Inspired by our March 2016 cover story by James Fallows, “How America Is Putting Itself Back Together,” readers share their best aerial photos from across the U.S. Submit your own via hello@theatlantic.com. (Please provide the location, the story behind the photo, and the largest file size you have. Horizontal photos with a bit of the plane visible—a wing, the edge of a window—are ideal. Terms and Conditions here.)
Another fascinating view from a reader:
This picture is looking down at the former Savanna Army Depot just South of Hanover, Illinois, this weekend. The Mississippi River is in the background. Large sections are now being used for temporary storage of rail cars, but you can see the remains of roads that were once lined by ammunition bunkers.
More details from KWQC, a local news station:
Yesterday Stu Smith, who flies as a seasonal pilot for Kenmore Air in the Seattle area, shared a wonderful photo of a circular rainbow.
I’m very familiar with and fond of Kenmore Air, and not simply because my wife Deb and I took some of their seaplane flights for travel around the Puget Sound area when we lived in Seattle in 1999 and 2000. It’s also because I took seaplane-flying lessons there from Smith’s Kenmore colleague, Chris Jacob.
Because they fly so low-and-slow, and because they often land on lakes, bays, and shorelines right near cities, seaplanes generally offer a particularly striking version of the aerial view. In his note, Stu explains what we are seeing above:
Stu Smith, a reader who works as a seasonal commercial seaplane pilot for Seattle’s Kenmore Air, passes along a real beauty:
This photo was taken from the copilot’s seat by my friend Marshall Collins, who is a flight instructor at Clover Park Technical College (where I received my training and was also a flight instructor). This was a scheduled flight in a Beaver from Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia. We were about a third of the way into the 70 mile-long, northwest-bound flight when the circular rainbow appeared below us. If Marshall had had a wider-angle lens, he would have caught the entire circle.
At the time of the photo we were over the small village of Port Gamble, Washington, which had a long history as a timber and sawmill town. We’re looking to the northeast, with Point Julia in the foreground, the Kitsap Peninsula in the middle distance and Admiralty Inlet in the far distance. Marshall was riding along as my guest, since there was an unsold seat on this flight and he was available to join me.
I’ve had the good fortune of seeing several circular rainbows over the years. Phil Plait had a great article about them in Slate several years ago.
More props from a reader:
Love this series so far and thought I’d throw in one of mine. This shot was taken along the central California coast in the Big Sur area after taking off from Monterey en route to Montgomery Field in San Diego in a Diamond DA-40. In contrast to all of the great shots so far on (mostly) clear days, this photo was captured under instrument flight rules. [CB note: That’s defined as “rules and regulations established by the FAA to govern flight under conditions in which flight by outside visual reference is not safe”—in contrast to visual flight rules.]
The right side of the picture shows an interesting pattern that tends to show up in cell phone pictures taken from propeller aircraft. The best explanation I have found is here.
This reader gives us props:
I really enjoyed “How America Is Putting Itself Back Together,” as well as your reader series on aerial photography, “America by Air,” which is one of my new favorite things. As a private pilot, I’ve been dying to submit, so today I thought I’d drop a line and share what I have.
Here’s a photo of Lake Bryan I took flying over beautiful Bryan, Texas. I love shooting photographs over the cowling of my Cessna 152 because of the effect that the moving propeller creates in the lens, like drifting horizontal tildes [ ~ ] cutting into the frame. Of course, you can’t see this effect with the naked eye, but it always shows up on a digital photo. As a Mexican-American pilot, I like to think of the tildes as benevolent latinate characters greeting me in the sky. Think Super Mario and those friendly clouds.
It’s overcast today in Seattle, where my wife Deb and I have come for the annual Citizens University conference — an inspiring gathering of civic-engagement activists from around the country. But two days ago skies were clear along the West Coast. That is when reader (and son) Tom Fallows of San Francisco took pictures as he left Seattle, above, and came into San Francisco, below.
No comment needed, beyond remarking that this is a beautiful part of a beautiful country (and world).
After the jump, a reaction from another reader, involving the theme of fathers and sons and the view from above.
In response to a new pilot’s note about what he enjoyed in the aerial view, a reader who has worked as a flight instructor describes what he misses about that time in his life:
Thanks for your occasional odes to flying. I haven’t flown for years—for lack of $$, not for lack of desire. Some of the things I never tired of:
Flying west: over Ohio, an altitude of 3,500 was just beyond the ability to detect human forms on the ground below. And it fascinated me that if I held that altitude, I would crash somewhere just west of Colby, KS. [JF note: In case it’s not obvious, this is because the ground level goes steadily up as you head west. Between the Appalachians and the Atlantic, the ground level is generally less than 1000 feet above sea level. It’s the same through Ohio and Indiana and across the Mississippi River. But then it starts going up, and has reached 3,500 feet in Kansas. An airplane’s flight altitude is measured in elevation above sea level, not above the ground.]
