The Trailing Edge
Summer’s end.
We’re always a little surprised when we’re asked about the little details of our office setup and working conditions. Mostly these come through Twitter which makes us wonder if it’s SkyBot — or worse yet Elon Musk — simply gathering information for some nefarious purpose.
That notwithstanding, the subject of what music we have on in the office came up. The short answer is, for the most part, none. We encourage the use of headphones. Music is so subjective that it’s pretty high risk to assault somebody with Speed Metal when you know their taste moves to the Adult Contemporary end of the spectrum. And nobody here seem to wants to admit that they already know all the lyrics to Red (Taylor’s Version).
However, we do have one playlist we play out loud to which most of us can agree most of the time: The New RC Soaring Digest Writing Trance is its rather ominous sounding name. It runs the range from what the kids call House through to what the same kids call Trance or Electronica. Mostly what we like is that it’s non-music music. Something that fills the aural void without being distracting. It’s like white noise without it actually being noise, which seems to let us focus on the job at hand. After all, we all know if the ten minute version of the Swiftinator’s All Too Well comes up in the rotation, nothing is getting done for a while.
But every once in a while we let Tim Cook do the DJing — in other words, just set Apple Music to random play (within reason). Which is why it caught us all a little by surprise when the late, great John Prine’s Summer’s End began to play. Not our usual fare at all.
Prine’s simple melody and even simpler, honest lyrics are absolutely perfect for a day that while it’s still hot, it’s a different kind of hot — softer and more gentle: the warmth of a summer just about run its course. There was a sense that everybody slowed down or stopped for a moment to savour the last of a lovely long, languid season inevitably fading away.
For a while the Coronamatics fell silent and the background chatter died away.
With the last, sweet bars of Prine’s elegy for the best times sliding into fading memories, there were a few faraway looks and dare we say some moist eyes around the office, with no one clearly ready for summer to end quite yet.
What’s New in The RCSD Shop
We were working away with our friends down in Minas Gerais, Brasil on a listing for their exciting Retroplana 2022 event coming up in September (see Resources, below) and when the folks in the RCSD Shop got wind, they piped up with “hey, we have a flag for that.” And thus was born the New RCSD Logo Events Flag.
With its clever topographic map motif, it’s a great way to jazz up the flight line at your next event. Also, if you fly it near the launch zone, it will tell you which direction the wind is blowing — no extra charge! This beautiful and functional flag is 87.6cm (34.5in) wide and 142.2cm (56.0in) long; it won’t crease or shrink thanks to the 100% polyester, knitted fabric with a weight of 4.42 oz/yd² (150 g/m²) and has two metal grommets for running it up the flagpole to see who salutes.
Also, did you know that all of our products are made especially for you as soon as you place an order — making products as required instead of in bulk helps reduce overproduction, so thank you for making thoughtful purchasing decisions!
Make Sure You Don’t Miss the New Issue
You really don’t want to miss the October issue of RCSD when it’s out — we always have some exciting things in the works. Make sure you connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn or subscribe to our Groups.io mailing list. Please share RCSD with your friends — we would love to have them as readers, too.
That’s it for this month…now get out there and fly!
©2022 The New RC Soaring Digest Staff
Resources
- Aer-o-Tec.de — From the website: “Our concept includes the introduction of competition models of the classes F3B, F3F and F3J as well as suitable accessory for competition and dedicated spare time pilots. In doing so our goal is to keep low delivery times!”
- The New RC Soaring Digest Writing Trance — This is the playlist mentioned in this article. Currently available only on Apple Music. But let us know if you would like it on another platform!
- Summer’s End— The beautiful song by the late, great John Prine that left all of us here in the office feeling a little melancholy.
- Retroplana 2022 — From the RCSD Events calendar: “the largest gathering of retro RC gliders in Brasil…this year the event is set to resume in style, with the retro theme in the exhibits, flights of replica gliders and vintage models.”
Read the previous article or go to the table of contents. A PDF version of this article, or the entire issue, is available upon request.
