hopefully the message to his friends will not get lost in translation
As the NYTimes.com homepage loads, the first visual display is a plane four-fifths submerged in an urban waterway, gray buildings turning gold in the receding sun. Dozens of people are in yellow rubber life-vests, huddled arm in arm out on the wing of a commercial jet that rests on the Hudson River’s surface. The other side, even more swamped, holds just as many of the passengers of flight 1549 as it lists into it’s first full aquatic immersion, where wet feet seem to be the least of the worries. Faces are calm despite the reality that the groups are being ushered into inflatable lifeboats that are latched to the grab handles positioned by the rear door. Normally seeing those yellow and gray boats sticking out in two-dimension from the safety card neatly stowed the seat back in front of you never seemed such a luxury.
Do not fret, the mouse will be explained later.
One hundred and fifty five people got a taste of how good it is to be alive, as it could so easily have been the contrary. It is rare in the life of a normal individual to have a true scare, where survival is not immediately evident. Luckily all of the passengers that spent their sunset on the Hudson, and the bystanders as well, were able to witness a great show of emergency service organization. And as the location could not be any more easily observed then the shore banks nearby, there will be plenty of great photos to share in the end.
The most pivotal point of the unravelling sequence was deftly handled by swift acting human intelligence: a pilot who knew how to do his job. Warning the passengers to brace for the impact, Captain C.B. Sullenberger had as clear of a concern for the people under his watch as he did the technical nature necessitated by the landing. After all the passengers had been cleared of his airship, the captain still went up and down the aisles twice to ensure that no one had been left behind. This begs the in-obvious question: did aisle emergency lights remain lit under the water that had flooded into the cabin?
At the moment of truth, people who do the jobs that matter, did they job they were entrusted to do. The ferry service, the fire department and the coast guard all had vessels out and facilitating a well executed rescue as they had undoubtedly prepared for so many times in the past. Even the NY Water Taxi put boats out to assist however they could, though the municipal rescue effort proved to be more than capable. With the plane not sinking completely there will be less of a headache in the future, but a logistical hangover will still be present in the extraction. Really though, kudos to everyone involved in rescue that seems to be the product of a couple of ten pound birds taking down a 47 ton commercial jetliner.
Oddly enough this has not been the only jet to go down in the last few days. Earlier this week a financial advisor from Indiana faked his own death by making a phony distress call and abandoning his personal jet while in mid-flight over Florida. Marcus Schrenker parachuted from the plane, leaving it to travel another 200 miles and land wherever it may. Fate must have felt for anyone nearby, as the plane finally went down in an uninhabited wooded area. Is this how we deal with having been recently served with divorce papers as well as being investigated for securities fraud? A child in a man’s body could be the only explanation for such irreverence of life and the permanence and impact of such a reckless and unthought out action.
This man had recently posted a video on tube of him performing a double bridge fly under in a high performance single seat plane. Traveling at 270 mph, Schrenker passed under two bridges in the Bahamas filming himself in a stunt that is claimed to have been permitted by the Bahaman government. And he thinks that people will believe that he lost control of his plane over Florida and died in a wreckage that had no body and no blood. In his SOS, Mr. Schrenker claimed that the windshield had been shattered and he was bleeding everywhere. Upon first inspection it was obvious to anyone on site that the windshield was intact and there was no blood. John Stewart said it best on the Daily Show, everyone staging a death in the manner knows to go and get a body from the morgue to burn-up unidentifiably in the wreckage.
There are so many aspects of this self-centered, perilous, brainlessness that point to the many levels of stupidity upon which this man operated. From the estranged phone call to a neighbor, the story given that he was in a canoeing accident while still carrying his oddly-aeronautical looking gear and googles, and the video of him checking into a motel after having paid in cash, this moron might be able to be classified unfit to stand trail. What kind of an imbecile plans his own ‘elaborate’ suicide with the amount of thought an eight year old gives to running away: i.e throwing a few juice boxes, cheese sticks and a change of underwear into his knapsack before riding off on his BMX into the hinterlands of suburbia. There should be surprise that they he was not found walking the railroad tracks with a stick over his shoulder, a small bundle tied up on the end. That’s it, no more silly talk of shenanigous activity.
What does still trouble is that incidents of a certain influence often happen in threes. One example of note was in the fall of 1997 when Princess Diana, Mother Theresa and John Denver all died in the six weeks spanning August 31 to October 12; all significant individuals in their own light and all looked upon with favor. In this trinity of sorts, each particular peson was known for their positive effects on society and those who came into contact with them. It was a dark day and another that could share some homage as the day the music died. We can only guess what can be the third in today’s world.
Perhaps this analysis is flawed though. Maybe Flight 1549 was just an aberration and the fact that two planes went down in a week with nary but a few cuts and bruises is purely coincidental. This botched suicide could have been the third, the american component if you wish, in the financial industry suicides linked to the gross loss of material wealth, status and reputation. Or really, the triad linked by the common thread of shame and self-murder could be but a stretch of the imagination.
However you look at it, our social-sphere is coming to mimic the atmosphere, a large field that is undergoing shifts resulting in terrific instances that one by one shake up reality as we know it. Just as the storms and climatological phenomena that affect our world have increased in number, intensity and consequence, so have the social and emotional impacts on human existence. These days one is almost unsurprised by the maelstrom of bad news that streams through modern media, each blow delivered in an unbiased order.
Today Russian weight is being thrown around the natural gas supply line that runs from Eastern Europe into Southern Europe as a vestigial flex of might at democracy and western thought. Who cares about those freezing at the other end of the pipe, just as long as Yushchenko cannot warm his pock marked face. How did it get that way again? Strategy like this is truly going to motivate the Ukrainian people to dismiss future ties to NATO and re-embrace mother Russia.
The rockets of Hamas passing Israeli rockets mid flight over the Gaza Strip in a conflict over… wait, what is that over again. Have people not warmed up to the idea of a two-state solution already? Must another filled school, another old-age home and a UN building get destroyed…by accident? Someone here missed out on some good Star-trek, like the whole ‘live long and prosper’ thing. According to basic English, the translation is not exterminate and prosper… or is it?
To complete this trilogy, the cupboard below my sink is under attack by mice who have begun to kamikaze the peanut butter nestled into the Decon snap traps. At least these beady eyed, furry insurgents are getting what they deserve. The swift blow of justice can be primitive in it’s execution, yet the end result surely justifies the means. Too bad society cannot find an equally effective method of sorting the destructive exhibitions of force into black and white, then dealing with them accordingly to keep the global kitchen free of the smirch and grime that will one day erase the human out of humanity.
(The next breath would otherwise be spent on Steve Jobs absence from Apple, Bernie Madoff and President Bush’s exit interviews.)
