Martin Mars Miscellanea

A couple months back the New York Times wrote an article about the Martin Mars, the largest flying boat ever built. I found it particularly interesting because my grandfather helped design the plane while working as an engineer for Martin during World War II. I remember him showing me pictures of the plane back at his house in Mystic, CT.

Strangely enough, my dad just sent me some neat TIFF files with this description:

You might find these interesting, I scanned the originals which I've had in the safe. In stamp collecting these are referred to as "First Flight Covers", the word "cover" in this case refers to the envelope. They commemorate the first flight of a particular airplane or new route. Pan Am was big in this back in the '30s. These two covers are quite rare in that there were only 3 or 4 of these planes ever built. They just retired the only two in active service this year, they were used for fighting fires in the Pacific NorthWest.

One has the signatures of the pilot and copilot, the pilot is mentioned in the article. The other was mailed to your great grandparents with the note and newspaper clippings. Dad was working for the Glenn L. Martin company in Baltimore at the time. A little family history...

This all took place in late 1941...

Perhaps I'm the only person that would find this cool, but just in case...


This is a letter sent by my grandfather to his parents, I'm not sure if this was the letter sent on the first flight of the Martin Mars or if this was a letter letting them know that a letter would be sent on the first flight of the Martin Mars. The most interesting thing to me though is that my Grandpa addressed his parents as "Folks".

Kinda neat that this is a collectors item. But more importantly, my great grandmother's name was E. Field Worsley? Totally random. I had know idea. Awesome name.

A newspaper clipping from 1941. Look at the beautiful design! So art deco, and they probably never even realized it. They were building a war plane and yet it's strikingly elegant.


The attached story. Note that the first attempted flight of the plane ended with a propeller breaking loose causing one of the 2,000 horsepower engines to be ripped from the nacelle. And I thought "nacelle" was just a term from Star Trek. Also, it's fun reading articles from this era because everyone sounds like they're talking in a Noir film. "Listen here, see! This ship is invincible, see! Nothing can stop it. You don't know who your mess'in with, kid!"

Cheers, Grandpa.

Ban Popeyes!

Do you know why Popeyes should be banned in DC?

For one thing, it sucks. Also, Popeye ate spinach, not fried chicken. But most importantly, people in this town seem unable to throw their half-eaten chicken bones into the trash. Instead, they just throw them onto the sidewalk, and then they end up in my dog's mouth, along with the half-eaten corn cobs, broken glass, used needles, screws, and paint chips that I usually find.

I'm not sure if your dog is like this, but mine seems to lack any semblance of a survival instinct. Maybe it's been bred out of her, but she seriously has a death wish. She chomps on glass for fun and repeatedly tries to run into traffic during rush hour.

I can't do much to change my dog, but I can start a movement!

Let's get rid of crappy fried chicken restaurants today. Don't wait until tomorrow. I don't care if you Love that chicken from Popeyes. Fried chicken will eventually kill my dog unless we take action. Write a letter to your congressman. Blockade an intersection. Drop a banner. I don't care! Just join me in this crusade. Trust me, my dog is too damned cute to die young.

Our Generation is Poor Because of...Women?

Shocking News! According to a new study, American men are worse off than their fathers for the first time in generations:

"In 2004, the median income for a man in his 30s, a good predictor of his lifetime earnings, was $35,010, the study says, 12% less than for men in their 30s in 1974 -- their fathers' generation -- adjusted for inflation. A decade ago, median income for men in their 30s was $32,901, 5% higher than 30 years earlier."

How could this have happened? The Wall Street Journal, and their bevy of "experts" from the Brookings Institution seem stumped:

"[Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution] said she isn't sure why men's wages have stagnated. "It seems there's been some slowdown in economic growth, it's possible that the movement of women into the labor force has affected male earnings, and it's possible that men are not working as hard as they used to."

Yes, let's blame it all on those pant-suit wearing 90s women! It's couldn't be the fact that America's entire manufacturing sector has moved overseas only to be replaced by Wal-Mart style jobs in the service sector, or the fact that trade unions have virtually disappeared. No, it's got to be women. Also, sheer laziness.

Leave it to economists to develop complex theories just to explain painful, base reality. Maybe Isabel should just ask her 25-year old nephew who undoubtedly works at Borders why he can't support a family of five on $7.50 an hour.