Contrails

On a perfectly clear afternoon during the spring and summer, I usually see several bright, white streaks crisscrossing the sky—more often in the late afternoon. These lines are called contrails, the exhaust from commercial jet airliners flying at 30,000 feet or more. Contrail is a condensation of the term “condensation trail” (pun intended.)

If a plane is nearly overhead, I often see the reflection of the sun off the silver-colored wings and fuselage, even if the plane is more than five miles above me.

Courtesy: fastcodesign.com

Contrails are formed when the super-heated exhaust from a jet engine hits the extremely cold air (minus-35 degrees F) and forms a collection of frozen particles that form a white trail behind the airplane. Under certain conditions, contrails can also be formed by the wings or tail of an aircraft. Depending on the temperature, humidity and wind currents, this line may be several miles long or dissipate very quickly.

I find these trails fascinating to observe, to see how long they last and I wonder what the destination of the flight could be based on the alignment of the flight path revealed by the contrail.

Contrails and Jets

Transcontinental commercial jet air service dates to 1958 when Boeing introduced the 707. This plane could carry over 150 passengers from New York to Los Angeles in a little over five hours. Now commercial jet flights are routine for many Americans. And, while everyone complains about ticket prices, I think it’s a pretty good bargain to be able to fly from Northeast Ohio to the West Coast and back for about $400 or less.

International jet flights are making the world smaller, allowing Americans to get to Western Europe in six or seven hours from the East Coast. My son spent one college semester in Thailand and he flew from Chicago to Bangkok (with a stop in Tokyo) in about 19 hours—11 time zones and nearly 9,000 miles. That’s pretty amazing.

I remember in 1958 when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to LA and the New York Giants moved to San Francisco. The emergence of non-stop, reasonably fast air transportation made this more palatable to the owners of major league baseball teams, who were concerned about the length of trips for visiting teams and the three-hour time zone difference.

The economic and social impact of relatively cheap world travel has a profound effect on all of us. Along with communication satellites and the Internet, the world really is getting smaller in a figurative sense and I think that is a good thing.

Contrails,"Chemtrails" and the Environment

But, whenever a new technology takes hold, there are usually naysayers. Some environmentalists complain that commercial jets contribute significantly to climate change.  It is true that commercial jet exhaust contains very small amounts of particulate matter, the material is widely dispersed and doesn’t make it to the ground six miles below.  

The exhaust is super hot when it leaves the rear of the engine, but it is cooled rapidly and contrails are formed. For three days immediately after the 911 attacks, the Federal Government grounded all commercial air traffic in the country. Some enterprising scientists took measurements of air temperature during this time and then again after commercial flights resumed.  There was a very slight increase once the flights resumed, but most of these scientists felt it was insignificant.

Also attacking jet air transportation are the conspiracy theorists who have renamed contrails as “chemtrails.” They maintain that the exhaust of commercial airliners contains chemical and/or biological agents being spread over an unsuspecting populace for sinister purposes. These rumors took root in the mid-90s when the U.S. Air Force Air College drafted a strategy paper that discussed how jet aircraft could be used to create some climate change by the year 2025. Most experts agree that releasing any other substances from that altitude would be ineffective because the material would dissipate and not reach the ground.

So, later this spring and summer, when I sit on my deck with a cold drink and gaze at the “blue suburban sky” (Thank you, Paul McCartney!), I’ll notice the contrails. I’ll wonder about the origin and destination of each flight.  Are the flights heading to the northeast taking the polar route to Europe? Are the westerly flights heading for LA or San Francisco? And I’ll still marvel that 15O or more people could be going thousands of miles to visit family, close a business deal or visit a faraway land and experience its culture. And they will get there in a few hours.

Depending where the plane is heading, I’d like to be going with them

What's in a Name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose

by any other name would smell as sweet." 

--Juliet in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

So, what is in a name? It isn’t something that a lot of us think about often. For most of us, our first and middle names were given to us at the time of our birth by our parents. Later in life our surname may change due to marriage or adoption, but the first name our family and friends call us usually doesn’t change.

My full legal name is Christopher Collins. No, I don’t have a middle name because my father, Neil Aloysius Collins, declined to give my brothers and I middle names at birth. I’ve been told he didn’t like his middle name and said that if his children wanted a middle name, they could choose one when they became an adult. So, for my whole life when filling out some kind of form, I have always left the the middle name space blank.

