The end or a new beginning?

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

Horace (65 BC - 8 BC)

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Air Traffic controllers Association have been trying for nine months to reach agreement on a new contract. Today, they have announced that they were done talking. The FAA will try and impose their contract demands onto its air traffic controllers in sixty days.
Needless to say, there are no pay raises or increases in the amount of leave that I will earn in a given week. Actually, what I will be receiving is a 30% pay cut, no more sick leave and two weeks of vacation time ( the FAA will select when I get my two weeks off).
This new contract is going to adversely affect just about everything that is in my life now. It probably is going to affect everything in my life from now until I retire, maybe even beyond retirement. Thankfully, we had our daughter all ready. I shudder to think of how the new FAA will treat a controller who happens to get pregnant without permission from the FAA. My wife will probably only get two weeks of maternity leave when she gets pregnant again. This will be a trying time for the air traffic control community. I understand that the entire aviation community has gone through some ups and downs, mostly downs, over the past 5 years. I guess it was time for my family to share in the pain that the rest of the aviation community has dealt with. Then again, I have never gotten to work 9 days a month and make $255000.00 like most pilots had done before the cutbacks. Pilots are working more with less of them. Controllers are getting ready to do the same. If the paycut goes through as expected at least 4500 controllers will retire immediately. They will make more retired than if they keep coming wo work so they would be stupid to stay (in my mind they are stupid to still be there but that is a different story). Unlike pilots, controllers can't go work for jetblue if they get laid off or pissed off with United. The only option for controllers is the FAA or we can go up to Canada and hope for the best up there.
Thankfully, this contract will only be in effect for four years. Hopefully, the next contract will be more friendly towards the air traffic controllers. Hopefully, when my daughter is old enough to realize what her parents do for a living we will be treated like people who are worth something. Right now I am not looking forward to this period of adversity that we are going to go through. Right now I am glad that my daughter is young enough not to understand the turmoil that is about to engulf my life, my wife's life and my daughter's life.
Just another legacy that george bush has to add to resume. Thanks so much george.

Fate or maybe not

Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.

Ovid (43BC-17AD)

Well thanks to my sister, I have a new TV addiction that thankfully is disappointing me. 24 seemed like a good idea, it seemed like something that I would like, I actually really liked the first 4 or 5 hours of this season. Now, the show is really ridiculous and I am sad to say that I still am watching it. Martial Law in Los Angeles to protect 200000 people? Come on...the government tries to declare martial law in LA and 200000 bloods and crips alone would be dead before nightfall. The OJ riots would seem like a day at Disneyland compared to how that city would erupt if any government tried what is being done on 24. Then, as if to add salt to my wound, martial law is declared and they never talk about it again! I know I need to suspend my disbelief but I just can't take it anymore with this show. It's on at 9pm on Monday and I really can't wait to see what happens to President Palmer's brother this week. If you don't know what that means, save yourself 24 hours of TV viewing and don't try to figure it out.
Enough of that.
Do you believe in fate? That as we move around in this world sometimes things just happen for a reason? As my good man Ovid notes above, Chance or Fate is always powerful. If we choose to let it have the power. Sometimes I believe in it, usually when it's good fate I believe in it, bad fate I have no time for right now. Good fate or at least a weird coincidence happened today. In the mail was a letter from a realtor indicating that someone is interested in purchasing our house. If I hadn't just written yesterday's blog yesterday then today's letter may not of been that strange. As we consider moving selling the house is a big concern. We tried to sell it last year for a few months and we pulled it off the market before we got any serious interest. If we had the house sold before we went looking for a new one it would really make looking for a new house a lot easier. At least I think it would make looking for a new house a lot easier. On some levels it is almost like a chicken and an egg kind of situation.
If we sell our home first, then we will feel pressure to find something new because by a certain date we will, in essence, be homeless. If we find something we want to buy first, then we may end up with two mortgage payments for a while. Neither scenario is likely or desirable but both scenarios are possible.
Of course we could just stay put. Do nothing. Hunker down for the long haul. Stay the course. Ride out the storm. Or any other cliche that you can think of that pertains to not moving. Staying in place certainly alleviates the stress of moving. It doesn't alleviate the stress involved in staying put however. That is the catch-22 that I and my family find ourselves in.
Any suggestions?

Larger than life

The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

The Atlanta airport is getting ready to open a new air traffic control tower. The new one is much larger than the one it is replacing, actually Atlanta will soon have the tallest air traffic control tower in the US. If you look at the photo above you'll notice just how much larger than the old tower it is. The Atlanta airport is getting ready to open another runway. The city of Atlanta just opened up an aquarium. They anticipate 3 million people will visit their new aquarium this year. I would be surprised, stunned actually, if 3 million people visited New Hampshire in a year.
Some people are confused when I say that I would like to move to Atlanta. Why? is the famous question. My best answer is that Atlanta is growing, it is vibrant, it hasn't reached its peak and is not on the downward slide.
The weather is hot. It's probably too hot. The state income tax will probably mean that we take a paycut, although it will probably be a very small one. It will mean that we, my wife and I, are going to have to start over again. We will have to learn a new community, retrain in new facilities, try to make new friends and find some place to provide daycare to our daughter.
In New Hampshire, the opportunities for childcare are limited. The opportunities for child development are also limited.
It seems that in order for us to provide the best for our daughter, we may need to seriously investigate all the pros and cons of moving to another area. A national publication just rated New Hampshire as one of the top three places to live in the US. I don't think Georgia made the top ten. Of course, those ratings are very subjective. The author likes some things that New Hampshire has but some other states may lack. I didn't really memorize the article or the criteria that were used to determine the rankings. Maybe the study is right, maybe moving to Atlanta will wind up being some kind of a mistake. If it is a mistake though, it seems like a lot of people are making the same one. New Hampshire is also the third oldest state in the country. The population of the state is the third oldest I should say. Texas is the youngest state. Being in a state with such a large percentage of older people means the likelihood that schools will not take such a high priority to the voting population in the not too distant future. When schools don't get money they begin to go down hill and down hill fast.
With most things in life there are two ways of looking at things. Sometimes three or four viewpoints. None of them are necessarily wrong they are just different. I really hope that our viewpoint is the right one when it come to the best place for us to raise our child.

