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Show GIVING CUR WORLD THE Once Over Song 01 The Sky . There is joy in flying that no one who ever has taken a plane up alone can ever forget. It is the Joy of fulfillment of an age-old dream. It is the joy of achievement, achieve-ment, of acquiring new skill. It is the joy of learning,, not only the mechanics of engines and gear, and the theory and dynamics of flight itself, but the wonders of the air and sky, with their winds and clouds and storms which buoy and buffet planes about, and stars and sun and moon which serve as guideposts and milestones for the masters of the ships of the air. It is the aesthetic joy of seeing earth's beauties revealed anew, in clarity and forms which make the mountains look small and rivers look large, and glistening cumuli the living, moving, denizens of ; ? vast blue regions. It is these, and more. And on a wintry Sunday afternoon, after-noon, when fresh snow overlays the earth and all things on it, and clouds hover low so visibility is limited, and airports within the radius of action of little planes are all socked In, and the planes are nested safely in their hangars, except for big transports which fly by IFR above and through the murk guided by their superior elec tronic senses, there's joy in rea ding a good book on flying, by a writer who knows and loves these things, and has the gift for set ting them down on paper in a way which brings his reader not just the facts and figures of the thing, but the joy of it, too, in words that soar as the planes themselves, and stir the imagina tion, and feed the Intellect with answers to the why's and how's of flying, as they roam not only the sky, but the ages as well, back to Ptolemy and Leonardo and beyond, in myth and science, to Icarus and Plato, and deal even with the fanciful psuedo-science of astrology as it touches upon the many-sided art of flying. Such a book is Guy Murchie's "Song Of The Sky AnExplora-tion AnExplora-tion Of The Ocean Of Air", recent selection of the Book-Of-The-Mon-th Club, whose author, a newspaperman news-paperman of nine years standing, having found himself in March. 1942, "faced with the need of either resuming my war meand-erings meand-erings or choosing some other brand of war activity before the draft 'board chose one for me", already possessed of a private pilofslicense, got a job as instructor in-structor of navigation with the Air Transport Command, from which he went on to position of navigator naviga-tor on an American Airlines C-54, flying a cargo of penicillin and oxygen cylinders to England for the ATC. By Dick Morrison departure from the customary flying fly-ing story, which is nearly always told by the pilot. The history and background of the science of navigation nav-igation given by Murchie is not only informative, but downright romantic. He reviews early achieve ments of seafaring peoples all over the world: the Polynesians, the Chinese, even "the earliest of known navigators, Noah", who em ployed "that early navigation de vice, the shore- sighting bird", and, of course, he reviews the remarkable remark-able achievements of the Mayans in astronomy, which would put our own European ancestors of a thousand years ago to shame. And he gives due credit, too, to one Omar Khayyam, the mathematic ian of Persia, who "wrote his great " "'gebra in Arabic, the lang uage of learning, and his quatrains in poetry eternal". The discussion leads up to modern mod-ern instruments and methods, written for laymen, in non-technical language, nor does it omit a suspense-filled account of what carelessness in navigating can do to a plane and its passsengers. Part Two, Through Wind And Cloud, is a discussion of the air itself, again delving into the romance rom-ance and folklore, the science and mathematics of the medium through thro-ugh which he, the navigator, is guiding an airplane. This the reader rea-der should enjoy, in its entirety, by reading it himself; yet the author's coverage of the subject is so fascinating that a few quotations quot-ations are in order, taken almost at random, as, for instance, his statement that the earth's atmosphere atmos-phere is five hundred miles deep and weighs 5,000,000,000,000.000 tons, and "gravity thus holds the airy sky to the earth with such a fierce hug that very few of its molecules can hope to escape". (Which is fortunate for us humans. DM). And, if the Chronicle's able linotype operator, Anita, doesn't mind setting up a few more zeros, We may note, too, that "In an ounce of air there are more than 1,000 000 000 000 000 000 0OO OOO molecules boiling and moiling a-bout, a-bout, each pulsing with electron orbits, buttoned with mesons, figuratively fig-uratively bursting with excitement". excite-ment". The section adds up to" an amazingly exhaustive and intriguing intrig-uing treatment of the subject of air, and what's in it, including lightning and raindrops, as well as the techniques of the U. S. Wea ther bureau in drawing maps and