Well, forty years ago I was following a Lockheed Constellation (four engine piston airliner) in my Mooney M20E (single engine four seat retractable)onto 33L. It was night and I was 600 feet over the water. The tower wanted me to be as close to the Lockheed as possible. The wake turbulence seized my Mooney and I was immediately upside down, despite full opposite aileron. Everything was on the ceiling, including my glasses. Then I was out of it and rolled rightside up. The tower never saw my roll, and I decided to land well beyond the touchdown point of the Connie, putting me above the wake. Since my Mooney could land in less than 1000 feet, and 33L is 10,000 feet long, that was not a problem. I did not have to go around in such a small plane. It was an amazing sensation looking up at the water only 600 feet away.

I had two other two experiences at Logan, while we hangared our plane there. We had fuel injector problems while coming in at night. Approach Control immediately closed the field and alerted the emergency vehicles. They were desperate to foam the runway, but I rejected that notion. The taxiway parallel to 33L was lined with every ambulance and fire truck they could muster. After an uneventful landing we taxied over to the Van Dusen hangar and parked the plane. I walked over to the tower and asked them how many reams of paperwork I needed to fill out. They laughed and thanked me for the opportunity to test their emergency response capabilities, since they could never keep their tests a secret, and evryone was ready for one. They said to go home and forget it. I was also the last plane to land the night of the great NE blackout of 1965. I wss talking to the tower and landed normally, and suddenly the lights went out and I could not talk to Ground Control. So I taxied over to Van Dusen and parked. Luckily it was a bright moonlight night and even if the lights had failed on final approach I could have still easily landed. I drove to my apartment in Cambridge through a very dark city.

I still miss those days of being a bachelor in Cambridge with an airplane at Logan, and dating smart, talented, and beautiful Harvard graduate students. I ended up marrying one and she had spent a year between undergrad and Harvard being a Norhtwest stewardess. Of course she learned how to fly.

To me it's very simple. If a woman has a child with a man she is not married to, it is adultery. Just because they did not enjoy sexual intercourse with each other, it is still adultery. The prohibition against adultery is not because of some esoteric jealousy, but to prevent men from having to raise children they did not father. If a man consents to his wife bearing another mans child, OK. But she should then have sex with that man until she gets pregnant. This insertion of technology into the equation does not really solve the problem of paternity. Each child should know his biologivcal parents, even if he/she is raised by someone else. The anonymity of sperm donors is being challenged by the children they have fathered, and rightly so. People have the right to know who their biological parents are, and to have some sort of relationship with them. The Catholic church is correct on this issue, sex should not be divorced from childbearing. When the Doe/Roe child grows up he or she will want to know where he or she came from. These children have a right to know.

Many years ago there was a book called something like the "60-minute die change". It was about Toyotas ability to change a body-stamping die in 60 minutes rather than the 24 hours it took US companies. They have always sought improvements, and each employee seemed to be proud of their accomplishments.

I once had a job in which I burned at least 5000 calories per day. Once when I knew that I would probably not get lunch I ate six eggs, sauages, bacon, several hot cakes, and a couple of bowls of oatmeal. Coffee and orange juice too , of course. I weighed myself after breakfast and had gained five pounds. Late that night when I got back I ate an equivalent dinner. The next day I weighed my normal weight. The ridiculous obesity and its cotrasting twin, ridiculous and ugly skinniness are both abhorrent. Do triathloners look like either one of these? The key issue is whether you can do a hard days work, and still be interested in and attractive to good-looking members of the opposite sex is the only issue that really counts. Neither the obese nor the calorie-restricted meet that criteria. And will, of course, miss out on the greatest pleasures that life has to offer.

I'll be 73 next February. In the 1950's and 1960's, it was very unusual to see obese people. Almost everyone was pretty slender, and I might add a hell of a lot more attractive than the horde of fatties around us now. Since our genetic makeup could not possibly have changed in such a short interval, it has to be behavior. The interview pretty much proves that assertion. Neither my wife nor I are at all overweight, but we avoid eating out, and buying foods that contain empty calories. When we do eat out we find that we bring enough home in the doggie bag for a complete lunch the next day. I cannot understand the mentality of people today who will tolerate having such unhealthy and unattractive bodies. My daughter, who job requires lots of travel, says that she would like to live in Europe where people are far more slender and attractive than obese Americans.