Saturday, February 20, 2010

Being Amelia Earhart . . . is it ever too late to learn?

She comes in for a landing, hard. I suppose I've picked a theory for my novel, though it's the bleakest of all. It has her overshooting Howland and living as a castaway. Certainly it was done before in a more romantic vein, see I Was Amelia Eahart for details on that one. My book is completely different. No romance on the island, or off for that matter. She's Amelia and as such, she will have two competing concerns. She wants to complete her flight, but she also wants to understand what she's been brought back for.

More on that later, anyhow now she's in her sister's living room, and assuming it's a fever dream. One that shows a whole lot of depth. She's got visions of a future that are uncannily accurate. Slowly but surely she learns the limits of this place, and this fantasy . . . for the moment she's stuck in Mudford. Would she stay put? I vote no. I think her whole life was an attempt to leave this behind. She would want to do it again. But with second chances, there's a learning curve. You won't make the same piloting mistakes. You won't let the sun blind you, or run out of fuel, or overshoot the mark.
And psychologically I hope that's also true. I want to believe that it's never too late to learn. . .

6 comments:

  1. Heck no, it's never too late to learn and you're never too old to become a student. Speaking from the domain I'm most familiar with, pilots spend their entire careers learning new stuff, and learning old stuff better. That's what makes aviation so rewarding -- there's always something more to learn, no matter how many years you've been flying. Also, it's never too late to take up flying for the first time. I know of several student pilots who began taking instruction in their 70's & 80's.

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  2. I'm in my fifties, there's time I hope.

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  3. I agree that it is never too late to learn. Since we are in our fifties, if we are fortunate enough to avoid premature death, we have a good quarter-century of learning ahead of us- thank goodness!

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  4. You know Colleen, I was just thinking this. I hope we're both right. I'd like to believe there's fun to be had. Or as Amelia said, for "the fun of it."

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  5. Speaking of "The Fun of It," I'd like to point out something about that book which no one, to my knowledge, has ever noticed: so far as I can tell, the chapters where she talks about women pilots past and present constitute the first survey of women's aviation history. The aviation history texts which existed in her day would typically give a description of only one or two newsworthy women pilots amongst a sea of male pilots. AE, in other words, was the first author to treat women's aviation history as a subject in itself, and she must have done quite a bit of source-gathering to do it.
    How do I know this?: I do quite a bit of research in women's aviation history.

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  6. That's very interesting, it seemed to be the point of the book to me, the part about herself is really beside the point although that was the reason it sold, it seemed she wrote it because she wanted to bring attention to women in aviation and used her own success as a way to revise the current, male centric history.Also obviously to encourage others to follow her example.

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