for Jean Lipman<\/p>\n
My fathers made Boxford, Massachusetts. They drove out the trees
\nthen straightened and smoothed the land
\nlike bedsheets. They were proud to call themselves
\nthe first settlers. Once when I was fifteen, imagining myself
\ninside a coat and vest and static beard,
\nI stepped out of that body and walked
\nto Maine. There, looking upward past the roofs
\nof Portland, I found that god-damned tower.
\nLord, what a sight! A flag calmly unwrapping
\nthe sea-breeze, the windows spiraling
\nhigh above the town. When I traveled its stairway,
\nthe light leapt and leapt for me
\nuntil I could see Casco Bay and clear
\nto Paris. Here, I told myself, here is a place
\nwhere I can live. And so I stayed in Portland,
\nbecoming a house and sign painter,
\nsleigh-painter, drum-painter, drummer,
\nfiddler, schoolteacher, gristmill-builder, and a member
\nof the Portland Light Infantry, in five years. Then
\nsomething big happened. I was on my way
\ndown through New York State, pulling a cartload of paints
\nbehind me and trying to figure how
\nto free Napoleon from the island of Saint Helena,
\nwhen I envisioned blimp. There is was,
\nlifting off a hayfield and rising higher
\nthan the Portland Observatory in no time flat;
\nthen sort of pausing to turn and float
\nthe light. Good God, it was beautiful! Fitted out
\nwith a rudder, a steam-powered propeller and,
\nlast but not least, a saloon which contained the small
\nsmiling faces of Napoleon and yours truly. I shouted
\nfor a full minute before I noticed the farmers
\nin the road, leaning on their scythes.
\nHow could I tell them I had just begun to invent
\nthe future? I kept right on going
\nthrough New Jersey, painting portraits
\nand considering how to put the American farmer
\non wheels. For the next several years it gave me pleasure
\nto imagine his solemn figure seated
\non a Rotary Plow, and Engine for Harrowing, Sowing and Rolling
\nat the Same Time, and a Car for Removing Houses and Other
\nPonderous Bodies. My favorite invention, however,
\nwas not a farm machine or my walking cane that unfolded
\ninto a chair or even my three-wheeled steam carriage
\ncontrolled by reins: it was the blimp.
\nThat fact is, I chased the god-damned balloon
\nthrough five decades, trying to find someone who could see
\nthe sense of it. once, in 1849, I even wrote it up
\nas \u201cR. Porter & Co.\u2019s\u2026Aerial Transport for the Express
\nPurpose of carrying passengers\u2026to the Gold Region
\nand back in Seven Days\u2026for $50.\u201d Of course, I lied
\nabout everything. There was no company,
\nthere was no blimp, there was, in short,
\nonly me, Rufus Porter, feeling so damned free
\nin my mind I was on my way to California
\nalready. Thinking of me, imagine that flight
\nupward, beyond the immovable farms,
\nbeyond whole towns clinging to earth, beyond the earth.
\nImagine me standing up to shout among the clouds forever.<\/p>\n
-Wesley McNair<\/em><\/p>\n\n for Jean Lipman My fathers made Boxford, Massachusetts. They drove out the trees then straightened and smoothed the land like bedsheets. They were proud to call themselves the first settlers. Once when I was fifteen, imagining myself inside a coat and vest and static beard, I stepped out of that body and walked to Maine. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3959"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3959"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10859,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3959\/revisions\/10859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}