Giving Advice

Leaving in about an hour for Ft. Worth Central Library where Ft. Worth Veterans Memorial Air Park Museum is holding an all-day event titled, "Women, Pilots, and Writers in Aviation." Gotta say that's an eclectic group.

There will be a collection of about a dozen military authors signing books and a day-long program of speakers on a range of topics from waiting wives to probing the reaches of hypersonic flight and space in the SR-71. I close out the speaker's schedule at 3:30.

Since my research on women is drastically out-of-date and even when it was current my advice probably wouldn't have been very good, I opted out of that topic.

I assumed the other pilots and aviation writers would be talking with their hands, shooting their watches and elaborating on their remarkable achievements without regard to their personal safety or the immutable laws of physics, so I declined to confirm the world's opinion of fighter pilots as arrogant, egotistical, bastards by recounting my exploits.

That left writing as my topic. Coincidentally there was a review in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about a recently opened Broadway stage-play about a seminar group seeking the route to publication at the feet of a successful author and noted cynic. Apparently young eager and aspiring writers pay up to $5000 each to be abused in the name of their art.

My presentation on the route to publication will not cost that much. But I will freely acknowledge that it will be worth exactly what the audience pays for it.

The goal of the day will be to prevent at least one individual from spending his own money to self-publish his worthless rambling which will be the literary equivalent of Uncle Seymour's Super-8 home movie collection from past vacations to the Catskills.