#planes of fame museum

[nocternalrandomness]

P-38 nose art at the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California

[captain-price-unofficially]

The last Mitsubishi J2M "Raiden", at the Planes of Fame museum in Chino, CA. Primarily designed to defend against the B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber, the Raiden was handicapped at high altitude by the lack of a turbocharger. However, its four-cannon armament supplied effective firepower and the use of dive and zoom tactics allowed it to score occasionally.

Insufficient numbers and the American switch to night bombing in March 1945 limited its effectiveness

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The D-21 Drone and project Senior Bowl: i.e. the SR-71 Blackbird was not the Most Secret Program ever developed by famed Lockheed Skunk Works

The D-21 Drone and project Senior Bowl

At Beale Air Force Base (AFB), in California, you would think that the SR-71 Blackbird program would be the biggest blackest deepest secret.

But you would be wrong.

The biggest secret was Project Tagboard/Senior Bowl.

CLICK HERE to see The Aviation Geek Club contributor Linda Sheffield’s T-shirt designs! Linda has a personal relationship with the SR-71 because her father Butch Sheffield flew the Blackbird from test flight in 1965 until 1973. Butch’s Granddaughter’s Lisa Burroughs and Susan Miller are graphic designers. They designed most of the merchandise that is for sale on Threadless. A percentage of the profits go to Flight Test Museum at Edwards Air Force Base. This nonprofit charity is personal to the Sheffield family because they are raising money to house SR-71, #955. This was the first Blackbird that Butch Sheffield flew on Oct. 4, 1965.

Project Tagboard/Senior Bowl is a relatively unknown project in the history of Area 51 reconnaissance A-12 aircraft. This project was Top Secret from its inception and during the Senior Bowl part of the project, there were less than 100 personnel cleared to work on it.

According to Air Force Test Center History Office documents, all manned flights over the Soviet Union were discontinued by President Dwight Eisenhower after Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane was shot down May 1, 1960. However even if the US government was planning on using satellites for reconnaissance, the technology was still a few years away and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) determined unmanned drones could fill the gap until satellites became viable.

For this reason, in the 1960s the famed Lockheed “Skunk Works” developed the D-21 a highly-advanced, remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) designed to carry out high-speed, high-altitude strategic reconnaissance missions over hostile territory.

The D-21 Drone and project Senior Bowl: i.e. the SR-71 Blackbird was not the Most Secret Program ever developed by famed Lockheed Skunk Works

M-21 and D-21

Launched from the back of the M-21

According to the document Project Tagboard/Senior Bowl Overview by Road Runners Internationale, Project Tagboard/Senior Bowl was the brain child of Lockheed’s Skunk Works’ Kelly Johnson. It consisted of a drone (D-21) mated to a modified A-12 aircraft (M-21), the combination known as MD-21 (mother/daughter).

The project was first conceived in 1962 when Lockheed’s Kelly Johnson got approval from the CIA to add two aircraft to the existing A-12 assembly line. Known as M-21’s, these aircraft were built with a second crew station for the Launch Control Officer (LCO) and structurally enhanced aft fuselage with a large dorsal pylon to carry the new drone atop the rear fuselage. When attached, the wingtips of the D-21 would have only six inches of clearance with the tops of the vertical stabilizers of the mother ship. This combination was known as the MD-21 (mother/daughter).

The D-21 would be launched from the back of the M-21. Ideally, after conducting its reconnaissance mission it would eject a hatch with photo equipment to be recovered either mid-air or after the hatch landed.

The D-21 Drone and project Senior Bowl: i.e. the SR-71 Blackbird was not the Most Secret Program ever developed by famed Lockheed Skunk Works

B-52 – D-21

However, on the fourth flight test, the D-21 experienced an “asymmetric unstart” as it passed through the bow wake of the M-21 causing the mothership to pitch up and collide with the D-21 at Mach 3.25. Crewmembers Bill Park and Ray Torick ejected from the M-21, but Torick opened his helmet visor by mistake and his suit filled up with water causing him to drown.

After the accident and after the death of Ray Torick, a test flight engineer, the M-21 launch program was cancelled but testers still believed the D-21 would make a valuable reconnaissance vehicle and decided to launch the drone from B-52Hs under a top-secret test program named Tagboard. The new code name for the D-21 project became Senior Bowl.

Modified B-52s

It was Kelly Johnson, President of Skunk Works, who suggested to use the B-52. As a result of Johnson’s advice two B-52’s were modified: 61#0021 and 60#0036. Both B-52’s are still in the US Air Force (USAF) inventory. The ultra-secret 4200 test squadron was formed at Beale.

The D-21 Drone and project Senior Bowl: i.e. the SR-71 Blackbird was not the Most Secret Program ever developed by famed Lockheed Skunk Works

D-21 drone.

+Only a few of the men that flew the SR-71 had been read into the program: out of necessity one of the few included my father Richard “Butch” Sheffield, SR-71 RSO who had already been read into Oxcart in 1965. In his unpublished book he writes that on the flightline he was with Bob Spencer, SR-71 pilot. They were taxing out when they saw the B-52 with a drone underneath it. Spencer asked ‘What is that under that B-52?’ My Dad responded ‘I have no idea.’ He couldn’t tell Bob Spencer the truth.

These two B-52‘s were kept away at the end of the runway apart from any other operations.

The D-21s were used on four flights over communist China but none of these missions fully succeeded.

Two flights were successful; however, the imagery could not be recovered from the D-21’s hatch. The other two operational flights ended with one being lost in a heavily defended area and the other D-21 simply disappeared after launch.

D-21 over China and Senior Bowl

The main mission of the D-21 was to fly over China and take pictures of its nuclear weapons test facility in the remote west central of the country near Lop Nor.

An Omega KDC-10 is the first commercial tanker to refuel USAF B-52, MC-130J over Pacific Ocean

This print is available in multiple sizes from AircraftProfilePrints.com – CLICK HERE TO GET YOURS. B-52H Stratofortress 2nd BW, 20th BS, LA/60-0008 “Lucky Lady IV”.

The pictures were supposed to be dropped in the ocean and recovered by the Navy. During the Cold War this information was necessary for the defense of the US.

The fourth and final mission of the D-21 drone took place on Mar. 20, 1971 and was undertaken by D-21 #527. Experts at the 4200th Support Squadron and at Skunk Works concluded that #527 must have malfunctioned. It was thought to have gone down near Lop Nor. This drone is on display in China at their national aviation museum. So, we know that it got close to the target.

Senior Bowl lasted from January 1968 until Jul. 15, 1971. Interestingly, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Ben Rich (then retired president of Lockheed’s Skunk Works) finally had an opportunity to tour Russia himself. While in Moscow, the KGB presented Rich with a gift of what they thought were the remains of a stealth fighter that had crashed in their territory. As it turned out, the wreckage was actually pieces and parts of the lost D-21 Drone!

Be sure to check out Linda Sheffield Miller (Col Richard (Butch) Sheffield’s daughter, Col. Sheffield was an SR-71 Reconnaissance Systems Officer) Twitter X Page Habubrats SR-71, Instagram Page SR71Habubrats and Facebook Page Born into the Wilde Blue Yonder Habubrats for awesome Blackbird’s photos and stories.

@Habubrats71 via X

[unknownworlds4]

In honor of Black History Month, here are 10 Black Americans who were pioneers of their time. (I apologize that this post is late. I’ve been preoccupied with midterm exams)

Eugene Bullard (1895 - 1961)

Eugene Bullard was one of the first African American military pilots in the world. Originally from Georgia, Bullard had run away from home when he was 11 and wondered around the state for six years with a clan of gypsies before stowing away on a German cargo ship in 1912. He ended up in Aberdeen, Scotland and eventually ended up in London, where he worked as a boxer and performer for an entertainment troupe. He traveled to Paris for a boxing match and eventually settled there permanently. When World War 1 began in 1914, Bullard joined the French Foreign Legion, where he saw combat at the Somme, Champaign, and Verdun. After being injured during the Battle of Verdun, he was sent to Lyon to recuperate. After recovering in 1916 he joined the French Air Service as a machine gunner. He obtained his pilot's license in 1917. He flew several missions during the war and claimed two victories over German planes. He applied to join the American Air Corps after the United States entered the war in 1917 but was rejected because of his race. Bullard returned to the French Air Service but was removed after an apparent conflict with a French officer. He remained in the military until 1919. He returned to Paris where he worked a nightclub, operated his own nightclub and gym, and married Marcelle de Straumann. After Germany invaded France in 1940, he volunteered to fight again, but was injured during the defense of Orleans. He escaped to Spain and later returned to the United States, settling in Harlem, New York City. In 1949, he was working as a security guard at concert hosted by Paul Robeson. Riots broke out where a racist mob and police officers beat concert goers, including Bullard. He eventually died of Stomach Cancer in 1961.

Bullard received many honors from France. In 1954, the French government invited Bullard to Paris to be one of the three men chosen to rekindle the everlasting flame at the Tomb of the Unkown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe. In 1959, he was made a Knight of the National Order of the Legion of Honor. He also received the Military Medal, an award given for courageous acts and the third highest award in France. After his death, he also received honors from the United States. He was posthumously commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force in 1994. He was inducted into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame in 1989 and the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2022. The Museum of Aviation in Warner Robbins, Georgia erected a statute in honor of Bullard.

