Tapestry, Charles Lindbergh - 1927

A fabulous tapestry of one of the world's great historical events - the first solo crossing by an aircraft of the Atlantic Ocean, by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 after he left New York with a highly overloaded Spirit of St Louis, and 33.5 hours later, landed at Le Bourget Airport, in Paris, France.

This is a large high quality rather thick linen table runner that is still in mint condition.

If tells the story from left to right, featuring Lindy flying over the New York skyline as he starts out, the hero in the middle, and arriving over the Seine and Eiffel Tower in Paris.

It's hard to appreciate, today, what a truly phenomenal achievement this was at the time.

Many men and at least one woman had died in large planes and small, all during the twenties, trying to accomplish the first successful crossing of the Atlantic by a plane.

Many started or stopped at Harbour Grace, Newfoundland.

Many of their bodies were never found.

Today's phony explorers and adventurers are backed by millions of dollars, protected by Google earth maps, high precision top sheets, the Coast Guard, the Navy, satellite phones, GPS, rescue planes standing by to respond to every emergency.

Lindy did it all without any of those aids, entirely on his own.

And for 33 terrifying hours cut himself off from every human contact possible, as he launched himself across a trackless hostile ocean, where no one could save him if his plane iced up, his fuel pump seized, his motor quit, or if his judgment failed, or he simply fell asleep from exhaustion and plunged to his death into the sea, never to be found again..

Stopping for him meant instant death. Modern adventurers just hunker down, and wait till the rescue party arrives, in answer to a phone call.

Lindy took his own life in his hands and between himself, God, and a fragile plane - which was little more than a motor with a gas filled bomb attached - he truly did it in the same spirit as Columbus and the real explorers of earlier times.

Modern adventurers like Steve Fossett are simply men with money who buy their way into the adventure history books.

This chequebook adventurer just bought his balloons, his planes, his women. Like rich men since time immemorial, he bought his way everywhere.

When he tried it Lindy's way - a man alone with pluck and brains, a small plane, and a tank of gas - Fossett failed, spectacularly, the first time out, and was killed, because other than oodles of self-indulgent money, he did not have "the right stuff" that true adventurer explorers, like the Norsemen, Columbus, Lindy and Amelia Earhart, had in spades.

In retrospect it turned out Fossett did his adventuring simply to get away from his wife so he could be with his two or more mistresses, and other types of seedy women whose company he clearly preferred.

Left Fossett waving goodbye as he leaves his wife for another adventure - with a prostitute...

No one will make a tapestry of this failed human being - just another, in a never-ending supply of rich men, who put on a public face of friendship with their wives while betraying them, big time, in the nether world of tawdry relationships with tarty women who don't mind doing things for any kind of men with tons of money.

Lindy - a man of principle - in those days - a man with a dream, and no money - got to Paris entirely on his own - he had no safety net, let alone whores in hangars, like Fossett, to tell him what a great performer he was...

Flying in fog, without charts, without sleep, over thousands of miles of trackless ocean, for 33.5 hours, it took far more than a mere stock broker with money to carry off.

Stripped down to his tee-shirt, shorts and a bottle of water, Fossett couldn't even return from a simple one hour, sunny day flying excursion without getting lost and crashing his small plane. Using no protection - for survival anyway - he was dumb, dumb, dumb...

So long Steve; the world won't miss another rich stock broker with a bunch of boughten so-called adventure accomplishments. And don't feel sorry for a whole slew of tawdry women he leaves behind, who have lost their sponsor. They have already found a paycheck from another rich banker, stock broker, politician, lawyer, or CEO.

Lindy - we miss your kind today...

Well not really. We miss what you were when you were young...

Once Lindy got wealthy, in later life, he became just another rich man like Fossett, paying for at least three mistresses his wife knew nothing about, in far-away Europe.

So Lindy, who started out life as a decent man, descended to the low-life pattern followed by most other rich and powerful men the world over. Kennedy, Clinton, Spitzer, Kuralt, Edwards, etc. are only a few who have been "outed." Clint Eastwood has seven children by five different women, apparently mostly bastards produced behind the backs of the only two he ever married.

As a young man Lindy had derided the womanizing of fellow barn-storming pilots he associated with.

When he became rich in later life he became far worse. He used his money - like rich men always have - to secretly pay for tawdry women who do it for money.

And so he produced a whole raft of children with shameful origins (bastards) that he took great precautions to keep secret while he lived.

So in the end Lindy and Fossett really did have something in common.

Huge wealth - and their private lives couldn't pass the smell test...

They always go hand in hand...

Money is the root of all evil, is the old saw.

Not true. Too much money is the real root of evil.

At least when it is in the hands of rich men...

And that will never change in a culture where men have all the money...

And women have all the insecurity...

But then, looked at another way, hope is on the way, when philander... I mean philanthropists, like former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer - left in his working clothes - are willing to share the wealth... And his wife, also can't give up the money and stays with the creep too. Rich men rule.

Milton Friedman invented the concept. It's called "trickle down economics" which is designed to raise up poor people, women, and non-whites, and is the reason, Blacks, Hispanics, Aboriginals and women, in the US, are among the most wealthy minorities...

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