Monthly Archives: February 2026

WINGSPREAD Zine for February, 2026


Spreading wings in a perplexing world
February, 2026                  James P. Hurd

Please forward and share this zine with others. Thank you.

The world is a strange, beautiful, mysterious and sometimes disappointing place. This zine is dedicated to pondering that mystery.

Contents

  • Writer’s Corner
  • Blessed Unbeliever novel
  • This month’s story: “Colombia: A Severe Mercy”
  • This month’s puzzler:  “No Time”
  • WINGSPREAD zine subscription information
  • Wisdom

Writer’s Corner

Dedicated to the world of words and the people who create them.

Want to browse archived WINGSPREAD stories? Click here, then click under “archives” at https://jimhurd.com/   These stories include memoirs, stories about bush flying, personal essays and other topics.

Here are a few examples:

“All Hallows Eve: A story for October 31” (October, 2015)

“Reggie Radcliffe and the Fundamentalists” (October, 2018)

“The Returning” (October, 2025—carrying Barbara’s ashes back to Pennsylvania)

NEW BOOK!

 Forthcoming―a book of stories and essays, new and old. Some samples―”Egg McMuffin Miracle,” “Churched Atheists,” “Gaming Airport Security.” I’ll keep you posted on the launch date.

Writer’s tip: Scan your piece for “out-of-order” sentences. They may flow better and make more sense if they’re rearranged.

Words

.Sanewashing  (v.) Normalizing and rationalizing outrageous, extreme or false behavior by a public figure. “The commentator sanewashed the bizarre speech, arguing, ‘He’s just being honest.’”

Kavanaughing (v.) Getting targeted because of your appearance. Origin: Brett Kavanaugh (SCOTUS) wrote a recent opinion in support of using physical appearance to identify criminals and undocumented people. Example: “Even though he was a U.S. citizen, ICE Kavanaughed him because of his dark skin.”

Favorite metaphor: “He’s the kind of man that destiny had a serious grudge against.”

Digital resources: AI is a curse and a blessing. The creators never tell you what algorithms they use. However, I have found it useful for critiquing pieces I have written. Ask AI, “Critique the following essay.” It will give you several suggestions.

TV series of the month: POLDARK. On Netflix. A British soldier returns to England after the American Revolution and confronts a new life in Cornwall where he runs a copper mine, deals with threats of war with France and negotiates complex relationships with his relatives.

Task for you: If you have something you wish to submit for publication in this WINGSPREAD Zine, send it to me for consideration. (Humor, pithy quotes)

BLESSED UNBELIEVER novel

Sean’s serene childhood turns to tortured adolescence after Reggie steals his girlfriend, Kathleen. He leaves for college, shaken and losing his childhood faith. and finds himself telling people he’s an atheist—.at a Bible Institute! Parts of the novel draw deeply on my own life experiences, but I’m not telling which parts!

Available in paper or Kindle version at Wipf and Stock Publishers, Amazon
(  https://a.co/d/9su5F3o ) or order it wherever good books are sold.
Hashtags:  #blessedunbeliever #christianwriter #babyloss #southerncalifornia #planes #aviation #humanist #pilotlife #religion #travel #aviationgeek #orangecounty #godless #atheism

New story: “Colombia: A Severe Mercy

Except for the burglaries, Land Rover crash, airplane crash, typhoid fever, a murder and getting kicked out of our rental house, bush-flying for MAF in Colombia was great.

Within a few weeks after checkout, I was flying solo into the small bush airstrips located all around Montería. Muleticos had a hill at one end, making it a one-way strip―you could only land to the west and only take off to the east. This day I’d just cleared the boundary fence when two pigs breached the fencing and darted across the runway. Too late to go around. I touched down and stood on the brakes. Bam bam! I tore them both  in two with the left wheel, knocking out the left brake. At that point I could keep the airplane straight or brake to a stop, but I couldn’t do both. The plane swerved violently to the right, took out some fenceposts and came to rest after severing a six-inch tree trunk, throwing the airplane down on its left wing. Thankfully no one was hurt. After we traveled several hours by mule and jeep over dirt roads, I arrived home tired, dirty and discouraged. I collapsed into Barbara’s arms―“I crashed the airplane!” . . .

