An A-380! The biggest commercial jet — spotted at JFK. I doubt you could get me on one!
By Caitlin Kelly
I’m sure this post will get about 5 views and I don’t care.
As someone who so enjoys travel, I absolutely love watching videos from the cockpit, available from FlightRadar24.
I just watched a very small craft fly from Iqaluit to Pond Inlet, Canada — 71 degrees north. i.e. the Arctic! I was only there once, in my late 20s, on assignment for the Montreal Gazette, flying into Salluit, a tiny town in northern Quebec. To get there we took a jet from Montreal to Kuujjuaq then a very small plane from there north to Salluit, north of the treeline — all there is to see is ice and snow, rocks and ice and snow. This was in December, so you can imagine how cold it was!
We landed on a tiny strip with nothing but icy waters all around us and I admit to white-knuckling it — the plane held me and a photographer and a CBC reporter and her cameraman.
The Arctic is a place so few Canadians will ever visit — it’s far, costly to get to, and other easier places beckon. But what a world it is and so different in every way.
The TWA Hotel — so fun!
Which is part of the tremendous appeal of these videos — armchair travel!
I love plane-spotting, which we did while staying at the TWA hotel at JFK. So fun!
The smallest plane I’ve been in (so far!) commercially was in Nicaragua, from Managua to Bilwi, on the east coast — they weighed every passenger, not just our bags! Much frantic unpacking ensued. I dream of landing on the sandy beach of Barra in the Hebrides — I love small planes and don’t love 200+ passenger widebodies. Too many people.
Our aircraft from Managua to Bilwi — and back!
The cockpit videos and images are so beautiful — you see cities and mountains and the ocean and distant lightning and aurora borealis. I follow several pilots on Twitter and love seeing where they’re off to — London to Nairobi or Houston to Beijing. Several like Kelly Lepley, fly huge cargo jets. I am in awe of the skill and experience pilots bring to their work, moving us and our stuff around the world.
Next Friday (gulp) I step back into an overnight long haul flight from New York to Rekjavik and on to London, on Icelandair (a first for me and the cheapest flight I could find for my dates.) I am a weenie when it comes to turbulence so lots of deep breaths.
I highly recommendthis gorgeous book, Skyfaring, by a British Airways pilot, called Skyfaring, about life in the pointy end.
I love this photo….such fun! My mother was the food editor for a magazine and this was for a
story about kids cooking. We were ordered (!) to have a flour fight. BLISS!
By Caitlin Kelly
I was struck this week by a New York Times story about American parents so determined to give their children happy memories they spend $6,000 and up to visit Disneyworld or Disneyland, happily digging themselves into debt to make sure their kids have this. As someone who grew up in Canada and has never been to both or wanted to, this obsession entirely escapes me, but ours was never a pop culture/cartoon family.
I know my childhood was, compared to that of many people, pretty weird. I was born in Vancouver, Canada and moved to London ages two to five while my father made films for the BBC. We came back to Canada, to Toronto, where I lived to the age of 30, with time in Montreal and Mexico.
My parents did not have a happy marriage; my New York born mother was 17 when she married my Canadian father, then 23. They were both smart, charming, stylish and came from wealthy families filled with various dysfunction — my maternal grandmother married six times, twice to my mother’s father. They split when I was seven or eight which meant leaving behind a gorgeous huge house and Toronto’s nicest neighborhood. I wouldn’t live in a house again until I was 14.5 when I moved back in with my father.
I went to boarding school in Toronto at eight, the youngest there, sharing a room (typical) with three or four other girls. Privacy was impossible. We had no television except on weekends in the common room. Making a telephone call meant filling out a paper form explaining who and why we wanted it. Our days were regulated by bells: 6:55 wake-up, 7:05 out to walk the city block of our campus, neighbors easily setting their watches by the sight of us.
Breakfast, like every meal, meant sitting at an assigned table and eating whatever we were served — preferences be damned. It sure wasn’t Hogwarts! After school was sports then supervised study hall, dinner, then more study hall. (I will admit those habits stood me in very good stead later, especially working alone at home.)
