My grandmother flew only once in her life, and that was the day she and her new husband ascended into the skies of Victorian London in the wicker basket of a hot-air balloon. They were soon to emigrate to Canada, and the aerial ride was meant to be a last view of their beloved England.
Those fields of daisies we landed on, and dusty fields and desert stretches. Memories of many skies and earths beneath us - many days, many nights of stars.
Anyone who's read my 'Terror in the Skies' series knows that I have not been writing with an eye toward approval from any government agency.
Westerns are simple stories where there's good and there's evil and where people had a sense of space and freedom. Growing up in the city, as a kid, you've never really seen that before. It's a beautiful dream to go from concrete to big skies, dirt and horses.
My mother watched the skies at evening for a portent of the morrow. A cloud that went over and then turned around and came back was an especially bad sign.
Exterior shots showing blue skies add a levity and brightness to each show.
When I wrapped 'Falling Skies,' I took a trip to the Caribbean to visit my grandma, which is great. I was out there for two weeks in Grenada. Then after that, I went to Poland for two and a half weeks to go watch some of the European soccer championships.
A Texas upbringing - and living now in Brooklyn, too - have surely helped my appreciation for open spaces and skies, but beyond that, it's not easy to find words for what it feels like to be up in the Rockies or out on the Great Basin - such silences and spaces! - or to be heading up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Our American heritage is greater than any one of us. It can express itself in very homely truths; in the end it can lift up our eyes beyond the glow in the sunset skies.
Clear skies and clean air must become the new normal. We must re-design our cities, reclaiming the streets for cycling and walking, allowing people to walk along streets unpolluted by traffic.