Afraid of the dark

A conscience is like a baby. It has to go to sleep before you can.

Author Unknown

Over the past four days Samantha has slept right through the night. She has been falling asleep at 7:30pm and sleeping until 6:30am.
Last night was the first time she slept in her own room, all by herself, for the whole night. This may sound like a small step, inconsequential in the overall course of her life. For me it is the continuation of her becoming her own person. Although we were connected to her by the baby monitor, this was the first time that we as parents had to let her go so she could be by herself. There will be many more moments in her life that we will have to let go, this just happened to be the first.
First times are usually a little scary. The first time off the high board at the pool, the first time petting a strange dog, the first day of school, these are all firsts that kids have to go through on their own. We, as parents, can help her get to the point of "deciding do I or don't I?", but we ultimately do not make the choice for her.
Naturally, there are other firsts that kids do, first beer, first cigarette, first time sneaking out with boys. All of these firsts are looming out there. They are quietly waiting their turn to become part of my daughter's history. Hopefully when she gets to decide about some negative firsts we have taught her well enough that she will skip over most of them. Maybe not but hopefully she will.
Right now it's pretty cool that she went to sleep in her own bed. That's a first that we shared as a family. She doesn't know it, but this small first step has certainly made her mom and I very proud of her.

P.S.---Happy birthday to Grandpa Kenny, a day late is better than not at all :)

Marching along

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

William Shakespeare

We watched the movie March of the Penguins tonight. If you haven't seen it yet, don't worry there isn't much of a plot that I am going to ruin for you. Basically, the penguins walk, they mate, the mom penguins leave, the dad penguins keep the eggs warm for the two months the moms are gone, the moms come back, the dads leave, then the dads come back, and finally the parents leave together. The chicks live on their own from that point forward.
This movie really shows some interesting things. The fathers watch the eggs, they keep them warm, if they drop the eggs they freeze within minutes...hence no more chick. If the moms don't make it back the chicks starve to death. If the dads don't make it back, the chicks starve to death. If an albatross flies by, a few chicks are going to end up in the albatross's stomach.
Most of the time working for the United States Government in the Federal Aviation Administration is annoying, frustrating and constricting. Sometimes, like this past Monday, it really sucks. Other days, like today, I couldn't imagine having another employer. My request for paternity leave was approved today. There really wasn't much of an approval process, the union contract states that my request has to be granted. Of course ,the FAA has a funny habit of not paying any attention to the contract so everything is always kind of a guessing game.
My last day of work is going to be June 10. I am not going back until March 10, 2007. If you're counting at home that is a total of 9 months. Nine months that I get to share in just about every moment in my daughter's life.
This is kind of like how the emperor penguins in Antarctica do it. My wife stayed with our chick, kept her warm and watched her grow while I was gone. Now I am coming back, and wife is going to go to work and I will be watching our little "chick". This is probably the way this routine will work until one of us retires. We are going to spend very few and very precious moments together as a total family unit. Parenting and working tasks are going to be shared and I wouldn't have it any other way.
The male penguins form an amazing bond with their babies. So do the females. Some where along the line humans strayed off of this course. We left the bonding process up to just the mom and the baby. For one time in my life I am look forward to being more like an emperor penguin than a human.

It's not what we say, but how...

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.

Eric Hoffer

I learned again today that there are right ways and wrong ways to talk to people. I got told at work that I was "pissing" someone off and "if I knew what was fucking good for me" I would stop whistling immediately. At first I was stunned by how blatant his use of profanity was, then I was surprised that he said it, then I stopped whistling.
Obviously, this was said to goad me into some kind of a response. To get me to do something which I would later be sorry that I did. Unfortunately, I didn't do anything, I just stopped whistling and continued on with my workday.
Inside my mind however this led to a snowball effect, it made me sad, than angry. It bothered me until I got home and then I got angry with my wife. I never get angry with my wife and I allowed this moron to get me angry enough that I took it out on my wife. This person who means less to me than a flea on a dog crap affected my whole day. He got what he intended and I let him get it. This won't happen to me again.
There are some people in life who push our buttons. We need to realize what it is about these people that affects us so negatively or we will fall again and again into this trap of anger and frustration. For me, I have a real hard time understanding what it is about this person that bothers me. Is it the fact that he talks to people like he is above them but actually he is just a scared, little man? Is it the preferential treatment that he shows to some at the expense of almost all others? Is it the fact that he is totally and utterly unqualified to do the job that he holds? It is probably a combination of all of these things. It is a rare combination, I can honestly say that there have only been two other people in my life that I have despised as much as I do this person.
My daughter is also going to run into people occasionally with whom she won't get along. I need to be able to show her how to deal with it when it happens to her. As of now I am totally incapable of teaching her this skill. As I have written in a few past blog entries I do not claim to be perfect or fully developed in all areas. This is certainly one area that I can use a lot of improvement in. Perhaps this is why this person has wound up in my life. Maybe fate realized that I am inadequate in this area so I am supposed to try and work things out with this person. Maybe I just need to get over it, move on and adopt the motto "some people are just asses". Whatever I am supposed to do, I hope that I figure it out before I have to go back to work on Thursday.

Endangered no more

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

Aristotle

It seems that people can, sometimes, do the right thing. It was announced today by the Department of the Interior that the Great Lakes gray wolves are no longer endangered. This is big news, it proves that with the right management people and animals can share this earth and everyone can get along.