I loved our uniform, a Hunting Stewart tartan wool kilt, cotton bloomers beneath, green blazer, beige cotton shirt, Hunting Stewart tie, green wool knee socks and black oxfords. No make-up or jewelry allowed. I really feel sorry now for young girls who spend so much money and time on make-up and beauty products, egged on by social media. I loved that the focus was on sports and learning, not physical appearance. At summer camp, also all-girl, same thing.
But boarding became nightmarish as I chafed at all the rules and was asked not to return for Grade 10, despite winning awards and prizes. That hurt.
My mother, Cynthia. She had worked as a model and actress. Wish I had her glamour!
Camp saved me, spending eight weeks in the woods doing sports and a musical and sailing almost every afternoon. Being in nature all summer long was wonderful.
I just didn’t see much of my parents. My father traveled the world for his work and my mother moved around as she pleased, thanks to family money and no deep ties. So many of the classic/standard childhood memories so many people have in common — I just don’t. That’s been hard.
Some favorite memories:
A visit to Antigua after my parents split up, my first solo flight.
A visit to Cuernavaca, Mexico (where we later lived) to a house on Via Lactea — Milky Way Street.
The year I had three Christmas meals in 24 hours — in Montreal, on the flight to London and the next day in London with my aunt and uncle. And clotted cream! And Hamley’s toy store.
Christmases with my maternal grandmother were lavish affairs with a huge cooked goose and stacks of gifts from Canada’s best store, Holt Renfrew, wrapped in their distinctive silver paper with blue ribbon.
I loved my 12th birthday — spent in Montreal where we lived for a year — when several of my Toronto friends came by train and we all slept on the living room floor and ate Sara Lee banana cake for breakfast.
I see that many of these are linked to special occasions rather than day-to-day life.
Normal stuff? I had trolls and Legos and all sorts of games and books to amuse myself, an only child. For a while I had a hamster, Pickles, but had to relinquish him to a friend when I went back to boarding school. We had a dog when I was maybe six or seven, a dachshund, Stook, and two Siamese cats, Mitzpah and Horowitz. I still remember the name of the pink-cheeked boy who lived next to us at that first house.
I have very few photos of myself as a child, teen or young adult — no one cared enough to take them. Now, thanks to my loving husband who is a former New York Times photographer, there are many many many photos of me! This means a lot.
When asked about my earlier years, I generally say they were materially privileged but emotionally difficult.
It’s been another crazy summer — maybe just the new normal. Happily, no floods, wildfires, tornadoes or hurricanes, but alternating torrential rain or 95 degree heat and humidity. The pool and balcony we crave all year suddenly unusable. We only have three months!
So we’re making our long to-do lists and getting there slowly.
Nothing exciting, but all useful and some very overdue:
Having all our kitchen knives professionally sharpened.
Having two floors refinished completely, lightening the wood tone a bit.
Trying to ditch unused clothes, shoes, housewares… I’ve had good luck selling to a consignment shop in our town.
Clearing out (sigh) our garage. WAY overdue and a chore we always postpone: it’s too hot or too cold or…who knows. MUST do this.
Finally, I hope, sanding off a very worn pair of bedside tables I scored at an antique shop a few years ago. The fronts have a lovely design but the tops are horribly faded and worn, so I need to refinish them with a nice coat of creamy white.
Going through our collection of art — framed posters, photos, prints — and deciding which, if any, to sell, and seeing if they have any value at auction. I have a great pair of 18th c engravings, nicely framed, I found in Victoria, B.C. but we have so little wall space! I love the things we’ve chosen over the years but…
Maybe finally spending the money to have our bathroom wall broken open to repair the water flow, which is terrible. We did the room in fall 2008 but I made sure to keep leftover tile, just in case.
Bringing two smallish potted trees indoors for the winter.
Possibly replacing a few very worn out pieces of cookware.
Maybe a new small kitchen scale to help me (ugh) lose weight with more accurate measurements.
The print edition had three other people discussing theirs, and their stories were interesting. I’ve long been someone who loves jewelry. I spent my childhood at boarding school where the only thing we could wear would be very simple pierced earrings. I don’t remember thinking much about it in high school or university, although my maternal grandmother (who was very wealthy) gave me a gold snake chain with a Gemini charm that I wore often.