Ruby Bridges (1954 - )

Ruby Bridges hadn't even been born yet when, in 1954, the United States Supreme Court made a landmark ruling in the Board vs. Board of Education case that declared that desegregation in public schools was unconstitutional. This decision caused protests and celebrations all across the South, including New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1960, when Ruby was 6 years old, U.S. Circuit Court Judge ruled that schools in New Orleans must begin desegregation. Ruby was one of four 6-year-old girls (the others being Lenona Tate, Tessie Provost, and Gail Etienne) selected by the NAACP to participate in the integration. Tate, Provost, and Etienne enrolled at McDonogh 19 Elementary School, while Bridges enrolled at William Frantz Elementary School. All four faced death threats, racial slurs, and taunts. After a race riot broke out at Parish School Board meeting, U.S. Marshalls were called in to escort the girls to and from school.

Since the tumultuous period, Bridges has become a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement. She has been the subject of Songs, documentaries, movies, and 1964 Norman Rockwell painting "The Problem We All Live With". She is currently the Chair of the Ruby Bridges Foundation. She has also received numerous accolades over her life including the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Clinton in 2001, being honored as a "Hero Against Racism" by the Anti-Defamation League in 2006 and being inducted in the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2024.

Bessie Coleman (1892 - 1926)

Bessie Coleman was born the tenth child out of thirteen to a family of sharecroppers in Texas. She walked four miles each day to attend a segregated school where she loved reading and established herself as an exceptional math student. Every harvest season she helped her family harvest cotton. When was turned eighteen years old, she enrolled at the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, Oklahoma (known today as Langston University). She only completed one term before running out of funds and returning home. In 1915, she moved to Chicago to live with brothers where she worked as a manicurist at a barbershop, where she heard flying stories of pilots returning from their service in World War 1. She took a second job as a restaurant manager to save money in the hopes of becoming a pilot herself, but flight schools in the U.S. at the time were not accepting women nor black people. As such, she was encouraged to study abroad by Robert Abbott, publisher of the African American newspaper 'The Chicago Defender'. To do this she received financial backing from the defender and banker Jesse Binga (founder of the first black owned bank in Chicago).

In 1920, she traveled to France to earn her license. She trained on a Nieuport 14 Biplane. In 1921, she received her pilots license, becoming the first black woman (and first black person in general) to receive a license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. She returned to the United States in September becoming a media sensation. She made a living performing in air shows as a stunt flier. She met with community activists and spoke before crowds about perusing aviation as a profession and the goals of black people in the United States. Unfortunately, she was killed in 1926, when the plane she was flying in lost control and threw her out at 2,000ft. Though she never established her own flight school, her ambitions inspired many other black aviators to this very day.

Katherine Johnson (1918 - 2020)

Katherine Johnson was one of the first black to be employed as a scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Born in White Sulpher Springs, West Virginia, she was the youngest of four children. Her mother was a teacher, and her father was a lumberjack, farmer, and handyman. From an early age she displayed strong mathematical abilities, so her parents enrolled her in high school in Institute since their home county didn't school for African Americans passed the 8th grade. After graduating high school, she enrolled at West Virginia State College, where took every mathematics course offered (new classes were even added just for her). She graduated 'summa cum laude' in 1937 and took a teaching job Marion, Virginia.

In 1938, the Supreme Court ruled that states that provide higher education for white students must provide it for black students as well. As a result of this, Johnson was selected along with two men to become the first black students to be enrolled at the West Virginia University Graduate School in 1939. However, she left the program to start a family with her husband James Goble. The couple had three daughters: Joylette, Katherine, and Constance.

At a family gathering in 1952, a relative informed her that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the precursor to NASA) was hiring mathematicians and that the Langley Research Center was hiring Black applicants as well as white. Johnson took a job at the agency in 1953. She spent 33 years with NACA and NASA, where she earned a reputation as a human computer for mastering complex mathematical calculations and helping pioneer the use of electronic computers. She worked at topics including gust alleviation, flight trajectories, and launch windows. Her work was instrumental to the Apollo Missions during the Cold War 'Space Race'. For her work she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, the Silver Snoopy Award and a NASA Group Achievement Award in 2016, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2019. She was the one of the subjects of the 2016 film Hidden Figures, and she was posthumously inducted into the National Womens Hall of Fame in 2021.

Shirley Chisholm (1924 - 2005)

Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman to be elected to the United States Congress. She was born in Brooklyn to working class parents. Since her mother face difficulty working and raising her children, Shirley and her three younger sisters were to live with their grandmother in Barbados. She said about her grandmother "Granny gave me strength, dignity, and love. I learned from an early age that I was somebody. I didn't need the black revolution to teach me that". She returned to the United States in 1934 and in 1939, began attending the integrated Girl's High School in Brooklyn. She did so well academically, she served as the Vice President of the Junior Arista Honor Society. She attended Brooklyn College where she majored in sociology and graduated in 1946. She married her husband Conrad in 1949. After suffering two miscarriages, the couple learned they could not have children. She worked as a teacher's aide from 1946 to 1953, during which she went on to obtain her master's degree in childhood education from Columbia University in 1951. She soon became an authority on childhood education and child welfare as a consultant for the Division of Day Care in New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare.

She entered politics when she joined the effort to elect Lewis Flagg Jr. to the bench as the first black judge in Brooklyn. The election group became known as the Bedford–Stuyvesant Political League (BSPL), which pushed candidates that supported civil rights and advocated for expanding opportunities in Brooklyn. After leaving the BSPL she worked with a number of different political groups including the League of Women Voters, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League, and the Democratic Party Club in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

In 1964, Chisholm decided to run for the New York State Assembly after the present holder, Thomas R. Jones, was appointed to the New York City Civil Court. Despite resistance because she was a woman, she appealed to women voters and won the Democratic primary in June. She was elected in December serving in the assembly from 1965 to 1968, where she championed several pieces of legislation including expanding unemployment benefits and sponsoring the introduction of the SEEK program which helped disadvantaged kids enter college. In 1968 Chisholm ran for the United States House of Representatives for New Yorks 12th District, which had recently been redrawn to incorporate the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. She ran with the slogan "unbought and unbossed" and won the district with a nearly 2 to 1 margin over her opponent, becoming the first black woman ever elected to Congress. She served on a number of different committees during her career, including the Agriculture, Veterans, and Education and Labor Committees. She worked with Bob Dole to expand the Food Stamps program, played a critical role in the creation of the WIC program, and was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Women's Political Caucus. In 1972, she became the first black candidate for a major-party nomination for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, though she ultimately lost the nomination. She retired from politics in 1983, after 14 in Congress. She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.

Thurgood Marshall (1908 - 1993)

Thurgood Marshall was a lawyer and jurist who served as the black justice of the United States Supreme Court. Marshall was originally from Baltimore, Maryland, where graduated from high school with honors in 1925 and then attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania where he graduated with honors in 1930 with a bachelor's degree in American literature and philosophy. While at Lincoln, he led the schools debate team to numerous victories. He attended Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C. because he couldn't attend the all-white University of Maryland Law School. While at Howard, he was mentored by NAACP first special counsel and Law School Dean George Hamilton Houston. He graduated first in class in 1933. He joined Houston as his assistant at the NAACP in 1935, where they worked together on the landmark case Missouri ex rel. Gaines vs. Canada, which ruled that any state which provides a school to white students had to provide in-state education to black students as well. After Houston returned to Washington, Marshall took over his position as special counsel to the NAACP and also became director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. 

During his career he argued 32 civil rights before the Supreme Court, winning 29 of them. Many of them were landmark cases including Smith vs. Allwright (which ruled that primary elections must be open to voters of all races), Morgan vs. Virginia (which ruled that a state law enforcing the segregation of interstate buses was unconstitutional), Shelley vs. Kramer (which ruled that racially restrictive housing covenants cannot be legally enforced), and Brown vs. Board of Education (which ruled that state laws requiring segregation in schools was unconstitutional).

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed him as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in order for Kennedy to demonstrate his commitment to the interests of black Americans. He took the oath after numerous delays by southern Senators. Marshall authored 98 majority opinions while on the bench. He was nominated as the United States Solicitor General by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, where he won fourteen of the nineteen Supreme Court cases he argued. In 1967, Johnson nominated Marshall to be a Supreme Court Justice after Justice Tom C. Cark resigned. He took the Oath of Office on October 2. Marshall remained on the Court for 24 years until his retirement in 1991. A staunch liberal, he often dissented from the court as the liberal majority vanished and the court became more conservative. During his tenure he advocated for equal rights for minorities, opposed the death penalty, and supported abortion rights.

Jesse Owens (1913 - 1980)

Jesse Owens was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games. Owens was born the youngest of ten children in Oakville, Alabama. In 1922, his family moved to Ohio during the great migration in search of better opportunities. As a child, he developed a passion for running, which was encouraged by his middle school track coach Charles Riley. It was in middle school where he met Minnie Solomon. They married in 1935 and had three daughters: Gloria in 1932, Marlene in 1937, and Beverly in 1940. He first came to national attention while attending high school where he equaled the world record of 9.4 seconds in the 100 yards dash and long-jumped 24 feet 91⁄2 inches at the 1933 National High School Championship in Chicago. While a student at Ohio State University, Owens won a record eight NCAA championships. Notably in 1935, he set three world records and tied a fourth during the Big Ten Conference track meet in Ann Arbor. He equaled the world record of 9.4 seconds in the 100-yard dash and set records for the long jump at 26 feet 81⁄4 inches, the 220-yard sprint at 20.3 seconds, and the 220-yard low hurdles at 22.6 seconds, which cemented him in track and field history.

