neither need nor want.) But that delay was a retirement test drive. Prior to this I hadn't really spent any time thinking about retirement, but during my leave of absence if they had called and said "you're done" (which can certainly happen; we're dealing with a pretty inscrutable government bureaucracy) I realized I'd have been totally fine with that. THAT was a wakeup call. (Assuming my retirement accounts were sufficiently in order.) 

Prior to this, if Susan asked me "Would you keep working if you didn't have to?" I invariably answered "Yeah, I think I would." And now I'm starting to think "Well, not if I didn't HAVE to." I'm coming up on 62 years, and my health remains pretty good. So I think retiring now when I'm still fully present and able to travel, etc. seems a good thing. 

AND YET. This morning I caught a train into downtown Osaka and walked thru the city looking for a cup of coffee. And these little moments are something I will miss when I'm permanently barred from the cockpit. I don't really DO anything on my layovers except walk around listening to music or an audiobook and soaking in the surroundings, but I've done that now for 30 years (23 at this company, the last 15 almost entirely international). This is how I interface with the world. And while I'm aware that I don't really know much substantial about any of these places, I've gained a comfortable, easy familarity with so many of them. I ride the trains, I have favorite restaurants or coffee places, I have favorite walking paths, I know where the cash machines are, I have several local favorite laundry vendors or shopping malls, all of this in far-flung places: Japan, China, Singapore, Mexico, Canada, Dubai, Australia, many places in Europe. In the space of a single year it's amazing to retrace how many places the job takes us to. 

And it's not just the job itself--though the business of flying the 767 is far from old. I'll never NOT find it thrilling and a little magic, no matter how often I've done it. But there's also the independence of work life away from the airplane. From the time we step off the jet until we meet in the hotel lobby 15 or 24 or 50 or 80 hours later, I answer to nobody and get to do exactly what I want according to whatever whim. I've seen great pianists in Cologne, had breakfast on the poop deck of the QE2 in Dubai Harbor, ridden the MagLev train in Shanghai (after viewing the world from the Oriental Pearl), ridden the Star Ferry in Hong Kong. So many, many things, most of which I'll never do again when the airline music stops. While I have never felt the slightest resentment about accommodating my schedule to my wife's work or desires (quite the contrary), it is nonetheless a lovely feature of my job that I am able to follow my own star entirely for these layovers. In retirement, this independence will be harder to come by. 

And there's the question of usefulness and purpose. I have never been motivated by a desire to change the world, and I don't think any question of status among my friends and acquaintances has ever really entered my mind (though perhaps it's because I feel like the job I kind of stumbled into checks that box without any additional effort or attention from me?). But will these things continue not to matter when I'm no longer working? Will becoming an absolute nobody after my working life is done be OK? 

After a couple weeks at home now, I find I'm quite willing to head back to work--sometimes I'm even eager to do so. But increasingly I am aware that if the company called and removed me from my trip with pay (something they occasionally do when a particular trip is needed for training purposes) I would dance a little jig at being able to just stay at home. The nature of this kind of work is hard on one's circadian rhythm. We fly daytime and nighttime in continually shifting time zones, and fatigue--sometimes quite deep fatigue--is part of the job. As I get older I find this more challenging. When I'm over the North Atlantic, dog tired after a long day, I increasingly think to myself "I could just be done." But then there are days like today, walking around Osaka. 

I suppose it's both inevitable and good that I spend lots of time hashing these things over in my mind before making any decisions (and my little CPAP adventure reminds me that my career can very likely end on a timing not of my choosing). From here we head off to places South, including a couple of favoite layovers which I've not experienced for 8 years (since I was on the MD-11): Hong Kong and Sydney. 

So let's not retire just yet.

UnBornAgain Yesterday

One of my favorite old films (I thought I had reviewed it here, but I can’t find it) is George Cukor’s 1951 remake of the Garson Kanin stage play Born Yesterday. It’s not that the film is so great, but Judy Holliday is worth watching again and again (she won an Oscar for the performance). She plays Billie Dawn, a New York chorus girl who gets lured into being the for-hire girlfriend of junk dealer and aspiring racketeer and all round shitheel Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford). Billie is loud and brash, a rough stone from a poor background who now finds herself with money via her millionaire boyfriend. Harry doesn’t really grasp how the adult world works, but he thinks he does and he imagines Billie’s ignorance is getting in the way of his success. So when a journalist shows up at his hotel suite to interview him—William Holden—Harry hires the guy to “smarten her up.” And they all learn that a rough stone might, when polished, turn out to be something very different.

