Alvaro Jaramillo replied to Dennis's enthusiastic message about the B-2,
by writing:

> I must admit that as a little kid the first type of "listing" I did was
> planes. I would never miss the Toronto Air Show and even skipped off school
> one day to go see the Space Shuttle piggy back on a 747, before it had gone
> to space. My dad would take me to the airport and I would tick off the
> different types of airliners. Eventually, I would go to the air show and
> count hawks rather than planes, then I stopped going. Its unfortunate that
> so many of these planes are made to kill people, they really are amazing and
> sometimes even beautiful machines.

I was a little kid during WW II and shortly thereafter, when virtually
all the planes were meant for killing, but I, too, was in love with them,
especially with B-17s, which I used to draw a lot. Those old planes had
a certain classiness and beauty. All the boys could identify all the
planes, and we built a lot of models of them, too. Remember that Roger
Tory Peterson was involved in a project to teach rapid plane
identification with the same system he had devised for birds. I'll bet
there's a lot of crossover between learning to identify planes and
learning to identify birds.

Burt Guttman guttmanb at elwha.evergreen.edu
The Evergreen State College Voice: 360-866-6000, x. 6755
Olympia, WA 98505 FAX: 360-866-6794

Reunite Gondwanaland!