In 1936, in despite of his apprehension, he was selected to compete in the Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. At the time, Germany was under the iron grip of the Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler. Hitler saw the games as an opportunity to promote the Nazi ideals of antisemitism and Aryan supremacy. He believed German athletes would dominate the games. However, he visions went unfulfilled. Over the length of competition Owens won Gold Medals in the 100-meter dash at 10.3 seconds, the long jump at 26 ft 5 inches, the 200-meter sprint at 20.7 seconds, and the 4 x 100-meter sprint relay at 39.8 seconds. On August 1, Hitler shook hands with the German victors only and left the stadium and then skipped all further medal presentations. Despite his victories, racial discrimination in the United States made it difficult for Owens to earn a living, being prohibited from appearing at sporting events and refused commercial sponsorships. He attempted several careers, but all they proved fruitless. He hit rock bottom in 1966, when he was prosecuted for tax evasion. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower selected Owens as a Goodwill Ambassador, being sent all around the world to promote physical exercise and tout American freedom and economic opportunity in the developing world, a position held until the 1970s. He also did product endorsement for corporations such as Quaker Oats, Sears and Roebuck, and Johnson & Johnson. He was invited to the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics as a guest of the West German government. He eventually retired and moved to Arizona with his wife. Owens succumbed to Lung Cancer in 1980 at the age of 66 and was buried in Tucson, Arizona. In 1983 he was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame and was posthumously a Congressional Gold Medal in 1990.

Hiram Revels (1827 - 1901)

Hiram Revels was the first African-Amercian to serve in the United States Congress. He was born to free black people in Fayetteville, North Carolina. His father was a Baptist preacher. He attended a Quaker seminary in Indiana as a boy and in 1845, was ordained as a minister with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He traveled throughout the Midwest preaching and acted as a religious teacher. He studied religion at Knox College in Illinois from 1855 to 1857 and then became a minister a Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland, while also serving as a high school principal. During the Civil War, he enlisted as a Chaplain in the Union Army and helped recruit and organized two black regiments in Maryland and Missouri.

In 1866, Revels was called to be the pastor in Natchez, Mississippi where he settled permanently with his wife and five daughters. In 1868, during the Reconstruction Era, he was elected as an Alderman of Natchez and in 1869, he was elected to represent Adams County in the Mississippi State Legislature. In 1870, Revels was elected to the United States Senate by the state legislature to fill the seat left since before the Civil War. Southern Democrats opposed his seat, stating that the 1857 Dred Scott decision disqualified him on basis if citizenship. He officially became the first black senator on February 25. As a senator, he advocated compromise and moderation, and supported racial equality. He served on both the Committee of Education and Labor and the Committee of the District of Columbia (at the time, Congress administered the district). His professional conduct was greatly admired by fellow congressmen and the Northern press. After his term expired, he became President of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in Claiborne County, Mississippi (currently Alcorn State University). He served in this post until his retirement in 1882. In 2002, he was listed as one of 100 Greatest African Americans by Molefi Kete Asante.

Henry Johnson (1897 - 1929)

Henry Johnson was an American soldier who was noted for heroic actions during World War One. Originally from North Carolina, he moved to Albany, New York and worked variety of menial jobs before enlisting in the army in 1917, two months after the United States entry into the First World War. The unit he was assigned to, the all-black New York National Guard 15th Infantry Regiment, was mustered into federal service and redesignated as the 369th Infantry Regiment, commonly known as the Harlem Hellfighters. The regiment was assigned to labor service duties while stationed in Europe. The black service members faced discrimination and harassment by white soldiers and even the American headquarters. The American commander loaned the regiment to the French Army. It's believed he did this because white soldiers refused to fight alongside black soldiers. The French enthusiastically welcomed the new troops.

The regiment, Johnson included, was assigned to the Ardennes Forest. While on outpost duty on the night of May 14, 1918, Johnson came under attack by a German raiding party. Using only his bare hands, a bolo knife, his rifle butt, and some grenades, he was able to repel the attackers, killing four of them and preventing the capture of his fellow soldiers, all while suffering 21 wounds. He was given the nickname "Black Death" for his actions and awarded the Croix de guerre by France. However, his actions went unrecognized in the U.S. because of racial discrimination, and he died poor and in obscurity. However, he has since been posthumously given several awards by the military, including the Purple Heart in 1996, the Distinguished Service Cross in 2002, and the Medal of Honor in 2015. In 2023, the U.S. Army base Fort Polk in Louisiana was renamed Fort Johnson in his honor.

Dorothy Height (1912 - 2010)

Dorothy Height was an activist for both the Civil Rights and Women's Rights movements. Height was born in Richmond, Virginia and moved to Rankin, Pennsylvania when she was five. Her mother was active in the Pennsylvania Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, and regularly took along Dororthy to meetings, which exposed her to activism from a young age. Height was an enthusiastic participate in Young Women's Christian Association, who was eventually elected as president of the club. She was appalled to learn that her race prevented her from using the YMWA's central branch swimming pool and dedicated much energy to changing the YWCA. While in high school she was active in the anti-lynching movement and won first place and a $1,000 scholarship in a national oratory contest held by the Elks Club. Height graduated from high school in 1929 and was accepted entry in Bernard College at Columbia University but was barred from entering because the school had an unwritten policy of only admitting two black students a year. She instead enrolled at New York University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1932 and a master's degree in educational psychology in 1933. She pursued postgraduate work at the New York School of Social Work.

From 1934 to 1937, Height worked for the New York Department of Welfare, a job she credited for teaching her conflict resolution skills. She then took a job as a counselor at the YWCA Harlem Branch. While working there she met civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt at a meeting of the National Council of Negro Women being held at the YWCA office. During this meeting Bethune told her "The freedom gates are half ajar. We must pry them fully open". She dedicated her life to this cause. She also did work with the United Christian Youth Movement, a group that worked to relate faith to real-world problems.

Beginning in 1939, she worked at YWCA offices in New York City and Washington, D.C., specializing in interracial relations. She ran trainings, wrote periodicals, and worked in Public Affairs on race issues. She believed that segregation caused prejudice through estrangement, so after the YWCA adopted in interracial charter in 1946, Height worked to help white members of the organization transcend their apprehension and bring their action in line with what the YWCA principles by running workshops, facilitating meetings, and writing articles. In 1958, she was elected president of the National Council of Negro Women and remained at the post until 1990. While president of the NCNW, she worked alongside civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and Whitney Young. Thanks to her background as an orator, she became a master at acting as the middleman in initiating dialogue between feuding parties. In 1963 she became head of the "Action Program for Integration and Desegregation of Community YWCAs", which was started in response to the growing civil rights movement. In this role she worked to monitor progress in integrating the association. In 1974, she was named to the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which was formed in response to the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment scandal. She was also a driving force behind the movement to get a statue of Mary McLeod Bethune in Lincoln Park, the first statue of a woman or a black person to be erected on federal land.

She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993. She was awarded the Presidential Citizen's Medal in 1989, the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton in 1994, a Congressional Gold Medal by President George H.W. Bush in 2004, and President Barack Obama called Height "the godmother of the civil rights movement and a hero to so many Americans". She died on April 20, 2010, at the age of 98. She was buried at Fort Lincoln Cemetery in Maryland after a funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. She is considered one of the driving forces of the American Civil Rights Movement.

[psalm22-6]

Source: The Jewish News of Northern California, 2 October 1992

I thought this was a very cool profile and an interesting perspective. I love the research she did on the gamins. 

Understudy says Jews will see themselves in Le Miz by Paul Freeman The theatrical epic Les Miserables tells the story of Jean Valjean, a noble, good-hearted man unjustly persecuted for a minor crime. To sate his extreme hunger, Valjean steals a loaf of bread only to find himself mistreated for the rest of his life. According to cast member Pauline Frommer, Jean Valjean's ordeal should strike a chord among Jews. 

“The persecution is not really about the loaf of bread," says Frommer, “but about who he is." 

Similarly, she says, "We, as Jews, are persecuted not out of anything we actually do, but because of who we are. That's the story of Jean Valjean, who is imploring Javert, 'Look at me as a human being! Don't look at me as a criminal!'"

[. . .] Frommer attributes the show's popularity to its spiritual quality. "It touches on what's best in human beings, revealing our aspirations towards creating new worlds," she says. "It brings out a longing in people to go out and create a revolution, to try to make things better. At the end of the show, it says that to love another person is to see the face of God. That's very powerful." 

Frommer understudies two roles — Eponine and Cosette. One requires a soprano voice, the other an alto. Fortunately, Frommer has a three-octave range. She also has to adjust to the differences between the personalities of the two characters. Cosette is gentle, while Eponine has rougher edges. 

Very often, Frommer doesn't know until only a few hours before the curtain that she will have to perform one of these featured roles. "That makes it exciting every time I go on," she says. "There's always an adrenaline rush. I can never get totally comfortable with a character. That's a big advantage, I think." 

When Frommer isn't called upon to play one of those roles, she focuses her energies on her work within the ensemble. "I play a boy for most of the show," she says. "To prepare, I watched the little boys in the cast, seeing what kind of tricks they liked to play on people. I also read [author Victor] Hugo's novel and learned about the contradictions of these little gamins. They're both playful and serious. They steal and eat from garbage cans, but they love the theater and want to know more about the culture of Paris." 

Growing up, Frommer had the unusual opportunity to experience a number of other cultures firsthand. Her father, after all, is the famed travel writer Arthur Frommer, who wrote the Europe on $5 a Day series of books. According to his daughter, Dad researched the hotels and restaurants, while his wife at the time, actress and acting instructor Hope Arthur, gathered information about museums. 

"I started traveling when I was 4-months-old," the 25-year-old Frommer says. "My parents would push me into drawers at night, because they didn't carry a crib. Every summer since then, until I was 14 and started going to camp, we would go to Europe to update the book.

"It gave me a great appreciation for how different, and yet, how alike we all are," she says. 

Arthur Frommer, who recently wrote a new book titled The New World of Travel and hosts a cable TV show of the same name, made Jewish historical sites an important part of the family's European visits. 

"In Spain we visited many synagogues," his daughter recounts. "We went to Israel when I was 11. My parents got off the plane and kissed the ground. I remember very clearly the Wailing Wall, which had a profound effect on me. It also meant a lot to me to realize that I was in a Jewish state, where I was in the majority, not the minority." 