Pretty much my whole life I have heard about the destruction that we humans are causing to this planet. We are destroying it with pollution, too much garbage, too much smog, too much waste. The icecaps are melting, the air will never be clean, the crap we put into the oceans will eventually kill everyone and everything. It also has been a fairly common theme throughout my life that no one is really doing anything about it. The governments argue if any problems actually exist. People use and consume with little regard or care for each other or for the future. Recycling fades come and go like fashion statements. Solar power, electric cars or wind farms have yet to yield any tangible results. I guess the occasional Greenpeace guy on a raft yelling at some polluter or helping to clean some birds is about the best I have learned to expect.
My daughter is going to begin to realize things about the world outside of her immediate family and her home in a few years. It is scary to think that some of the things that we take for granted today may be distant memories by the time she is my age. Things like clean air and water. Things like food free of disease, chemicals and pesticides. Things like wild animals, trees, grass, bugs and flowers.
Returning this small group of wolves probably won't affect my daughter directly. Most likely she never will see a great lakes gray wolf. It's just nice to know that some people, somewhere put the time and effort in to make sure she can see one if she wants to.

Lost, found and lost again

Did you ever see an unhappy horse? Did you ever see bird that had the blues? One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.

Dale Carnegie


Some scientists have been arguing for years about the status of the ivory billed woodpecker. Long thought to be extinct, there was some excitement in the birding community when a few sightings and a video tape surfaced that showed the bird alive and well in an Arkansas swamp. Sadly, the most trusted bird guy in all of the land says that the videotape and sightings are mistaken and the bird actually has been extinct for some time,
This semi-controversy is interesting to me from several points of view. First, it proves yet again that some people will believe anything as long as they want to believe it. Weapons of mass destruction? Sure. Bigfoot? sure. Nellie living in loch ness? of course. Alien abductions? absolutely, my wife's cousins best friend was abducted just last week.
Sometimes when we are shown irrefutable proof that something does or does not exist we can't see it because our mind blinds us to the truth. We have been raised to believe certain things about ourselves, about our world and as we grow older we never take the time to challenge these self imposed, learned limitations. Our minds chain us to these past beliefs, to the time we tried something and we failed. We learn to never try to do that again. If we try it again we will only fail again. Our minds can become a more restrictive, suffocating place than any penitentiary.
When I was younger I was told that I couldn't do certain things. Some of it came from my teachers, some of it came from my parents, some of it came from my friends. It's not important who put the thoughts out there, it is important what my mind did with them once they got inside. I never really developed the skills or courage to challenge my self doubts. I think I am a lot better at challenging myself now than I used to be. My wife helped me learn this skill, although she most likely doesn't know it.
I don't want my daughter to develop the self doubts that afflict everyone. I would prefer she live a life of happiness, bliss and never experience any sadness. This, of course, is not reality. She will have sadness, depression and unhappy moments just like I do, her mom does and you do.
As parents we need to enable her to deal with these issues in life. She needs to be taught to challenge her self doubts, challenge her inner critic when it says things that make her sad. If she learns from a teacher that she isn't such a great singer, she needs to be strong enough to challenge that belief the next year, with the next teacher. I hope we can show her not to wait too long to challenge her negative thoughts. The longer they stick around, the harder they are to question and eradicate. If they stay around long enough we meld them into our psyche, they become part of how we identify ourselves to the world.
Part of being a parent is to have some sort of a guideline of what you want to impart onto your kids. You need to have some sort of a plan, it can't be a willy nilly kind of thing or you are likely to leave out some important things. I just want to make sure that I try to teach her all that I possibly can so she can be the best person she can possibly be.

Long time no see

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.

Mark Twain


I got an angry email from a faithful reader today. It seems that my two week hiatus has actually been noticed by someone other than my wife. My goal when I began writing this blog was to chronicle the first year of my daughters' life. It fascinates me that anyone else reads it but it sure is nice to know when someone is.
My writing has taken a turn towards repetition, when I start a new blog I feel as though I have all ready written about this before, so I delete the blog entry and try again the next day. Granted, I am no Hemingway or Faulkner but some may call what I am going through to be a bit of writers block.
Everyday is something new in my daughter's life, but everyday is not something so new that it is easy for me to write about it. Sometimes life gets in the way. I am not always able to sit down and devote the time necessary to write something meaningful
What I fail to realize is that my daughter's life is being lived, every hour that goes by she is becoming older, smarter and more like a person rather than an infant. These steps need to be written down, No matter how small, she deserves to know about it and I need to write it down for her.
Some of the blogs that follow will therefore be short, some may be long. Some may sound the same as previous blogs, some may not make any sense to anyone other than me. I ask that if you read this blog and you don't see an update after a week...please email me and get me back on track.

Tin Pusher part three

Tin Pusher Part Three (of Three)


I clear an aircraft for takeoff to New York. He lifts off safely and as I switch him to the departure radar controller I turn back to the television just in time to see the second airplane hit the second tower. Within seconds a notice comes out to stop all traffic to New York. Almost all of the aircraft taxiing to my runway are headed in that direction.

“Attention all aircraft; All traffic to New York and surrounding airports has been stopped. Please contact your companies and then Ground Control to return to your gates.” “How long will the delay be to New York?”…One pilot inquires. I look at the two burning towers and answer, “Sir, I don’t think that anyone is going to New York today.”

Minutes later the reality of the situation is filtering through the system. These were not lost small aircraft, others are now missing. The new message comes out… “STOP ALL TRAFFIC IN THE UNITED STATES!”

Our jaws drop but only for a second. There is much to do. They can not take off but thousands must still land. “Attention all aircraft; All traffic in the United States has been stopped. Contact your companies and Ground and return to your gates.” I simply can not believe that these words just came out of my mouth. I am shaking. A walkie talkie in the back of the tower crackles and then the voice of the Radar supervisor booms that a United Airlines Aircraft is a confirmed hijacking and heading towards the Washington D.C. area and that we must evacuate the tower.