Names and Popularity

The popularity of first names changes over time and it is an interesting exercise to consult one of the numerous web sites that track the popularity of first names given at birth in different years.  According to the Social Security Administration, the top five names for boys in 2014 were: Noah, Liam, Mason, Jacob and William. The top five for girls: Emma, Olivia, Sophia, Isabella and Ava. My name came in at number 30.

When I was growing up, I’m sure there was no one else named Christopher in my grade in elementary school and I don’t remember any in my high school graduating class either. In fact, the name Christopher was not even in the top 100 in the late 1940s.

During the 1980s, the name Christopher became wildly popular ranking number 2 on the annual Social Security lists for most of the decade. That meant about 3 percent of all boys born in the U.S. were given that name. Another illustration of how popular that name was in the late 90s, my son’s 8^th grade basketball team had three boys named Christopher out of 13 players on the roster.

A Boy Named Chris

So, how did I get my name?  My parents had two sons before me, so they hoped I would be girl to be named Christine, which ranked number 47 in 1948. But, when the delivery day came, as the saying goes, “…this apple has a stem on it.” So, I was named Christopher.

Most of my life I’ve used the abbreviated name “Chris” because that’s less formal. When I was very young, if my mother called me “Christopher” that meant I was in big trouble.

But, using the abbreviated form of my name caused some gender confusion for others who have never met me. In recent years I’ve even met a couple of women named “Chris Collins.”

In the 1960 Olympics an American female swimmer named Chris Von Saltza won two gold medals getting a lot of news coverage. As a 12-year old I was the victim of some serious razzing by the gang I hung out with because of that name and a couple of times fists were thrown. So, I grew to dislike my first name for awhile.

Years ago at work there was a discussion in our office among two co-workers and me, Dale (male) and Dana (female) about this topic. Occasionally, I get junk mail addressed to “Ms. Chris Collins” including a Victoria’s Secret catalog a few years ago.

Names and Personality

There are a lot of websites that purport to link a name with personality traits. I went to a couple of them to see what they said about my name.

A website called first-names-meanings.com said men with the name Christopher are “perceptive, intuitive and particularly emotional” and “they are characterized by a certain dualism, between sociability, extroversion and altruism.” The website went on to say “they need other people” but, it added, “…they also require time alone in order to recharge their batteries and maintain their privacy.” Interesting.

Another website called blogthings.com said those named Christopher “…communicate well…and are naturally creative…” The website also said, “You are the total package—suave, sexy, smart and strong.” I think I like this description better.

The people who write these things have to include enough things that you like as well as other things that intrigue you enough to keep reading. Same thing goes for those who write horoscopes.

There are many, many other websites for you to choose from if you want to find the meaning of your name. It can be a fun way to spend some time, so enjoy.

Allergies, Asthma and Ambivalence

Okay, so looking back I never should have started smoking, but I probably would still have some of the symptoms I am experiencing today even if I hadn’t. For the past few years my respiratory problems have slowly worsened and the past two winters I have had great deal of difficulty dealing with asthma and related symptoms.

My problems with my lungs began when I was a pre-schooler. First, both my mom and dad were smokers and the air in our house was often filled with a bluish-colored haze, especially if my mom and one her friends were having a gabfest. Now, I don’t blame them because nearly half of all adults smoked in the 50s long before the government mobilized against cigarette smoking in the 60s.  It was a part of their culture. Just look at movies or TV shows from the 50s and see how often of the characters light up on screen.

Smoking as a Sign of the Times

When the movie “Good Night and Good Luck”—the story of the confrontation between TV journalist Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy—came out a few years ago, a younger co-worker was stunned at how many of the characters smoked. I explained to him that that’s how it was back then. My parents sometimes hosted another couple for drinks and bridge. My older brothers would often sneak down the stairway that was partly enclosed to eavesdrop. Once when the adults were discussing the health effects of smoking, a woman guest exclaimed, “When I die, I’ll die with a cigarette in my hand.”

Also, when I was four years old I contracted Pertussis a.k.a. Whooping Cough. When I was an infant my parents had me vaccinated for the childhood diseases, but I later read that the Pertussis vaccine then was only 60-70% effective. So, when another kid next to me in the swimming pool threw up, I was exposed to the disease and caught it. I spent four weeks that summer in quarantine not allowed to go outside or have contact with anyone other than my immediate family. Even after I was released from quarantine, I still remember having violent coughing fits in the evening and night time hours for a few months.