A reader who goes by Glenn got perilously close to an erupting volcano:
During one of my trips to Hawaii, I decided to get creative and take a ride in a replica of a 1939 biplane. Over Kilauea. There is nothing like the thermals in a biplane over an active volcano.
Needless to say, taking pictures was problematic. Almost all the shots came out completely out of focus. [The one above] is an example of “That would have been a great shot if I only could hold the camera still for one more second.”
Here’s what Kilauea looked like this week, in timelapse, via Hawaii 24/7:
A reader sends this shot of Los Angeles and an affectionate nod to the city’s pollution problem:
I snapped this picture upon my return from a year-long master’s program in Oxford, England. After enduring all that noxious clean air and lush English countryside, I have to say I’ve never been more excited to see such a sprawling and smoggy grid before: home sweet smelly home.
The current forecast isn’t so bad:
I’m stepping in for Chris Bodenner, usual host in this space, because I was so delighted to hear the back story behind today’s reader photo. Riley Roberts sent it early this month:
As a newly-certified pilot (I passed my FAA checkride just yesterday), I've spent a lot of time puttering around the DC area’s tightly-controlled airspace over the last few months, both solo and with my instructor. [JF note: Congratulations!]
One of my favorite things about flying, particularly on crisp winter days, is the view: when the air is clear, you can see for miles. Once you’re at altitude and on course, with the plane trimmed for cruise, the cockpit isn’t overwhelmingly busy. There’s no sound other than the drone of the engine and occasional radio chatter in your headset. It becomes almost dreamlike—with the landscape slowly rolling by, the horizon rocking up across your field of vision with each bank of the wings, and nothing but open sky for a mile in every direction.
I snapped this photo of Maryland’s western shore from the pilot’s seat about a month ago, just a few days after the massive snowstorm that shut down the area. It took almost a week to clear the runway at my local airport, so the snow had begun to recede by the time I got back into the air. But the world still looked dramatically different—and absolutely gorgeous.
What I’ve learned over the decades is that many people shudder at the very idea of small-plane flight. But those of us who love it, love it for exactly the reason the reader explains so well. It is a dreamlike state, in which you do what people through the first 99.9% of human existence only imagined: moving through the air as if swimming, seeing the Earth from above. If you enjoy this, you never tire of it.
Just when I think the series is coming to a close, we get an especially great email from a reader:
My work has taken me to Barrow, Alaska, on several occasions over the years. This photo was shot immediately after taking off from Wiley Post-Will Rogers Memorial Airport in Barrow. The west end of the runway ends close to the Chukchi Sea, and the view in this photo is looking southwest along that coast. Barrow is behind the aircraft, not visible in this view. The landing gear is not yet fully retracted and we are already turning toward Fairbanks, our next stop.
The most significant attribute of this photo is that it was taken on October 2, 2014, and there is no sea ice in sight.
I spoke too soon when I noted last night that we’ve only received aerial photos from airplanes so far:
I hope it’s not too late to submit a photo! This one was taken from the Shamu blimp over Virginia around 1990. The blimp came from SeaWorld to Manassas Airport to provide camera services for a University of Virginia football game. I was lucky enough to snag a seat on a practice flight the day before the game. We took off from Manassas and cruised over the Virginia countryside to Charlottesville. We orbited the stadium for a bit, then flew over Monticello, and basically had a beautiful sightseeing tour over the Valley of Virginia in the fine fall weather.
At one point, we were joined by the friendly little biplane in my picture. (In the background is the Blue Ridge, or maybe it’s the Alleghenies...) We were in the air for about six hours, and after seeing a beautiful sunset, we landed by the light of the full Harvest Moon. A magical flight …
Anyway, I doubt you’ll see many more contemporary shots of a biplane in flight, taken from an airship.
Previous blimp blogging here.
Every time the president ramps up his violent rhetoric, every time he fires up Twitter to launch another broadside against me, my family and I see a surge of vicious attacks sent our way.
When I put my hand on the Bible at my inauguration, it did not occur to me that less than two years later, I would have to tell my daughters about a plot against me. But earlier this month, I learned that a multistate terrorist group was planning to kidnap and possibly kill me. Law-enforcement announced charges against 14 people as part of the plot. As jarring as that was, just over a week later, President Donald Trump traveled to Michigan, and when a crowd chanted “Lock her up” after he mentioned me, he said, “Lock them all up.”
