The light at tunnel’s end
FIVE days until Christmas, or whatever passes for it in 2020. Trappings and wrappings and a live Nativity all look the same, but trying to sing Joy to the World through a mask is otherworldly. We are in lockdown again. Numbers keep soaring. How much can shopkeepers, bistros, hospitals, responders and medics take?
Better angels have sent in the cavalry—FedEx and UPS freighters, with millions of miracle vials and syringes loaded with ammunition of life. Even if we get a shot, we can’t throw away our crutches and shields; demons never sleep. If we still made seasonal wishes, this should be the easiest year for granting them. I am sure we’re wishing and praying for the same things: An end to fear, pain, suffering and grieving. Pray give us our lives back; we will pledge our industry to erase hatred, arrogance, divisiveness, and inequality. We have not done well with these. Help us maintain the planet’s delicate checks and balances: Beasts, birds, seas must be venerated, not violated. Same for this time of hope. Let us forever shout out “Merry Christmas!” I’m shouting now.
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The virus has bruised many holiday traditions, but not the spirit of honoring 25,000 at Sac Valley National Cemetery. There was every reason for putting it off this year, but donors and volunteers, led by Susie and Curtis Stocking, wouldn’t have it. They placed that many garlands against the headstones. They did them— and us—proud. It’s a moving tribute. Go see it; the boughs will be up until Jan. 16.
* * * DECADES after Chuck Yeager became the first to break the sound barrier in 1947, he still created a buzz wherever he went. Chuck died Dec. 7, at 97. Now there is more buzz than ever. It’s what having The Right Stuff means. It’s why Nut Tree partner Ed Power and I flew into Grass Valley Airport in 1980, to ask Gen. Yeager to be guest of honor at the annual Vacaville Rotary Fly-In at the Nut Tree that June. He met us at his airport. We pitched the idea. He was confident, with laser eyes of a raptor. A P-51 ace in WWII, Chuck could see an ME-109 miles away. He said yes and wowed the crowd.
A few years later, I chaired the annual convention of the Calif. Newspaper Publishers Assn. at the Fairmont in S.F. Workshops, banquets; the usual, with a lineup of newspapering talking heads. I wanted to change that. I wanted Yeager, a man with buzz, not of the news biz. I called him. We chatted a bit, and then he said, “I’ll be there.” We arrived in S.F. a day early; it was his birthday. A few of us threw a party for him that night. The legend who lit candles on the Bell blew out candles on his cake. Chuck spoke the next day. The newsies were spellbound.
On Oct. 14, 1997, 50 years after he topped Mach 1, Chuck suited up to do it again in an F-15 over Edwards AFB. Ed, his wife Linda, thousands of others and I were there to witness the flight. Chuck launched; his narrative was on a grandstand speaker: “There’s point-8… point-9… now Mach 1…” The F-15 boomed the barrier without breaking a sweat. A base shop sold sheets of postage stamps, with an image of the Bell X-1. After he landed, Yeager was busy scrawling his signature across sheet after sheet. He looked up: “Thanks for coming,” he said. Like I’d be anywhere else. Some legends fade away. Some keep getting bigger. That would be Yeager. I like to think he rode the Bell past Mach 1 again, and just kept going.
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AFTER 800 years of floating around heaven at a glacial pace, planets Saturn and Neptune will align very, very closely tomorrow night to create an exceedingly bright star in the southwest sky. Astronomers are stunned, and they should be. It last happened in 1226, in the Middle Ages. The next big one won’t come again until 2820. No wonder some are calling the phenomenon, “Star of Bethlehem.” Others are calling it a “sign,” just when we need it most. Be it a spiritual secondcoming or an uber astroscience rarity, as it relates to the pandemic and toxic politics, it’s a light at the end of the tunnel.