forecasting. To get on to On Wings Of Mystery, Mys-tery, the third and concluding sec tion, our navigator-author here discusses flight from its earliest history, and before, when a Shah of Persia, one Kai Kaoos, built a We meet him, as his story opens, ! flying machine shaped like a four- somewhere over the Atlantic, oc cupied with the navigator's job of keeping account of the plane's position and track, of altitude and passing cloud layers, of horsepower horse-power and consumption of fuel. "While flying the ocean I am plainly the busiest of our crew of five", he explains modestly, not even excepting the pilot. He loved the jop, so much that at times he all but went off the deep end with rhapsodic expressions like, "I hold the needle that will pierce the cloud. I sing the song of the sky", and, again, "I am a human lodestone the homing pigeon of mankind". But let the reader not dismiss the book in alarm for those bits of self-praise. It goes on to a worth while treatment of the subject of planes and flying, to which his penchant for poetic expression merely adds charm. The Song Of The Sky is written one might almost say sung in three parts. These are, The Airplane Air-plane Finds Its Way, Through Wind And Cloud, and On Wings Of Mystery. These subtitles, read together, hold a nice continuity. Part one. The Airplane Finds Its Way, treats of Navigation, and be poster bed, with an eagle tied to each corner, and some meat mounted moun-ted above each to encourage them to fly. He "had trouble synchronizing synchron-izing his motors and soon had to make a forced landing " Two French brothers succeeded in making mak-ing balloons which would rise, by using big paper bags filled with hot smoke. This leads up to a comprehensive discussion of various var-ious phenomena of flight, including inclu-ding causes of accidents, of which landing accidents are "by far the most common of flying mishaps", and an explanation of the circular rainbow, which can be seen, of course.only by people flying through thro-ugh the air, with, when there is a cloud surface for it, the shadow of their plane in the center. This leads to a bit of poetic philosophizing philosoph-izing in the concluding chapter, which is entitled Beyond The Rainbow, Rain-bow, with a rather sudden transition transi-tion from the scientific to the supernatural, and the quotation from Genesis, "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a token The author permits his reflections reflec-tions on flight, life, death, and God to range all over the place ine writtten from the viewpoint of in this final chapter, and any rea a navigator, it is an interesting der may take or leave what he likes oX It. Kealizaig- that here we have an author of, obviously, extensive ex-tensive learning, great curiosity, and keen imagination, we may give him credit for full sinerity, yet still, ourselves, be left somewhat some-what befuddled by his mixture of Keimannian geometry, lattice alge bras, a "non-technical metaDhv sical explanation" of matter and "the first dimensions of God". It is, indeed, all very puzzling. "I usea to think of the passage of time as a steady motion." he savs. but, "I .cannot any longer even think that time actually begins or ends. Ur life. Or love". Well, maybe they don't, and to me a fanciful discussion of that kind always makes an interesting pastime, nor is it at all unusual for a flier-writer to launch off along such lines, yet here Guy Murchie definitely has switched from flying to religion, and, while it makes good reading, I cannot refrain from saying that, were I a passenger in a trans-ocean air plane, I'd just as soon the navigator nav-igator would pay attention to the dials, and stop thinking thoughts like, "Death js not the reverse of life, but its unfolding". He might decide it wouldn t make anv diff erence. whether the plane dived in to the sea or not But I am not in his Diane flvine over the ocean. I am in a soft chair at home, reading a good book on a winter afternoon, and I recommend the book to all ex cept those good people, if any, who can't see anything in the art of flying to stir the imagination. It's for flyers and non-flyers alike. Song Of The Sky. "by Guv Mur chie, is published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. 