Utah
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The Bittersweet Flights of Onkel Wackelflügel
Gail ‘Hal’ Halvorsen, born in Salt Lake City in 1920, grew up on small farms in rural Utah and Idaho. He worked hard, went to church, and dreamed of learning to fly. In 1941, he earned his private pilot’s license and joined the Civil Air Patrol. In December of that year, Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan and the U.S. declared war. In 1942, he joined the U.S. Army Air Forces, received military flight training, and was sent to fly supply missions in the South Atlantic. In 1948, after the war, he was stationed in Germany, flying C-54 cargo planes into West Berlin as part of the U.S. effort to…
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Contemporary West
Hello friends. I’ve been a bit distracted and I took an unintentional break from blogging. I’m getting back in the saddle; I promise. Meanwhile, I wrote a thing and someone published it! Yay for me! You can read it here if you are so inclined.
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Working Gals
A few years ago, I was dining alone in a nice restaurant in Irvine that had a cool hipster name like Figs & Branches or Peas & Bacon. I don’t know what it was. I was traveling for work (remember traveling? remember restaurants? *sigh*) and my boss recommended the spot. I got their early in the evening and had no trouble getting a table for one, but by the time I was finishing my meal the waiting area was packed with hungry foodies. Suddenly, three Indian women appeared at my table. One confidently sat down and the other two hovered for a moment, watching my face for my reaction. The…
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The Gatekeepers
I was in the 7th grade, sitting in class, when I heard my name called out over the intercom, directing me to go to the counselor’s office. I probably went either white or red, I don’t know. I just remember being paralytically shy in those years, and I remember the horror of having this attention directed toward me. The school counselor, Mr. Larsen, asked me to sit down in his office and he got straight to the point. “I called you down because you made an error on your class registration form for next year. You signed up for shop instead of home-ec. Here, I just need you to fix…
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2020 is a Shitstorm
The last couple of weeks went to hell in an old frayed tote bag from a long forgotten telethon for PBS. Last week, especially, was completely unproductive. There has been a lot of focus on the fires in the West, and the stories are terrible and horrifying. I just wonder if it were a slower news week, maybe the fact that there was a small hurricane in Utah might have received SOME attention. But no. Utah is the U.S.’s weird cousin state that everyone pretends not to know at school (or anywhere in public outside of Thanksgiving, for that matter… but even then you have to sneak into the dining…