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# 2024-08-17 - Daughter of the Sky by Paul L Briand, Jr. | |
The Story of Amelia Earhart | |
> Courage | |
> | |
> Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace. | |
> The soul that knows it not | |
> Knows no release from little things: | |
> Knows not the livid loneliness of fear, | |
> Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear | |
> The sound of wings. | |
> How can life grant us boon of living, compensate | |
> For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate | |
> Unless we dare | |
> The soul's dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay | |
> With courage to behold the resistless day, | |
> And count it fair. | |
> --Amelia Earhart | |
I loved how Amelia Earhart defied stereotypes in all dimensions. She | |
"colored outside the lines" so to say. Amelia Earhart experienced a | |
lot of "push back," and yet became a national and global hero | |
supported by a great number of people. She lived free even though | |
not on a level field, or should i say level runway... | |
This book has a lot of crunchy details for aviation nerds. What | |
stood out to me was the unbelievable count of aircraft failures over | |
the course of Amelia Earhart's life. It seems to me that the | |
aircraft were spectacularly dangerous and unreliable. Perhaps it was | |
not as mature a technology in that historical period. | |
What follows are interesting quotes from the book. | |
... she had an insatiable curiosity about everything in life--ideas, | |
books, people, places, mechanical things; she loved all kinds of | |
sports and games, especially those "only for boys"; she fidgeted with | |
an implacable unrest to experiment, to try new things; she teemed | |
with a zest for living, paradoxically entwined with a gnawing and | |
pervasive longing to be alone... | |
"... Perhaps the fact that I was exceedingly fond of reading made me | |
endurable. With a large library to browse in, I spent many hours not | |
bothering anyone after I once learned to read." | |
* * * | |
Railey thought Amelia looked dissatisfied. "What's the matter?" he | |
asked. "Aren't you excited?" | |
Her answer came slowly. "Excited? No." Amelia took her leg off from | |
the arm of the chair and sat up straight. "It was a wonderful | |
experience, but all I did was lie on the floor of the fuselage and | |
take pictures of the clouds. We didn't see much of the ocean. Bill | |
did all the flying—had to. I was just baggage," she said, "like a | |
sack of potatoes." | |
"What of it?" Railey replied quickly. "You're still the first woman | |
to fly the Atlantic, and, what's more, the first woman pilot to do | |
it." | |
Amelia was not convinced. "Oh, well," she said, "maybe someday I'll | |
try it alone." | |
* * * | |
Amelia looked out over the waves; then she swung around quickly. "But | |
someday," she said strongly, "I will have to do it alone, if only to | |
vindicate myself. I'm a false heroine now, and that makes me feel | |
very guilty. Someday I will redeem my self-respect. I can't live | |
without it." | |
* * * | |
At the luncheons and dinners Amelia chuckled at some of the names the | |
speakers used for the women fliers: "sweethearts of the air," "flying | |
flappers," "angels," "sunburned derbyists." All they wanted to be | |
called, AE insisted in vain, were "fliers," and, if necessary, "women | |
fliers." | |
The press called the race "Lipstick Derby," "Petticoat Derby," | |
"Powder Puff Derby." The last one stuck and has continued to the | |
present time. | |
* * * | |
Twenty-three years old, and with three hundred dollars in his | |
pockets, GP [AE's husband] settled in the valley of the Deschutes | |
River at Bend [, Oregon]. He was soon elected mayor of the town. | |
* * * | |
"If you follow the inner desire of your heart," she had said in a | |
magazine article, "the incidentals will take care of themselves." | |
* * * | |
The restless urge. Better than any college education was it to | |
experiment, to meet new people, to find out what made them tick. | |
Adapt, please, anger, study: these were better than any classroom. | |
The unexpected by adventure became the inevitable. Even the small | |
things, if they were an invitation to hop out of the rut, meant just | |
as much--as flying the Atlantic. | |
* * * | |
"I, for one," she wrote of the experience, "hope for the day when | |
women will know no restrictions because of sex but will be | |
individuals free to live their lives as men are free--irrespective of | |
the continent or country where they happen to live." | |
* * * | |
The communications equipment, however, was at once delightfully | |
modern and frustratingly primitive. Pilot and navigator had voice | |
radio; but only the navigator had telegraphic key. Both could | |
transmit and receive with ground stations, but not with each other. | |
For intercommunications the navigator would have to use a cut-down | |
bamboo fishing pole, with an office clip nailed to the end of it, to | |
send messages written on cards up to the pilot; if he wanted to talk | |
to the pilot, or if he wanted to dial the radio behind the pilot to a | |
new frequency, he would have to crawl along the catwalk over the two | |
big tanks between the cockpit and the passenger compartment. … | |
* * * | |
"Hamlet would have been a bad aviator," Amelia once said. "He worried | |
too much. The time to worry," she added, "is three months before a | |
flight. Decide then whether or not the goal is worth the risks | |
involved. If it is, stop worrying. To worry is to add another hazard. | |
It retards reactions, makes one unfit." | |
title: Daughter of the Sky | |
author: Briand, Paul L., Jr., 1920-1986 | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Amelia_Earhart | |
LOC: TL540.E3 B7 | |
source: gopher://gopher.pglaf.org/1/7/0/2/6/70263/ | |
tags: biography,ebook,gender,non-fiction,travel | |
# Tags | |
biography | |
ebook | |
gender | |
non-fiction | |
travel |