If you are operating under the impression that air show megastar Sean Tucker confines his fancy maneuvers to his airplane, I'm here to tell you, he does not. Yesterday at the NTSB hearing in Washington, I watched him dazzle a panel of hardened air safety investigators looking into ways to improve air show and air race safety.

"It's not basket weaving 101", he said, all gosh, shucks and boyish charm and the five board members from Mark Rosekind on the left to Earl Weener on the right practically cooed.

But Tucker has a point. In a demonstration of courage and cojones, he was one of only a few of the air show/air race luminaries who testified at the hearing willing to admit that all ain't right in the world of performance aviation.

Well, as Chairman Deborah Hersman said early on, "Danger is part of the attraction." But when 11 people end up dead and dozens more are injured as happened on the final day of the Reno Air Races on September 16, 2011, the usual blandishment that "Safety is our number one priority" no longer seems sincere.

Let's be honest, safety is not the number one priority or all those souped-up planes and hot-shot pilots would be safely on the ground. Thrill seeking is the number one priority for the performers and for the spectators. The question is; can safety be the co-priority in sport aviation?

That's the delicate task for the safety board and the Federal Aviation Administration, recognizing that this kind of aviation is tremendously popular because it taps into our emotions. Air shows recall a pioneering past and demonstrate how innovation is sculpting the future. (And then there are those pilots!)

But the safety folks can't be carried aloft on the winds of good intentions. Real issues, as of yet unaddressed, have been brought to light by the Reno disaster.

Jimmy Leeward, the pilot whose nosediving P-51 turned the box seats at Reno Stead Airport into a scene of carnage, was 74-years old. To fly competitively and undergo the extraordinary physical stresses of air racing, he was required to have just a 3rd class medical certificate, the same sign-off as your basic general aviation pilot.

Then there is the airplane. Leeward's P-51 was as far removed from its original design as the family Ford is from a Formula One race car. And whether airworthiness has been compromised by all that performance-enhancing tinkering can be a difficult question for FAA inspectors to answer authoritatively.

"They can check that things are tightened down and make sure things are properly greased but they can't say that the thing is going to hold together, they don't have the expertise," said Mike Danko, an aviation lawyer from San Mateo, California. Mike spoke with me yesterday while I was working on a story about the hearing for The New York Times.

These omissions speak to the question of pilot hazards and one can argue that the men and women who fly in this environment know what they're getting into.

But it becomes a matter of public concern in the third area into which the NTSB board members tiptoed yesterday; are the setbacks for air show spectators appropriate?

In his testimony, Mike Houghton, chief executive of the Reno Air Race Association was unequivocal, even after Hersman pressed the point, reminding Houghton of a crash on the track at the 2007 Reno air race.

"We looked at debris disbursement and compared it with what had been established," Houghton said, of the set backs established years earlier and how they impacted the safety of race attendees in the 2007 accident. He continued, "and all the calculations were correct. We were 75 feet short of the spectator area. In spite of that we took steps to put Jersey barriers on the other side of the racecourse between taxi and runway to mitigate if something should ever happen again and if debris were to happen it would be stopped by the barriers."

Hersman wasn't the only one raising the figurative eyebrow about the notion that the course of an out-of-control airplane can be predicted. Danko says the premise is fallacious.

"They’ve used geometry and physics to say we’re going to design a course so the aircraft is never pointed at the crowd," he said. "But it's based on a false premise that if it fails in flight it will travel in a straight line. It may not travel in a straight line. It may go out of control. A control surface breaks off it may go in an unpredictable direction."

Predictably, a control surface did appear to come off Leeward's plane which then landed nose down within striking distance of a crowd of spectators. 

Leeward, Tucker and all the other performance pilots are not alone. They share the risks with every thrill-seeker who buys a ticket to an air show. Any industry capable of pushing envelopes like this one does can surely balance mitigating the risks with maintaining the sport. But the first task on the check list is acknowledging the real priorities.

Sometimes being a mom helps me make sense of the world, because even when the world isn’t sensible, it at least is familiar. Take, for example, spoiled children. We’ve all seen these children, pitching a fit at the grocery store because mommy and daddy won’t purchase that tempting something on display in the check out line. (Not, my kids of course.) 

