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# 2024-08-17 - Daughter of the Sky by Paul L Briand, Jr.
The Story of Amelia Earhart
> Courage
>
> Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.
> The soul that knows it not
> Knows no release from little things:
> Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
> Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
> The sound of wings.
> How can life grant us boon of living, compensate
> For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
> Unless we dare
> The soul's dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay
> With courage to behold the resistless day,
> And count it fair.
> --Amelia Earhart
I loved how Amelia Earhart defied stereotypes in all dimensions. She
"colored outside the lines" so to say. Amelia Earhart experienced a
lot of "push back," and yet became a national and global hero
supported by a great number of people. She lived free even though
not on a level field, or should i say level runway...
This book has a lot of crunchy details for aviation nerds. What
stood out to me was the unbelievable count of aircraft failures over
the course of Amelia Earhart's life. It seems to me that the
aircraft were spectacularly dangerous and unreliable. Perhaps it was
not as mature a technology in that historical period.
What follows are interesting quotes from the book.
... she had an insatiable curiosity about everything in life--ideas,
books, people, places, mechanical things; she loved all kinds of
sports and games, especially those "only for boys"; she fidgeted with
an implacable unrest to experiment, to try new things; she teemed
with a zest for living, paradoxically entwined with a gnawing and
pervasive longing to be alone...
"... Perhaps the fact that I was exceedingly fond of reading made me
endurable. With a large library to browse in, I spent many hours not
bothering anyone after I once learned to read."
* * *
Railey thought Amelia looked dissatisfied. "What's the matter?" he
asked. "Aren't you excited?"
Her answer came slowly. "Excited? No." Amelia took her leg off from
the arm of the chair and sat up straight. "It was a wonderful
experience, but all I did was lie on the floor of the fuselage and
take pictures of the clouds. We didn't see much of the ocean. Bill
did all the flying--had to. I was just baggage," she said, "like a
sack of potatoes."
"What of it?" Railey replied quickly. "You're still the first woman
to fly the Atlantic, and, what's more, the first woman pilot to do
it."
Amelia was not convinced. "Oh, well," she said, "maybe someday I'll
try it alone."
* * *
Amelia looked out over the waves; then she swung around quickly. "But
someday," she said strongly, "I will have to do it alone, if only to
vindicate myself. I'm a false heroine now, and that makes me feel
very guilty. Someday I will redeem my self-respect. I can't live
without it."
* * *
At the luncheons and dinners Amelia chuckled at some of the names the
speakers used for the women fliers: "sweethearts of the air," "flying
flappers," "angels," "sunburned derbyists." All they wanted to be
called, AE insisted in vain, were "fliers," and, if necessary, "women
fliers."
The press called the race "Lipstick Derby," "Petticoat Derby,"
"Powder Puff Derby." The last one stuck and has continued to the
present time.
* * *
Twenty-three years old, and with three hundred dollars in his
pockets, GP [AE's husband] settled in the valley of the Deschutes
River at Bend [, Oregon]. He was soon elected mayor of the town.
* * *
"If you follow the inner desire of your heart," she had said in a
magazine article, "the incidentals will take care of themselves."
* * *
The restless urge. Better than any college education was it to
experiment, to meet new people, to find out what made them tick.
Adapt, please, anger, study: these were better than any classroom.
The unexpected by adventure became the inevitable. Even the small
things, if they were an invitation to hop out of the rut, meant just
as much--as flying the Atlantic.
* * *
"I, for one," she wrote of the experience, "hope for the day when
women will know no restrictions because of sex but will be
individuals free to live their lives as men are free--irrespective of
the continent or country where they happen to live."
* * *
The communications equipment, however, was at once delightfully
modern and frustratingly primitive. Pilot and navigator had voice
radio; but only the navigator had telegraphic key. Both could
transmit and receive with ground stations, but not with each other.
For intercommunications the navigator would have to use a cut-down
bamboo fishing pole, with an office clip nailed to the end of it, to
send messages written on cards up to the pilot; if he wanted to talk
to the pilot, or if he wanted to dial the radio behind the pilot to a
new frequency, he would have to crawl along the catwalk over the two
big tanks between the cockpit and the passenger compartment.
* * *
"Hamlet would have been a bad aviator," Amelia once said. "He worried
too much. The time to worry," she added, "is three months before a
flight. Decide then whether or not the goal is worth the risks
involved. If it is, stop worrying. To worry is to add another hazard.
It retards reactions, makes one unfit."
title: Daughter of the Sky
author: Briand, Paul L., Jr., 1920-1986
(TXT) detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Amelia_Earhart
LOC: TL540.E3 B7
(DIR) source: gopher://gopher.pglaf.org/1/7/0/2/6/70263/
tags: biography,ebook,gender,non-fiction,travel
# Tags
(DIR) biography
(DIR) ebook
(DIR) gender
(DIR) non-fiction
(DIR) travel