Flying the Friendly Streets of New Jersey

What have we here? It's a jet plane coming around a friendly corner in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It's the remains of US Airways ill-fated flight 1549 and I don't know where they are going with it, but they obviously took the scenic route to avoid traffic. I think next time they should consider using the Turnpike, don't you? That is one sharp turn.

The skies weren't so friendly to US Airways flight 1549 back in January. You probably remember. The whole world watched as Capt Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger landed a jet plane in the middle of the Hudson River without the loss of one human life. It was a miracle and it was captured while it was happening on cellphone cameras and in twitter updates. It was relayed around the world in seconds in an amazing interactive demonstration of the power of the new media. The print and TV crowd did their thing too, interviewing survivors and covering the well deserved honors heaped on Capt. Sullenberger by a grateful nation for weeks afterward. Not a day went by without a mention of some kind.

Then suddenly it was over. Everyone moved on to the next big thing and the "miracle on the Hudson" just wasn't news anymore. Meanwhile, the wreckage of the Airbus 320 was towed to Battery Park City and moored to a bulkhead just north of the World Financial Center where investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board spent weeks giving it a thorough going over.

Once the inspection was done, the damaged plane had to be taken somewhere and here it is on its way. A friend emailed me this picture of it passing unheralded by the press, through East Rutherford, New Jersey. Just a footnote to history. I'm not even sure how recently this happened since there was zero press coverage. Even celebrity jet planes only get 15 minutes of fame these days, it seems.

photo credit: Beverly Leavell

Confessions of a Twitterphobe

The internet is all about Twitter these days. I'm doing my damndest to keep up, but it isn't easy.

I resisted Twitter for the longest, figuring that it must be a silly waste of time and that I had nothing to say in 140 characters to a bunch of people I didn't know. I signed up a few months ago, but remained totally intimidated. Every time I went to the site I felt like the wallflower at a college mixer. All those @ replies scared me a bit and I didn't know a RT from an RSVP.

Last week I finally downloaded Tweetdeck and got serious. I plunged in and have been learning by doing. I discovered the awesome power of this deceptively simple program. So now I'm on Twitter every day, following, being followed, and finding it a treasure trove of useful information and blog fodder. I get up to the minute breaking news, different slants on every topic under the sun and the most amazing inter-active search function. On top of it all it turns out there are a lot of very bright, very interesting and funny people on Twitter exchanging wisdom and witticism and guess what....it turns out they are very friendly:-)

Time for the Twitter song! Check it out and follow me on Twitter:-)

Multi Tasking Mama Drives and Breastfeeds

The blogisphere is abuzz today with the story of the Ohio woman who was cited Saturday by police for breastfeeding her daughter while driving and talking on her cell phone. Talk about multi-tasking! This makes a DUI look like a walk in the park.

A fellow motorist noticed and called police on HIS cellphone to turn her in.Evidently, she had the baby in her lap, its head only inches from the steering wheel as she tooled along the highway nursing and chatting away. Her three older children were in the back seat. She was driving them to school.

It gets better. When police wrote her up for violation of the child restraint and child endangerment laws, she was indignant, claiming that she was not about to let her baby go hungry-- yeah well, better a hungry baby than a dead one.

I'm feeling very judgemental about this, I must admit. I'm a mother too and I know how hectic it can all get and I too did some stupid things when my kids were little and got away with it--but this is ridiculous. I hope this dizzy dame stops being defensive and learns her lesson. Next time, maybe she'll pull over to the side of the road if she can't bear to hear the baby cry. So what if the older kids are a little late for school?

I hope she changes her multi-tasking ways or she's going to end up winning a Darwin Award.


source:http://www.whiotv.com/irresistible/18831330/detail.html#-