The Omen
From today’s Guardian:
President Barack Obama ordered a suspension of the controversial Guantánamo Bay military tribunals, in one of his first actions after being sworn in yesterday.
Within hours of taking office Obama’s administration filed a motion to halt the war crimes trials for 120 days, until it completes a review of the much-criticised system for trying suspected terrorists.
As a first presidential gesture, I like this one.*
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/21/barack-obama-first-full-day
I also like the four direct phone calls to Middle Eastern leaders at the same time as I’m thinking, okay, we know he can grandstand. What comes after? And how sure was he (or his advisors) that the leaders in question would take phone calls as a gesture of faith and good will and not a piece of Hollywood?
And, because this is the blog of a self-obsessed middle-aged fantasy writer, I will add that as I sit here, having clawed myself back up off the sofa to eat dinner sitting up not because it’s the civilised thing to do but because if I eat it lying down I’ll get it all over me** and extra laundry is a drag, I sure hope he does not go down with ME.
Meanwhile, in other news***, did you follow the extraordinary story of the airplane crash–or rather belly flop–in New York’s Hudson River a few days ago?
There doesn’t seem to be any good video footage†, but you get a couple of fuzzy glimpses of what appears to be a very large plane flying very much too low here:
http://www.ny1.com/Default.aspx?ArID=92463&ap=1&Flash
And†† the crucial paragraphs from this http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/17/plane-crash-hudson-investigation :
Within seconds of taking off towards the north from LaGuardia, Sullenberger reported to air traffic control that both engines had been hit.††† He first requested to return to the airport, but then tried to land in a nearer commercial air strip just across the Hudson in New Jersey.
To reach the strip he banked sharply to the left at about 1,400 ft, following the course of the Hudson south along the west side of Manhattan and clearing the George Washington bridge by only about 800 ft.‡
By now the plane was without power, and Sullenberger’s training as a certified glider pilot was coming into its own. He realised that he would not make it to the New Jersey strip, and decided to land on the water. He then executed what experts described as a perfect ditching of the plane.
He was the last to leave the plane, checking that everyone had left even as the aircraft began to lurch lower into the water.
There are two things I totally love about this story. In the first place, it has a happy ending. And in the second place . . . Captain Sullenberger isn’t just the pilot that guessed right. He’s a forty-year aviation veteran, and he lectures on aviation safety and what to do in emergencies: ‘He was instrumental in the development and implementation of the crew resource management course used at his airline and has taught the course to hundreds of colleagues.’ He’s an EXPERT. But he’s an EXPERT who actually knows what he’s talking about. He’s a practical expert! When he was taken out of the classroom and plopped down in the middle of what he knew about on paper, he didn’t start talking about bullet points and fumbling for his parachute he knew what to do and he did it. ‡‡
This positively gives me faith in my fellow human. And because I’m a fantasy writer and a romantic as well as a cynic and an evil cow, and I’m playing in both my worlds this week, I’m going to say that it makes a good omen for the new administration. I kind of feel I’m on a plane in nosedive from Double Bird Strike. But Captain Obama might just pull us out.
PS: And Lucy Coats sent us this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xkw8ip43Vk
I cannot express how much I want one of those t shirts.
* * *
* Got an email from Hannah saying, Ha! I read your blog! Where’s your cynicism now! And furthermore, I’m going to tell the story of . . . mmmmmrrglmMMMph . . . Oh no you’re not. There are some things a finely nurtured rep as an evil cow will not survive. However I had lunch with a local friend today who said that the BBC had been prowling with microphones at the ready and they’d managed to find someone who went on quite a while about the degradation and downfall of the ex-great country of America and that segregation was the only possible way for white people and black people to live together^ blah blah blah blah blah blah and of course they aired this one, all in the name of impartial reporting and covering the full range of blah! Thanks guys! Well done! May you always have chewing gum on the bottoms of your shoes, especially when you’re about to walk across your mother-in-law’s new off-white carpet!
^ Tell that to Barack’s genes
** and the hellhounds. Although since it’s a sort of lamb and duck cassoulet they’d probably be fine with the idea^
^ If I put it in their bowls they wouldn’t eat it, but licking it off the sofa would be great
*** For those of you who still are as current-events allergic as I’ve always been, I’ll get off this political jag soon, and revert to ranting about hellhounds and geraniums. But . . . well . . . nobody idealised Bill Clinton, did they? And we wouldn’t have idealised Hillary. And while one of the ways I’ve survived being a blisteringly deep-dyed romantic is by keeping my fantasy world and my real world severely apart, Obama–or possibly Obama’s spectacular sense of theatre–is briefly giving me a holiday where I get to play with/in both at once.^
^ I was too young for Kennedy and in hindsight I don’t like him much. Lincoln, maybe, but you do know that he freed the slaves out of political expediency, don’t you? Liberating his black brothers and sisters was not on the agenda: saving the Union by scaring the south into good behaviour was. [Gross oversimplification alert]
† And I realise it’s nothing like the same thing–this is 155 people who lived as opposed to almost 3000 who died–but I keep thinking about the fact that we have enough photographic nightmare material from 9/11 to keep us going for the rest of our lives–you remember your equivalent of sitting on the sofa wrapped up in a blanket and three whippets watching smoke drifting up from the World Trade Center and the latest update running across the bottom of the screen on a yellow ribbon, don’t you? And–possibly–endlessly trying the same phone number(s), telling yourself that of course the lines are jammed solid and that you can’t get through doesn’t mean anything? And here we have a piece of genuine jaw-dropping life-saving heroism also involving a plane over Manhattan and nobody had their cell phone out at the right moment.
†† Don’t bother with this video: it begins with a spectacularly annoying ad and goes downhill from there.
††† By birds. No, really: ‘ . . . both engines had sucked in birds in an extremely rare case of “double bird strike”.’ Double bird strike! It has an official name! Oh dear! Since everyone is okay, am I allowed to say snoork here?
‡ Yeeep
‡‡ It might have been nice if he were an Iraqi, but we can’t have everything.
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