James Tobin

For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life. So wrote a quiet young Ohioan in 1900, one in an ancient line of men who had wanted to fly -- men who wanted it passionately, fecklessly, hopelessly. But now, at the turn of the twentieth century, Wilbur Wright and a scattered handful of other adventurers...

When A, E, I, O, and U jump off the page, reader Sue MacDonald pursues the renegade vowels.