On February 19th, 1959, Władysław ‘Spud’ Potocki was test flying the sparkling white Avro Arrow RL-201 in the fair but chilly skies near Malton, Ontario. On that particular flight, the World War II veteran fighter pilot was testing the Arrow’s roll rates at Mach 1.7. While fast, it was still well below the nearly twice the speed of sound the sharp, delta-wing aircraft had already achieved on previous test flights. As aeronautical engineers like to say, the Arrow had ‘flown off the drawing board’. The celestial expectations for the all-new, Canadian-designed and built supersonic interceptor were being met or exceeded with each passing day …

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on BluFly 🛩️.

It is time we realized there’s a little bit of each in all of us and in all that we do.

I have a smoky old eighties sports car which I drive, usually too fast, for a few weeks during the shoulder seasons. Any other time of year I park it lavishly, luxuriously in a heated and cooled garage. Yet, I also lust after a brand new Tesla Model S and the solar panels with which to charge it. Weird, eh?

We recycle everything we can in our household. I was annoyed, though, when our nanny state, local government rammed through blue bins city-wide at taxpayer cost. It was as if I was being forced to take money for a blood donation which I had, for years, happily given for free simply because it was the right thing to do. Except in reverse...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published in May of 2016. (photo: ©Stocksnapper via iStockphoto)