{"id":117,"date":"2012-04-26T22:05:01","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T03:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/melissakaysimonds.com\/?page_id=117"},"modified":"2018-12-16T08:06:17","modified_gmt":"2018-12-16T14:06:17","slug":"about-me","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/melissakaysimonds.com\/?page_id=117","title":{"rendered":"About Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love well-told stories. Novels, memoirs, short stories, poetry and movies engage me and always have.\u00a0Professor and author Judy Doenges<\/a> wrote that good fiction\u00a0is “equal parts emotional power, intellectual complexity and artistic richness.” That’s true of all\u00a0good stories, whether factual\u00a0or imagined.\u00a0No other device exposes the pith of a truth as elegantly as a story.<\/p>\n

Aviation is important to me too. My dad saw to it that I learned to fly at\u00a0Mangham Field<\/a> in Hurst, Texas. The little 25-foot wide airstrip is long gone now, but back in 1975 it was just across the Grapevine Highway from Tarrant County Junior College. Around that same time, I attended Christ For The Nations Institute<\/a> in Dallas, Texas. I really thought I’d become a missionary pilot and fly all over\u00a0Africa \u00e0 la Beryl Markham. That didn’t happen, but I did get to live it a little bit by reading\u00a0\u00a0West with the Night<\/a>. Thank you, Ms. Markham, and thank you, my dear friend Eric, for sharing the book with me.<\/p>\n

As things turned out, most of my experience in aviation happened on the ground side of the microphone. I became an en route air traffic controller and was on the boards, as we say in the business, for almost a decade. After that, I switched to safety assurance work and stayed with that for the rest of my career. I retired from the FAA in 2012, and now I have a day job as a subject matter expert with CSSI, Inc<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jack London wrote a memoir he called, “No Mentor but Myself<\/a>.”\u00a0Unlike Mr. London, I’ve had more mentors than I can count, though many of them probably never knew that’s what they were to me. Because I’ve encountered so much generosity in life, I’ve tried to put my best foot forward on this website and talk about things that uplift and encourage. We all could use a little more of that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love well-told stories. Novels, memoirs, short stories, poetry and movies engage me and always have.\u00a0Professor and author Judy Doenges wrote that good fiction\u00a0is “equal parts emotional power, intellectual complexity and artistic richness.” That’s true of all\u00a0good stories, whether factual\u00a0or … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P8Mo02-1T","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":127,"url":"https:\/\/melissakaysimonds.com\/?page_id=127","url_meta":{"origin":117,"position":0},"title":"Stories","author":"lsimonds","date":"May 7, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"In contrast to the Leaves of Grace essays, these are short fiction pieces from past and present. \"Vieux Carr\u00e9\" was\u00a0originally published in Apocalpyse, the literary journal of Northern Illinois University.\u00a0 The story is a brief portrait of\u00a0New Orleans' French Quarter. \"Dadaw Stories\" came from the experiences of my maternal grandfather,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/melissakaysimonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/melissakaysimonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/melissakaysimonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melissakaysimonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melissakaysimonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/melissakaysimonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1124,"href":"https:\/\/melissakaysimonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117\/revisions\/1124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/melissakaysimonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}