Granny had a jeweler, a small shop in Toronto she preferred, so it gave me a very early introduction to gems and gold and the many ways they can be combined beautifully. There was always a full jar of jelly beans on the counter and a stunning sterling Art Nouveau mirror in which to see what looked best. They also had a drawer with some estate pieces (used) and the year I chose one I really liked my mother bought it for me — a heart-shaped ring made of very small pearls and sapphires. I still have it and wear it.
I do remember owning a stack of silver bangles, several from the Caribbean and later (sob!) losing a denim jacket with a collection of sterling brooches at the Miami airport.
I still have my pave diamond engagement ring from my first marriage — and what a lesson I learned about re-selling! I took it to a place in Manhattan who were so rude and so dismissive, sneering at it because “it’s not Cartier.” No, it’s from an even better iconic jeweler, I replied calmly, seeing where this was going. They weighed it, looked at it carefully, then offered me an absurdly low amount (especially given its initial value.) I was very lucky that I didn’t need the income that desperately and hung onto it. Decades later I went to the jewelry company who made it, and who immediately offered me four times that amount — or eight times that amount to buy from their stock.
Seller beware!
But also, buyer. We recently bought a pair of earrings at auction (online) we were sure were original Greek coins, and very early…when I checked with an expert, they’re not.
Most of the jewelry I wear now is simple and comfortable — I’ve never been a huge fan of colored gems or obsessed with diamonds. I have some pearls, but rarely wear them. I love semi-precious stones like agate or labradorite, a moody stone that always reminds of canoe trips, staring deep into green-gray lake depths. One of my favorites, bought for $50 in a store in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, is vintage snowflake obsidian set in sterling, pictured above.
When my husband I started dating, I had never met a man who wore jewelry, but, being native American and Hispanic, he sometimes wears a silver bangle or rings — and it looks fantastic on him. Years ago we had a talented jeweler in our town and I had a ring made for him that I designed, with a central stone of green agate and a wide band of silver with a gold accent. He was delighted.
After my mother died in 2020, some of her belongings were returned to me, and two pieces are so utterly her — a very fine short gold chain and a simple gold ring. I won’t wear either of them, but am glad to have them. Two ornate and beautiful pieces also arrived, pearl and sapphire clip earrings and a spectacular ring with carved emeralds; I’ve worn both.
I admit, I look at a lot of jewelry online, both costume and real. I love an interesting long necklace, great earrings or a substantial ring. I also love to give it for major birthdays — sending small diamond studs to my bestie and peridot and silver studs to a friend turning 30.
I love love love these — pearl clouds with crystal raindrops ($975), both playful and beautiful.
As someone who was nationally ranked for four years as a saber fencer in my 30s, with Steve Mormando, a former two-time Olympian as my coach, I’ve loved seeing the world’s best match up at the Grand Palais, its enormous windows shaded with fabric, its stands full to bursting with fans. It was so cool to watch competitors walk down the Palais’ wide staircase to reach the strip.
The commentators were super knowledgable and I learned a lot. There was much referring to the video for the judges to determine the winner of each touch as the game is so so fast. In saber, the body above the hips, including head, is target — in foil, just the front of the body and in epee everything from head to feet. Saber is based on cavalry fighting, so the hips would have been target when someone was fighting on horseback and the legs difficult to reach.
The three weapons are all so different they tend to attract different personalities. I don’t have the patience for foil and epee and loved saber — but it can hurt and leave bruises when that thin metal blade whips against your arm or shoulder. Women slide small metal breast protectors inside our vests — and they end up covered with dents and scratches.
One of my medals
It’s been such a pleasure to see some unlikely wins — like Canada winning a bronze. We’re not known for this sport! It’s always been dominated by Hungary, France, Italy…you know, all those countries where dueling lasted a while. I watched Iran play against France (France won.) A young woman from Queens, New York, Lauren Scruggs also took home a bronze. Huge! And the U.S, foil team took their first medal.
Anyway, I hope some of you had a chance to watch my beloved sport.
Broadside 
