Pardon my ignorance, but I have to ask sometime. How do you get the quotes lifted from other posts to appear with a nice light-blue backing?
Like this!
When you reply, you'll see on the toolbar at the top of the page a symbol that looks like a 'speech bubble'. Put your cursor over it and it says 'wrap [quote] tags around the selected text'. So select and copy the text you wish to quote from someone's post, click the 'quote' bubble on the toolbar, and paste the text in the gap between the two sets of [xxxx] [xxxxx] that appear (XXXX=QUOTE, XXXXX=/QUOTE).
Last edited by Shaggy Sheep Driver; 24th Sep 2012 at 21:04.
Back in 1971 I was going through RAF Basic Flying Training at RAF Linton on Ouse. Wandering around the bookshops of York one Saturday I chanced upon "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"; having read "Stranger to the Ground" some years before, the author's work was known to me...so I bought the seagull book. I read it in one go.....and passed it around the crewroom. It's probably still there, as I never got it back! It struck a chord with all of us in the flying training system at the time. I have since read the rest of Richard Bach's works, and have found the later stuff to be rather more existential...but always entertaining. I like the idea of "every man his own Messiah"...
My thoughts go out to him and his family, and I wish him a speedy and complete recovery.
My kids still remember the time I tried to read them the "terminal velocity" passage from JLS and had trouble doing so, because I kept bursting out laughing!
Quote:
There in the night, a hundred feet in the air, Jonathan Livingston Seagull - blinked. His pain, his resolutions, vanished.
Short wings. A falcon's short wings! That's the answer! What a fool I've been! All I need is a tiny little wing, all I need is to fold most of my wings and fly on just the tips alone! Short wings!
He climbed two thousand feet above the black sea, and without a moment for thought of failure and death, he brought his forewings tightly in to his body, left only the narrow swept daggers of his wingtips extended into the wind, and fell into a vertical dive.
The wind was a monster roar at his head. Seventy miles per hour, ninety, a hundred and twenty and faster still. The wing-strain now at a hundred and forty miles per hour wasn't nearly as hard as it had been before at seventy, and with the faintest twist of his wingtips he eased out of the dive and shot above the waves, a gray cannonball under the moon.
Later, when he tries from 5000':
Quote:
He began his pullout at a thousand feet, wingtips thudding and blurring in that gigantic wind, the boat and the crowd of gulls tilting and growing meteor-fast, directly in his path.
He couldn't stop; he didn't know yet even how to turn at that speed. Collision would be instant death. And so he shut his eyes.
It happened that morning, then, just after sunrise, that Jonathan Livingston Seagull fired directly through the center of Breakfast Flock, ticking off two hundred twelve miles per hour, eyes closed, in a great roaring shriek of wind and feathers. The Gull of Fortune smiled upon him this once, and no one was killed.
Latest twidder conversation 11 hours ago from James Marcus Bach (one of Richard's sons) in response to someone asking how his dad is doing is:
Quote:
Francesco Grant @energipsy
@jamesmarcusbach hello from Rome...have you good news ? thanks. Francesco
James Marcus Bach @jamesmarcusbach
@energipsy On what subject?
Francesco Grant @energipsy
@jamesmarcusbach I couldnt read any news about your father conditions...
James Marcus Bach @jamesmarcusbach
@energipsy There are some encouraging signs, but it's too early to say much more. Stay tuned.
Here's a great video Richard posted just days before his accident that I thought you all my like to see. It's him flying his SeaRey down very low along the water up around the San Juan islands. A lovely bit of footage.
Another new message on Twidder from James Marcus Bach (Richard's son) that Richard's improving
Quote:
James Marcus Bach @jamesmarcusbach My father was truly lucid today for the first time. He can't speak much, but he definitely understands what's happening. Life signs stable.
Things can go either way at this point. I've known of people starting to get better like this and then they still die unexpectedly. My best prayers and wishes to Richard Bach. If he comes out of this I'm sure he will have an incredible story to tell us all.
Here's another of Richard's videos flying in his SeaRey called Puff Puff flying2 - YouTube
Time to re-activate a moribund thread. I was wondering how things are going, and it seems he's back with his family and has completed a fourth part to "Jonathon". Let's hope he gets back in the air soon.
