As anyone who is not a native New Yorker knows, there is no form of provincialism more acute than too long a confinement on Manhattan Island. Most of our writers and researchers, for one reason or another, come from other parts of the U.S., are alternately exhilarated or frustrated by the tension and pressures of the big city and of their jobs, and often feel penned in at their air-conditioned, glass-walled offices set high on steel shelves. Maybe that is why they read so much about far-off places, have an incurable travel itch, and pursue exotic and audacious hobbies. And maybe that is why, when our Modern Living department got intrigued by the growing hobby of sky diving, two of the best sources for the story turned out to be at nearby desks. Sport Researcher Geraldine Kirshenbaum and Associate Editor Douglas Auchincloss (whose previous experience in the heavens includes 17 years as TIME’S Religion editor) had decided to try sky diving for themselves. Last week each jumped from a single-engine plane, parachuted 2,500 ft. to earth in 21 minutes.
“The landing was harder than I expected, though not too much for these old bones,” reports Auchincloss. “Everybody congratulates you on your first jump and asks you how it was. ‘Great,’ you say, or ‘Perfect.’ Obviously, there you are walking around, aren’t you? Truly, getting there is all the fun.”
Gerry Kirshenbaum added: “I left the plane all wrong and landed all wrong, but those two minutes in between were wonderful. The air was so quiet. You can’t even hear the plane. And the ground seemed to ‘stay away’ until the last few seconds. I wish I had stayed up longer.”
The story appears this week in Modern Living, and the moral, if any, is that earthbound, Manhattan-bound TIME staffers can fling themselves as ardently into a story as any of our far-flung correspondents.
THERE is nothing better calculated to rile the Irish than to treat them as a land of begorra, shillelaghs and shamrocks. Yet the myth is part of the land, and so is the economic progress that at last has reversed the emigration rate. It will take more than a few factories to make of Ireland another Ruhr, but the changed landscape is a sight to see, as shown by the eight pages of color this week that accompany the cover story on Sean Lemass, who represents the new spirit in the ould sod.
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