This is the image that comes to mind when I read about America’s budget impasse between Democrats and Republicans.

Only in this case, something more significant than supermarket embarrassment is at stake. When the Republicans inserted into the Federal Aviation Administration’s operational re-authorization bill, a provision to eliminate subsidies to rural airports, the Democrats said “hold on” and refused to pass the legislation. Without a house and senate agreement, the FAA lost a chunk of its authority to operate. 

It immediately furloughed 4,000 workers and suspended action on a number of projects including the extremely important work moving US airspace to next gen capability. 

Just to be clear, it is a $16 million difference of opinion that is costing the federal government $30 million a day in uncollectable aviation taxes alone. 

Yes, this is a costly game and I’m not only talking about money, I’m talking about a loss of international prestige and leadership.  Let’s just look at the next gen aspects for a minute. Australia and Tibet have more advanced air navigation systems than the USA. The FAA has been plugging along at a pace that is frustrating US carriers and now this forced suspension of FAA spending will further slow progress.

As I travel around the world, the near unanimous impression of the FAA that I hear is that it is a premier aviation organization; Slow-to-act sometimes, sure. Not distant enough from political considerations in its decision-making, undoubtedly. But as an agency effective in achieving and maintaining high levels of safety, it has been and still is a global leader. That’s what I hear anyway.

Until recently the same might be said of American government as a whole. But these days it is looks like the spoiled children have grown up and taken their tantrums to Washington where they are embarrassing themselves, eroding progress in aviation and discrediting the nation.

Storms in the so-called Golden Triangle, the corners of which are New York, Atlanta and Chicago have caused a lot of air travelers to hunker down at the airport, or return to wherever they came from with plans to try to fly tomorrow. Meanwhile, here in the heart of it all, I'm happy as the proverbial pig. Why? Because I'm coming off a week-long airplane extravaganza in Oklahoma and now I am stranded at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. 

 On arrival this afternoon, I learned my onward flight to New York was canceled due to weather with no chance to get out of town until Friday afternoon. I'm no fool, so I hustled on over to the Hilton O'Hare Airport, which has absolutely one of the best views on the planet for plane spotting. 

The view from my room, if I look left. The view right is equally good.

From my room high above gates E, F and G, I am watching Kalitta Air, KLM and United B747s and Iberia and SAS A340s, British Airways and American B777s take off from Runway 14R. That lineup of Fed Ex and Lufthansa Cargo MD 11s probably won't start moving until late tonight. 

In the foreground, like pawns on the chess board, a passel of American, United and Continental (is that redundant?) RJs are chugging around - cute as can be. I am watching all of this over the screen of my laptop. I can hear the vroom of the engines and smell the jet fuel. Jealous yet?

Refurbishing seats at the American MRO in Tulsa

This all-airplanes-all-the-time afternoon - courtesy of Mother Nature, no foolin' - follows an extraordinary week in which I was trotted from Tulsa to Oklahoma City to learn how rich is the history of aviation in the Sooner state. I guess had I given it much thought, I would have realized on my own that Oklahoma is pretty darned steeped in aviation. 

The state's two biggest employers are the FAA's Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center and Tinker Air Force Base. And the whopping American Airlines maintenance and repair operation in Tulsa, competes with Lufthansa Technik in bragging that it is one of the largest airline-owned repair operations. (More on this visit from KOTV.)

KC-135 flight crew at Tinker AFB

At Tinker, along with a group of twelve journalists from the U.S. and Europe, I toured the maintenance and repair operation for half a day. Yeah, it's a big building, okay? We rode around in tram that made us feel as if we were headed for Disney World but there was nothing Mickey Mouse about the sight of KC-135s lined up one next to another inside 3.8 million square feet of cavernous space. The base occupies bunches of buildings but we spent most of our time in one of Tinker's new acquisitions, a former General Motors assembly plant the state bought in 2006 and turned over to Tinker.  

Oklahoma feels, I am told repeatedly, that the more it supports aviation, the more stable, well-paying jobs will be available for residents of the state. These are "gold collar" jobs, I was told by Kara Gae Neal, superintendent of TulsaTech, a school that trains students in aviation maintenance and piloting among other things.  With an I'm-serious-but-let's-be-real approach, Kara told me, "This not your father's shop class." 