A couple of brave controllers stay behind to assist returning airborne aircraft to the airport. Just before one of them leaves to catch up to us, she sees and reports an unidentified primary target heading towards Washington D.C. Our supervisor notifies the White House and it, too, is evacuated. Within seconds one of our brothers from National Tower can be heard shouting over our speakers that the Pentagon has just been hit by an airplane.

We gather at a nearby restaurant, not too far but not too close to the airport, to await further instructions. Like everyone else, I dial repeated and unsuccessful calls to reach family members; my children’s father, the airline pilot, my sister, the flight attendant, my brother who works at another Washington D.C. airport.

We sit together watching the events and information unfold on the restaurant TV. The newscaster suddenly announces the identity of the aircraft that had hit the Pentagon. Wait a second…that was our airplane! It is the first time that we realize that the fated aircraft took off from our own airport by our own instructions---how long ago was that? It seems like days and yet it was only a couple of hours ago. In horror we realize that we just talked to that very flight crew and then the other reality sets in; that as we parked our cars that morning and we got our Starbucks and went through the security lines, we walked among them. Not just the victims but the terrorists, too.

It will be hours before I reach my aviation family and am assured that they are safe. Eerily though, the pilot ex- spouse was number two for take off at the fated Boston Logan when air traffic was shut down.

Along with all other Americans that day, our lives, our security, and our sense of safety are forever changed. For Air Traffic Controllers, we are still reminded every day as the procedures have changed, and a new type of vigilance is required that adds to the stress that we already experience as controllers. We police the skies above Washington now, along with separating thousands of airliners. We talk to every single private pilot now, tripling our workload with no extra staffing to do so. And we watch every second of every day, every single target on the radar scope, to ensure that America is safe.

It’s 2005 and I have just read some disturbing and inaccurate public comments from our Administrator. It seems the FAA thinks that I am under worked and overpaid and that this job just isn’t that stressful.

I return home from another late evening shift; I see uneaten cold and spoiled dinners on the counter; I see backpacks still by the door most likely untouched since the bus dropped off the kids, and homework, what homework? One teenager is asleep on the couch, always afraid to go to bed until Mom is home for the night. With the rotating schedule I haven’t seen them in four days. I kiss the littler one good night and the older one, well you can’t find her through the mess in her room.

I peel another ruined blouse off and contemplate burning it or attempting to save its life. Like so many before it, it has been sacrificed to an overworked, understaffed day and it finds its way into the trash. Tonight I lay awake sleepless and my mind is unable to quiet down. Some nights it is caused by too many airplanes in too little space that we are expected to work miracles with; sometimes it is nightmares of the pilot who turned left when you said right and the ensuing chaos as you pry him apart from another aircraft. Just yesterday the sleepless night was due to the pilot who descended too low over a hill in Leesburg, Virginia, a knoll that has already claimed so many lives before this one and how I yelled frantically for him to climb, climb, climb.

But tonight I lay awake thinking and worrying about contract negotiations and how I will pay the bills if this administrator were to cut my job or pay. Even a pay freeze would devastate my family as inflation and bills rise along with my mortgage but my pay wouldn’t. In high cost of living areas controllers are already forced into long commutes in order to serve. And let’s face it, I made my financial commitments based on the agency’s commitments to me. To rescind that now would mean certain bankruptcy for thousands of us.

So, as I lay awake I wonder…how does a single mom find time to supplement income to feed the kids and start this year’s college? Do I work planes by day and then waitress all night? Do I clean houses by day and then planes all night? Can I stay awake on the job and stay healthy? How do we controllers who leave before the kids and miss dinner with them every night find time to salvage our financial futures if the FAA freezes or cuts our pay?

Or will they resort to this “productivity increase” we have been hearing about. More hours per shift in the trenches and less breaks. We are already short controllers, and the FAA themselves said they would start hiring!! Never mind the down time needed to de-stress and refresh that is absolutely paramount in between nightmare sessions of chaos during the rush hours of the skies. Never mind the time the mind needs to quiet down in between the roller coaster rides in order to approach the next turn in the barrel refreshed, sharp, and ready to turn another Heavy Metal rock band into a Classical Symphony.

My mind is ablaze. What of the sick time or vacation time that the FAA might reduce? I have climbed those twelve flights of tower stairs pregnant and resembling a whale; I have climbed them on crutches after surgery; climbed them with swollen joints and Lyme disease; I have transmitted separation instructions raspy with Bronchitis, and after cancer prevention surgery; I have shown up to push tin hours after my teenager rolled her convertible, and hours after she broke her ankle at the prom; and thankfully it was a darkened room when I moved those airplanes so efficiently, in spite of a face swollen and covered in Chicken Pox.

But what of the times when you are so sick or injured or so worried about a family member that you can’t safely concentrate on airplanes? Even a migraine headache or a sleepless night can reduce the sharpest controller’s decision making process and slow the critical response time in crucial moments. Would the FAA require us to work at such times? Is that what they desire for the safety of the flying public? Is that a productivity increase?

Ms. Blakey says that we are overpaid compared to others. I wonder…are they home for dinner; home for French toast and coca coca on Christmas mornings? Can they take Nyquil when they have a cold, or take the morning off for a school play? I wonder if everybody just tells their kids they can’t play high school sports because there is no way to pick them up when Mom is on evening shifts and there’s no one to watch them anyway.

I once had an Orthopedic Surgeon tell me that the only cure for the painful locked up muscles in my back was to leave this stressful job. After several months of medicines, MRI’s, and physical therapy I was told, “You know, your job is just too stressful. Your back won’t relax until you leave your job.”-------and yet again I read in the papers that the FAA Administrator says that I am under worked and overpaid.