It’s really a lovely little Pygmalion kind of story, buoyed as I said by Judy Holliday’s really fabulous performance—you really can’t take your eyes off her. Broderick Crawford plays his role splendidly well, but his character is frankly unattractive—boorish, loud, abusive to everyone, entitled yet out of his depths, critical of everything, over-rich yet not very competent.

It reminds me of someone, which fact kind of ties into today’s theme.

One of the elements of Billie’s awakening at the hands of her tutor involves his explaining the workings of American government. Harry and Billie are in DC so that Harry can buy some politicians, and Billie uses her lessons as an impetus to learn about how Washington works. And in the process—and via her tutor’s passions about the nation’s fundaments—she comes to see the glory of the system Harry is trying to break for personal riches.

Anyway, everything old is new again. History repeats again and again and again.

I thought of this film today as I spent a couple hours wandering the Capitol Mall in DC. I have a 36 hour layover in Baltimore, so I rode a local train an hour South to look around (I think it’s been more than 30 years since I was here last). I find myself hearing William Holden’s voice from the film, stirring words about the Capitol buildings as the cheesy patriotic music swells in the background.

At one point near the end of the film Harry runs into resistance from his much-abused lawyer who complains that Congresspeople cannot just be bought to suit Harry’s whims (though that’s exactly why they’re there). “Why not?” Harry asks. “Because these guys are honest,” the lawyer scolds.

Walking past these same buildings today I couldn’t help thinking what a sham the whole place is. The super-grandiose buildings (oddly mimicking architecture from 500 years before, as though the work done within won’t be taken seriously unless the buildings look MUCH older), the whole town trying like a theatre set to win us over by force of pretense; the armed guards everywhere; the black SUVs with smoked windows; the barricades and roadblocks. All of it, as it happens, protecting a failed exercise: one party bent on a malicious overthrow, the other unable to meet the challenge.

As I wandered the Capitol grounds the Senate had just failed to conduct a legitimate trial of the president for obstruction of justice and abuse of power—charges for which the House of Representatives impeached him a few weeks ago (only the third such impeachment in the country’s history). The Senate’s was a trial in name only. The Senate Majority Leader stated openly and in advance that he would scuttle the trial, and virtually every Republican lined up behind him: they voted almost to a person to refuse even to allow witnesses to be questioned. This despite the common knowledge that the president is absolutely guilty as charged—guilty of this and very much more.

The acquittal is an act of organized, pure partisanship—the latest chapter in an insurgency stretching back over 10 years now, with roots going back even before that, to Reagan. Partisanship is not necessarily bad; opposing Nazis, say, seems a thing that should be done without even-handedness. “Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” But this is partisanship without even the pretense of a social or civic purpose. This present act of partisanship is just a naked power grab, a nuclear-blast maneuver that will decimate representative self-government, maybe permanently. (I really don’t think that overstates it.) It fundamentally undermines our system of checks and balances such that the presidency becomes autocratic.

They know all this, but at this point they’ve stopped even trying to justify their actions. Journalists’ probing questions to officials are met with explosions of indignation and fury; press conferences have dried up entirely; journalists are being denied access unless they toe the propaganda line. The party’s goal at this point is to circle the wagons and keep the autocrat in power at any and all costs—even when the costs may well be catastrophic for the country. (At the very least they will have set the precedent that no president can be charged with any crime or removed from office for any reason. Hard to imagine this precedent would sit well with a rogue Democrat in the seat; the solution to that seems to be to just keep a Democrat from holding the office—by any means possible. There’s broad consensus that Russia—a foreign power decidedly hostile to American ideals—interfered maliciously with the the electoral process in 2016. And indeed, the president-elect invited the interference publicly, and then met repeatedly with the Russians before and after the election. Republicans, while admitting Russia’s hostile intent, refuse to acknowledge the interference or take steps to combat it, and the consensus is that Russia will try again in 2020–they’re at work already.)