Susan Brake in a aircraft worked on by Tulsa Tech students

TulsaTech, like Tinker has been the beneficiary of Oklahoma's commitment to enhancing an already well-developed aviation industry. The school's gleaming new campus, spacious airplane hangars and engine shops are designed to turn out mechanics for many of the companies I visited and dozens of others in and outside of Oklahoma. 

Geek confession - I loved engaging in all this plane-talk with other aviation writers and it was with regret that we said our goodbyes this morning and set off on separate flights back to Cleveland, Washington, Paris, Rome and England. I was the only one rolling sevens (and I'm not talking about Boeing sevens here) which is why I am now perched unexpectedly and delightedly over the perpetually busy airfield at O'Hare. Unwilling to remove my head from the clouds after a week at altitude, it turns out for one more night I don't have to.

I love the fourth of July as a summer ritual, as an opportunity to be with family and friends and most of all as an excuse to be unabashedly enthusiastic about being an American.  But if there's one thing I'd like to change about this land that I love, it is the Fourth of July hot dog eating contest in Coney Island, New York.


The annual event is a 10 minute spectacle of gluttony, and its a metaphor for what is wrong with America. For 92 years, Nathan's, the makers of very delicious hot dogs, sponsors a contest to see how many hot dogs participants can eat in 10 minutes. This year, Joey "Jaws" Chestnut won the prize after consuming 68 dogs in buns according to Nathans.

I find gorging as entertainment
a) repulsive and
b) inexcusable in a world where more than one billion people go hungry.

Does eliminating an annual tradition do anything to address the problem of world hunger? Well indirectly, yes. Our nation has been so richly blessed we have an obligation to be responsible with resources and share our wealth.   But when we consume a disproportionate amount of the world's food supply and glorify our excesses, our perspective becomes distorted. Gluttony is transformed to virtue.

As long ago as 1630, John Winthrop preached to the settlers of New England that America would be as a "city on a hill" with the "eyes of all people upon us." Much has changed since then but the world is still watching America. What does it see?

America is sometimes accused of being a degenerate country. Events like Nathan's hot dog eating contest do little to disprove the charge.  I believe that we Americans are better than this. If I didn't, I wouldn't love the Fourth of July as much as I do.

Saturday night I attended a “meet the congressman” gathering at the Greenwich home of Chicken Soup for the Soul publisher Amy Newmark and her husband Bill Rouhana. Amy was quite specific that this was to be a bi-partisian event to meet Congressman Jim Himes - though checks for the freshman’s lawmaker’s upcoming re-election bid would not be unwelcome.

This was my first opportunity to meet Jim Himes and I was impressed with his willingness to hear what was on the minds of his constituents. Unlike many politicians, he listened far more than he talked. Toward the end of the gathering he spoke for about 10 minutes.

In the interest of full disclosure, last spring, Cong. Himes sent a letter to the White House on my behalf when I was a potential nominee to the National Transportation Safety Board. But he already had my vote, because he is in the right place on so many national issues.

A question about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico launched a conversation about America’s oil dependence. Himes suggested our well-established taste for foreign oil, specifically Saudi Arabia’s, is unwise. He said that while artificially depressing energy prices seems like a good idea, it has the negative effect of removing incentives to conserve or create innovative alternatives to oil.  

Himes, speaking in affluent backcountry Greenwich did not hesitate to tell folks whose children attend one of the finest public school systems in the nation, that more attention needs to be paid to education in other American cities and towns, including more federal funding for programs that encourage local school districts to improve.

Between mortgage and banking scandals, health insurance reform, military conflicts and environmental and safety catastrophes these reforms have been sidelined.

I remember clearly Inauguration day 2009. My husband and I and our two younger children waited in the cold on the Washington mall connected via cell phone to our two college-aged kids as Barak Obama took the oath of office. The presidential race was their first opportunity to vote so it was a heady, emotional, hopeful event for our whole family and  many others.

