Tag Archives: helicopter

Da Vinci, Leonardo

Da Vinci, Leonardo: (Prop N) a famous artist, engineer and scientist during the Renaissance.

I guess if you paint well enough, no one remembers that you came up with an early design for a helicopter.

There’s a danger in being multi-talented.

You personally may want to be remembered for your designing or scientific mind, but since you emerged from the Dark Ages and were one of the first Renaissance Men, it may be a little difficult for people not to go ahead and put a name tag on you and assign you a permanent position.

Then there are those who found out that Leonardo was a gay man. Yet, for some reason, they didn’t take down the print of “The Last Supper” from the front of their church. I guess it’s okay to be gay as long as you paint well and you’re already dead.

It upset some other people when a conjecture was brought forth that the “Mona Lisa” was Leonardo painting himself in drag, yet that was survived.

After all, pretty is pretty.

So universal is our acceptance of Mr. da Vinci that we theorize that he had a “Code,” which turned into an action-filled book. Also, he was honored by being one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I don’t think we’ll ever get over touting Leo as a great painter.

But fortunately, he was a good enough painter that history gives him a footnote for his helicopter design.

Chopper

Chopper: (n) a helicopter.

Knowing that my brain, like most human brains, has selective memory, and that triggers installed for certain sounds, words, or even smells, I can tell you of a truth that the word “chopper”–and the vision of one–for me conjures memories of Vietnam.

I don’t know why.

Maybe it’s because I came of age during the height of the conflict, came upon my eighteenth birthday and was eligible for the draft. Helicopters were prevalent in the nightly news, and made me think about that horrible war.

Today I call it horrible. When I was a teenager, I lived in a community that actually had its own chapter of the John Birch Society, and the violence in Southeast Asia was extolled as patriotic–our best avenue for stopping the spread of Communism.

So for me, it’s a chain of mental commands:

Chopper makes me think about Vietnam.

Vietnam makes me think about the protests.

The protests make me think about rock and roll.

Rock and roll conjures images of Woodstock.

Woodstock reminds me that I was living in a provincial village and was too frightened to go to the festival.

And being too frightened to go–as a young man, I was also always arguing with my family over a half-inch of hair over my ears, trying to rebel by listening to The Monkees.

I was no hero.

But as history moves forward, we realize that unfortunately there were no heroes during that era.

The government was corrupt, the hippies were imbalanced, the Vietnamese were crazed, violent and suicidal, the draft dodgers were relegated to the status of cowards as they drove their Volkswagen vans to Canada, and the soldiers who did go to war bled in a jungle that no one even cares one bamboo shoot about today.

So I guess when I see the word “chopper,” I think of lost causes, and I am alerted to spy them–and call them out before they generate guilt, graft … and graves.

Donate Button