I am not surprised. I have watched the president wedge a deeper divide in our country; refuse to denounce white supremacists on a national debate stage; and launch cruel, adolescent attacks on women like Senator Kamala Harris and public-health leaders like Anthony Fauci. And while I won’t let anything distract me from doing my job as governor, I will not stand back and let the president, or anyone else, put my colleagues and fellow Americans in danger without holding him accountable.
The tradition of granting post-term immunity from prosecution to those who leave the White House now comes at too great a cost.
In the 240 years since America’s founding, no former president has been indicted for criminal conduct. This isn’t because they were angels—far from it. And it isn’t because post-term indictment is not legally allowed. Instead, it is because Americans don’t like the idea of criminalizing politics. Both parties and the public see the prospect of post-term immunity as a guarantee that the country’s politics will remain civil and that power will transition peacefully from one party to the other. That is what drove President Gerald Ford to pardon Richard Nixon. And it’s one reason why the Office of the Independent Counsel decided not to indict former President Bill Clinton.
The presidency of Donald J. Trump has upended those calculations, and the resistance to post-term investigation may now come at too great a cost. When he leaves office, whether in January or four years later, the next administration or one of the states can and should investigate citizen Donald Trump—a former president whose legal status will be no different from that of any other American. The risk of politicization of such an investigation is far outweighed by the danger posed by failing to uphold our nation’s values. To protect future presidents from retributive investigations once they leave office, however, any investigation should be limited to Trump’s conduct before and after his presidency, not his behavior while he was president. If the findings of such an investigation justify it, prosecutors should indict the former president for violations of criminal law.
A citizen’s guide to defending democracy
In normal times, Americans don’t think much about democracy. Our Constitution, with its guarantees of free press, speech, and assembly, was written more than two centuries ago. Our electoral system has never failed, not during two world wars, not even during the Civil War. Citizenship requires very little of us, only that we show up to vote occasionally. Many of us are so complacent that we don’t bother. Nearly 40 percent of eligible voters failed to participate in the 2016 presidential election; nearly half stayed home for the midterm election two years later. We treat democracy like clean water, something that just comes out of the tap, something we exert no effort to procure.
But these are not normal times. The coronavirus pandemic—which has killed more than 200,000 Americans and sickened millions, including President Donald Trump—has made many voters anxious about going to the polls on November 3. The pandemic has also created new opportunities for Trump and his allies to subvert the election. The warning signs are multiplying: If Trump gets his way, the presidential election on November 3 will not be free and fair. My Atlantic colleague Barton Gellman has laid out an entirely plausible scenario, one in which Trump challenges the validity of mail-in ballots, more numerous this year, and persuades state legislatures to overrule them, imposing an undemocratic result. He reported that Republican Party officials are preparing for this outcome.
America won the internet, and now makes us all speak its language.
LONDON—Sharing the internet with America is like sharing your living room with a rhinoceros. It’s huge, it’s right there, and whatever it’s doing now, you sure as hell know about it.
This month, Twitter announced that it would restrict retweets for a few weeks, and prompt its users to reconsider sharing content which has been flagged as misinformation. The reason for this change, of course, is the U.S. presidential election. The restricted features will be restored when its result is clear.
Anything that makes Twitter fractionally less hellish is welcome, as is the recent crackdown by Facebook and YouTube on QAnon conspiracy groups and Holocaust denial. But from anywhere outside the borders of the U.S., it is hard not to feel faintly aggrieved when reading this news. Hey guys! We have elections too!
“Our boyfriends, our significant others, and our husbands are supposed to be No. 1. Our worlds are backward.”
Kami West had been dating her current boyfriend for a few weeks when she told him that he was outranked by her best friend. West knew her boyfriend had caught snatches of her daily calls with Kate Tillotson, which she often placed on speaker mode. But she figured that he, like the men she’d dated before, didn’t quite grasp the nature of their friendship. West explained to him, “I need you to know that she’s not going anywhere. She is my No. 1.” Tillotson was there before him, and, West told him, “she will be there after you. And if you think at any point that this isn’t going to be my No. 1, you’re wrong.”
If West’s comments sound blunt, it’s because she was determined not to repeat a distressing experience from her mid-20s. Her boyfriend at that time had sensed that he wasn’t her top priority. In what West saw as an attempt to keep her away from her friend, he disparaged Tillotson, calling her a slut and a bad influence. After the relationship ended, West, 31, vowed to never let another man strain her friendship. She decided that any future romantic partners would have to adapt to her friendship with Tillotson, rather than the other way around.