To read more, click here: https://jimhurd.com/2026/02/11/colombia-a-severe-mercy/

Leave a comment on the website, subscribe to the zine. Share this with others. Thanks.

You can also access my articles on Substack: https://jameshurd.substack.com/publish/post/164503545

This month’s puzzler. thanks to NPR: “No Time”

In qualifying for a Trophy Off Road Race, potential drivers and their teammates were told that they had to traverse a course in as close a time as their partners without the use of time pieces like clocks, watches, or anything like that. 

For example, the first person of the two-person team would drive the course through the woods, over bridges, through streams and then return to the starting point and give his vehicle to his partner, who would then drive the same course and try to finish it as close to the time of his partner. So if the first partner finished in four minutes and 25 seconds, the other guy would try to duplicate that time.

But how could he do that without the use of any kind of clock or timepiece?

How could he possibly finish in the same time? That’s the question. So the guys that won the race figured out a way to finish in the same time.

How did they do it?

Good luck.
 (Answer will appear in next month’s WINGSPREAD newsletter.)

Answer to last month’s puzzler: 

Find the homophones that are opposites in the following sentences:

1. The model wore a timepiece on her ankle. (war/peace)
2. Who will underwrite the cost of the sarong? (right/wrong)
3. This is a rare Bolivian diamond. (live/die)
4. The customer got a souvenir from the pharmacy. (near/far)
5. Let’s celebrate by throwing a party. (sell/buy)
6. The stoker must reignite the furnace daily. (night/day)
7. Can buffalo experience hypertension? (low/high)

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Wisdom

Medieval Liturgy of the Hours

Monastic life followed a disciplined schedule.

  • Matins (during the night, at about 2 a.m.); sometimes called Vigil and composed of two or three nocturns
  • Lauds (at dawn, about 5 a.m., but earlier in summer, later in winter)
  • Prime (first Hour = approximately 6 a.m.)
  • Terce (third Hour = approximately 9 a.m.)
  • Sext (sixth Hour = approximately 12 noon)
  • None (Ninth Hour = approximately 3 p.m.)
  • Vespers (“at the lighting of the lamps”, about 6 p.m.)
  • Compline (before retiring, about 7 p.m.)

Computer error messages as Haiku poetry

In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft Error messages with Haiku poetry. Haiku poetry has strict construction rules. Each poem has only three lines, 17 syllables – five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, five in the third.

Haikus are used to communicate a timeless message, often achieving a wistful, yearning, and powerful insight through extreme brevity. What better answer for th  impersonal computer? Here are some samples:

The Web site you seek

Cannot be located, but

Countless more exist.

Chaos reigns within.

Reflect, repent, and reboot.

Order shall return.

Windows NT crashed.

I am the Blue Screen of Death.

No one hears your screams.

Yesterday it worked.

 Today it is not working.

Windows is like that.

First snow, then silence.

This thousand-dollar screen dies

So beautifully.

Stay the patient course.

Of little worth is your ire.

The network is down.

A crash reduces

Your expensive computer

To a simple stone.

Three things are certain:

Death, taxes and lost data.

Guess which has occurred.

You step in the stream,

But the water has moved on.

This page is not here.

 Serious error.

All shortcuts have disappeared.

Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

ABORTED effort:

Close all that you have.

You ask far too much.

The Tao that is seen

Is not the true Tao, until

You bring fresh toner.

Out of memory.

We wish to hold the whole sky,

But we never will.

Having been erased,

The document you’re seeking,

Must now be retyped.

Rather than a beep,

Or a rude error message,

These words: “File not found.”

With searching comes loss

and the presence of absence:

“My Novel” not found.

Colombia: A Severe Mercy

Except for the burglaries, Land Rover crash, airplane crash, typhoid fever, a murder and getting kicked out of our rental house, bush-flying for MAF in Colombia was great..