Her words still ring in my ears about our salary. For my eighteen year FAA career I have always worked the busiest facilities and the top paid. And yet as a single parent living in the expensive Washington D.C. area, just a few years back my salary was $63,000 per year. Around here these days, that gets you subsidized housing. The “Bad deal” contract that Ms. Blakey
detestfully refers to took that income and raised it on a steady incline over several years to reach the competitive and fair number that is correctly proportionate with the skill levels and sacrifices required to perform our duties. (And which by the way are still not the incorrectly inflated numbers the Administrator quotes to her audiences in those controller bashing speeches.)

August 20, 2005: We drop my daughter off as a freshman at college. She is the age that I was when I first became an Air Traffic Controller. It is a four hour drive there and we don’t arrive until 8pm at night because I couldn’t leave work early. The other parents have all since come and gone. A quick unpack of the car, a hotel night, and a quick goodbye breakfast to rush four hours back to the evening shift. This monumental moment in our lives is befitting of the last eighteen years of my daughter having an Air Traffic Controller mom; Quick hello---good bye---gotta go to work.

On the ride home from the college I tearfully wonder where the years went. Twenty years on the job and the only Christmas I spent all day with her was when I had that nasty Chicken pox. Eighteen years as her mom and I never had weekends off with her. Twenty years of, “sorry, I have to work on your birthday, sorry I can’t see you leave for the prom, sorry I was late to your graduation…”

We sacrifice our families, our friendships, our health, and our lives. Overpaid?! Is there any pay worth that 50 feet of separation and that agonizing wait to exhale? Is there any pay worth running out of the airport after hearing one of our own just went into the Pentagon and another is heading this way? Is there any pay worth permanent back aches, hundreds of ruined blouses and countless sleepless nights? Is there any pay worth dropping your kid off at college and realizing that you missed her growing up and it’s too late to pick another job and do it all over?

We don’t do it for the pay. It is who we are. It is what we take pride in doing. Even now, as the atmosphere has turned sour and negative and the agency is trying hard to take our pride away from us. We still know what we do every day even if Marion doesn’t. And we are still proud! Getting the lost student pilot with the cracking voice safely on the ground; hearing the quick “Nice Job” from a sympathetic pilot as he switches frequencies because he appreciates how busy you are and how exhausted you are after getting him and thousands of others to the end of their routes. I am still proud!

The four hour drive from the college is complicated by an insidious illness that has been sneaking up on me. By the time I arrive at work I am doubled over in pain. It is a Saturday night. The neighbors are having a Bar-b-Q. No sorry, I can’t make it, you know, gotta work: No they don’t know. They are home every weekend. I limp into the Tracon to await a position assignment. Surprise, you’ve been randomly selected for drug testing. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Do not stay with your nervous daughter for the weekend or help her unpack. Do not go to the neighbor’s party. Go directly to the special room so you can pee in a special cup for the stranger.

Escorted to the water machine by the stranger like a common criminal, it then takes two hours of bottled water and direct supervision to give her what she wants and then I am free to limp sickly back to work airplanes. As I hobble back to the cold dark room---the place I see more than my children---I am embarrassed and ashamed, resenting the drug testing I was just forced to humiliatingly endure. I am modest and ill and I have never tried so much as a cigarette. Then it comes to me; those words twenty years ago from that very first flight surgeon on that very first day.

“Congratulations. You are going to be an Air Traffic Controller. Your body is no longer your own.”

They can try to take away a lot of things from us, John, but they can’t have my soul. And I have the soul of an air traffic controller. Tell the FAA that’s the one thing we’ve got on our side that’s non-negotiable.

Sincerely,

Controller X

Tin Pusher Part Two

Tin Pusher Part Two (of Three)

It’s 1987…how long was I in FAA remission? Only a year and a half. Was I nuts to be walking back into a Washington D.C. area tower and embracing once again the art of moving metal? I think in a way we are all a little nuts. It takes a certain personality and strength to voluntarily put yourself in the constant center of chaos and stress day in and day out. It’s like a roller coaster ride that scares you and yet thrills you and you can’t get off. We have a rhetorical question, “Which comes first, the crazy people who want this job, or the job that makes the people crazy?”

It’s 1990 and I am training on my very last position. It has been three hard years and for some even four. It does not go missed that we could have completed medical or law school in this amount of time. I am expecting my second child and thankfully still have a trainer plugged in with me; Because more times than I can count, I must suddenly unplug and run into the nearby men’s room to say goodbye to the hasty out -the -door breakfast that I choked down while the normal world was still asleep.

The smiling face of a sympathetic supervisor always guards the door understanding that the lady’s room was a daunting flight of stairs away.

Mouth rinsed, I return, plug in, and carry on. Sometimes watching the green sweep go ‘round the scope I would worry about radiation and pregnancy. But assured by the FAA that there were no documented problems, I continue. It would be years later when I would realize my fortune at having such a healthy baby when we controllers calculated that over 50% of the babies born to that facility in recent years had some sort of a birth defect or health problems. No one will ever know why.

Eight months pregnant and 45 pounds of water, (that’s my story, never mind the late night Pop Tarts), The Airport Authority and its perfect timing chose to disable the tower elevator for two months of refurbishing. Climbing 12 non-air conditioned July concrete flights did nothing to rid those Pop Tart, I mean water pounds. Of course I never did get a thank you for making the unbearable daily hike to help the understaffed operation but I did once get a nice back room counseling session for being late after a 6th floor stop to catch my pregnant breath.

It’s 1994 and I am asked to return full time from maternity leave to help a floundering trainee with a last chance effort at succeeding on the intense unworkable roller coaster of all rides---Final. I left the baby boy behind and gave the trainee all that I had. My family sacrifice ended in one washed out trainee, an operational error with only 50 feet separation, two weeks of bad dreams, and a spot on The Learning Channel titled, “Understanding Air Traffic Control.”

