When it's time to go, it's time to go, and it's time for NASA to let the rest of us go, too. Equally impressive are the dozens of people who stand gaping underneath it. I'm sure they, like me, have had years of flying bored, as the commonality of air transport has turned the rides into expensive nap times, movie galleries with cramped seating and bad food. O'Keeffe reminds us to look, and her canvas and oil instantly reminded me of the summer of my 8th year, heading to Los Angeles from Philadelphia. The song is mechanical, more read than sung, and yet since hearing it, I don't know if I've ever flown into Chicago, or any other city for that matter, without thinking of it - or thinking like it.
Planes fly in and out of Chicago hundreds of times a day.
It's safe and sound and boring. Thankfully Orville and Wilbur shared the experience with Georgia and Liz and the rest of us. It's time for science to share space. It's past time to get the poets, the philosophers, the psychologists, the politicians, the plumbers and, darn it, me, up there. I want to see what weather looks like without a meteorologist in the way.