Joni Mitchell - Amelia - lyrics (2024)

© September 2, 1976; Crazy Crow Music

Amelia:
Amelia Earhart (1897-1937)

Amelia Earhart was an American aviator, one of the world's most celebrated,who was the first woman to fly alone over the Atlantic Ocean.

Earhart moved often with her family and completed high school in Chicago in1916. She worked as a military nurse in Canada during World War I and as asocial worker in Denison House, Boston, after the war. She learned to fly(against her family's wishes) in 1920-21 and in 1922 bought her first plane,a Kinner Canary. On June 17-18, 1928, she became the first woman to flyacross the Atlantic, although she was only a passenger. The same year, herreflections on that flight were published as 20 Hrs., 40 Min. She marriedthe publisher George Palmer Putnam in 1931 but continued her career underher maiden name.

Determined to justify the renown that her 1928 crossing had brought her,Earhart crossed the Atlantic alone on May 20-21, 1932. Her flight in herLockheed Vega from Newfoundland to Ireland was completed in the record timeof 14 hours 56 minutes. After that flight, she wrote The Fun of It (1932).This soon led to a series of flights across the United States and drew herinto the movement that encouraged the development of commercial aviation.She also took an active part in efforts to open aviation to women and endmale domination in the new field.

In January 1935 she made a solo flight from Hawaii to California, a longerdistance than that from the United States to Europe. Earhart was the firstperson to fly that hazardous route successfully; all previous attempts hadended in disaster. She set out in 1937 to fly around the world, with FredNoonan as her navigator, in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra. After completingmore than two-thirds of the distance, her plane vanished in the centralPacific near the International Date Line. Although her mysteriousdisappearance has since raised many questions and much speculation about theevents surrounding it, the facts remain largely unknown.

"Icarus"
Icarus was the son of the inventor Daedalus and a slave named Naucrate. King Minos of Crete imprisoned Daedalus and Icarus in the Labyrinth to punish Daedalus for helping the hero Theseus to kill the monster called the Minotaur and to escape with Minos' daughter, Ariadne. Daedalus knew that Minos controlled any escape routes by land or sea, but Minos could not prevent an escape by flight. So Daedalus used his skills to build wings for himself and Icarus. He used wax and string to fasten feathers to reeds of varying lengths to imitate the curves of birds' wings (These are the "beautiful foolish arms' in 'Amelia').

When their wings were ready, Daedalus warned Icarus to fly at medium altitude. If he flew too high, the sun could melt the wax of his wings, and the sea could dampen the feathers if he flew too low.

Once they had escaped Crete, Icarus became exhilarated by flight. Ignoring his father's warning, he flew higher and higher. The sun melted the wax holding his wings together, and the boy fell into the water and drowned. Daedalus looked down to see feathers floating in the waves, and realized what had happened. He buried his son on an island which would be called Icaria, and the sea into which Icarus had fallen would ever after be called the Icarian Sea (between the Cyclades and Asia Minor).

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