The Constitution should be the sturdy vessel of our ideals and aspirations, not a derelict sailing ship locked in the ice of a world far from our own.
During her confirmation hearings, Amy Coney Barrett argued that the judicial philosophy known as “originalism” should guide judges in their interpretation and application of constitutional principles. Most famously associated with the late Justice Antonin Scalia (for whom Judge Barrett clerked), this idea sounds simple and sensible: In determining what the Constitution permits, a judge must first look to the plain meaning of the text, and if that isn’t clear, then apply what was in the minds of the 55 men who wrote it in 1787. Period. Anything else is “judicial lawmaking.”
In some cases, interpreting the Constitution with an originalist lens is pretty easy; for example, the Constitution says that the president must be at least 35 years old (“35” means, well, 35), that each state has two senators (not three and not one), and that Congress is authorized to establish and support an Army and a Navy. But wait a minute. What about the Air Force? Is it mentioned in the text? Nope. Is there any ambiguity in the text? Again, no. It doesn’t say “armed forces”; it explicitly says “Army” and “Navy.” Did the Framers have in mind the Air Force 115 years before the Wright brothers? Not likely.
States and cities struggling through the pandemic recession are wondering if higher taxes will raise revenue, or cause a mass exodus.
Cities and states across the country are facing a conundrum: They are desperate for cash because of the ravages of the COVID-19 recession. Rich people are pretty much the only ones who have any, because of both the recession and the yawning inequality that long predated it. But if cities and states raise taxes on the 1 percent, they worry that rich families might simply leave, no longer bound to their offices or their children’s schools. The conundrum is real, and the solution is easy enough: Let the federal government help states and cities circumvent the whole issue.
The pandemic recession has battered local coffers, causing revenue losses of an estimated $155 billion in 2020 and $167 billion in 2021, about 6 percent of local revenue. New York alone is projecting a $59 billion shortfall through 2022. The federal government could easily finance those kinds of deficits by issuing bonds. But doing so is harder for local governments, which generally have to keep their budgets balanced and often have limits on their borrowing. When big recessions hit, and the COVID-19 recession is a huge one, many of them have no choice but to raise revenue or cut services.
If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him?
Illustrations by Guillem Casasús / Renderings by Borja Alegre
There is a cohort of close observers of our presidential elections, scholars and lawyers and political strategists, who find themselves in the uneasy position of intelligence analysts in the months before 9/11. As November 3 approaches, their screens are blinking red, alight with warnings that the political system does not know how to absorb. They see the obvious signs that we all see, but they also know subtle things that most of us do not. Something dangerous has hove into view, and the nation is lurching into its path.
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The danger is not merely that the 2020 election will bring discord. Those who fear something worse take turbulence and controversy for granted. The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation’s creaky electoral machinery.
Like other stories about terrible rich people, HBO’s glitzy murder mystery The Undoing is entranced by a world it finds immoral.
Is any capitalist endeavor more menacing than the control of nature itself? The conquest of occupied lands, the rerouting of rivers, the hoarding of purified air—the American elite has always maintained itself in part by manipulating the environment. The wealthy characters on The Undoing, a new HBO miniseries set in New York City that premiered Sunday, can’t harness the East River. They don’t set about planting flags in Central Park or claiming Fifth Avenue. But with a selective private school, Reardon, as their home base, they still exert a nearly godlike rule over their surroundings and those who dwell there.
The show begins with a premise that’s most easily summed up as Big Little Lies: Manhattan—a murder mystery that takes place in the land of the uberrich, where daunting architecture is set against the backdrop of a concrete island rather than an ominous sea. Nicole Kidman plays Grace Fraser, a successful family therapist; her husband, Jonathan, is a children’s oncologist, played by a characteristically charming Hugh Grant. Their family, which includes their 12-year-old son, Henry (played by Noah Jupe), seems happy—picturesque, tidy. In addition to sharing a star (Kidman) and a lead writer (David E. Kelley), Big Little Lies and The Undoing are also both adapted from novels.
The 11th annual panoramic-photo competition has just come to a close, and the winning images and finalists have been announced.
The top-scoring panoramic photos entered in the 11th Epson International Pano Awards have just been announced. The contest is meant to showcase the best work of panoramic photographers around the world. Organizers reported that they received 5,859 entries from 1,452 photographers in 96 countries this year, competing for the top spots in five categories, for several special awards, and for some of the cash prizes offered. Contest organizers were once again kind enough to share some of the winners and top scorers here.