So, the movie. It gives today’s events an unfortunate odor of deja vu: the boorish, ignorant, control-freak criminal trying to enrich himself no matter who or what is destroyed (indeed, the destruction and personal devastation are marketed as selling points to the propaganda-fed media consumer, who craves his Colosseum moment); the for-sale politician, the ignorant masses huddled behind the cartoon depictions of their noble government while donating to and voting for its destruction.

When I first saw Born Yesterday some years back I was shocked at how much the world had changed in 50 years—at least the Hollywood version. The Wikipedia article talks about the difficulties Cukor had in getting the film past the censors, having to skirt around their being lovers—they *certainly* could not share a bedroom!—or Judy Holliday having an actual woman’s body. But the real shock for me was Harry’s treatment of Billie which by any standard today is frankly abusive. It’s uncomfortable to watch. Judy Holliday is not allowed to show an inch of cleavage or tailbone or anything even remotely suggestive to the censors; but Harry’s violence toward Billie gets past with nary a protest.

But this is the world Republicans are striving to re-create, where white men run everything and everyone else’s citizenship is second-class—if that. Environmental regulation is scuttled to gleefully pander to the country’s most ignorant people, propaganda tells us what to think, profit takes precedence over virtually every other thing.

One wants to think that we actually have progressed, and on the surface we have made progress since 1951. I know the jagged edge of history trends broadly and inexorably toward progress and equality and fairness. But always there is a reminder that human nature contains much that is selfish and greedy and clannish and self-destructive.

A Jagged Path

This was written in 2016 before I went to ground school.

***

I've decided to change airplanes.

For an airline pilot, this is kind of a big deal. The equipment you fly at an airline determines a bunch of things: it sets the route structure you'll spend your time plying; it dictates your seniority (since overall seniority in the company is less immediately important than your relative seniority in your fleet and seat); it dictates the minutiae of your work schedule (and, in our case, your sleep schedule).

And there's the equipment itself. An airplane is an airplane, maybe, but each transport jet is kind of its own world, and we must immerse ourselves in the particulars and minutiae if we are to operate it efficiently and safely. And that's an involved undertaking.

I come to my current job by way of about eight years at regional turboprop airlines. That means I flew passengers on short-haul routes, flying many short legs in the course of a typical workday. Lots of legs, mostly hand-flown, down at low altitudes in the weather. Lots of instrument approaches, lots of paperwork and refuelings and weight-and-balance calculations. Lots of repetition of checklists--over and over again multiple times every day. Eight years of this. This contrasts pretty sharply with my current job flying international cargo on a heavy jet. I tend to fly very few legs, almost all of them long-duration legs flown under automation at high altitudes above the weather.

So life in these two jobs is very different in pretty much every way. The only commonality is that in both cases I'm operating a pretty complicated machine in the contemporary ATC and IFR environment.

When I came to my current employer 15 years ago I began in the old Douglas DC-8, first as a flight engineer (a new job for me) and then as a First Officer (copilot). This was my first experience with a heavy jet (or any jet, though a turboprop motor is in fact a jet engine that's used to drive a propeller instead of moving the aircraft purely by exhaust thrust), and it represented quite a change from the flying I knew. Most DC-8 workdays consisted of two legs: one leg after sundown from some city--Milwaukee or Detroit or Denver or Cleveland, etc.--into our package sorting facility, and another before sunrise back out to our starting point. Two legs per night, 10 legs per week. Week-on, week-off; that meant about 20 legs per month. This contrasts with my turboprop days where we averaged six to eight legs per day.

The upshot of this was that I was now flying a much larger, heavier, faster airplane and had much less time with my hands on the controls to master the task. It happened, of course, but it took me a year in the DC-8 to log as much time as I would have accumulated in a couple months of my previous job.

After eight years on the DC-8 I moved to the MD-11, where I found this same situation amplified and extended. Now I was flying a VERY heavy jet on VERY long legs. Typically one leg of nine or ten hours every other day.

