A marvel of British and French aeronautical engineering was towed to Manhattan yesterday.
A Concorde jet, one of seven recently retired from flight by British Airways, sailed up the Hudson River aboard a rusty barge to its new home at the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum at Pier 86, on 46th Street. The jet will be displayed there on a 90m barge.
As aviation passages go, the chilly late-morning ceremony was one filled with patriotism and a fair bit of supersonic lust by gray-haired male speakers.
"It certainly is the sexiest machine I've ever seen," said Tom Tyrrell, a retired Marine Corps colonel who is the museum's chief executive. She was "a gorgeous bird," said James Kennedy, a construction magnate, who was not alone in assigning the supersonic jet gender. Concorde was the defining symbol of speed, beauty, style and sex, gushed a British deputy consul general, Duncan Taylor.
The women at the ceremony huddled under bulky coats and wiped their noses in the chill.
For all the shared affections of the British and Americans, there was the prickly issue of nationalism. And everyone danced around it like religion in an interfaith marriage.
The Americans thanked the British for the plane but quickly lathered the ceremony with all things American. A USO group sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" as helicopters buzzed overhead, and American speakers dominated the dais. A rabbi said a prayer praising the Concorde for showing what speed could do for the cause of freedom.
The British could enjoy that the plane -- officially Concorde G-BOAD, known as Alpha Delta -- was berthed facing east, with its needle nose pointed toward the queen and its aft pointed at New Jersey and the rest of the United States. Beyond that, the advantage was American. Taylor was the fifth speaker but only the first British one, a fact he feebly pointed out. Tea and finger sandwiches were set out at a reception afterward, alongside Pepsi and brownies.
No speaker made any reference to the French, who had, after all, engineered the supersonic jet with the British.
After the crowd had retreated inside the museum for the reception, two British tourists paid their entrance fee to the museum and walked past the aroma of a McDonald's out to the pier to inspect the plane. They found the jet alone, tied down to the barge and surrounded by a pier full of empty chairs.
"It is sad, isn't it? A bit degrading," Andy Thomson said to his friend Dave Clipstone.
"It's lost a bit of its dignity," agreed Clipstone.
"It does seem slightly ironic that the Yanks didn't want anything to do with it when it was flying," Thomson said.
"Trust no one," Clipstone replied. "Especially the French."
May 18 to May 24 Pastor Yang Hsu’s (楊煦) congregation was shocked upon seeing the land he chose to build his orphanage. It was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the only way to access it was to cross a river by foot. The soil was poor due to runoff, and large rocks strewn across the plot prevented much from growing. In addition, there was no running water or electricity. But it was all Yang could afford. He and his Indigenous Atayal wife Lin Feng-ying (林鳳英) had already been caring for 24 orphans in their home, and they were in
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday delivered an address marking the first anniversary of his presidency. In the speech, Lai affirmed Taiwan’s global role in technology, trade and security. He announced economic and national security initiatives, and emphasized democratic values and cross-party cooperation. The following is the full text of his speech: Yesterday, outside of Beida Elementary School in New Taipei City’s Sanxia District (三峽), there was a major traffic accident that, sadly, claimed several lives and resulted in multiple injuries. The Executive Yuan immediately formed a task force, and last night I personally visited the victims in hospital. Central government agencies and the
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
As with most of northern Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) settlements, the village of Arunothai was only given a Thai name once the Thai government began in the 1970s to assert control over the border region and initiate a decades-long process of political integration. The village’s original name, bestowed by its Yunnanese founders when they first settled the valley in the late 1960s, was a Chinese name, Dagudi (大谷地), which literally translates as “a place for threshing rice.” At that time, these village founders did not know how permanent their settlement would be. Most of Arunothai’s first generation were soldiers
RSS