In all her worldly travels, Frommer claims never to have encountered anti-Semitism, though on tour with Les Miserables she occasionally has felt that her Jewishness made her an outsider. 

"Usually, there are a lot of Jews in theater," she says. "In Les Miz, there's only one other Jewish member in the cast. In Kansas, my dresser told me I was the first Jewish person she had ever really known. But it wasn't a negative thing. She was curious about me. 

"Being from New York City, I grew up around many Jews. On Yom Kippur, the whole school got the day off. So it was strange for me to be seen as being so different. At the end of the week, the dresser gave me a pin that said, 'Oy vey.'"

Despite her Jewish upbringing, Frommer claims always to find herself cast in non-Jewish parts. "It's funny. In camp, I was in Fiddler on the Roof. I played the Russian sergeant. I'm always cast as the shiksa. They always cast the blonde in the non-Jewish roles," laughs Frommer, who plans to audition for movie roles when the tour hits Los Angeles. 

Nonetheless, Frommer remains hopeful. 

"Who knows," she says, "maybe someday I'll get the part I've always wanted, my dream role  — Anne Frank."

[ichayalovesyou]

This is my carefully curated playlist based on Tumblr's favorite Mafia movie, Goncharov! It is arranged into story order but you can enjoy it on shuffle as well! Normally I color code which songs are about who, but this time around I wanted to leave it up to interpretation, although I think you might be able to tell who my favorite character is lol!

Winter In Naples

“You Need The Fear of God Put Back Into You Goncharov”

Taikatalvi by Nightwish from Imaginaerum • Ruler of Everything by Tally Hall from Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum • Birds With Broken Wings by Ben Caplan from Birds With Broken Wings • Istanbul by They Might Be Giants from Flood • The Cat Came Back by The Laurie Berkner Band from Laurie Berkner’s Favorite Kid Songs • Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz from Gorillaz • Champagne Taste by Eartha Kitt from Totally Crazy • Amar y Vivir by Carlos Rivera from Mexicano • Crazy = Genius by Panic! At The Disco from Death of a Bachelor • Farewell Wanderlust by The Amazing Devil from The Horror and the Wild • Time is Running Out by Muse from Absolution • Aha! by Imogen Heap from Ellipse • Modern Day Cain by I DON’T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME from Modern Day Cain

The Ball

“Your Husband Is As Tasteless As His Counterfeit ‘Boots’, Dear Sister”

Vampire by People In Planes from Beyond the Horizon • Don’t Mess With Me by temposhark from The Invisible Line • There’s A Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven’t Thought of It Yet by Panic! At The Disco from A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out • Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps by Daniel Boaventura & Carlos Rivera from Your Song • Careless Whisper by George Michael from Ladies & Gentlemen The Best of George Michael • Real Men by Mitski from Lush • As The World Falls Down by David Bowie from Labyrinth • I’m A Funny Dame by Eartha Kitt from The Essential Eartha Kitt • Sin un Amor by Carlos Rivera from Mexicano • Bad Romance by Lady Gaga from The Fame Monster • Señor Amante by Kika Edgar from Señor Amante • Take Me To Church by Hozier from Hozier • Disarm by The Civil Wars from The Civil Wars • Femme Fatale by Coyote Kid from The Skeleton Man • Monkeys Uptown by Iron & Wine from Kiss Each Other Clean

Two Cigarettes, One Flame

“A Perfect Pearl Need Only Circumstance, No?”

Pretty Little Head by Eliza Rickman from O, You Sinners • Runs In The Family by Amanda Palmer from Who Killed Amanda Palmer? • 551 by Dessa from Castor the Twin • Wife by Mitski from Lush • The Bed Song by Amanda Palmer from Piano Is Evil • The Moon Will Sing by The Crane Wives from Coyote Stories • Evening On the Ground (Lilith’s Song) by Iron & Wine from Woman King • Better Love by Hozier from Better Love • Arms of A Thief by Iron & Wine from Around the Well • Where Evil Grows by The Poppy Family, Terry & Susan Jacks from A Good Thing Lost: 1968-1973 • Eric by Mitski from Lush • Angie by Bert Jansch from Bert Jansch • I Want To Be Evil by Eartha Kitt from That Bad Eartha • Don’t Get My Hopes Up by S.J. Tucker from Mischief • You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart by Sinéad O’Connor from So Far: The Best of Sinéad O’Conner • Dulce Mal by The Chamanas from Dulce Mal • Don’t You Dare Forget the Sun by Get Scared from Built For Blame, Laced With Shame

The Clock

“How Can Time Be Still, And Still Running Out?”

Blindness by Metric from Fantasies • Come Away To The Water by Maroon 5 & Rozzi from The Hunger Games: Songs of District 12 And Beyond • Era Escuro by Faun from Luna • Fly Me to The Moon by Melodicka Bros. from Fly Me to the Moon (Space Rock) • Glass Heart Hymn by Paper Route from The Peace of Wild Things • Where Butterflies Never Die by Broken Iris from The Eyes of Tomorrow • I Hope Your World Is Kind by Auri from Auri • Ballad of Jeremiah Peacekeeper by Poets of the Fall from Temple Of Thought • Broken Crown by Mumford & Sons from Babel • Dirt And Roses by Rise Against from Avengers Assemble • Marked Man by Mieka Pauley from The Science of Making Choices • If I Had A Heart by Fever Ray from Fever Ray • I Think I Smell A Rat by The White Stripes from White Blood Cells • Paranoid Android by Radiohead from OK Computer • Cool by Ansel Elgort & Mike Faist from West Side Story • That’s My Boy by Vast from Turquoise & Crimson

Ambrosia, The Blood of The Gods

“I’m Gonna Kill That Mario!”

Familia by Nicki Minaj, Angel AA & Bantu from Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse • Onward & Upward by Tommee Profitt & Fleurie from Gloria Regali • The Horror and The Wild by The Amazing Devil from The Horror and the Wild • Breaking the Law by Judas Priest from British Steel • I’m Always Walking as Somebody Else from American Murder Song from Murder Ballads of 1816: The Year Without A Summer • The House Of The Dead by NADA5150 & Mr.Kitty from The House Of The Dead • Adore Me by StarKid Productions from Black Friday • Kill My Friends by gP. from Kill My Friends • 7 Rings by ChuggaBoom from 7 Rings • Heavy Rain by Youth Man from New Moons Vol.1 • Loki by The Mechanisms from The Bifrost Incident • Warflower by The Mayan Factor from In Lake Ch’ • Dead Butterflies by Architects from Meteor • Man or a Monster by Sam Tinnesz & Zayde Wolf from Man or a Monster • The Weeping Song by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds from The Good Son

The Bridge

“If We Really Were In Love You Wouldn’t Have Missed”

What Love Can Heartbreak Allow by Ben Caplan from Old Stock • The Wolf by PHILDEL from The Disappearance of the Girl • Animal Impulses by IAMX from The Unified Field • Don’t Make Me by MALINDA from Don’t Make Me • Shout by Tears for Fears from Songs From The Big Chair • Don’t Call Me Angel by Ariana Grander, Miley Cyrus & Lana Del Rey from Charlie’s Angels • Heaven Knows by The Pretty Reckless from Going to Hell • Castle by Halsey from BADLANDS • Mineshaft 2 by Dessa from Castor, the Twin • Die Anywhere Else by Julia Henderson & Lorenzo de Sequera from Dusk • A Death by an Unkindness from 4 Songs • Despedida by Antonio Pinto & Shakira from Love In The Time of Cholera • Daughter of the Sea by Sharm & Alison M. Sparrow from Daughter of The Sea • Jane Doe by Hail The Sun from Wake • Bag of Bones by Mitski from Lush • Girl Into Devil (I Belong to Me) by S.J. Tucker from Stolen Season

The Train

“We Could Burn It All Down”

Panacea For The Poison by Flobots from Survivor Story • Here Come the Ravens by Aviators from Dystopian Fiction • All Night Long by Peter Murphy from Love Hysteria • A Sadness Runs Through Him by The Hoosiers from The Trick To Life • The Deep by PHILDEL from Wave Your Flags • Irish Hour by Saint Sister from Where I Should End • There Is Still Time by Lorn from The Maze to Nowhere • Happy by Mitski from Puberty 2 • Burned Out by dodie from Human • Where To Begin by Adam Watts from When a Heart Wakes Up • Hungry Like the Wolf by Hidden Citizens & Tim Halperin from Reawakenings • Dark Matter by Les Friction from Dark Matter • I Found by Amber Run from 5AM • The Hearse (Stripped) by Matt Maeson from Bank On The Funeral • The Wolf in Your Darkest Room by Matthew Mayfield from Recoil • The Devil Wears A Suit by Kate Miller-Heidke from Nightflight • Sinking Ship by CAKE from Sinking Ship • Lessons by SOHN from Tremors • Black Sun by Death Cab for Cutie from Black Sun • Die Today by The Txlips Band & Guitar Gabby from Queens of A New Age • Blood Moon by Saint Sister from Madrid • Cinder and Smoke by Iron & Wine from Our Endless Numbered Days • Girl With One Eye by Florence + The Machine from Lungs

The Apple

“Tell Them I’m Sorry, For I Have No Sorrow Left to Give”

The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid by The Decemberists from Hazards of Love • Conversations at the End of the World by Kishi Bashi from String Quartet Live • My Way by Chase Holfelder from Major to Minor Vol.2 • We Are Your Nightmares by Cast of Nevermore from Nevermore: The Imaginary Life & Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe • Oh Death by Noah Gunderson from Saints & Liars • The Coldest Goodbye by Mary Kate Wiles from Spies Are Forever • Cathedrals by Jump. Little Children from Magazine • Carry Me Out by Mitski from Bury Me At Makeout Creek • Ghosts With Heartbeats by Plastic Patina from Ghosts With Heartbeats • Blood by My Chemical Romance from The Black Parade

“The film is gone, the only proof thereof Upon a boot, a tag mark’d Goncharov...”