Fifty (50!!!) feet apart in the middle of the clouds and me holding my breath! When those two targets came apart on the other side I exhaled; I still had 16 more aircraft under my control in a tiny airspace waiting for instructions. I still had work to do and it would be the longest thirty minutes of my life before the short staffing would find another controller to relieve me.

While listening to the tapes and reliving the near disaster, somewhere in the terminal two airline pilots were shaking hands. Having sought each other out after an unexpected meeting in the clouds, they followed up with a call to the facility graciously commending my performance and chastising the FAA for allowing any controller to be put through such an impossible Rubik’s cube of traffic. I took two weeks vacation, sent my family packing, and sat locked inside my home thanks to a record breaking shut- the -city -down ice storm. Seems 8 foot waves and San Diego sunsets are a distant dream now. For days and nights I relived that moment over and over and contemplated and second guessed how I could have prevented it. The nights were sleepless and if I was lucky enough to sleep, it only brought nightmares of the near disaster.

My husband of ten years was by then an Airline veteran who used to truthfully joke that his biggest worry day to day (in the 7 days per month that he flew) was whether to choose the chicken or the fish. He used to say that he did not get paid for what he did every day, that he was paid for what he might have to do in a moment’s notice. A heroic United pilot in Sioux City comes immediately to mind.

You could not pay Captain Al Haynes enough for what he endured that day in Iowa and the FAA does not pay me enough for what I went through that day in Virginia, and what I have heard in my head thousands of times since.

The FAA Administrator who is now holding my career in her hands…I sometimes wonder. She remarks about Hollywood’s Pushing Tin, but has she taken the time to view The Learning Channel’s, Understanding Air Traffic Control? I don’t think she has. You see, the actual audio tape from my close encounter of the worst kind is played out during the one hour documentary. I myself can not watch it without sweaty palms and a lump in my throat.

She's a professional whose former position was to run the National Transportation Safety Board. I would imagine that somewhere along the way she must have tip- toed through a gruesome and heartbreaking scene with a scarf held over her face. Hasn’t she seen first hand the horror of what happens when the targets don’t come out the other side? Could she really stand in a hotel room shower trying to scrub away the acrid smell of disaster and later in speeches minimize the stress and trivialize what I and 14,500 other Air Traffic Controllers do every single day and night?!

Can Ms. Blakey really believe that just anyone can and will do this job? And that it only takes a high school diploma? That is like telling every college drop out that he can become a Bill Gates. Or tell every basketball player cut from Varsity that he will become a Michael Jordan.

About two thirds of my coworkers have military backgrounds and the other third have college degrees. Oh yes, there are the lucky few who manage to succeed with only high school behind them, but the FAA has also spent millions on trainees with no background only to eventually wash them out.

It’s 2001 and I am training a new gal in the tower. Not really a new gal because just before I had danced at the prom to a Beatle’s tune, this lady had been a Washington D.C. controller, but got caught up in the strike of 1981. Now ten years and two presidents later she was rejoining the world of aviation. I am teaching her about a runway rule that is not favored by controllers or pilots but the FAA insists upon it because it reduces delays.

At that moment a pilot has an emergency and my back turned to my trainee, I am coordinating with other personnel regarding the pilot’s situation and the need for fire and rescue equipment. In the blink of an eye, I miss the trainee’s incomplete landing clearance to a different aircraft. Attention now on her and the approaching aircraft, I recognize her omission and have her take action to correct it. All seems well and the aircraft are separated and land safely. However a jump seat rider takes issue with the trainee’s handling of the initial instruction and the situation snowballs. It is just the sort of thing that the bureaucrats are looking for to kill the procedure, and I am about to become the sacrificial lamb.

Days later I am called to a formal conference; sort of a hearing outside of a courtroom. I am greeted outside the ominous doors by an attorney from the U.S. Justice Department. He hands me his fancy card and assures me that he is there to represent me in the inquest.

The party inside that awaits me besides my new best friend from the Justice Department consists of FAA Headquarters, the NTSB, ALPA, NATCA, and local personnel. Everyone has their own agenda. In the end me---and the ever unpopular “Land and hold short“procedure ---are beheaded.

I didn’t suffer water droplets or bamboo shoots during the interrogation but being party to an official lynching wasn’t worth the Chai Tea Latte that my trainee sheepishly handed me afterwards.

I hear now that the FAA would like to do away with the measly ten percent training pay incentive; I’d rather teach my teen to drive again than train new controllers resulting in near mid airs, NTSB inquisitions, or lawyers from the Justice Department. Ten percent is a joke….if it was all about the money this measly pittance wouldn’t be enough!

It’s a beautiful Tuesday morning in September, 2001; as I clear planes for takeoffs and landings at Dulles International, I turn around to watch confusing scenes on the television of a World Trade Center building on fire. The TV is normally restricted to weather information in the tower but this morning we cannot wait until our breaks downstairs to hear more on the mind boggling event. Everyone is surmising about a lost private pilot. How many of these have we worked through the years?

Coming tomorrow....The final installment of "Tin Pusher.........."

Tin pusher part one

Over the next three days I will be publishing a letter that appeared on the NATCA presidents' blog, the mainbang. NATCA's president, John Carr, gets a lot of materai; for his blog from his readers and this particuliar letter does a really great job of explaining the feelings and costs associated with being an air traffic controller.
On the main bang the author of this letter was never mentioned so I can not give credit to the mysterious woman who wrote it. All I can do is say thank you to her and provide another forum for her words to reach a different audience.

Dear John,

Its 1982, a typical steamy spring day in San Antonio, Texas when a young naïve girl from Southern California gets summoned to see the US Air Force Flight Surgeon. She can’t imagine why or what a Flight Surgeon even is. As the intimidating officer tells me---that eighteen year old girl---that I am about to undergo an extensive physical, I quickly object, insisting that I had already done so upon entering the USAF. Right down to being made to waddle like a duck in my underwear. It is then that she, the lady Doc, explains that all Air Traffic Controllers are subject to much more thorough exams and that my body is no longer my own.