In the fourth or fifth grade, a bunch of us began having smoking parties in a wooded area near the local grade school. Since nearly all of our parents smoked, it was easy to grab a few cigs from a pack laying around the house and head for the woods. I remember coughing at times but I also remember the buzz I got from inhaling cigarette smoke. Also, there was the cachet of danger in having these gatherings because our parents would have killed us if they found out.

And if that wasn’t enough, my lungs were also exposed to a lot of DDT when I was a child. The biggest public health scourge of the 50s was polio, a crippling and disfiguring disease virus that was thought to be spread by the common housefly.  Every couple of weeks or so during the warm weather months, a city truck with an insecticide spreading machine would cruise down our street spread a white, oily fog in its wake. And, that truck would usually  be followed by a crowd of kids on bicycles including me zigzagging in and out of the smoke.

When I Began to Smoke

I didn’t really smoke much during high school, but I did drink a lot during my senior year. But that’s a story for another time. During my freshman year in college, I took up smoking to relieve boredom while studying and help me stay awake during late night cramming sessions before an exam. By then I was 18, so it was all legal and I even smoked at home during breaks and vacations.  Another activity that encouraged smoking was frequent visits to bars and nightclubs. At that time, 18-year-olds in Ohio were allowed to drink low-powered beer and most bars, especially near college campuses eagerly admitted us. And drinking and smoking were joined at the hip and bars probably had the highest concentration of second-hand smoke anywhere.

I continued to smoke after graduation and getting married. The first serious sign that I was developing serious allergy problems occurred a couple of years after graduation when we unexpectedly met some acquaintances at the 1972 Kentucky Derby.  We planned to return to Lexington after the race and we arrived at their apartment  in Lexington around 8PM. We had a marvelous time, steaks on the grill, lots of bourbon and a very good time. Our hosts had two pet Siamese cats who generally stayed away from us while we partied. As we prepared to leave, I used the bathroom and noticed red blotches on my neck and face. As the bourbon wore off, I noticed these blotches were making me itch. I put a wash cloth soaked in cold water on them when we got home and by the next morning they were gone.

And Now Here Comes Asthma

Later that summer, we went to the wedding of one of my wife’s college roommates. The bride’s parents invited us to stay with them. They had a couple of pet cats and, voila, I woke up in the middle of the night with itchy face and neck and having trouble breathing. After that episode, I vowed to avoid cats and started using over-the-counter inhalers like Primatine and Bronc-Aid. That seemed to work pretty well for a couple of years. I thought I had things well in hand until one night in Indianapolis. I had been out drinking after work with friends. Pam was still living in Lexington to finish our lease and some job assignments. I awoke in the middle of the night and was having breathing problems, but I didn’t have an inhaler. At five in the morning, I drove to a 24-hour drugstore and bought an inhaler. I took a couple of hits from it in the parking lot and drove home and got a couple of hours sleep before I went to work.

About six years later, I contracted pneumonia for the first time. We had moved to Akron and then Cuyahoga Falls. I got sick in September on a very hot weekend. My doctor put me on antibiotics and Tylenol for the fever and told me not to go to work for a week. I got pneumonia two more times in the 1980s and several other severe bronchial infections. Once we adopted our son and I changed jobs, I finally quit smoking in 1996.

Treatment and Consequences

Now, 20 years later, it has caught up with me. I take four different medications for asthma and allergies and spend about $100 a month trying to control the damage that’s been done. I’m fortunate to have avoided heart problems and lung cancer so far, but as I sit here typing and wheezing with the latest sinus infection and bronchial distress, I wish I had never smoked or quit much sooner. 

Yesterday, I watched the first episode of the “Mad Men” again—one of my all-time favorite TV shows—and Don Draper was trying to save his firm’s best client Lucky Strike cigarettes from the damage caused by a government ruling that cigarette companies could no longer say their product had any health benefits. Now we know that cigarettes are linked to lung cancer, heart disease and numerous other health problems. Now cigarette advertising in mass media is virtually nonexistent because of government pressure. And the number of adults who now smoke is down to about 17 percent according to the Centers for Disease Control.

I’ve been to allergy specialists, pulmonary specialists and my primary care doctors. Each of them have given their best efforts to make me feel better, but with uneven results. Earlier this week I talked with my current doctor about my latest sinus infection and bronchial congestion. As he prescribed another round of antibiotics, he said the mix of drugs I was taking was about all they could do for my condition. 

It is a sobering thought that I may not have too many quality years left. I will likely end carrying an oxygen tank or air compressor to assist my breathing. I think it may be time to begin making up a bucket list. I’ll start as soon as I can find that Marlboro pen I got years ago.