438 pages. Other Books Winter is the time for books, and now that it seems to have set in in earnest, it is nice to have three more of them at hand. Song Of The Sky, aforemention ed, may gain a good number of readers, yet it was recently bro ught home to me that another good book doesn't seem to have gained much of a following. Perhaps, Per-haps, in fact no doubt, this is partly because it treats of the dismal dis-mal science, and people generally avoid books on economics as the plague. . About three years ago I borrow ed George S. Montgomery's The Return Of Adam Smith from the Salt Lake City public library. Last month I borrowed it again, and the librarian remarked that it had been out only once between! The lack of interest thus indicated for one of the most brilliant works of its kind is startling. The Return Of Adam Smith would seem to be out of tune with the times, unfortunately. It struck me as a devastating attack on "social coerclonism", and a convincing con-vincing argument in favor of human hu-man freedom. In it, the author reduced re-duced certain of the arguments of, our present-day "liberals to a pulp. He presented the statement that their chief devices of pro-pagaanda pro-pagaanda are: the unsupported premise, the non-sequitur (unwar ranted conclusion), the illusion, mirage, fallacy, and a series of frightening phantoms. Take the way he showed up the use of the non-sequitur in current political argument: "The individual indivi-dual in this complex world, being faced with greater demands on his intelligence and industry then in the days of Adam Smith, must resort to the State for guidance", is the way he states the current "liberal" argument He then goes on to say, "For those failing to detect the flaw in the premise we have just discussed, this conclu-son conclu-son of the syllogism is presented. It is a palpable non-sequitur. "In the first place, it assumes that the individual is incapable of improving his own intelligence and industry sufficiently to cope with the greater demands. This assumption assump-tion is unwarranted. In the second place, it assumes that, if the in dividual must look beyond himself for aid, it is to the State he must turn. This assumption is unwarranted. unwarran-ted. In the third place, it assumes that the State will possess the in- Okerved in ihe best circles . . ' i Si " ' - f - X 4r The extra years enrich its great Boartoa flavor OLD HICKORY SIX THIS OLD ss proof telllgence and power to assist the individual. This assumption is unwarranted". un-warranted". Well, maybe that makes it clear why the book isn't popular these days. In addition to being unan- swerable, it strikes a note that people just don't like to hear. They don't want to be told what it tells them, so they ignore It. They don't have to face reality. They can go ahead and ignore it. So they don't bother to read The Return Of Adam Smith, or other books like it. Last summer, there was reviewed review-ed herein a new book by Hugo E. Czerwonky, who, on reading a letter let-ter of mine in the Wall Street Journal, had written and told me about his own work, "Freedom From Insecurity". Last week, there came another letter from Hugo Czerwonky, bringing the news that the New York Sunday Mirror had published an item in praise of the book, along with a copy of the Mirrow Sunday Magazine of December Dec-ember 12, which carried the item. "Because of the splendid review you gave my book, "Freedom From Insecurity", last June 3, . I thought you would be interested in the attached material", he wrote. I certainly am, for, as I am saying in reply to him, to me the need for wide dissemination of the principles it expounds seems little short of desperate. Mr. Czerwonky advocates abolishing the income tax, among other things, and I think that would be a wonderful idea. Nor would he merely abolish the income tax and let the chips fall at random. He advocates a new economic program along the soundest of new economic prin ciples which would, in my opinion, restore free enterprise to its own, and cut Big Government down to size. Freedom From Insecurity is well worth reading, though people who still hold to the old-line ideas on the gold standard, the federal debt, money, and banking. would have to discard those ideas fast in order to prepare their minds for it. Incidentally he isn't a "reactionary", having been as sociated with the old AAA and FERA in early new-deal days. He was also co-author of "In Defense Of Capitalism". The Sunday Mirror calls his new book one of the most explosively controversial of all in the field of economics, saying say-ing it is due to be published this January, 1955. You Chronicle rea ders got a six-month early preview of it, then, last June. The last book we'll mention this week is an old one of purely local interest. It was published by the Delta Commercial Club, Scott Tag-gart, Tag-gart, Secretary, in the early twenties, twen-ties, that is, about thirty years ago. The pictures and write-ups contain authentic material now of historic value. Looking at the pic- MILLAHD COUNTY CHRONICLE Delta, Utah Thurs. Jan. 20, 1955. turei of several towns, it appears T's. Write-ups of many locaT boo-that boo-that then might have been called ! ster-farmers of the day asked the the age of snow and slush. Delta, ! readers to communicate direetlv Lynndyl and Leamington were with each. . Some are dead and Bassett's page states that "in 1923 i muddy beyond belief. A scene on j gone. Many, like W. C Cole, and Delta's Clark Street shows horses ' Ruf us and John Clark, are still I land bue'L'ips minded with model with nc and cr.iinrr ti(nn w w I The Delta district was nn ito u-cv then. his entire 76 acres will be in alf alfa' . 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