U.S. carrier now pounding ISIS from Mediterranean – CNN.com

Impact

 Never forget how hard you worked to become the best.

WORKING ON A FLIGHT LINE is an experience embedded for life in that it is both beauty and beast. Few other occupations require the intensity and precision of a team whose members must absolutely communicate across not only distance, but also throughout the noise. The margin for error is practically zero, and the climate is often extreme.

This news article  has no video, yet it invokes powerful recollections and imagery of having been a ground refueling specialist at a fighter training facility.

How’s The Weather In L.A.?

Weather, A Safe Topic

Songwriter Keith Curtis wrote his songs as he lived them. He has a B.M.I. repertoire of sixty–five songs, of which more than half are based on a lifetime of travel. Some of his traveling could be categorized as exotic while other destinations were seemingly tame.

He filled his down time at hotels worldwide feet up with a legal pad writing emotive versions of experiences to music coming from seemingly nowhere.

An awkward phone conversation with someone in Los Angeles turned toward the topic of weather when little else was to say.

Every Damned Day

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Enough Is Enough.”

There’s a towel in every damned day that goes by when I keep trying until I won’t fail.

But for every day of perceived failure, I succeed in learning something new. When that happens, I get up from my self–imposed retreat on the comfy sofa where I hope to read myself to death or re–awaken with a new appetite for what I think I was cut out to do oh so many years ago.

If not for the giant wet blanket, I would probably not need one towel, much less several gross of spares. Asking someone for advice as to how to deal with it gets an answer something like this: Deal with it; work your way through it; it takes intestinal fortitude… Platitudes!

My secret way of dealing with it is to come apart in big ways when nobody is around to experience this dramatic thing: I get up, stalk the length and width of my writing space, slathering and roaring out creative expeletives. The benefits outweigh the risks in that I breathe heavily, which is something I forget to do while working.

If there is a final towel to throw in, it won’t be done by me. That’s some comfort in itself.