...instead we have the image of what, by all accounts should have been an unspeakable tragedy...a plane gliding, as gracefully as is possible in an unplanned crash landing with two blown engines, coasting across the surface of the Hudson River before coming to an indelicate halt...bedraggled passengers standing on the wings, lifted into ferryboats moving quickly to the scene...cold and uncomfortable, no doubt, and lightened of what was no doubt some valuable luggage...but, against all odds, alive and grateful to the calm and unassuming Sully...marking, one can only hope, a new era in which we begin to coast above our fears....
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The best of our journalists, past and present, couldn't top this commentary. Not a word I usually use here, but.....beautiful.
Would that every potential tragedy had such a happy ending ... almost makes one believe in Fairy Tales again.
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"We're gonna be in the Hudson"
Those were the exact words the pilot of the 'miracle flight' told air traffic controllers right before ditching the plane in the Hudson River. The flight attendants yelled, "Brace! Brace! Head down!"
What an eloquent commentary!
A very powerful metaphor. Obama is about to step into the white house. Let's get our collective tail from beneath our legs and wag it with glee.
OK - I must be an uber-geek; in my mind this elicited a scenario where your main desktop and your file server both went down... I was worried until I saw the picture!
Incidentally, I came to the post because I am reading "A Tale of Two Cities at the moment.
Jesus. Beautifully put. Just when I think you can't get any more profound. Love the sentiment of coasting above our fears.
An amazing bit of news, that was. I remember realizing some years ago that although you're always briefed on landing on water safety before take off, you never see any successful landing on water footage on the news. Any landing on water footage I've ever seen ended in mass destruction & everyone dead. I realized then that the safety info on the plane is more to give you the illusion of survival from such an event than anything based in reality. All those times, it seemed everyone was just being lulled into a false sense of security. Not in this case, however. Kudos to the pilot, totally!
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