Posted on 07/14/2012 8:29:05 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Ezekiel, the top-hatted balloonist, has recited his little poem on the glories of flight and barely missed the white church steeple more than 20,000 times now.
He has called out his warning of white water ahead to the unsuspecting canoeist far below for 36 years.
Before giving way to hang gliders, barnstorming pilots and the Navys Blue Angels flight team, his silver balloon with the four American flags attached to the gondola has soared above the rolling green Vermont hills and churning, roaring Niagara Falls every single day the Smithsonians Air and Space Museum has been open.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
CC
Saw it a million times cutting class at GWU. Some scenes still make me dizzy.
It narrowly misses a crowd gathered for the airshow
and slams into four buildings.
One can only imagine the horror of the occupants inside those buildings.
The horror. The horror.
Go and see it sometime.
Maryland PING!
Saw this for the first time at the Natural Science Museum in Denver, in 1983, when we were visiting my airline pilot brother. He LOVED it, and had seen in many times, at that point.
The film is completely incongruous with the reality of life today. Back in 1976 there was still relative freedom to pursue air travel on an individual level. Now it is regulated to the point of absurdity making air travel of any kind other than occasional commercial flights both too cumbersome in requirements and too expensive for all but a rapidly disappearing group of upper middle class and idle rich.
I was born around the time this movie was made, and even in the 80s children like me looked to the skies and space as our obvious futures. Now, we have moved backwards. Who still views flight or space travel with awe and romanticism and dreams of taking to the skies? It got lost somewhere along the way.
This movie is a relic of the American Dream that has disappeared. It is nostalgia for the DREAM of a time when you could actually take up flying that this video still brings out in people, not the actual desire to go out and FLY that it originally was designed to invoke.
When we went to the moon the whole country was glued to the TV. Why has there been no new frontiers blazed since then? Nothing worth the world’s time to stop and watch? There should have been many firsts since then. Many successes and a few tragic failures that the whole nation could cheer and cry over. But no. Since that time we pulled back.
When can we all share the real living excitement of “TO FLY!” again?
We waited in line for 3 hours.
It was amazing then, and it is still amazing today.
The film motivated me to go into aviation (aerospace engineer, Air Force pilot).
Some films just inspire.
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