Delta Airlines Leaves a Disabled Soldier Behind on 9/11

On September 11 2016, Delta Airlines completely forgot about a 75 year old disabled retired serviceman at Los Angeles International Airport. After being booked on a commuter flight from San Diego to Los Angeles, with connecting flight to Australia, +Delta Airlines dropped the ball when the original flight was late to leave the terminal.

Forgot to document his emergency contacts.
Forgot to document he needed a wheelchair.
Forgot to call his local family, when requested.
Forgot to advise on rebooking his connecting international flight.
And while they did give him a bed for the night...
Forgot to feed him.

Shame on you +Delta  Take a good look at the disabled soldier you left behind on 9/11.

Halfway

Halfway to the finish line.

The first 50 has been great.

The next 50 look to be awesome.

There Was Another

     In the United States, the last week of November signals the beginning of the "holiday" period. It starts with Thanksgiving, runs through Christmas and New Year, and finishes up somewhere around Superbowl Sunday.

  This year, the house was empty for the first real time, not a child to be had, not a potato mashed, not a turkey carved, not an arrival recieved.

  I could not have asked for a better window in which to complete two major articles that were approaching their deadline. By July 2016, you should be reading about an American Pioneer, but not the one whom you might think.

  It turns out, there was another.

Writer Distractions.

Dad.

Wedding.

Daughters.

Fantasy football.

Alcohol.

Unemployment.

New adventures.

The Commute.

Clutter on my desk.

Sunday mornings.

Time to return to the pencil.

The Monster That Haunts Me

   The major project has been sitting for the last few months, waiting. Lamenting. It needed an ending, a conflict, an unexpected cliffhanger. A sudden revelation to neatly tie off the principle of the book.

  Two weeks ago I found that ending, that startling revelation. It began when I read studied, author Thomas Larson's book The Memoir and the Memoirist.  Ironically, among his credits, Larson is also a Staff Writer for the San Diego Reader, the same magazine that I write for.

  Larson showed me how the neat bow, the conclusion to wrap up the story was missing. That one element which would make the memoir memorable, was absent. I had known it now for almost a year, and still could not come up with any appropriate ending. I was given a possible conclusion by one of my daughters when she announced her intention to wed, but I did not have an "ending". As much as I had written, without the ending, it would be, as Larson wrote, a memoir which was inauthentic.

  And from another daughter, the ending arrived about two weeks ago.

  The rewrite is on. The ending has compelled me to go back into the draft, and begin working more of the elements of the ending, into the backstory. And with the ending, comes the opportunity to finish out this "monster" which has haunted me.

It's All Right Chickybabe.

"Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties." - John Irving.

"I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing." - Alice Walker.

"It's all right Chickybabe, I understand." - A father.

Viewpoint: Go Set A Watchman

On July 14, 2015, one of the most anticipated fiction novels was released both in the United States and the United Kingdom. Go Set A Watchman, the second book by author Harper Lee made it's debut almost fifty five years to the day after the first release of To Kill A Mockingbird. The storyline of Watchman centers on Jean Louise Finch, "Scout" returning home to Maycomb County to discover, everything has changed since she and her brother Jem were the object of attention from neighbor Arthur 'Boo' Radley.


In the weeks leading up to the release, reviews began to emerge that the father of Jean Louise, Attica Finch, had become a racist. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus defends a man falsely accused of rape, and later during the film of the same name, Gregory Peck delivers one of the revered performances ever, which won him an Academy Award.

Writers and the blogosphere cried out in dismay at the fall from grace.

"Say it isn't so?"

"Falls from grace - first Cliff Huxtable, now Atticus Finch."

With a simultaneous release in both the United Kingdom and the United States, fellow writers "across the pond" got their hands on the book and were putting their thoughts into newspapers, before I even woke up. After reading their reviews, I wondered if it was worth preordering and prepaying for my copy on the first day release.

On the third day, and after avoiding the "mass hysteria" about Mister Finch's tainted view, I picked up my copy and isolated myself for the read. Cover to cover, one sitting. As I read the book, I could not help but be drawn back to the circumstances that brought Lee's first book to me.

Growing up in Australia, there was not a lot of detail paid to the civil issues of the South. The book, To Kill a Mockingbird, is required reading in junior High School English, along with Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. My first viewing of the film was in 1982 - not a lot of television in Australia. However, as my daughters grew up, they too also experienced Mockingbird as required reading in both Australia and the USA. Like myself, they also were not exposed to the civil issues of the south before the book, but had more exposure to Hollywood's interpretation of the issues.

Go Set A Watchman draws on the premise that every person has a Watchman, a conscience. Jean Louise, on a humid Sunday afternoon finds herself sitting in the same balcony of the courthouse where she watched her father so many years ago. This time, Atticus is leading a Citizen's Council. Jean Louise is horrified and then goes on tirade against almost everyone. Almost.

The book has flashback scenes interspersed explaining where her childhood friends ended up.  Dill lives in Italy and her older brother, Jem, passed away with a heart attack. About the only person in Maycomb that hasn't changed is Calpurnia, who is still the housekeeper for Mister Finch.