Quotes from the movie Goncharov (1973) provided through art by: @theshitpostcalligrapher @when-sanpape-arts @inthefallofasparrow @not-the-blue @cloudmancy

[strictlyfavorites]

MiG-29OVT during cobra maneuver

1) No. 56 (F) Sqn Lightning F.3 having Firestreak missiles loaded RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus, 1963.

A Florida F-106 Delta Dart Up and Over!

19 March 1959. First flight of the Boeing NB52A Stratofortress named The High and Mighty One with the X-15.

27 March 1994. First flight of the Eurofighter Typhoon DA1 from DASA at Manching. Powered by two RB199 engines. Canard-delta wing,

27 March 1957. First flight of McDonnell F-101 Voodoo F-101B-30-MC (56-0232) designated NF-101B from Lemburg Field. Two seat all-weather interceptor.

Colorized photo of a Grumman F14F Hellcat II taking down a Japanese Zero, circa 1945.

Corsairs on the ramp at the Planes of Fame Air Museum Airshow in Chino Valley, CA

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

don't wait for tumblr to give u more tags. go off about tony and steve and zola pls i am humbly requesting

As a part of my ongoing war on my ask box this is a very old post regarding a tumblr tag essay i made forever ago. i half answered this ask when it came in and then forgot to finish. without further ado:

Anon is talking about this post about Steve and Tony’s relationship. I HIGHLY recommend the original post it's great but i copied the original tags essay below since it's been so long since the ask arrived.

#I feel like anyone who writes Tony stark for marvel should have to go watch bojack horseman first as like a mandatory assignment#because that show understood the premise of Tony stark better than any MCU writer ever has and it wasn’t even writing for tony stark#in sum bojack horseman follows the titular bojack who is a washed up 90s sitcom television star#bojack himself is extremely self destructive and the show follows him as his selfish and egotistical tendencies erode at his relationships#However bojack himself is an extremely sympathetic character. his harmful acts are all tied very directly to the trauma of his life#he’s a survivor of generational abuse whose own substance abuse problems stem from the fact that he was in such a neglectful environment#that he had started drinking at an INCREDIBLY young age got himself sober only to relapse due to a spiked drink after fame

#this sympathic is increased by the fact that he does geninuinely love and care for his friends and often goes to extreme lengths to show it#but what the show understands that MCU writers dont is that his tragic past doesn’t excuse the harm or pain he causes and the show goes to#LABORIOUS extents to emphasize the consequences and suffering his actions cause in his attempt towards making amends#it is FASINCATING to me that MCU just fails to grasp this because it’s really the core of Tony’s character. his story is one of redemption#and regret. but what it never seemed to get is that requires recognition of wrongs and change and his relationship with steve is a prime ex.#when they meet tony is 40+ and Steve is 23-25. steve has been awake from world war 2 for less than 2 weeks everyone he loves is dead and hes#visibly haunted by his time in the ice. his ptsd flashbacks to crashing the plane is how his character is introduced. Tony spends the time

#calling him ‘capsicle’ and talking about how much he can’t stand steve. the narrative plays it off as a gaff of little consequence but#practically speaking that’s INSANE. like can you imagine you’re a traumatized war vet who got out of a coma 2 months ago and woke up to#discover everyone you ever loved is dead and this stranger twice your age at your new work nicknames you coma boy and hates your guts bc of#his daddy issues? like Tony in avengers is borderline cruel but the narrative and the fandom never acknowledge it. it’s like removing the#laugh track on a scene from one of those old sitcoms and realizing how mean it is. and while we can fully acknowledge that Howard hurt Tony#that doesn’t make it Steve’s fault and doesn’t give Tony the license to take it out on him. like at the end of the day your healing is your#responsibility and the MCU fails to grasp that with Tony. honestly it does a disservice to the depth of his character b/c Tony should have#already grown past this by the time of Avengers. he had already gone through iron man 2 and grappled somewhat with his relationship w howard#while that doesn’t mean he’s healed yet it does mean that his character needs to learn to grow past it or he risks stagnation. mcu just#happily embraced stagnation and it made the character worse for it. Theres a scene in the comics where Tony is the first to reach out to#Steve post ice. he takes him to the air&space museum and welcomes him to the future. THATS the growth we want. Bc fundamentally even if we

#sympathize for Tony’s abuse by Howard lashing out at someone who was functionally dead at the time of ur dads mistakes is a very juvenile#mindset. /growth/ is deciding to be better than the person who hurt you and the MCUs obsession with blaming Steve for howard cut that off#CW would have been SO MUCH MORE COMPELLING if Tony had formed a relationship with Steve bc Steve would be torn between past and present but#instead Tony is saying how much he hated Steve during the fucking movie and Steve’s taking it with grace. like you’re 50 man you gotta work#past this at some point. out of tags but I have Opinions about Tony and actually zola too but we won’t get there give me more tags tumblr

Fundamentally, my issue with Tony and how he's written for the MCU is that he has the potential for one of greatest redemption arcs ever and the writers are fucking allergic to giving it to him, and his dynamic with Steve is a a prime example of it. How poorly Steve's relationship with Tony was mishandled is a pretty perfect case study as to how Tony as a character was mishandled as a whole.

As stated in the Tumblr Tags Essay above, by the time Steve came on the scene, Tony should have already grown past his hate for Steve. To be clear, that is not saying he should have gotten over Howard or any harm that he suffered as a result of his. Howard was his parent who was, to some degree, at least emotionally neglectful, if not abusive. Healing and learning helping coping mechanisms does not demand you forgive your abuser.

But Steve was never his abuser. He's a 20-something year old guy who has been trapped in a block of ice for Tony's entire life and who woke up two weeks ago to find out that everyone he ever loved is dead or suffering from alzheimer's and that his sacrifice was for nothing because he was just told the thing he drove a fucking plane into the fucking arctic over is Back Again Because We Learned Nothing.

And the thing is that the realization that "This man can hold literally no complicity in my abuser because he was frozen in the Arctic Circle the entire time" requires a level of emotional maturity you generally achieve at the age of thirteen or so. Tony is fucking fifty. Mentally, he's over twice Steve's age. At absolute best, the way Tony treats Steve from the outset is immature and more accurately it's downright cruel. Voluntarily killing himself by driving a plane into ice only to wake up and discover that he has lost everyone he ever loved is undoubtedly one of the most traumatic things that has ever happened to steve, and he just woke up from it. He is two weeks out from this. He's actively having flashbacks of what happened right before Tony starts cracking jokes about it. It'd be like if Steve walked up to Tony right after he got back from Afghanistan and called him Waterboarding Boy and everyone treated it like it was a cutesy character trait.

That's one of the most egregious parts of how Tony's character is written--things that are objectively things that need to be addressed in his character arc area treated like acceptable and borderline justified quirks in his personality. Tony's relationship with his father is one of the cornerstones of his backstory and who he became. While he doesn't have to forgive his father on the road to recovery, he does have to realize when he's using it as an excuse to hurt others and stop it.

That's also something he never does, and one of the reasons why i think that the writers for him need to watch Bojack horseman. In the same movie he's claiming to that he was Steve's friend, he's still saying to his face how much he fucking hated him over things that happened when Steve was supposed to have martyred himself to save the world.

There's multiple parts of Tony's character that could have formed the basis of an amazing character arc if he grew and improved from them, but the narrative refused to even recognize them as problems, let alone have him overcome them, and his relationship with Steve is a perfect example of it. The writer's refusal to recognize that brings down the quality of his entire arc and cheapens him as a character.

If Tony had been allowed to recognize that Steve was not to blame for his father, accepted it, and given a man half his age who just lost everything a lifeline, that would have shown an amazing amount of growth. Instead, they left him as immature and cruel. It's a shame and an insult to the potential of his character, and it's a mistake that they repeat again and again. Tony was supposed to be completely against developing weapons for others, but he canonically helped build a major part of Project Insight. Tony's entire stance in Civil War was meant to show that he had accepted that he made mistakes and that he needed to be held accountable for his actions, but then he went and unilaterally built EDITH, whose existence violates multiple international treaties including the Accords and had so few safety precautions that a teenaged boy was able to accidentally call out a missile strike on his teenaged classmate. He's in a movie where he's driven by his guilt for causing the death of someone's college-aged son, and in that same movie he blackmails a high-school-aged boy to join in on a fight he knows nothing about, that goes directly against his interests, and could get him killed even if he was certain that Team Cap wouldn't use lethal force. Rhodey got paralyzed from the waist down from friendly fire. Tony had a moment in the same fight where he had reason to fear that Peter had been injured if not killed.

Ultimately, Tony's entire character is built on a foundation of repentance and growth. That's why he has so much potential and why he's so compelling. The fact that his writers were unable to recognize when he even needed to repent, let alone allow him to grow, was honestly insulting to what he could have been.

Zola:

The reference to Zola is actually more of a response to fandom’s response to Zola as a whole than the actual specific person who made the comment.

Overall, the majority of fandom response that I've seen just seemed to be sort of besides the point? The thing about Armin Zola working for SHIELD is that I personally have only seen discussion about this in context of talking about how Peggy and Howard are Bad or talking about how steve would feel betrayed when he discovered it. To be honest most of the discourse I’ve seen has just been about hating Peggy Carter and using this as a sledgehammer in that discussion.

