Relativity

If I were a cartoonist, I'd draw a cartoon with two old men sitting on a park bench, one being Albert Einstein, the other being either Plato or Thomas Hobbes (I don't know what either of them looked like or even if they lived long enough to be old, which is why this cartoon doesn't work without some explanation).

Plato (or Hobbes) would look at Einstein, and say, "So, you really think that everything is relative?"

To which Einstein would reply, "Absolutely!"

The Castle

One of the greatest experiences of my life was seeing the Gerhardstein Castle.

I was stationed at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany for three and a half years in the 1970's. Anywhere I traveled in Germany, I looked in phone books trying to find another Gerhardstein, but never found one. I went to various government offices trying to find any family history I could, but I was always told the same thing: what probably happened was that the ancestor who arrived in America probably was named Gerhard Stein, and my last name was a corruption thereof. Although I did find a fifth cousin of my Dad's in Oberbexbach -- a man named Otto Ruffing -- I had no success in finding a Gerhardstein.

We would go to a rifle range near the town of Gerolstein, about 25 kilometers from Spangdahlem. You may have seen Gerolsteiner Sprudel Wasser (mineral water) in the store, and it comes from Gerolstein. Because I got there by military bus, and our time there was limited to the range, I was not able to explore the town, and in fact I had no compelling reason to do so.

Imagine my reaction when a distant cousin, while traveling in Germany in 1985, found the Gerhardstein Castle in the town of Gerolstein. For 42 months, I had been a half-hour drive from our ancestoral home and didn't even know it existed.

Then, while recovering from back surgery in 1999, I did an internet search of German telephone directories and found a Peter Gerhardstein listed in Wiesbaden. I immediately wrote a letter, and about a week later, I received a phone call from Sandra Gerhardstein-Bishoff, Peter's daughter. (Peter had died several years earlier.) She thought she was the only Gerhardstein in the world. Sandra's English is not great, nor is my German, but we managed to communicate, and over the next several years we swapped many stories and family pictures.

In late 2002, I took a trip to Paris to visit my daughter, who was studying at the Sorbonne. We rented a car and drove to Wiesbaden to visit Sandra, her husband Manni, and her mother Luise. On our second day there, we hopped in the car and drove to Gerolstein to see the castle.

The castle was built on a hill overlooking Gerolstein around 1115, and is little more than a ruin today. No matter. Seeing the ruins and the carved stone lions guarding the castle at the foot of the hill was worth the trip. This is a partial view of the ruins.

Near Death: Volume 2 - 1989

I was working on a radio project at Toledo Edison, and three of us (myself, Mark and Jim) went to Lynchburg, Virginia to visit the Motorola plant where the radio system was being engineered.

As long as I had known him, Jim had a fear of flying. We got to Lynchburg without incident, but he especially did not like flying on the puddle-jumper that took us from Baltimore to Lynchburg.

On the way back to Baltimore, we ran into a storm system, and after flying around Baltimore for a while, the pilot announced that we could not land there. Instead, we were going to a small airport at Salisbury, Maryland to wait the storm out. Our landing in Salisbury was awful, by far the worst I had ever experienced, but that's not the point of this story.

After about two hours on the ground, which gave us time to reschedule our flight from Baltimore to Detroit, we were cleared to go to Baltimore. This was one of those little planes with one row of seats down the port side and two rows on the starboard side. I sat in the front row, immediately behind the cockpit. I could easily see all of the instruments from where I sat.

We took off, and at about 2000 feet we were in clouds so thick I couldn't see a thing. At 6400 feet, something happened. The plane suddenly starting going down, and every loose item in the cabin was on the ceiling. The chart books in the cockpit were also floating, and the co-pilot kept pushing them down to keep them out of the way. The pilot and co-pilot were working frantically to regain control of the plane.

I turned around to see how Mark and Jim were doing. If you can imagine what sheer panic looks like, that is what I saw. Jim was holding onto the seat in front of him, his fingers digging in so deeply that I thought the material would rip. Mark's face had drained of all color. They probably didn't appreciate the huge grin on my face. I still don't know why I was grinning, but I guess I figured I might as well enjoy the ride.

I looked out the window while pushing down on the ceiling to try to stay in my seat. Nothing but clouds and rain. The men in the cockpit were not having much luck righting the plane, although occassionally the plane seemed to level off for a second or two, and then the descent continued.

I realized that I was going to die, and I waited for the ground to meet us. I wouldn't see it coming because of the weather, and I was sure it would be swift and painless. And I was okay with it.

As I was on my way to meet my Maker, I thought about my life. I've made a few mistakes, but on the whole I had led a good life and had been good to people. I thought about my daughters, who were 8 and 5 at the time, and I was sorry for them that they would grow up without Dad. And I had only one regret: I didn't have enough life insurance.

Suddenly, at 1800 feet, the plane slammed into a pocket of air, and as swiftly as we had gone down, we started going up. The force drove me back into my seat, and all of the objects that were floating came crashing to the floor. A few minutes later we were at altitude and flying smoothly through the sky.

When we landed in Baltimore, I waited for the pilot and co-pilot before walking to terminal. I had to know: were we as close as I thought? Yes, we were. The pilot explained that we had hit a wind shear, and he simply could not regain control. The only thing that saved us was the other side of the wind shear, where the current rushed up instead of down.

We immediately headed for the airport bar, where I ordered a beer and a shot of whiskey. I don't like whiskey, but I needed something stronger than beer to settle my nerves. Jim was absolutely beside himself, and asked Mark (our supervisor) if it would be alright to rent a car and drive back to Toledo. Mark denied Jim's request, and we eventually made it back to Detroit, where we got in the car and drove home. Jim swore he would never fly again.

Post script: the following day, I contacted our benefits department and increased my life insurance by a factor of four - a small price to pay for peace of mind while falling to your death.

That Lincoln guy is getting old

Happy birthday to Abraham Lincoln, who is celebrating his 196th birthday today.

In keeping with the non-partisan nature of this blog, I won't get into a discussion about how Lincoln was hated by many northerners (who thought he was a very stubborn man) during the civil war, and that it took a great deal of fortitude on his part to stay with the program to save the union.