Skip to main content

Southwest Airlines Community

Inside Spirit's May 2014 Issue

JayHeinrichs
Adventurer B
Spirit May 2014 Issue One of the best things about working Southwest’s inflight magazine is the writers. We consider them friends, and we’re kind of in awe of some of them. Take Tracy Ross, the author of this month’s big story, “The Carousel of Happiness.” She happens to be in Nepal as I write this. The author of a remarkable memoir, The Source of All Things, she’s now reporting her second book. She took a break from it to tell us about a Vietnam vet who dedicated his work life to preventing torture—and his free time to carving beautiful animals for a carousel in Nederland, Colorado. Her story is heartening, just a little eerie, and classic Tracy Ross, full of hope. To get into the spirit of the place, she even spent the night there, sleeping in the closed carousel. Spooky! The story goes nicely with our cover package on “The Art of the Veer.” We were thinking about the best ways to hop to a different place when you’re on a business trip or vacation, where you can grab a quick flight or rent a car and see something amazing. The staff came up with 28 of them, from Ian Fleming’s Jamaican villa (where he wrote Casino Royale) to a desert love shack. Go on, veer. You know you want to. The adventure this month is in Providence, Rhode Island, one of my favorite cities. The drink is a celery cordial, the Automobile, from the Dead Rabbit Bar in Manhattan. And my favorite Number: You can grow 11 miles of hair in a year. Hey, you, have a drink. Now get a haircut.