Hi Jim, hi Ralph,
Jim: I'm glad you like the quote! Thank you for your insight into it, it's been with me now for many years. Yes, discs will do strange things beyond the scope of spheres, that's just how it is in aerodynamics. I've spent many years, again, working on just that - wasting time, indeed, if time is ever wasted.
Ralph: what a lovely poem! I have a hang glider poem as well. It's about a good friend's death, and I am happy to remember him here. His name was Fabrice:
The Blue Sky Overhead
Fabrice, you child of summer, when you fell
along the rock face, your team was not there
to move you down the field in pass and cut
and catch to score. We’d all left La Défense,
where we had showed our pastime to the French –
we’d left the happy field of play. You climbed
alone that day into the sky. And when
you rode that updraft through the shining air,
what glory! though it took you into rock,
where your art had no purchase and you fell.
And did the Earth embrace you, when you came
wrapped in your glider to its arms? Did you
give up your spirit to the tender hands
of those who watch upon the young? You were
not thirty. I still see your happy face;
the sun of June; the blue sky overhead.
And so, that story ended. But for me,
I choose not to accept this. I prefer
to take the pass. Fabrice is cutting yet
into the endzone here. He’s worth a bet.
|