The MD-11 is a challenging airplane. It can be unforgiving, with a history of punishing certain kinds of mistakes very severely. It's not an especially tricky airplane to land, but mistakes on landing can be problematic. And because of a couple design details, it's one of the fastest airplanes in the terminal environment and on approach, which makes it a challenge for controllers to integrate it with other traffic, and a challenge for pilots to play well with other airplanes (we're routinely told we're rapidly catching the airplane in front of us since we commonly are flying 30 knots faster than anything else in the pattern). And for this most challenging airplane to fly, we get our hands physically on the controls about 1/4 as often as with the DC-8 (which means about 1/16th as often as with my prior turboprop flying).

This is not a great combination. More challenging flying, less opportunity to practice. This is even further exacerbated by the fact that a portion of the copilots' time is spent as International Relief Officers--a third crewmember whose job is to give the other two flying pilots a rest period during long flight legs (since no pilot can be in the seat more than 8 hours in a day). Most F/Os on the MD-11 spend at least some of their time at IRO duties, and the IRO virtually never does the takeoff and landing. So the already-much-reduced number of legs is further reduced to below 50% for the F/O.

All this has factored into my thinking about what airplane to bid. The MD-11 has allowed me to see the world--literally. I've circumnavigated the globe in the last eight years probably 40 times or more, which activity, world travel, has been No. 1 on my bucket list forever. And it's an extremely comfortable airplane: quiet and spacious and with great visibility. It has a bunk for rest periods, a small galley with an oven and hot cup and refrigerator, and plenty of room for crew and jumpseaters. And it typically involves a one-long-leg-to-the-hotel workday, with the plusses and minuses that entails.

But with my background, I've long been leery that this is the right working environment for me--regardless of how much I may like it. My time on the airplane has allowed me to get mostly comfortable with the airplane's challenges and limitations, but always there is a sense that the airplane waits to bite if you step out of line. And the nature of the work we do with the airplane gives us the bare minimum opportunity for keeping abreast of these challenges.

My original plan was to settle in on the MD-11 and stay there until I could hold the captain's seat. But this would have required my changing domiciles and commuting up to Alaska. And after years of stagnation--almost nobody was leaving Alaska to make new captain spaces there--this was an uncertain path for progression. Add in my skepticism about the challenges of the MD-11--and my sense that learning a new airplane might be all for the good--I decided it was a good time to move over to the 757 / 767. I get to stay on my beloved international schedule, and I'll have the chance to learn a new airplane as a co-pilot--rather than step into the commander's chair in an unfamiliar machine.

***

(Shift back to the present day.)

And so it worked out. Another consideration at the time was my awareness that an upgrade to captain would likely be available sooner on the 757, and that (as the most numerous aircraft type in our fleet—by a large margin) I’d just have many more flying opportunities on this fleet than on the MD-11. And the situation unfolded thus.  I had barely finished my copilot training on the 757 before I got notice that I’d been awarded a captain upgrade on the fleet.  And that’s another post.

The machine in the god.

I’ve long been fascinated with Tudor England.

Me and a zillion other people, duh. There have been a hundred billion books and films and tv shows based on the hundred+ years that mark the Tudor period (c.1485-1600+), so somebody cares, obv. In addition to the films The Other Boleyn Girl and Anne of the Thousand Days and the TV series The Tudors, I’ve read (in audiobook form) a bunch of historical fiction novels by Philippa Gregory and Alison Weir. The whole business is a stranger-than-fiction chapter in human history.

These actual stories are all cheating in a way, I know, since they involve emotions and words—and in some cases actual deeds—which simply cannot be known. The authors have wide leeway to make characters; the blankness of the canvas allows space for creation. At least in the case of these authors (Gregory and Weir), though, I feel their use of artistic license is limited and carefully restrained—and after all something very like these events MUST have taken place in order to get from point A to B.

