Oct 25 2012

A few steps apart

Rosemary

Someone had already snagged my favorite seat in the library, so I had to scout around for another with as many virtues.   I like: a window; elbow room; solitude; quiet.

As I wandered, I was also scanning the bookshelves, as one does –  and I spotted a friend!

Hi, Laurie!

Fire Logic and Earth Logic by fellow Genrette Laurie J. Marks

Which naturally meant that all I had to do was turn around, and shuffle to the left a bit, and:

Actually I believe they have two copies of each...

Tucked in between Kirst and Kirwan

Hm.   I’m going to have to give them some copies of The Language of Power.    But that would mean talking to someone!   And I rather love my anonymity here.  Maybe I’ll mail them instead of handing them over in person. 

Today’s random quote:

Were I to make the simple statement that I climbed to an altitude of thirty-three thousand feet, that statement in and of itself would mean nothing because I have often gone higher than that.  But when I add that I did this in 1937 in a fabric-covered biplane without heating, without pressurization, and without an oxygen mask, the elements of an accomplishment are added.   I nearly froze; the pipestem between my teeth through which I tried to get an oxygen supply from a tank and connecting tube was inadequate for the purpose, and I became so disoriented through lack of oxygen that it took over an hour to get my bearings and make a landing.   The difference between the pressure my body was accustomed to on the ground and the atmospheric pressure at 33,000 feet was  such that a blood vessel in my sinus ruptured.

— The Stars at Noon by Jacqueline Cochran, Little, Brown and Company, 1954.

Now, that's what I call a real author photo!  Think I should do that?

Chuck Yeager: "Jackie and I had one experience that can never be duplicated. I as the first man to pass the sonic barrier and Jackie as the first woman to do so each took a Sabre-jet, climbed to nearly fifty thousand feet of altitude and put the two planes, almost wing tip to wing tip, into a full-power vertical dive past the barrier, as a sort of supersonic duet"

And so to work…