It’s not that I disagree with that reading of it—like, I do think Steve felt betrayed by the realization that Zola was recruited in the end, and I think it’s bad to have recruited literal Nazis—but I do think that fandom elevated the most tangential point of it to the detriment of its entire narrative purpose. I've only ever personally seen it used in character discourse and shipping wars--which like, anyone can draw on any plot point they so choose while participating in fandom. But Zola's recruitment was the thematic core of Winter Soldier, and it always seemed kinda weird to me that it was treated as a personal defect in Howard and Peggy when it was the entire argument of the movie and one of the best social commentaries that the MCU ever made.

Zola gives what I think is one of the better MCU villain speeches in the bunker about how Hydra recovered after the war. He states that they realized that taking the freedom of the world by force only galvanised people against them. It led to their own downfall. But he explains that Hydra realized that the people of the world would freely give away their own rights and freedoms if you made them comfortable. If you say you’re doing it for their own safety and comfort, then they’ll effectively look the other way while Hydra seizes control of the world. And that entire monologue is bolstered by the fact that that is exactly what happened in Zola’s case.

Zola was brought into SHIELD as a part of operation paperclip. Operation Paperclip was a post-war initiative by the United States government to recruit key Nazi scientists into United States scientific development. This entire initiative was brought about in response to the Cold War arm’s race and it was justified on the basis of dire national security need. Both America and the Soviet Union were EXTREMELY CONCERNED about losing the cold war. As a result, they were willing to take pretty much any strategic advantage they could, including After, President Truman, who gave the final go-ahead for the initiative, said that "this had to be done and was done."

Even after it became public knowledge, it was defended as more of a necessary evil and the cost of the practicalities of governance than a world power welcoming war criminals with open arms. Multiple participants have been linked to human experimentation, slave labor factories, etc, though none were ever formally found guilty of anything--which may be because the US aggressively whitewashed their pasts and then went so far as to help relocate one of the members of the initiative to Argentina.

This was, again, all a part of the Cold War arms race with the USSR--who had an identical program going at the same time, Operation Osoaviakhim.

En arguendo, let's just assume that all of this was done with the best possible intentions and execution. The nominal rationale was the Cold War. While analyzing the Red Scare and the entire Cold War period would take way too long, I think a solid premise we can agree on is that nuclear war is bad. It would have been disastrous for anyone alive if the Cold War had escalated, and recruiting top scientists from the Nazi regime 1) kept the USSR from doing it instead, which they were actively doing, and 2) helped prevent strategic advantage in one country or another that may have led to an escalation. Now, I'm not a historian, and all of these premises can naturally be debated, but these were the like, best faith premises that world leaders had at the time. If you want a nuclear deterrent, you need the biggest stick.

The thing is that, if you assume these premises as genuine for the sake of the argument, the absolute best this leaves you with is doing a very bad thing for a very important government purpose. You're supposedly preventing nuclear war, but you're doing so at the cost of justice for all the people who suffered at the hands of these people, and the risk of future harm that they may cause.

Which, thematically, is the core of the Winter Soldier.

I've usually seen Zola's recruitment discussed in terms of Peggy or Howard making the decision to let him in, when in reality, they probably didn't make the call themselves so much as become complicit in it later. Zola was captured and recruited right at the end of CA:FA (he later clocks this at 1945) but Peggy and Howard didn't even have an organization at that point, let alone the power to recruit a head Nazi scientist. This was two decades before SHIELD was ever founded, and if we take the Agent Carter series as binding canon, at the time of Zola's transition into American government would, Peggy had so little sway that she couldn't even get anyone to listen to her, let alone recruit a nazi scientist, and Howard was potentially on the run and definitely not involved in any formal governmental decision making. Even if you assume that they were somehow in charge of a government agency at the time of Zola's recruitment, the actual recruitment and function of Operation Paperclip was conducted by independent agencies (Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency and the Counterintelligence Corps) that Peggy and Howard weren't a part of, and the person who made the call for Operation Paperclip itself was The Literal President Of The United States. Whatever way you cut it, Peggy and Howard probably had nothing to do with Zola's initial recruitment--what most likely happened was that two decades passed (the time between Zola's recruitment and SHIELD's founding) and when resources were being allocated some big-shot in the overseeing body was like Yeah You Do Weird Stuff? We Got A Guy Who's Been Doing Weird Stuff For Us For Like Twenty Years and then when Peggy and Howard saw him they were like Oh Its This Motherfucker.

To be clear, this is not at all to absolve howard and peggy for working with a guy they knew did literal human experimentation because he did it on one of their best friends. But this is to more clearly reframe it from Decision They Personally Made to The Ways Being At A Certain Level Of Government Makes You Complicit With Horrible Things, which perfectly encapsulates the heart of the movie.

At the open of the movie, Steve is visibly on a fucking ledge with SHIELD. Fuck, Fury and Nat spend most of the opening trying to keep him from flying the coop. And it's because Steve for the very first time has to grapple with the consequences of being an active participant in a governmental body.

Straight up--Steve spent the entire war going AWOL. His entire military career was spent doing what he wanted and flipping his superior officers the bird. The man was a terrible fucking soldier but by the time anyone figured it out they had already given him a comic book and the Medal of Honor and the man could bench press a tank it was simply too late. Then, he got encased in ice for 70 years, woke up, had two weeks of fun future integration activities like Not Getting Therapy For His Problems and Looking At Pictures Of His Dead Friends, got tapped in because they fucked up with the exact thing he lost everything to stop, immediately went AWOL again, almost died again, went on a roadtrip of self discovery, and at some point between then and CAWS started working as one of the main STRIKE members of SHIELD. This is likely his first time having to ever deal with the realities of being a hand of the government.

One of the most insidious things about high-level government work is there's rarely some Main Guy sitting behind a desk signing Evil Decrees and responsible for everything. Power is allocated and things get messy very quickly.

Take Ghost for example. One of SHIELD'S Main Guys falls out with another Guy, smears his name, which makes the Ex-Guy so desperate that he takes unnecessary risks in his experiments that predictably blow up in his face and leads to his young daughter having a debilitating power that results in her uncontrollably phasing through objects. Another Guy tries to do the right thing and help her, but Other Main Guys think "This kid would make a GREAT assassin" and leverage a cure for her debilitating health condition into turning her into a forced operative. This health condition starts to kill her, but the Main Guys were so happy with their new forced assassin that they never looked for a cure to begin with and was going to use her until she died. She goes rather reasonably goes AWOL, and in her attempts to cure herself, she's willing to do just about anything to get cured, and including contemplating kidnapping Scott's daughter as an option.

Steve obviously wasn't called in to help with that (he was AWOL himself at that point) but assume he was--he would only get pulled into this mess at the very end when all the damage is done and there's a highly unstable assassin kidnapping little girls. SHIELD was at fault for every horrible thing that happened to this person. He has a strong sense of justice, and he'd likely to be furious to find out that SHIELD took an orphanged child and abused their incredibly painful and terminal medical condition, which was indirectly caused by them, in order to force them into becoming a highly skilled operative.

But there isn't just one person that he'd be able to find and blame for what happened with this--culpability was stretched out over Multiple Main Guys who made bad decisions, a lot of Lower Guys who built the suit, trained her, handled her in the field, and experimented on her to learn her limits, many of whom likely didn't even work for the organization any more.

Who do you go after for that? The Main Guy who smeared her dad? But he didn't have anything to do with the assassin business or the actual accident. The Main Guys who made the calls for the assassination thing? Better candidates, but is it that simple? What about the guys who just get orders every day and have no decision making authority, who were handed a little girl who was vulnerable and in pain and told to train her to kill? What about the ones making a child-sized tactical suit with no details about what was going on but who had reason enough to suspect it wasn't all good? They were just following orders, but so were Nazis working the camps.

How do you go after people for that? Fire them? It's been decades. Most are probably retired. And that's a pretty lame punishment for what they did. He doesn't make the calls for legal action, they definitely have qualified immunity for their decisions, and there's a whole host of problems with proving anything.

But, on the flip side, what does he do about Ghost? what happened to her is terrible, but if she had kidnapped Cassie Lang, he couldn't exactly sit on his hands and let it happen no matter the justification. There's a very good chance he has to stop her and become another link in a chain of what's been a lifetime of abuse. Things get messy when you're just a cog in the machine of a sprawling agency that has a lot of power to abuse.

While we don't know what Steve's been doing while he worked for SHIELD, we do know that it pissed him off to high heavens. The very first thing we see him doing for SHIELD is recapturing the off-course Lemurian Star from pirates, and he is the exact opposite of a dutiful soldier during it. He doesn't just salute and follow his orders without question--one of the first lines of his mouth is calling them out for lying about the ship being in those waters because it was off-course. He's like "Oh, so it's not off course, it's trespassing" to which Nat says "I'm sure they had a good reason" and Steve replies "I'm getting a little tired of being Fury's janitor."

He's saving the hostages, and then all of a sudden he finds Natasha in the control room downloading the drive and realizes that this was about SHIELD's data to begin with but no one clued him in on that fact. He's pissed because the hostages could have died, which is a fact he immediately goes after Fury about.

There is so much character jammed into those few minutes of screen time. This is visibly an old argument--at one point, Fury says to him "It's damn near getting past time for you to get with the program, Cap" to which Steve tells him not to hold his breath. Steve doesn't like or approve of a lot of SHIELD's actions, but he's called in after all the bad things they did went to shit. Like, what's he going to do--say, sorry, the Lemurian Star was obviously Up To Some Shit that I don't want to be a part of, RIP to the hostages but I'm just going to let them get shot in the head? He's the janitor and he's sick of getting called into SHIELD fucking something up through their own immoral actions and calling him to pull their ass out of the fire. He spends the entire first half of the movie on the verge of flying the coop entirely, and Nat and Fury visibly know it and are trying to get him off the ledge in every interaction they have on screen with him--which directly contributes to the fact that Steve doesn't trust either of them for the first half of the movie.

