(The foliage is turning at the farm. I got the tractor out and did a last cut in preparation for the end of the growing season. Life is exceptionally good here. Photo Socotra.)

I am at the farm this brilliant Fall morning. There is a rich crispness to the air; it is dense with the morning chill burning off and the sky reverberated with the roar of rotary-engined Warbirds. Four of the 1943-vintage AT-6 Texans from last week’s cancelled Airfest buzzed the farm in an impromptu air show to break the morning calm. There is something profound in the sound of old engines, proud and strong and deep-throated with energy.

I have already been back and forth with several associates this mornings on matters of great import. I won’t bother you with that, since there is nothing we can do about it. I mean, we tried and it didn’t work. As the President said in his radio address yesterday, “the clouds of crisis and uncertainty have lifted.”

The clouds have indeed lifted, at least until January. Then we will do this again. That at least appears certain, though I am not sure if that is what the President was referring to. Then, he ignored the $658 million dollar elephant in the room, if I may be permitted the allusion, which is part of what the fight was all about. It is incomprehensible to me that the IT disaster was engineered the way it was. The contract to develop it went to CGI Federal, whose executives visited the White House at least six times before they snagged the award. They projected a world-class experience for on-line users, and the project is currently slightly less than Third World, ten times over budget and counting. The rollout of the Affordable Care Act cannot be taken as anything but what it is: a demonstration of the Government’s inability to get out of its own way.

And we all know that, right or left.

Anyway, I agree with Mr. Obama that we ought to get back to what a majority of our citizens thought they were doing when they elected these astonishingly dysfunctional branches of government. What was that? “Growing the economy, creating good jobs, strengthening the middle class, and laying the foundation for broad-based prosperity, and getting our fiscal house in order for the long haul.”

I will be interested to hear how he plans to do it. So far, none of those things have happened over the last five years of governance, any more than it did in the eight years before that. But maybe next week we can get on it after all the “glitches” in the system are solved. hahaha.

Anyway, the emotion has pretty much leached out of my fingertips and I have been following the four trusty war-birds as they arc around the perimeter of the farm.

They are all in this image, though the trusty iPad camera could not pick them out of the footless halls of air. Swear to God, it is as if the farmhouse was a pylon for their formation, doing a racetrack from here near Mount Pony and back to T.I. Martin Field.

(Who said they weren’t tech savvy back in the day? All four Texans are in this image. They must be stealth fighters!)

Trying to pick the aircraft out of the trackless blue was much better than thinking about the stupid Tigers. I made the mistake of watching the game and adding that late evening to the lunches and dinners of last week finished me off by midnight. Consequently, I only had enough spleen left for one tirade this morning, which I will mercifully spare you.

Instead, lacking the technical ability to share the magic- wait, the roar of Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp engines is swelling- here they come again! Let me try the other camera…

(#4 is trying to join the echelon formation. On the eight passes over the farm, they managed the “finger four” formation and a diamond or two. You could almost smell the AvGas from the front porch. Private shows are good. Photo Socotra.)

Seventy years old those planes are, and not a problem on the roll-out. The government that commissioned their construction worked, had goals, and everyone agreed about where we were going. Doesn’t have much in common with today, does it?

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
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