Go Set A Watchman reads like a "first draft", including a reference to Atticus defending Tom Robinson, and having him acquitted of rape twenty years earlier - the storyline that would eventually became Mockingbird. Watchman does not have the same hold as Mockingbird, and it's hard to imagine that Lee would "allow" this to be released, after a lifetime of rejecting pleas for a sequel. Lee, aged 89 and still living in Alabama, had her manuscript of Watchman "found" during an audit of assets by her lawyer.

The commotion about Atticus appears to be, unjustified. After getting into a heated discussion with Jean Louise, Mister Finch delivers the same lines from Mockingbird that his daughter has always heard from him. As her father, Atticus has never "forced" her daughter to do anything, and this time is no exception. The hysteria about Atticus being a racist old Southern lawyer, is unfounded. The town of Maycomb may have had a change of viewpoint towards civil rights, but Atticus, is still the same reserved man fighting the same internal demons that he did in Mockingbird.

I wouldn't expect anything else from a single father bringing up his children in a evolving world.

The Revelation It is Done.

   In May 1989, I delivered a child into the world, wiping away the blood from her body with my tears. I would be fortunate six years later to have another safely arrive.

  In August 1997, I began to write of the role of a father in the lives of their children after divorce, and of how now no person should interfere with that. I did not know at the time, I would be asked to stand on every word I had written.

  In February 2005, I left two children in care to seek out a new role as a functional father. I never gave up my children, I never excused myself, and I maintained the pressence I could.

 In November 2012, I last spoke to both children, amid hostility in their household.

  On November 29, 2014, I posted Christmas cards to both of my children. On May 9, 2015, it came back marked "return to sender, no longer at this address."

  Our lives now exist on eight photographs, and within several hundred pages of a diary.

  I now understand when my father once told me, that he moved away "because it was easier that way". I now understand why the father of the girls mother moved away and never made contact - not because it was easier, but because he understood that if he remained, what poison would be inflected.

  My role, as their father, has been severed. It is, over.

  And now I make all things new.
  He also said to me "Write this, because these words are true, and can be trusted."
  And he said, "It Is Done."
      - Revelations 21 5-6. 

Has It Really Been Ten Years?

  Has it really been ten years since my flight touched down at LAX?

  Has it really been ten years since Adam and I sat around Toscani's complaining about the public holiday surcharge?

  Has it really been ten years since the sun came up over the bay and set over the mountains?

  Has it really been ten years since Dad BBQ-ed lunch?

  Has it really been ten years since the drive up to Toowoomba to see my Godsons?

  Has it really been ten years since I put a sail on the water?

  Has it really been ten years since the last bout of "tickle wars" with my daughters?

  Sadly, it has really been ten years. 

For The First Fans

Christmas In Canada has been released and the tour is about to start. On this tour I'll be accompanied by my father, visiting from Australia. The irony of an Australian living in Southern California doing a tour about Christmas in Canada has not been lost

  Book tours are made for a variety of reasons, and in this instance, the book tour is not about my name on the cover, it's about the promotion of the title. 34 authors will meet to take part at the book signing in Toronto on November 4th, I will be one of a few traveling internationally. So why go?

  For the first fans.

  There are fans of "my" writing all over the world, those people who know of, or who found my writing and identified with it. There's my friends who are cheering me on. There's my daughters, some who walk around showing off the book, others who may one day get asked "did your Dad write this?" There's the distant contacts, the ones who know me through someone else. But the ones that I am endeared to the most are those who I should have treated better, and who still cheer for me.

  They are the first fans. Thank you, for your belief.

43 Years Waiting to Watch TV With My Father

  In September of 1971, South Sydney won the Sydney Rugby League Grand Final.  I have no recollection of watching the game on television.

  On the first Sunday of October, 1971, Alan Moffatt won the Hardie Ferrode 500, One of my earliest recollections as a child was walking into the living room and seeing my father laying on the floor watching the race. And that's what I did. Armco guard rails, hale bales, spectators on the fence line, and the pits opened directly onto the racing line. And I was hooked on motor racing.

  Over the years, I have been to motor racing events on four continents. I have seen my heroes like Jack Brabham, Nigel Mansell, Juan Pablo Montoya,  and Michael Andrietti race. I have stayed up past midnight to watch live international broadcasts from across the globe, and in those dark hours of my life, it has given me comfort.

 43 years ago was the last time that South Sydney appeared in a Grand Final. With my father in the country, he and I will stay up tonight well past midnight to watch the broadcast from Australia.

  It will be the first time in over 15 years we will have watched a game together. And the winner will be the relationship that a parent has with a child.

Repetitive Irony

I have to think back to when I was a child of age 6 or 7, for the last time I recall my father residing in my house. My mother would tell my brother and I, versions of what happened in their divorce. I had no reason to disbelieve my mother.

  I have to think back to when I was a father of two daughters ages 7 and 2, for the last time I recall residing with my father in his house. As my own marriage was failing, I would learn of what really happened in his divorce. I had no reason to disbelieve my father.

  Friends of my father later confirmed some truths, and my perception of his role as a father was forever altered.

  This week, my father flew from Australia to the United States and will be residing with me for a while. I have one final opportunity to make some memories with him, as I watch the man who was once a giant, struggle.

  His father passed away without him, when his own children were a great distance away.

  History, it appears, is not without repetitive irony.