Last Friday evening, while standing at the front of a packed ballroom, with microphone in hand, Mayor Gow Fields announced, “Aviation has reached a new high in Lakeland.”
When’s the last time you heard a mayor say something positive and hopeful about aviation? Wait! Before you reach too far back in your memory banks to come up with an example, there’s more.
There were six of us sitting around the table. The local economic development council had just announced the hiring of a new executive director, and the new guy was making the rounds to meet and greet as many people as he could before his official start date rolled around. So the city manager, two directors, a city commissioner, and an economic development council member sat down to talk business at city hall.
The new guy is competent, assertive, accomplished, energetic, and has a head crammed full of ideas to make our economy more diverse, more robust, and just plain more, frankly. Continue Reading »
In North Platte, Nebraska, they celebrate NEBRASKAland Days in June. Driggs, Idaho, pulls out all the stops for Summerfest in July. In Johnstown, Pennsylvania, they mark the joys of summer with Thunder in the Valley, and Salley, South Carolina, hosts the Chitlin Strut in November.
The point is this: Regardless of where you live, there is a festival, a carnival, a fair, or a public gathering of some sort that draws a crowd. That explosion of people represents an opportunity for those who know how to make the most of it. For those who don’t, it’s nothing but a traffic jam, a long line at the grocery store, or a headache that they wish they could avoid. Pity those people. They just don’t know a good thing when they see it.
Periodically I give readers a peek into the political world I inhabit. The intent is to provide some context for the battle ahead of you if you try to buck the tide in even the slightest way. Bringing radical new ideas to the table, like making the most of your local general aviation airport by touting its benefits to the community, will undoubtedly cause you to run afoul of co-workers, friends, family, and even the press from time to time.
Like a lot of cities and towns in America, my city has a program in place that is designed to help business professionals segue into becoming civic leaders. The program is called, fittingly enough, Leadership Winter Haven, and it is operated through the local Chamber of Commerce. It is a formalized, seven-month long program that allows each leadership class to get up close and personal with aspects of the city and its economy that they might not normally be exposed to. Periodically they take a day-long excursion to see and interact with such varied economic facets of our area as tourism, technology, city and county government, education, light industry, media, and agriculture. Last week they visited Gilbert Field, our airport.
I was scheduled to make a brief presentation to the group, but since life has a way of throwing curve balls at us, I found myself stuck between two tasks. I had the option of being late to my own presentation while I delivered my daughter to school after an orthodontist appointment, or my daughter could be even later to school than we’d planned, which would be inconvenient for her, but it would allow me to be on time to speak to the class.
Guess who got the short end of that stick?
It’s never too early to start planning for Sun ‘n Fun’s annual fly-in. This 38th edition of a great general aviation event presents the folks at Sun ‘n Fun, the aviation community, and each individual aviation enthusiast with the opportunity to really make something of the new year. And we here in Polk County, Florida, have something new, as well, to boost general aviation: The Polk Aviation Alliance.
A simple message can have far-reaching impact — just ask the readers of GeneralAviationNews.com, who have found a way of networking online.
This Sunday night marks a watershed moment here on Earth. On this side of midnight is 2011, the year we’ve been working with for the past 12 months. All that ends when the little hand and the big hand arrive at the straight up position on the big wall clock Sunday night because, arriving simultaneously with Monday morning, is 2012.
No matter where you are on the planet, that’s it. There’s no looking back. Time moves forward and so must we. Grudgingly or with gusto — we’re headed into a new year filled with new opportunities. Ready or not, here it comes.
Pilots are bold, confident people for the most part. We train to maintain our cool under pressure, be technologically adept at dealing with the machine entrusted to us, and maintain a state of safety consciousness above all else. Yeah, we’re cool.
Barney Fife was not a pilot. The character portrayed so expertly by Don Knotts was a fumbling, bumbling, ball of nerves and ego who never seemed to get anything right. He was a deputy sheriff who kept the one bullet he was allowed to carry in his shirt pocket, to inhibit the process of loading it into his pistol, which would undoubtedly lead to him hurting somebody – maybe even himself.
This may not seem to be a column about politics, but it is. Because ultimately politics is the art of people interacting with other people in order to get something done. Based on that, flight instruction falls well within the realm of politics. And just like politics in the governmental sense, the politics of flight instruction can be both as uplifting and as infuriating as the Washington D.C. variety so often is.
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