The 100th anniversary of powered flight was the date for our annual holiday gathering in the pilot's lounge at the virtual airport. It meant braving blowing snow and icy streets, but the goal was worth the effort. Everyone brought some food and some pretty good booze or wine and after an hour or so the atmosphere was as pleasant as it gets here all year. Sandy carried on our tradition of reading aloud aviation's unofficial Christmas story, "The Shepherd" by Frederick Forsyth, and even though we had heard it many times, we all shivered a little at the ending.Pretty soon the families started making their excuses and departing for home, leaving maybe a dozen of us in the big, overstuffed chairs, talking. As we dissected the year just past, we reflected on the fact that the media hype surrounding the anniversary was almost completely positive and reached well beyond the aviation community, something that had been pretty rare the last several years. We toasted Orville and Wilbur and expressed our satisfaction that despite the lack of success of some of the various replicas, the important thing was that the real one flew a hundred years ago. We also heartily cursed Mayor Daley for showing his support for the momentous anniversary by turning into the country's first elected terrorist when he vandalized one of the prettiest airports on the planet and for bringing the Meigs Field Curse down on the city of Chicago. We decried his actions in imposing the Curse, which wrecked the good season the White Sox were having and kept the Cubs from making it to the World Series where they could have seen if they could shake the Billy Goat Curse (which doesn't even kick in until the Cubs get to the Series).
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features/the-pilots-lounge-69-in-2004-we-resolve