“What do you mean Air Traffic Controller?!” I shriek. Isn’t that the crazy job where the President just fired everyone? No, no I explain, I am here to become a Linguist. “Oh, you’ll be learning another language,” she responds while listening to a heart that must have sounded like a runaway train. “Sort of a Pig Latin for aviators. No, nothing exotic like Arabic or French. You’re about to become an expert in Phraseology.” And then she went on to explain that whole “body not my own” concept of being subject to drug testing and not permitted to take medicine, over the counter or otherwise; and how everything I ever do again is subject to the explicit approval of a Flight Surgeon. From cold medicine to an after work cocktail, everything I injest will now be subject to someone else’s scrutiny, on demand.

It is 1983 and I am still green at the radar facility where the wind chill is 50 degrees below zero outside and I am still wondering when they will figure out their mistake and send me to the Linguistic school in beautiful Monterey, California. I thought to myself, “What have I gotten myself into, this separating of B-52’s and F-106’s along with the occasional Europe bound jetliner that must trek over North Eastern America before heading over water?”

I don’t know what is more traumatic for a 19 year old California girl; the 8 foot snow banks where there should be 8 foot waves, the potato farms where there should be malls, or the fact that as an Air Traffic Controller with a 6-day work week and shift work, that I have all but given up on a social life before I was old enough to start enjoying one. I was issued a parka, an ATC manual, and frostbite instructions. Where did they think that I would get frost bite working in a dark basement six days per week!?

It’s still 1983 and cancer steals my grandfather. With a tiny and dwindling family, I need to be there for my mother and sadly I am told that I may not attend the funeral far away in a sunny place called home, for I am an Air Traffic Controller in training and we are not permitted to take annual leave until we have completed the intense training program. As I sadly inform my mother that she is alone on this one, I vow that I will never miss another funeral. (I was still naïve, of course.)

Weeks later when my grandmother, my last remaining grandparent dies, and I cannot help myself. I try again. “Yeah, yeah, I know….I’m an Air Traffic Controller and I can’t go…blah blah blah.” Well my Dad had just passed three years before so there were only two family members to say goodbye to his mom and I wasn’t one of them. If you’re in the profession you know the drill…this was only the beginning of many years of missing heartbreaking funerals.

Weeks later my sister gets married. A beautiful Hotel Del Coronado wedding. The closest I get to the Hotel Del or Coronado Island is watching an old Marilyn Monroe movie that was filmed there before I was born. Again, little did I realize that this would be only one of many weddings that I would be forced to miss in the name of Air Traffic. Sometimes after a long night of studying and working KC135’s (flying fuel tanks) with engine fires and hot brakes I would collapse in the metal bed with the scratchy wool blanket and listen to the others coming and going and laughing and living. We (and I do mean “we,” as my profession morphed to become my family) had a song for those lucky ones, who still owned their own bodies, who worked nine to five, making heady decisions while pushing paper, not tin: “I want to be an Admin’ Ranger…livin’ a life of paperwork and danger.”

It’s 1984 and I am bound for civilian life. As I clean out a gun-metal gray locker in a gun-metal gray room, I take the Federal Aviation manual, the bible of all Air Traffic Controllers, the dog eared, scribbled on, highlighted, and long since memorized 7110.65 and purposefully and happily drop it into a nearby trashcan. I am reminded of all of those beautiful Junes when the beach beckoned and we would trash our notebooks on the last day of school with a sense of freedom and excitement. Of course it’s Caribou, Maine here and while late spring, the black snow banks on the roadsides were towering into the phone lines and unwilling to melt.

As I drive away from the base and glance back at the ATC tower where my dark home of two years sits buried in a drab basement, I have no idea that it is too late for me. The job is IN me. It is a part of me. It is now who I am. I am a tin pusher who talks fast, thinks fast, and speaks a different alphabet. That 7110.65 sits in the trash, but its words and its soul sit deep inside of me.

I had no idea that last day in Maine that a future of missed funerals and missed weddings still awaited me. I hadn’t an inkling that the future would unfold around missed birthdays, missed school plays, missed dinners and missed bedtime stories with children that haven’t even been born yet.

It’s 1985 and I have spent three months studying almost 20 hours per day and night to pass the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City. No television, no relaxing; my pilot husband sits on a Honolulu beach on a piloting assignment, and my best friend is a stack of 3x5 index cards to help me memorize non-radar rules of separating airplanes. The 15 foot snow banks of Maine replaced by the tornados and ice storms of Oklahoma.

Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years all come and go without family or celebration. Actually, I have a new family now---a mismatched group of students all pulling each other through an impossible screening process where we know that 60 % of us will not make it. The FAA Academy instructors even joked about it. “Look to your left and look to your right,” they said. “Of the three of you, two will not make it. If one of those other two people looks smarter than you, don’t unpack your bags.” We laugh together, cry together, and run problems together until the middle of the night. Our families back home are told not to visit because they might distract us.

We tell ourselves it’s OK to neglect them these few months; and all that matters is passing the screen; that we’ll make it up to them later. Forty percent of us passed that screen program in 1985. And not one of us made it up to our families. You see, we went on to our Towers, our TRACONs, and our Centers to a life of shift work, weekends, holidays, and constant stress. Whether a mom or a dad, single, married, or divorced, as government employees dedicated to the public’s safety we sacrificed our families, our friendships, and even our health for the system.

We miss school plays and home runs, Christmas mornings and turkey dinners, anniversaries and graduations. Our children eat their dinners alone and tuck themselves into bed. A staggering portion of controllers end up divorced from civilian spouses who can not tolerate the schedule and the stressed out faces we bring home, and those controllers marry other controllers because who else can understand the trenches and sympathize with the shift work and the war stories of the two that almost hit. Who else can speak the language?

