“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

Tod Kelly

Tod is a writer from the Pacific Northwest. He is also serves as Executive Producer and host of both the 7 Deadly Sins Show at Portland's historic Mission Theatre and 7DS: Pants On Fire! at the White Eagle Hotel & Saloon. He is  a regular inactive for Marie Claire International and the Daily Beast, and is currently writing a book on the sudden rise of exorcisms in the United States. Follow him on Twitter.

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8 Responses

  1. David Ryan says:

    Fly!Report

  2. Mike Schilling says:

    Also consider picking up a copy of Jonathan Segal Chicken, the story of a Jewish chicken who thinks there must be more to life than ending up as soup.Report

  3. Cermet says:

    As a private instrument rated pilot (flew jets for a while, too) I too gave it up after getting married/having a child (dangerous and expensive hobby.) Miss it a great deal. Would like to get back into it but age and health is not gonna make that easy. Still, the joy of flight at night over the clouds with a sky blazing with stars is a slight … a seeing a great thunderstorm reaching towards space as you pass by in the night is also ‘up there’ for seeing nature’s good side (illness being its bad side … .) Still, can’t say it added any enlightenment but it did require developing a degree of responsibility that most people, I think, do not want to deal with (especially heavy weather flying – that is a joy very few ever experience even among pilots but a zero-zero landing using analog instruments is an experience that cannot be imagined.)Report

  4. Roger says:

    I too read and enjoyed both books in my youth. I haven’t thought about them in decades. I need to see of I still have them in the basement, or if I need to order new copies.

    I guess surfing became my flight.

    Thanks for the reminder and flash back. I am sorry it comes along with bad news for Bach.

    Btw, I have similar fond memories of Pirsig’s popular (pop) philosophy.Report

  5. Nadir Hasan says:

    Thank you for saying what I wanted to say.
    The friends I lost as life became more ‘real’ have never really left me it seems.

    “The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly”Report

  6. wardsmith says:

    I was supposed to do an angel flight today with my friend but it got cancelled. He flies 747 for a living but loves to take the “little” guy out. The vagaries of modern life have made it that he can’t really afford to fly the plane for fun, but it /is/ worth it to fly patients around for a good cause and take the tax deduction. Since I volunteer my time as co-pilot, he gets to deduct my “cost” from his taxes as a “mission assistant”. Aviation fuel at $6/gal and burning 20+ gal per hour (not counting maintenance, insurance and other expenses) makes flying a very expensive hobby indeed. Still a blast however, just to be up there with the angels.

    Another good book about flying was written by Jimmy Buffet. More than just flying of course, an easy day read “A Pirate Looks at 50”. Chatty but fun, probably find it for 50 cents at a used bookstore.

    Cermet, have you seen the “green flash” at sunset or sunrise? Beautiful but no way I could ever be quick enough to take the picture. I’ve never done a zero-zero with steam gauges, luckily my friend’s planes have always had excellent instruments including the best GPS since they were first available. IFR nother story, been there done that.

    While I was a student pilot I was landing in mountain resort town with a poorly situated airstrip that had one hellacious crosswind worse than this. I’ve got the rudder jammed about through the floor and am crabbing in until I’m literally 10 feet off the ground. My friend and CFI is sitting there with his arms crossed like he hasn’t a care in the world, even though the plane is bouncing like crazy and I’m 35 degrees out of phase with the runway bringing it down. I say, “I can’t do this” and he uncrosses his arms, grabs the controls and sets us down pretty as you please. He said, “I’ve trained pilots in the air force and civilian and you were bringing the plane down perfectly, better than any student I’ve ever seen in these condition, why did you give up?”. I said, “All I could picture was me doing a ground loop”. He thought that was pretty funny and signed me off for solo that day.

    For the non pilots of small planes, it looks a little like this video.Report

  7. Naturally, you’ll have to let us know if they grab as they did when you were younger.Report