It also is likely the motivator behind why he does ultimately trust Sam. Steve spends the first half of the movie getting Managed. He's increasingly pissed and distrustful of SHIELD and its agents, and he's got good reason to be--Nat and Fury hide things from him and keep trying to persuade him to stick with the program (to be clear Nat's (and to a somewhat lesser extent Fury's) own actions and whether any culpability for things like project insight could possibly be imputed to her has to be analyzed under an entirely different lens due to the difference in her personal history and character type, but this is already way too long to tackle that here. this isn't actually meant to assign blame to her, but more to analyze the likely results on steve). Fury takes him for a tour of his Fascist Death Machine and tells him that's what the world needs. The neighbor he was growing increasingly intimate with was a SHIELD agent who lied to him about her name and the fact that she was spying on him. At the end of the day, the majority of the of the early movie is spent with his desires and principles are treated as secondary and unwanted complications to the fact that they really need him to keep throwing that shield on SHIELD's behalf (whether this is actually what nat and fury specifically are trying to do is, again, a separate analysis we don't have time for, this is just to go to how it likely affects and appears to Steve).

Sam, meanwhile, is beautiful and charming is the only one who openly expresses a genuine concern for Steve as a person and not steve as a solider. Sam spends the entire first half of the movie reaching out to someone in a position he's been in himself and trying to get him help. his entire first meeting with Steve is defined by him trying to help a fellow Vet recover from war. he tries to gauge where Steve's at with the future, invites him to the VA, and packages it in a easily-seen-through excuse that gives them both plausible deniability--Steve can come by and get the help he needs not as Captain America The Man The Myth The Legend Who Is Really Fucking Struggling, but as Steve the guy helping Sam impress the girl at the front desk.

When he comes to the VA, Sam has the direct opposite response that everyone else in the movie has to Steve questioning his place in SHIELD and in government work--he's like "Quit. Quit now. Be free and beautiful like me. become an ultimate fighter or whatever the fuck you want." He doesn't give two shits about what the world will do without Captain America keeping it safe--he just cares about what Steve needs.

This all goes to a greater analysis about how Sam is beautiful and charming the perfect parallel to Steve, the only one who could possibly have taken up his shield, and actually wrong in that line he says about how he does what Steve does but slower because he consistently decides to do the right thing before Steve is another analysis that would go too far off the point to get into. The point being is that Sam exists in the narrative as the direct opposite and alternative to the reality fury and nat offers Steve. Steve spends the beginning of the movie with Nat and Fury seemingly sacrificing the means for the end, but there's Sam, beautiful and charming someone who made the same decision he's now faced with, being like "fuck it. sometimes you have to walk."

Steve's entire struggle about his position with SHIELD reaches its climax when he first finds out the truth of Project Insight.

For the avoidance of any doubt, SHIELD secretly being infiltrated by HYDRA has no effect on how wrong Project Insight was from the start--it just emphasized how horrifically wrong it could go. But "Space Super Death Weapon That Can Immediately Kill Dangers To National Security" is a bad idea no matter who is in charge of it. First off, Steve is right--punishment follows the crime. No government has a crystal fucking ball and anyone who justifies things on the basis of "taking out threats ahead of time" is talking out their ass. to be clear, i'm not saying you need to wait for someone to be on a plane and flying at the twin towers to stop a terrorist attack--in law, we have a designated level of "closeness" that lets us say "yeah you were totally actually doing what we don't want you doing" at which point you can charge them with attempt, and often a lot of the earlier steps leading up to the Big Harmful Thing are actual crimes you can intervene with.

Project Insight was the flagship of of a "quantum surge in threat analysis." It did exactly what it was designed to do: it took out threats before they became threats. The only difference between SHIELD being at the helm and HYDRA is who gets defined as a threat. HYDRA would have defined that as anyone from a high school valedictorian in Iowa to Stephen Strange, but it's not any better if SHIELD's defining that as some random kid in Afghanistan who shows whatever traits show a risk for one day becoming a combatant.

And yet, steve's the only one in the movie who says this. We don't actually know how much Nat knows about Project insight itself, but Fury is fully aware and a participant in it, and Tony Stark apparently took one look at the thing and said "your engines are shit. i'll improve them." Steve takes one look at them and calls it fascist bullshit.

At the end of the day, you can never justify shit like this under the assumption that the people controlling it will use it for the best, because you cannot trust the people controlling it. Yeah, Project Insight was probably pitched with being used against the worst threats. Dangers to public safety, terrorists, that kind of thing. Do you want to know who else was considered a danger to public safety? MLK, who the FBI fucking murdered. The people who define threats to national security are the ones who have the same incentive to maintain the status quo in an unjust world. Even if we assume Project Insight was made to stop the next 9/11, we also have to assume that at least some of the strikes it would have carried out under not-HYDRA control would have been for the wrong reasons.

What the fuck does all of this this have to do with Zola?

Operation Paperclip and Peggy and Howard's decisions within it directly mirrors Project Insight and Fury's decisions within it, directly mirrors Steve's journey and central conflict over the course of the film, and directly contrasts with the alternative Sam poses within it.

CA:WS at its thematic core, says that initiatives that sacrifice justice for claims of national security and public safety are exactly what robs us of our rights and freedoms and ultimately endangers us all. It's not even subtle--Zola says it out loud in his evil villain speech. but operating at a high level in a government agency puts you in a position where you're meant to make that decision again and again, even if we assume you have the best of intentions.

Peggy and Howard were people who believed that they had to make the hard decisions to save the world. They were handed a decision where perception of culpability was obscured by how distributed out the blame was, and the direct public benefit to national security was posed to be overwhelmingly good. It leads to SHIELD's infiltration. Project Insight went through on the exact same reasoning. Fury, Maria Hill, possibly Nat, and Tony (off-screen) all do the exact same thing and justify the means by the end, and it leads to the helicarriers being made.

Steve spends the movie being told, explicitly, to "get with the program" and start making the same decisions. His central conflict is being someone on the inside of this club, being told that he needs to start understand what keeping the world safe demands, and his journey leads to him refusing to do it. The climax of the movie is a character so minor that we never learn his name refusing to launch the helicarriers with a gun pointed at his head, even though the complicity he carried in it would have been just as attenuated as Steve's was as SHIELD's janitor. And all throughout it, there's Sam, someone who left the military explicitly because he couldn't follow the rules he was being given anymore.

Peggy and Howard's decision to go along with Zola in Operation Paperclip is a direct parallel of the decisions Fury made with Project Insight and the decisions Steve ultimately refuses to make himself. Making Peggy and Howard complicit in what let in Arnim Zola encapsulates the entire core argument of CA:WS and it's so weird to me that I've only ever seen it discussed in shipping wars and discourse as to whether a Character Is Bad.

Peggy and Howard, ultimately, were members of a governmental task force who made the Hard Decisions for The Public Good. As an inherent part of that role, they did bad things. Unjust things. They undoubtedly saved the world multiple times over as a part of their tenure as the head of SHIELD, but it would be absolute naivety to assume that anyone in that position didn't become complicit in terrible fucking things. It's the direct product of their positions in the government, and it's exactly what leads to Steve's position in Civil War. it is absolutely bonkers to me how people watched Winter Solider and then reacted to Steve's opposition to the Accords like Local Imperialist Military Boy Refuses To Listen To Anyone Else. Steve just had a masterclass in how people in the government make decisions that sacrifice justice up to and including people he once trusted with his life. Of course he didn't fucking trust General Human Experimentation And I Consider Bruce Banner The Property Of The United States Military with his every action as Captain America. He had just learned that he couldn't even trust Peggy and Howard with it.

[allekha]

Maribel Vinson, nine-time US champion (women’s singles) and six-time US champion (pairs) in the same span of years, two-time World medalist, first European medalist not from Europe, and 1932 Olympics bronze medalist. She was a sports writer at the New York Times during her career and then would go on to coach, among others, her two daughters; tragically, all three would die in the 1961 plane crash that killed the entire US Worlds team.

Unknown date (presumably late 20s or early 30s), photographer, or any other context, as it wasn’t given and I couldn’t find an online copy. Scanned (and cleaned of what appeared to be dust and scratches on the original) from Figure Skating: A History by Jim Hines, where it’s credited to the World Figure Skating Museum and Hall of Fame. I don’t know if it’s her pose, her expression, her comfortable-looking-yet-fashionable dress, or what, but I just found something about this photo very striking.

[nocternalrandomness]

Corsairs on the ramp at the Planes of Fame Air Museum Airshow in Chino Valley, CA

[alexbyrth]

Come along in the cockpit with Chris Fahey as he demonstrates the Lockheed P-38J "23 Skidoo" at the Planes of Fame Air Show 2015. Planes of Fame Air Museum Where Warbirds Fly htttp://www.planesoffame.org

[usafphantom2]

The tower controller said “Beautiful, beautiful, come back and do another one”. I said I better not, I’m gonna go to Beale,’ Maury Rosenberg, SR-71 Blackbird pilot.

The famed tape in this post (recorded at Western Museum of Flight in 2018) features SR-71 Blackbird pilot Maury Rosenberg telling that story of when he decided to request a “flyby” over the Sacramento airport on his way returning to Beale Air Force Base (AFB) – where he was going to land.

The request was eagerly approved by air tower crew, and wanted him to fly the SR-71 “down the ramp” (much closer to the tower and other buildings).