Since then, our country has lurched from one national catastrophe to another and I am losing my optimism. That is why I was so impressed listening to this young, first-time congressman. Himes was confident enough to be frank - admitting that the process will be difficult and unpleasant. With his assessment of how hard it will be he has reinvigorated my belief that the change so many of us voted for in 2008, is achievable.

This Memorial day the family went to the Corsairs over Connecticut Wheels and Wings show at the Sikorsky Memorial Airport in Stratford. We had my mother-in-law, Mary Schembari, along because when she was teenager, she worked at the Chance Vought factory which produced the Corsair for the Navy during World War II. The single engine, gull wing airplane took its first flight 70 years ago and without stretching the point, I can tell you - that event happened in concert with a time in the life of my mother-in-law when she herself had wings.


In 1943, Mary was a brown haired pixie of a girl, five foot two and barely 100 pounds. She had moved from Sunbury, Pennsylvania to Connecticut after completing high school. She was just 17 and like thousands of other young American women at the time, she’d been trained in an industrial skill so she could help in the war effort.

She was hired at the Corsair factory in Stratford, which even today is still across the street from the airport. When the bosses learned she could weld, she was given the Navy welder’s exam and put to work for $1.25 an hour.

So imagine, if you will, young Mary, dressed in overalls and saddle shoes on her way to work where she will gather her toolbox, don a mask and gloves and build airplanes. Imagine this because - as if time had stood still - that’s the girl who stood on a sunny tarmac on Sunday, watching those airplanes take to the sky.

“I had tears in my eyes,” she told me later that afternoon, “just to think of them still flying.”

Len Roberto, a member of the Airdales and a volunteer at the air show, says there are only 25 or so Corsairs still airworthy. So to have five of them in one place, all dolled up in shiny paint and polished aluminum is a tribute to the plane’s unique relationship with Connecticut and the people who live here.

“This is one of the few planes where the whole thing was designed and built in one state,” he told me later. “Anytime you talk about World War II airplanes, the Corsair is always going to be in the top. There’s no way you can mistake this plane for anything else other than a Corsair.”

Now a number of high profile flying machines have emerged from the tiny state of Connecticut, including the S-42 Flying Boat which was operated by Pan American World Airways and Sikorsky’s Black Hawk and Sky Crane helicopters. But when it comes to the Corsair the confluence of design, technology and national purpose distinguishes this airplane. You could see that reflected on the faces of the crowd at this weekend’s show.

For Mary, the plane is evocative of a time when her life was full of promise. She was “footloose and fancy free” she told me, a cutie pie among cutie pies, who worked hard by day and attended dances with visiting servicemen on Saturday nights. She would marry a sailor, Jimmy, and enjoy a half-century of wedded bliss, but that was in the future. In the early 1940s, she was living in a boarding house with young women from around the country and enjoying it all.

“We had the foreman who would come around and check our work and say, ‘That’s a good weld Mary.’ Or ‘You know that wasn’t so great,’” she told me. “They kept after you to improve, to stop the fooling around and concentrate on what we were doing. There was a lot of flirting going on in the factory.”

I couldn’t help thinking about that this weekend when Christopher Soltis, a World War II re-enactor in full 40’s era flight gear, approached and started chatting up Mary. Christopher was certainly as adorable as Mary was in her prime and he appeared thrilled to meet someone who worked on the Corsair factory floor.

As the afternoon went on the Corsairs on display cranked up their engines and flew formations. Mary found herself affected in a way she had not anticipated by her role in the history of this airplane.

“It was an assembly line where you could see this thing being made. From the in-door to the out-door this plane is coming down and people are working on it. I didn’t have enough sense to look at it and realize what I was doing. I didn’t appreciate what I did until I stood there on Sunday. I got choked up and I thought, ‘My God, this is what I did.’”

Indulge me. This post has nothing to do with aviation and everything to do with how the human spirit can soar.

The worship service at my church this Sunday was led by former inmates from Sing Sing, the New York State penitentiary in Ossining. What do men who have served lengthy sentences for serious crimes have to teach generally law-abiding suburban Presbyterians?



While incarcerated, they participated in a special masters degree program with New York Theological Seminary. And now they are out, "released" from the safety of the prison community. Here, in the cold, hard world of freedom, their faith is put to the test.