Most stories revolve around Henry VIII and his six wives. That central thread, which needs no summary from me, is just history at its most lurid and stupefying. Different and fascinating social norms and the pernicious insipidity of religion and the vast gulf between rich and poor and the ghastliness of a world without science—the telling of it puts all this center stage. But even those several individuals are not the whole of the chapter. The book I’ve just finished is Alison Weir’s The Innocent Traitor, about the Lady Jane Grey, also known as The Nine Days’ Queen. She was the great-granddaughter of Henry VIII, yet even she managed to get caught up in the quagmire he stirred up.

And always it’s the religious angle of these stories that grabs me, mostly because there’s simply nothing more lurid—nor, sadly, more commonplace—than people killing each other over arcane points of invented mythological hooey. Henry VIII had initiated a traumatic break from the Catholic Church in order to effect his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and this to enable his marriage to the bewitching Anne Boleyn—all supposedly motivated by the need for a male heir to cement his young dynasty. Well, viewed through the lens of the moment (which these authors are trying to show us) these ARE rather pressing needs. His dynasty IS vulnerable if he cannot consolidate it with a strong male heir, and the Catholic Church IS standing in his way. He decides to remove the church as a rival to his authority, and his very Catholic wife sees heresy afoot—rightly, if we take the nonsense seriously.

But national matters do not settle with a decree, no matter what a sovereign might say. The newly formed Church of England, though declared to be the only legitimate faith of the land, was still doing battle with the much longer-established Catholic Church. And while the next king Edward VI (Son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour) was Protestant and sought to keep his father’s religious reforms in place, when he died at age 16 without an heir the expected bloodline reverted to Henry VIII’s eldest daughter, the staunch Catholic Mary—daughter of Henry VIII and the aforementioned very Catholic Catherine of Aragon.

But there’s a problem. A couple of them. First, in order for Henry VIII to remarry and attempt to beget a male heir, each of his preceding marriages was declared null and void—which then illegitimized the offspring of those marriages. So Mary (mother: Catherine of Aragon) and Elizabeth (mother: Anne Boleyn) are bastards, and thus ineligible to inherit the throne. Henry VIII said so, and his son Edward VI reiterated it. This mechanism might be perfect for keeping Catholic Mary from the levers of power, but it works to keep the equally Protestant Elizabeth away as well. Good for the goose... (And it sows confusion in the average citizen whose sense of loyalty follows blood.) Second, if Mary’s ascension to the throne would surely bring about a Catholic Reversion—and the resumption of the Pope’s influence as a competitor to the King’s—the prospect of it opened a larger social wound that had not really healed. The church being a conduit for political power, the disposition of the official Church of England was something that very powerful people cared about rather emphatically. For each unyielding Protestant there was an unyielding Catholic. This is the stuff that wars are made of. What to do?

Henry VI’s solution before his death was a reversion to the bloodline of a previous generation. (There’s some dispute as to whose actual idea this was.) This line of succession led (after her mother demurred) to Jane Grey being declared the legitimate heir. Jane was the daughter of Frances Brandon, who was the daughter of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister. So the bloodline WAS there. But even after the garishly fascinating lives of Henry VIII’s two daughters are set aside, the details of Jane Grey’s story are too sadly delicious. None of this was HER idea; she had no such ambition—except to see the Catholic Church kept in abeyance. But her parents...  Pathologically ambitious parents schemed and plotted with their daughter’s life, hoping for personal gain—and the father, having escaped being beheaded for treason the first time, waded into the greedy morass AGAIN. The lure of power and wealth is like a disease.

He did not survive the second attempt. Nor, sadly, did she. She was brought to the Tower of London for her coronation and she never left the place. The official coronation never took place, and forces favoring Mary began to prevail. And thus the victors in this scheme were quickly made traitors and heads began to roll. Mary had sympathy for young Jane Grey (though not for her heretical faith), and was determined to spare her life. But after her father attempted a SECOND coup to put his daughter on the throne instead it was clear she was a focus for Protestant zeal and would remain a thorn in the queen’s side—even though none of this was her idea nor did she seems to want any of it. So she had to go.

You think as people are being led to the block that common sense will prevail and the slaughter of, say, a 16-year-old girl for failing to believe that the wafer and the wine *actually become the flesh and blood* of the mythological character will be averted. And over and over and over again you will find that instinct thwarted. And that’s why we read on and on. It’s much of human foibles and heroism, of the vagaries of human culture mixed with our base and animal natures, and all of it just close enough to ourselves that we can relate.