Rosenberg recalls;

‘I think it was the 1982 or 83 Toronto airshow. I was a participant, we took an SR-71 and three crews went. One crew flew it in. One crew flew the second day airshow. And the third crew which was myself flew just a couple of flybys the third day of the airshow and then actually flew the aircraft back to Beale Air Force Base. So, when I came back into the Sacramento area and I was descending down to land at Beale, we had a lot of fuel. We had to work on the holiday and I asked the backseater You want to make an approach at Sac Metro? And he said Can we do that? And I said Why not?

asked the tower Would you like a flyby down the runway or down the ramp? The guy said Down the ramp! When I said okay, I sucked the gear up, pushed the power up. We started heading towards the ramp, towards the tower. As we were approaching it, I rolled the plane up away from the tower and lit the afterburners. We went around and made a pass. The tower controller said “Beautiful, beautiful, come back and do another one”. I said I better not, I’m gonna go to Beale. So, we went back to Beale and we landed.

‘As I mentioned it was a holiday weekend and Colonel Lonnie met us when we pulled in the hangar after we landed which was the normal procedure. I thought well that’s nice that he came out. As I came down the ladder from the aircraft, he looked at me and he said Maury, do we have any regulations that say we can’t make approaches at Sacramento Airport? I said No sir.

I want one on my desk at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.’

I have watched Maury telling this story several times on YouTube and he says later on he would run into people who would tell him how thrilled and scared they were when they heard the roar of the SR 71 flyover the Sacramento airport!

Written by Linda Sheffield Miller

@Habubrats71 via X

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[goldensimisage]

As promised, I did my best to shake off the writing rust with a quick plot dump, but it took way longer than I would have liked. Here it is under a cut though, for those interested:

Unova is a big place, but it’s populace is far from evenly distributed, and most of its daily goings on are centered around 4 cities known as the center ring, with most everything else (especially those geographically isolated by rough terrain or singular routes) being referred to as the outer branches. They all have their own local histories and claims to fame like Nacrene being home of the biggest labor strike in Unova’s history in the past, and nowadays being home to a certain prohibition-styled speakeasy and the biggest natural history museum the Unova region has to offer. And of course there are others ranging from the culinary hub of Striaton, the quiet fishing towns of Humilau and Village Bridge, to Anville town and its train museum or Opelucid and it’s deceptively traditional appearance hiding quite the tech powerhouse. But then on the flip side, there are also places like the isolationist Lacunosa, the far-off Aspertia and Nuvema, or the textbook definition of the middle of nowhere, Lentimas. But enough about those, on to the breakdowns of the big four:

Nimbasa City- The Unovan capitol in this au, serving as the geographical, economic, and political heart of the entire region. Be it underground passenger subways, above ground freight lines, or on-foot travel, all roads eventually lead back to Nimbasa. As such, there’s no better place for the elected representatives of each of Unova’s cities to gather, nor is there a better place for live entertainment with its sporting complexes, theme park, and music hall for old fashioned stage plays. No matter what your business, you’re likely to end up here at some point.

Driftveil City- All things considered, the mining and industrial focus of Driftveil isn’t all that different from canon. One of Unova’s oldest cities, Driftveil has always been the production hub of the entire region, leading in both industrial hardware and raw materials for everything under the sun. If it comes out of the ground, it ships out of one of the countless Driftveil mines. Mines that, due to their age, stretch for miles under the mountain range in Unova’s west and northwest.  

Mistralton City- While there are no planes taking off from this city like you might expect, there’s still plenty of air traffic. Home to countless avian pokemon and the biggest mail processing center in the region, most of the pokemon who live here are well traveled, and tend to share a common love of gossip from how much they hear wherever they go.

Castelia City- By far the biggest city in all of Unova. While Driftveil may be the center of domestic industry, not even the biggest mines in the world can match the sheer volume of imported goods processed by Castelia’s massive ports on a daily basis. And of course those goods don’t come alone, Castelia also serves as the biggest entryway for immigration, making Unova’s most populated city it’s most diverse as well. And with it’s wide array of mixing cultures, bustling streets, and history rich sites like Liberty Garden and the Kalosian lighthouse built at its center, this is the biggest tourist hub in Unova, and in fact, is the main thing most picture when the region is mentioned.

[signedtimes]

The Best Reasons to Visit Seoul

Seoul is one of the world's largest cities and the capital of South Korea. The city with more than 10 million people is the political, cultural and economic center of South Korea. The vibrant city with 4 UNESCO World Heritage Sites and numerous museums as well as grand Shopping plazas, markets, restaurants and skyscrapers is a preferred tourist destination. This is an overview of Seoul's major tourist attractions.

Gyeongbok Palace located in Seoul's major avenue, Sejongro is the most popular royal palace of the country. The grand palace built in the 1300s, later destroyed and restructured many times, has magnificent arched gates, gorgeous pavilions and halls featuring Korea's architectural beauty. Changdeokgung Palace is another famous Seoul palace and this 15th century historic palace encompasses beautiful buildings, secret gardens and castles. Walk through the Bukchon Village, a scenic area that has numerous conventional Korean wooden homes 'hanok'. Stroll down the alleys with architectural courtyards, beautiful outer walls and tiled roofs. It has also many old-fashioned cafés, restaurants and popular art galleries.

Shinsegae Department Store is one of the most popular shopping centers in Seoul. You will get all types of products here including fresh fish, fruits, traditional foods like kimchi, brand name shoes, cloths and more, arranged on different floors. Lotte and Hyundai stores are the other two big centers and the food court of Lotte is also notable. Bugaksan is the peak near the Blue House and is an ideal place for hiking. It offers a fantastic view of the city at a height of 342 meters. Here you can take-in Seoul's ancient fortress and many scenic areas nearby. National Museum of Korea that holds more than 220, 000 objects is the largest in the country. It has vast exhibition halls, 6 permanent display galleries, a children's museum, restaurants and more. Leeum Samsung Museum of Art is another best-known museum and is notable for its wonderful architecture and impressive collection.

Itaewon neighborhood close to the U. S. Army base is very popular among foreign tourists. This expatriate-friendly area has numerous trendy clubs, bars, restaurants and shops that sell various products. Club Volume featuring the best DJs and French café Le Saint Ex are particularly notable and enjoy a dinner at Kate's Kitchen. Trip Insadong, the famed cultural art market and view its great collection of Korean paintings, sculptures and more. Stroll along the beautiful, 5. 8 km long Cheonggyecheon Stream to enjoy the natural beauty and relax. The calm stream is 15 ft. below street level and has many petite falls and overhead bridges to enjoy.

Round-the-clock Namdaemun market is the busiest market that has thousands of shops arranged in many multi-story buildings, countless vendor booths and food stalls offering traditional cuisine. The vibrant street is the best to buy a range of items at incredibly low prices. The War Memorial of Korea is actually an enormous military museum and is a must visit for history buffs. The renowned memorial that holds planes, guns and tanks narrates the history of wars the country had fought with many of its enemies, but mainly its neighbor North Korea.

[kustas]

your post abt the little prince is so real the emotions caused by the death in that book was so shocking when I was a little kid its stuck with me for years, later on ive now been to the little prince museum and it was magical, and the netflix movie is lame as hell

I remember seeing the "story" segments of that film (as in, the actual little prince moments) and being pleasantly surprised by the style they used, which is reminescent enough of the original, keeping the iconic designs and their charm but new enough to stand out, not feel like a copy, with its own style which is a lovely one. I have not seen the film, so my point of view cannot be perfectly accurate, but it seems to be doing this trope of "adding backstory to a simple tale" (à la 2012 Lorax Onceler) which I really dislike - it's simply unnecessary. There's nothing bad about a simple story. Why not just make a short, stop motion animation based on the book?

But in the case of the little prince and how the original writes about death - this is a book written and illustrated by an aviator in the middle of WWII, which features a stranded aviator as a POV character. The movie decided to make him part of its new invented segments now as an old man retelling the tale of the prince, so it seems. It's hard to not draw parallels between the aviator of the original book and it's author, and to think his life experiences influenced the philosophy of it. From the film, making the aviator into an old man was a poor choice to handle the original, because Saint-Ex died in his plane a year after the book was written. Looking up the film to answer this ask made me discover something I did not know, which is that it's an insanely popular book known around the world, so at this point, it might be that the international fame of the story trumps the context behind it. Still, something that feels like an oversight coming from a film adaptation...

Looking back I think I hated this book as a kid because it overwhelmed me, and I wasn't yet equipped to process what it made me feel. I'd love to reread it. Where is the museum you are talking about? If it's in my country I might come and visit. And dig up my copy if I still have it :)

[aiautos]

The 1993 Ford-Cessna Valkyrie, a joint project between Cessna, and American manufacturer Ford, produced a single concept car, with the grand idea of making a flying car that could be adapted quite easily from a roadgoing car, to a flying transport for two, with an electric drivetrain (with a measly 50 mile range), an aluminum chassis, with fiberglass panels for lightness, and a very spartan interior that, though basic, was able to adapt to flying quite easily, once the wingpack trailer was deployed. Although it was met with great applause at the North American Auto Show in New York, it was very quickly realized to be a dead end, as despite the dream of flying cars being beloved for decades at this point, a converting car, with two engines, the Valkyrie would never see any production beyond 3 prototypes, one prototype of the car itself, one testbed to test the wing mounting, and one flying prototype, which was flown at EAA Oshkosh in 1994, before being given to the EAA museum in 1995. The first prototype was kept in the Ford Corporate office until the December 2002 auction, in which it was sold to a private collector, who wound up taking it to the Planes of Fame Air Museum, where it has been on loan for the past 20 years. The testbed prototype was to be broken up for scrap in October 2005, but a group of private aviation enthusiasts purchased the unrestored testbed from Cessna, and wound up shipping it to Denver, Colorado, where it sits in a hangar, undergoing a private restoration, potentially to flight, but there have been legal issues with this idea, so the team is prepared to maintain it in an airworthy condition, although unable to fly.