Listening to their testimonies, it was clear that folks who have spent years behind bars, have a rich perspective on the core concepts of Christianity: atonement, forgiveness, rebirth.

This was an unusual service for a number of reasons and in summary I can only say, you should have been there to hear them preach, pray and praise God.

But I can share with you the poetry of one man, Jafar Abbas, who led the prayer of confession, and added a poem he wrote to demonstrate his own hands-on relationship with forgiveness. I found it inspiring. I hope you do, too.

I Ain't Blamin' You by Jafar Abbas

Oh!
I'm sorry

I hope I wasn't

Writing too

Loud.

I had

Absolutely

No ideal that a pen

Could so easily break through

This forced internal silence

And set free so many

Externally loud

Noises.

I was afraid to talk about it

Even to myself

I was afraid

But I needed

To confront it right?

if I was ever

Going to move forward

With my life.

To deal with it

So I could deal

With myself.

I think I

Can tell you

About it now that

I had it locked up inside

Me for so long

I was mad at you!

I bet you didn't

Know that.

You know

We got the same blood

Well really not the same

Half of mine's belongs to Mommy

But you already knew that

Did you know

Your half still fights

With Mommy's half and

I'm still stuck in the middle

Siding with Mommy

Needing my father

Wanting my own blood.

Did you know

I didn't always like this blood

The way it ran through my veins screaming

"I should kill you!"

I didn't always like this blood

This red stuff

That made the world

Look at me and see you

"He looks just like his father."

I didn't always like this blood

This blue stuff

This you in me

I thought

It would make us

Apart of each other

How far a ---- part

From each other

We have

Grown.

Maybe

That's the part of you

That abandoned

Me

Or

The part of me

that abandoned

You?

I

Never

Told you

That I was

Scared.

I never told you

That I swore

"When I get big!"

"You wait, when I get big!"

I never told you

That I cried all by myself

That day you said

"Good-bye."

That day

My small world

Broke into a million

Confusingly tiny

Pieces.

I should have

Told you

That I loved you

And things may

Have been

All right.

But

I ain't blaming you

and its never

Too late.

I

Love you

Daddy!

Ron Mastro got the call at 7:00pm on Saturday night telling him to be in Greenwich by six Sunday morning. The worst of the March 13th Nor'easter hadn’t hit coastal Connecticut yet, but Mastro a Connecticut Power storm damage assessor from Waterbury understood; the heavy rains and massive winds would leave a path of destruction. Indeed that was the case.




Shortly after eight, a tree fell on a resident of back country Greenwich, killing her and injuring her companion. Emergency workers were delayed in their attempts to reach her because of blocked roads, according to an interview with the police chief David Ridberg in the local paper. "All the access areas were blocked, the officers and EMS had to walk to the scene and it took a while to get there."

By dawn Sunday, Greenwich town leaders declared a state of emergency. Hundreds of trees uprooted in the storm ripped down power lines, smashed through homes and garages and blocked roads. Eighteen thousand people are without power in Greenwich, about the same number in Stamford. Storm sewers backed up causing flooding in the streets and in some homes, too.

The most dramatic damage I saw on my side of town, Old Greenwich, was the towering hemlock that fell across Tomac Road near Innis Arden Golf Course.

As it fell, it sent a cylindrical transformer the size of a beer keg, crashing off the top of a power pole and onto the street. Assessing the damage, around 2:00 this afternoon, Mastro said it would take days to clean up this particular mess.

My friend Chuck Allen had some dramatic moments with the storm in Stamford yesterday afternoon. He took this photo Saturday. Below, he describes what happened. (Sabah is his wife and Khaled is their son.)

Last night Sabah and I were returning home from shopping at about 3:30 - driving north on Westover Rd. We encountered a power line draping across the road. It was black and nearly invisible. I decided to stay and direct traffic around it because it was very dangerous to southbound cars - they wouldn't see it and if they hit it, it could come right through the windshield with catastrophic results. I directed traffic for about an hour and waited for the police - 4 calls to 911 and no police ever showed up.

Sabah finally called Khaled at home and asked him to bring me a warmer jacket, gloves, hat and flashlight. Khaled arrived just as the powerline came down. He heard the blast and saw it explode in his rear-view mirror. He was the last car that came though there. Five seconds later and he would have been a part of that - very scary.