Within a few weeks after checkout, I was flying solo into the small bush airstrips located all around Montería. Muleticos had a hill at one end, making it a one-way strip―you could only land to the west and only take off to the east. This day I’d just cleared the boundary fence when two pigs breached the fencing and darted across the runway. Too late to go around. I touched down and stood on the brakes. Bam bam! I hit both of them with the left wheel, knocking out the left brake. At that point I could keep the airplane straight or brake to a stop, but I couldn’t do both. The plane swerved violently to the right, took out some fenceposts and came to rest after severing a six-inch tree trunk, throwing the airplane down on its left wing. Thankfully no one was hurt. After we traveled several hours by mule and jeep over dirt roads, I arrived home tired, dirty and discouraged. I collapsed into Barbara’s arms―“I crashed the airplane!”

“I’m so thankful no one was hurt!” she said The next day, I and Bill, the other pilot, returned to Muleticos. We spent three nights eating the rural food and drinking the water. Bill used a piece of hardwood to patch the aluminum strut and used bolts to reattach the left landing gear to the plane. The propeller was a full inch out of track but Bill decided to fly it out anyway. I opted to travel home again by mule.

Two days after returning home, I developed a high fever. The fever would rise, then break suddenly leaving me shivering in a cold sweat. After an hour it would start to rise again and the cycle would repeat. Had I picked up something on our overnights in Muleticos? I thought I had malaria but the doctor diagnosed it as typhoid fever. I was in bed for a month.

We lived in a rented house, prepaid for a year. One day two guys with a typewriter sat on our front porch and announced they were going to embargar the house. Turns out the homeowner wasn’t paying his mortgage so the bank was going to repossess the house and kick us out. We lost all our prepaid rent.

Barbara single-handedly found another rental home in a fairly affluent suburb. We moved. Early one morning Kimberly (our three years old who we had adopted in Costa Rica) came into our bedroom trembling, just as Barbara and I were waking up. “Mommy; who cut my screen?” I jumped up and went over to discover the cut screen frame sitting on the bedroom floor. Some of the jalousie windowpanes were removed. There were bars on the window but now two were pried apart. Easy to see that someone had broken in during the night. Timothy was still asleep in the bedroom. Thankfully neither woke up when the intruder was inside the house.

I walked out to the dining room and discovered our tape player was missing. And the typewriter. Someone (had they used a child?) had squeezed between the bars, stolen the stuff and exited through the front door. “Well, there’s two things we won’t have to pack when we travel back to the States,” I told Barbara. We were happy neither child had woken up during the burglary—Jeny, our third child was an infant and was sleeping in her crib in another room. I could see the fear in Barbara’s eyes, fear for herself and for her children’s trauma.  

This wasn’t the only time we were robbed. A few months later we were in Bogotá when a guy ripped my watch off my wrist. I turned to chase him but the knife in his hand made me abandon the chase. Later, at a park, someone else stole money out of Barbara’s purse. Back in Montería, a thief pulled up decorative shrubs in our front lawn and someone else stole a large can of weedkiller out of our Land Rover. We felt vulnerable, even at home.

A few months later, I was flying the mission plane back to Montería when the control tower operator called me―“Capitán, your wife and kids were in a car accident!” I I landed, jumped on the mission motorcycle and raced over to the accident site. A loaded dump truck had lost its brakes and slammed into the left rear side of the Land Rover, narrowly missing a fifty-five-gallon drum of aviation fuel sitting in the rear of the truck. Barbara was in tears, feeling the danger to herself and to the kids. If the truck had hit just a couple of feet to the right, the fuel drum could have exploded and killed them all.

Another night we awoke to the sound of gunshots. They seemed to be coming from the house behind us. A woman screamed, “Jairo; Jairo!” Then more gunshots. Then we heard someone running down a narrow passageway outside our bedroom. They jumped into a car in front of our house and drove away. We later learned that “Jairo” had murdered his wife whom he’d caught with another man.

Was Colombia a terrible mistake? Robberies, airplane accident, car accident, typhoid fever—Colombia seemed to be conspiring against us the whole time we were there. And yet, Colombia gave us two precious adopted infants—Timothy, and later, Jeny. We have much to be grateful for. Who can discern God’s plans for our lives? “We trust in thee whate’er befall . . .”