This was an 18 hour listen, and I found myself finished in a couple days—I looked for excuses to put on the headphones and go out for a walk. So, highly recommended. Next: Philippa Gregory’s tale of Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Hong Kong

This is yet another continuation post to the two previous, detailing some of my impressions about China stemming from our recent vacation there. Specifically, I'm interested in the special case of Hong Kong.

Though obviously a Chinese city, it was a part of the British Empire--governed and administered by the British--for a hundred years until being handed back over to Chinese control in 1997. And so it's always had a hybrid feel, a city of (mostly) Chinese people living under British ideas. And under that working arrangement it has attained an iconic status, like New York or London.

But my sense is that there has always been some tension there between West and East, and the handover of the territory back to Chinese control was the subject of much angst: China felt the territory was rightfully theirs (taken from them by unfair treaties) and most of the residents did not consider themselves to be Chinese and were very happy governing themselves. As an airline person, I remember reading about Cathay Pacific's concerns that Communist China would not honor the sovereignty of the profitable and thriving business at handover, and I believe serious consideration was given to moving the headquarters of the airline out of the region.

I found myself lounging on my hotel bed in the Tuve Hotel in Hong Kong reading a New York Times article about just this subject the day before we left to return home. The gist of the article was that Chinese authorities promised to honor Hong Kong's independence after control was returned to China--what China calls "one country, two systems"--but that, unfortunately, is not really how things are unfolding 20 years on.

I've always held Hong Kong in special regard, but this is based on my visitor's impressions rather than any scholarly expertise. On this trip we spent five days in Beijing and a couple days in Xian (another Chicago-sized city of which I've barely heard), and like all other major Chinese cities these places are abuzz with construction and growth and activity and change. Hong Kong is too, of course, though in that case it doesn't represent a change from the status quo. The larger sense is that China is a country massively on the move. And so Beijing very likely thinks it can manage growth and business quite well, thanks, and perhaps that there's no need or justification for Hong Kong's special status. More than this, to acknowledge Hong Kong's special spark--to acknowledge that its differences contribute to its spark--is to imply that other Chinese cities could follow the same model. That's clearly not immediately in the cards--although modern China is hardly recognizable from what was here 50 years ago. The NYT article says that some in China feel that HK suffers from "too much democracy." Residents of the city, naturally, resist this characterization.

So where does that leave Hong Kong? Right now, kind of stuck. Beijing has actively removed several democratically-elected politicians of whom it does not approve, and even gone so far as to abduct under cover of darkness those--liberal booksellers, for example--it considers to be threatening. All of this is a nightmare for residents who having let the fox into the henhouse are really left with few options.

Meanwhile, several massive projects are on hold because the two sides cannot agree on how to proceed. One has to think this all leads inevitably toward their not being "the two sides."

Much as I love HK, I find I'm torn. As a socialist, I think putting the reins on capitalism is sensible and utile. And I'm unqualified to see how much of HK's brilliance is due to laissez-faire economic policy--and I certainly don't KNOW that HK will be a different or less attractive place when Beijing gets its way. But OTOH I feel like people ought to be able to determine their fates, and it's hard for me to see how Beijing's control will benefit HK or its citizens. In any case, Beijing seems unlikely to back down--especially when they're doing so well in other places. I fear--and I'm obviously not alone in this--a place I love will be snuffed out and turned into something much less vibrant.

At the very least one feels that Beijing cannot be taken at its word, and that no success in HK will shake the elite of the Communist Party from their positions of power.

China

(This post kind of continues on from the previous post--and is followed by a kind of Part III about Hong Kong.)

We’re on a two week vacation in China.

I’ve been here often before. Well, I’ve been in the country many times before, but I’ve only visited a handful of cities in what is after all a vast and diverse place. Most of my time has been in the Pearl River delta—Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong—and further North in Shanghai. And I’ve spent a little time in Chengdu and now, recently (upon changing airplane fleets) a couple new places: Zhengzhou and Qingdao.