Chuck, who lives in north Stamford is without power and was gracious enough to plug into a generator to download and share with me, these other photos, taken yesterday in Stamford.



Mastro, says the wind storm damage here isn’t the worst he’s seen, in his years working for Connecticut Power, but admitted it was among the most notable. Over the next days he says he and hundreds of other
utility workers brought in from around the state will remain in Fairfield County, spending their work all their waking hours repairing the damage from this weekend's storm.

Read the statement from Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell.

Immigration officials at the West Palm Beach airport seized a two year old Haitian child being brought into the United States for medical treatment on Saturday.

The child, Mishna Prezille was flown to Florida on a private plane operated by the missionary group, Air Mobile Ministries and was in the custody of two journalists who volunteer with the charity. She was to be put into the care of a Florida physician, but immigration officers told the group when they arrived that the child had an illegal visa, according to John Torres, a newspaper reporter with Florida Today, who was on the flight.

Marlin Moudy, the pilot who regularly works for the Florida-based charity, flew the plane into West Palm Beach International Airport. He said he examined the visa before departing Haiti. "I'm a pilot and I have to make sure these things are all valid." Mr. Moudy said the document he examined was a one year visa issued on August 16, 2009.

"She was screaming and hollering when they took her," Mr. Moudy said calling the atmosphere at the airport traumatic when federal authorities separated Mishna from her chaperone, a local television reporter Marci Gonzalez.

"They put her in a big SUV and took her away and she was crying."

Mishna was on her way to the home of Dr. Stephen Badolato, who lives two-hours drive from West Palm Beach and says he has power of attorney to provide for the medical care of the child. He volunteers medical treatment and guardianship to the Ruuska Village orphanage in Bon Repos, Haiti. Dr. Badolato said the power of attorney was with him at his home, not with the child. "It's horrible. I've been up all night working on trying to get her back," Dr. Badolato said.

An official at the Department of Homeland Security said the problem was not with the child's visa but the authorization for her guardianship. "There was no proof of guardianship. He didn't have the documentation in terms of guardianship," the official said of Dr. Badolato's authorization.

Reached in Haiti Sunday, Joe Hurston, of Air Mobile relief said Mishna had surgery in the United States last summer and was in Haiti to visit her mother before returning to the U.S. for more medical treatment. She was at the orphanage at the time of the earthquake.

"This is a 2-year old girl with club feet. We had two journalists in the plane and another American Airlines captain and they were all held in the airport for 7 hours while being interrogated," said Mr. Hurston.

In addition to Mr. Torres and Ms. Gonzalez, Tom Garcia, an airline pilot and a state political candidate was also on the airplane. Mr. Torres said the baby and Ms. Gonzalez were inseparable. "She just took to Marci. She was hanging on her the whole time."

When the plane arrived, Ms. Gonzalez and the child were taken into the airport. The men were held on the aircraft by armed officers for six hours.

U.S. Congressman Bill Posey, who started calling customs officials after Mr. Torres contacted him by phone, said he was told that authorities were concerned because there was a report of a Haitian child kidnapped. A DHS official denies there was specific kidnapping but said the department is generally concerned that children entering the country "are placed with the proper people."

"I can't tell if it was handled in an appropriate way until I get the facts," Congressman Posey said of the airport snafu. "Obviously my staff and I have all the sympathy for the little girl but at the same time we must respect the rule of law. I'm not saying there weren't bad decisions made. That's our goal to get the details."

A DHS official said if Dr. Badolato produces documents proving he has the right to custody of Mishna, he would be able to take her from the children's home in Miami where she is presently being housed.

Like so much in Haiti, the Ruuska Village orphanage is in ruins and residents are sleeping out of doors. The director of the orphanage, Barbara Walker has arranged the adoptions of several children according to Mr. Hurston, who is taking care of their transportation out of the country. Mr. Hurston says the U.S. Embassy has promised swift processing of their visas. "We have 13 visas and making arrangements to fly them out tomorrow. Before they make this flight we want to make sure this travesty does not happen again."