I can not count the Christmas mornings that I watched for a “Santa” tag to playfully cross my scope, the result of a coworker’s holiday spirit, as my children sat home alone in front of a T.V. As any single parent knows, decent day care is not readily available for rotating shifts, nights, weekends and holidays.

It’s 1986 and I have quit! The stress that was Atlanta Center and its four year training program was already eating away at my marriage and my self esteem like an occupational cancer. Another 7110.65 finds its way into a trash can. This time I don’t feel that exhilarating sense of freedom but rather a weight lifted off my shoulders. Relief. Like the most stressful days of my life are now a memory and separating from the FAA is my chemotherapy.

Coming tomorrow....Tin Pusher Part Two

Churching

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.


Albert Einstein

I went to an interesting event last night. It was church sponsored training about the Anglican church and about the Christian faith. My wife and I are both new to the Episcopalian church so I am trying to learn what I can about it and share what I learn with her. I have never really been a big church goer, for a short time I went to church fairly regularly, sang in the choir, but that lasted at most 6 months.
I think this time around church and I are going to be able to stick together. Our new church feels different, it has a friendly, welcoming vibe that makes it feel more like a home than a place of business.
Being from two different religions never really seemed like that big of an issue when we were dating or even when we first got married. We got married in my wife's church, we went to my wife's church whenever we went to church. It didn't matter to me, that is until we had our daughter.
I became more and more uncomfortable with the idea that I was not able to take communion with my wife and eventually I would not be able to take it with my daughter. That bothered me. It bothered me that I would be excluded from something that I feel is important to share with my family. Not just share with my immediate family but be able to share it with my entire family. It also bothered me that my daughter would be excluded from participating in her faith to the highest extent that she wanted to. It seemed unfair that she would be banned from doing something because she was not a boy.
I thought about converting, becoming a Catholic. I went to a couple of RCIA classes, read a few books, spoke with a few priests. I stopped going to the classes because the feeling of being excluded was not going away. I felt that even if I converted I would never be accepted, never become a full person in the eyes of the Catholic church.
After some discussion we have ended up at the Episcopalian church. Sometimes referred to as "Catholic-lite". It was a compromise between the more liberal, open feel of the Lutheran church and the conservative, closed feel of the Catholic church. The Episcopal church has the same sort of traditions as the Catholic church but lets everyone take communion like the Lutheran church.
I have always viewed religious people, extremely religious people at least, with a great deal of suspicion. To believe in something that strongly, with that much compassion and fervor was scary and very foreign to me. When athletes or famous people thank Jesus or God for their good fortune it always sounds fake and contrived. It seems that some people can take something that is supposed to be beautiful, uplifting and inspirational and change it into something dark, angry and very superficial.
Being a new parent has taken my own interest in religion to a new level. As I begin this journey into religion it dawns on me that not everyone looks favorably at our decision to "churchify" our daughter. Not everyone feels that religion is important, that having some sort of spiritual foundation in life is important. To me, not bringing our daughter to church, not exposing her to that part of humanity would be like depriving her of a small part of what it means to be human. If we do not expose her to the mysteries and the beauty of faith than we have left out a part of life that she may never be able to attain. It is going to take a lot of time for me to develop the feeling of faith, of belief, that I want to have in the Christian faith. I don't want my daughter to have to work that hard for her beliefs. I only hope she is fortunate enough to have faith. Faith in the world, faith in herself and some sort of faith in something larger than herself, larger than the world. If she doesn't want to believe in the same things that I believe in that is fine with me. I just want her to believe in something, I want to ensure that I have given her the tools to decide for herself what feels right to her. She shouldn't feel forced or guilted into believing.
As a parent I hope for the best for my daughter. She should have the things in life that I don't. She will be exposed to things that I haven't, experience things that I never did. My job as her dad is to try and make sure that she has the tools to handle anything that life brings her way. I think that faith in some religion, some sort of higher power, is too important of a tool to leave out.

Another cold

A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.

Ogden Nash

Well I caught a cold, again. Sometime over the last 48 hours someone infected me and now I am struggling to avoid infecting my wife or our daughter. Hopefully, they are more immune than I and can avoid catching it.
I can't really comprehend what it would be like for our daughter to be sick. Even if it's just a cold it is going to be a real struggle to deal with her. Considering our daughter can't talk to let us know what's wrong it must be very frustrating dealing with a sick child. It must be even more difficult to deal with a child who catches something worse than the common cold. Doctors needing to get involved is scary for adults, people who should be able to comprehend the treatment and what the doctor is trying to do. For an infant, all that she would know would be the pain being caused. Obviously, we couldn't explain what was happening to her and seeing her suffer would be a lot for her mother and I to deal with.
I have thought about this before my wife got pregnant, how everyday with a child is a challenge. We are going to have good days and bad days but all in all I hope that being parents is going to be the best thing either of us has ever done. Our daughter's health has been perfect so far, I pray everyday that our good fortune continues.

It begins

If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting.
Benjamin Franklin

As the season of lent begins I am going to try and give up spending any money on anything that doesn't benefit my family directly. For this season I am going to be a non-consumer, just spending money on necessities and not on anything else. I am curious to see if I can live this way voluntarily before I am forced to live this way by george bush and his band of merry billionaires.
I am actually a little scared by this commitment to give up spending money. I have never really imposed any restrictions on spending money on things. If I want something I usually just go get it. Now I am not talking about Ferraris or Gulfstreams but I usually don't mind spending $25 on a baseball hat. I am curious to see if I can succeed in this quest, it may have a very positive impact on the rest of my life.
Isn't that what religion is supposed to do for us anyway? Bring some positives into our lives? Sometimes it seems that all religious people want to talk about are the sacrifices they make. We should be getting something back from our faith, something positive, empowering and life changing. Maybe, by learning to save rather than spend, I will be able to better prepare my daughter for the post-georgie world that she is going to have to live in.