I’ve been in love with Hong Kong since my first visit, and I’ve been trying to get Susan to come here for a decade. (She does not inherently share my fascination with the country, and she’s needed time and persuasion to take on the 13-hour flight.) She finally agreed provided we also spend some time in places I had not previously been. She suggested Xian (to see the Terracotta Army) and I suggested Beijing. And the trip would end with five days in Hong Kong.

And so it has gone. We’re currently on Day Three of five in Hong Kong after having a spectacular visit to Beijing and, after a delay, Xian. These places have been all we could have asked for. In Beijing we saw the Summer Palace and looked around Tiananmen Square and the outside of the Forbidden City, made a trip to Mutianyu and the Great Wall, toured the National Center for Performing Arts, wandered the 798 Arts Zone, explored the subway system (the largest in the world after Shanghai, which is only fractionally bigger), wandered the famed hutongs. Weather cooperated brilliantly, and our only snafu was getting out of Beijing at the end. Everything canceled due to bad weather and we ended up having to spend an extra night at a roach motel at the airport—which after all gave us one of our best meals in a cafeteria-style hotel restaurant.

This left us a day short in Xian, and we debated whether we shouldn’t just head straight to Hong Kong. But we didn’t want to miss the Terracotta Army, and China Eastern was not very accommodating about changing our tickets. So we got out the next morning, about 20 hours late. But everything then went like clockwork and we were at our (extraordinarily swanky) hotel in Xian by 10:30 that morning. We suggested to the hotel that we still hoped to see the army, and we were told it was no problem at all. Turns out, it may have been better to go around noon (as we did) then to go at 8:AM as we originally planned. It was a hot day and the place was only moderately busy at lunchtime. We immediately met up with a guide who took us through in a couple hours. Afterward, we spent the afternoon walking along the ancient and immense stone wall surrounding the city—some 60’ high and 60’ thick and some nine miles around! Absolutely immense, and one could land an airplane on much of it. We got a great vibe from the city, and I could see spending time here.

The next day we had a three hour flight to Hong Kong and were at our (strange, uber-modern) hotel by about 16:00.

My little bits of exposure to China and Hong Kong continue to kindle my enthusiasm but leave me far from being any kind of expert. I don’t speak a word of the language—something that’s more challenging away from the Southeast where English is fairly common. In Beijing and Xian people’s grasp of English was much more tenuous, making it very hard to communicate at times. And I fear the lack of language keeps everything at arm’s length for a visitor, even a repeat one. Either because of this language limitation or from my natural keep-to-myself travel mien, I’ve visited these places for years without every really talking to a local or seeing any but popular tourist sites and what you can see walking the streets.

Consequently, I don’t really know what life is like for the average Chinese. How are jobs arrived at? Does everyone receive a basic monthly income and can one supplement that by working in a free enterprise setting? And what does the government get out of that free enterprise in return? How do people decide to work in hotels or in little art boutiques or coffee shops or as tour guides? Is the process different from that in the US? And living arrangements: does the government still assign housing? We saw numerous real estate brokers in Hong Kong and the prices perhaps exceed even Manhattan’s. Who buys these? And where do you live if you can’t afford them (that is, how do MOST people find their housing)? I don’t imagine the answers to any of this are especially interesting or intricate, but they play a role in what life must be like in these bustling places for so many of the people with whom we interfaced.

A couple observations: All the Chinese subways I’ve been on have been things to envy. They’re relatively new and constantly growing (virtually every Chinese city I’ve been in except maybe Hong Kong is actively digging subway lines), spotlessly clean, utterly reliable. Trains seem to run (like London) as often as the tracks will allow—one is always leaving as we approach the platform, and the signs never say more than three minutes for the next train—and signage and ticketing could hardly be easier or more comprehensible. How fortunate for us that there’s always an “English” button on the ticket machines and that announcements are always made in English after the Chinese.

Beijing particularly was striking. The system, which is now up to 19 lines and growing (from, I believe, two lines in 2002) carries 10 million passengers per day, for a yearly ridership of almost 3.7 billion. That’s more riders than any other subway system, more than twice what NYC’s subway carries. (Shanghai's numbers are almost identical.) And the Beijing system is being aggressively upgraded and expanded to carry about twice its current numbers.