Photos courtesy of John Torres Florida Today

December 27, 2009

As we opened Christmas presents the other morning, the kids and I took notes about who gave us what. That list, scribbled in the chaos of Christmas morning, becomes an important document when it’s time to write our thank you notes.



I got into the habit of writing thank you notes when I was a young girl. My mother was insistent that all four of her children should write letters to everyone who gave us presents. It didn’t matter if the gift had been delivered in person and the gift giver verbally thanked, or if the present came from a perfect stranger.

Each year in the spring, my brother and my sisters and I would arrive home from school to discover a box full of presents from England. These were Christmas presents that never arrived in season. That was fine with us. We fell on them with great enthusiasm coming as they did, so long after our Christmas gifts had lost their novelty.

The box from Europe always had really cool things. One year we got some very unique mechanical pencils and boxes of replacement lead. There were toys and other doodads you just didn’t see in the States. England was still a long way away back then. My siblings and I loved the stuff that came in those cartons. For quite a while I never questioned the reason or the source of the gifts and it wasn’t until I was old enough to write thank you notes that it even occurred to me that there was a person behind the loot.

As it turned out, there was a pretty interesting story there. They came from a woman who had been communicating with my mother since the two of them were 13-years old. They were pen pals. Their correspondence continued through high school and into adulthood. In fact, my mother and Nette still keep in touch going on 63 years now.

It will come as no surprise then, that when I was in junior high school, mom encouraged me to get a pen pal. It seems so quaint now, in the age of email and IM and cell phones to think of a time when if you had something to say to someone you sat down, wrote it out, revised it, addressed an envelope, found a stamp, walked to the mail box and trusted that your news would be transmitted to the recipient within a week or two and that you’d have a reply in the next month. It sounds like I’m remembering life in a past century and I guess I am.

In any event, that is the kind of expression in which I was encouraged to engage and I have over the years filled my share of diaries and journals as well. While I was not, nor am I now a prolific epistolarian, I’ve written two books, and worked as a journalist for three decades so I guess I’ve killed a tree or two at this point in my life.

The most dependable pen pal I ever had was my grandfather, Sam. Because he was very generous with me I was obliged to write thank you notes with some frequency. I might have resented having to write the letter but I knew once it went into the mail, I’d hear back from him promptly.

When his letter arrived, it contained two things; a personal and handwritten reply, which included an update on his life and comments and questions about mine, and also my original letter with each misspelled word circled and each grammatical error corrected.
My grandfather could not bear for English to be maltreated and that went for the spoken word too.

When we were together if I started a sentence saying, “There was this girl…” I’d hear, “You mean - a girl I know.” If I reported on some activity involving my brother by saying, “Me and Jamie…” I’d hear, “You mean - Jamie and I.”

The parallel track to my grandfather’s lectures on proper English was the vocabulary and spelling component. Sam had a prodigious vocabulary. Though I never learned if it was inadvertent or intentional, I never had a conversation with my grandfather when I didn’t learn the spelling and definition of at least one new word. You may be thinking that Sam was a bit of a scold, but that’s not the case. We’d play games together. Especially Scrabble. That was a favorite.

In short, my grandfather was fascinated with words. He was taken by their variety and elasticity, how one root could branch into many others. He loved the specificity and power and structure of words.

The other thing my grandfather loved was travel. And I think these two great interests clashed because while he appreciated learning about people and nations around the world, he was frustrated that his marvelous facility with English did not serve him in many of the places he visited.

For many years he entertained the idea of creating a universal language called Pip. He used to talk to me about it and one detail that I remember is that no word in Pip would be more than one syllable. Now I think that my grandfather was ahead of his time, working out in his mind a vocabulary of words that would serve the global village.

As far as I know, Pip did not go any farther than our dinner table conversations. It certainly did not bring my grandfather fame and fortune. Sam practiced tax and estate law and made enough money so that he was a frequent donor to Rutgers School of Law, where he received his degree. His daughter - my mother - recently helped create of a law library reading room in my grandfather’s name. That is a great gift to his memory.

So when I think about my mother and her father one of their greatest gifts to me was teaching me to appreciate words. When used properly they can bridge cultures, enlighten minds and bring ideas to life. So in this season of gift giving, I want to show my appreciation for the great lessons they taught me through thank you notes.