To me, this seems like but one example of immense spending for the public good. And I can't help noting that it’s exactly the opposite of what we're doing in this country. Rather than pursue aggressive public benefit--since such things are castigated as "progressive" (the *horror!*)--we’re dismantling the federal government and trying to farm its functions out to for-profit concerns. A quick visit to this part of the world shows that in comparison we’re failing at almost everything (except defense spending; I guess that's not an accident). 

Every single subway station we were in when in Beijing (maybe 10 stations overall) had 1) functioning, clean bathrooms; 2) uniformed traffic directors / helpers; and 3) a pair of uniformed military personnel monitoring the entrance. There was often a military guy at the main boarding platform on a raised box keeping an eye out. We never saw the military people interacting with anyone, and they didn’t seem there to hassle or discipline anyone. But there is a clear sense that the transportation of people was an important thing that was managed and carefully overseen.

And these things continued in other spheres as well. The National Center for Performing Arts ("the Egg") is maybe the most impressive single building I've ever seen, all in support of the arts--the same programs, more or less, that we're cutting from every school curriculum Republicans can get their hands on. There are public bathrooms all over the place, every two or three blocks, and there are usually people there keeping things clean and picked up. There were no tip jars that I could see when I visited the facilities, so these folks were working for wages paid by someone and not relying on handouts. And it’s hard to overstate how lovely it is to always have a nice bathroom handy as you roam the city. There are people making the rounds of most blocks picking up trash and cigarette butts—I’ve seen this in every Chinese city—and the subway stations were typically being mopped and picked up. There is almost no graffiti, and none at all in the trains or stations (that I saw). Buses are numerous and reasonably new and clean (though we rode them only in Hong Kong).

So what to make of this? All these jobs require money and people. With 1.4 billion citizens--over four times our own population--people seem to be a resource they have well in hand, and many tasks that might be automated in the US (roadwork, say, or manufacturing jobs) are here done by armies of people. But keeping walkways weed- and trash-free is honorable work and very much to the public good, and these armies of workers can be turned toward any task imaginable: building a subway, driving trucks, shipping, manufacturing, construction. But there are some concerns attached to all this: where is the line between functional oversight that, say, makes it possible to have public bathrooms in the subway system and, on the other hand, Big-Brotherism? Surely to some degree everyone here behaves and celebrates the brilliant transit system because punishment for misbehavior is swift and merciless. Vandalizing a public bathroom or public transit has always seemed self-immolating to me, but at what point does preventing that vandalism become oppressive? I suppose this is the age-old exploration of the liberal and conservative mind.  This is an authoritarian society, though one which has loosened considerably in the last 40 years, and it's not until I'm here in person that I begin to formulate these questions.

It’s hard for me to have a sense of what life is like for a citizen of Beijing, especially one with worldly ambitions. Hong Kong seems to straddle these two worlds—Communist East and Capitalist West—and it seems to fall in the center of many scales: more public services than we see in the West, but fewer than in Beijing; more oversight / public scrutiny than in the West but less than in Beijing.

For as long as I’ve been coming here I have the feeling that we underestimate China at our peril. They may not do everything well; they may not have everything figured out; their citizens may not top every poll; their culture may not dominate the world: but I cannot put anything past them. They seem well positioned to call the shots in the future—about everything. They are playing a long game, and they have time and sheer numbers on their side. If they don’t yet have the best schools, they soon will; if they don’t have the biggest or most capable military, they soon will; if they don’t dominate business and finance, they soon will. I just don’t put anything out of their reach. And this at a time when the US is clearly and obviously on the decline. Our budgets are perilously out of control, our educational system is only semi-functional, and our popular democratic politics are clearly and obviously dysfunctional. One of our two parties is a disorganized rabble unable to keep its eye on any common good and the other is actively malevolent and corrosive.

It seems like a good time to be Chinese.

Some pictures:

(PS: A couple days after writing this I came across a New York Times article talking about the difficulty Hong Kong is having straddling exactly these worlds. That'll lead to another post.)