Milestones in time are a slippery concept. Oh, we can mark the yearly anniversary, which happens to fall today, of Pearl Harbor, and remember the lost -- even if it's getting to the point where not too many of us remember them personally. Semper fi, as the Marines say.

Speaking of Pearl Harbor, somebody might be forgiven for wondering whether the 100th anniversary of powered flight -- which at last is hard upon us -- should be an occasion to celebrate or to mourn.

Certainly for all the convenience and economic advantage of air travel, the airplane has figured in some of history's most appalling scenarios: from the devastating air campaigns and nuclear bombings of World War II to the terrorist nightmare in lower Manhattan.

But on that score, it must of course be said that airplanes simply serve the purposes of those who command, or commandeer, them.

Wasn't Allied air power critical to the defeat of Hitler and imperial Japan? Wasn't America's strategic air strength a pillar of our defense during the Cold War standoff with Soviet communism? If so, then besides making it possible for American families to cross the country in four hours on holiday visits, perhaps the parade of technological progress that stepped off in Dare County, North Carolina a century ago has had to do, as much as anything, with upholding freedom.

That's worth celebrating. So is, of course, the pure wonder of it all -- the moment when mankind's dream of flight finally came to pass, the moment pointing us eventually toward such incredible speeds and heights, beyond the sound barrier, beyond even our atmosphere.

The Tar Heel State's role in the epic doings of Dec. 17, 1903 may indeed boil down to a coincidence of geography. If southern Ohio had offered seclusion, steady winds and sand dunes, who doubts that old Wilbur and Orville would have saved themselves the trouble of schlepping their rig clear to the Outer Banks?

Schlep it they did, though, and there ensued what has to be the most momentous event ever to take place within North Carolina's borders. It's given this state a tourism magnet and a point of pride ballyhooed on our license plates; to those who think "First in Flight" a bit unseemly in taking credit for the Wright Brothers' heroics, just be glad we didn't opt for the perfectly defensible "First in Flue-Cured."

It's more than a bit daunting, in fact, to be worthy stewards of the Wrights' legacy. The National Park Service may have the official say over the site at the foot of Kill Devil Hill where history was made. But North Carolina, understandably having embraced the Wrights, has to live up to its end of the bargain.

This year it has made a valiant effort, what with the centennial festival in Fayetteville last spring (dogged by poor weather) and the capstone ceremonies planned for the Outer Banks just days from now. We Tar Heels may be preoccupied with our annual gift-buying binge, we may have become a bit jaded on the whole subject of First Fliers, but this truly is a milestone that ought not slip past little-noticed amid the holiday hurly-burly.

Could there be a better symbol of the kind of values and qualities this state must have to flourish down the years? The Wrights were champions of ingenuity and innovation. They were exemplars of farsightedness and perseverance. "To be rather than to seem" fits them like a glove. And what perfect symmetry if North Carolina were to emerge as a hotbed of aeronautics -- perhaps finally seeing the Global TransPark, with a new airliner assembly plant, evolve from laughingstock to dynamo.

The North Carolina of the past revolved around farming, fishing, the rhythm of life in the mills. Present-day North Carolina, while not abandoning its rural heritage, has hitched its fortunes to technology. The Wright Brothers may have been Ohioans to the bone, but their achievement here still undergirds this state's identity as a technological cradle.

It also captured the world's imagination. No better sign of that can be found than the tribute by the great writer John Dos Passos within his signature trilogy, "U.S.A."

Looking back past the Great War, Dos Passos in prose-poem style concluded his section on the Wrights:

"but not even headlines or the bitter smear of newsprint or the choke of smokescreen and gas or chatter of brokers on the stockmarket or barking of phantom millions or oratory of brasshats laying wreaths on new monuments

can blur the memory

of the chilly December day

two shivering bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio,

first felt their homemade contraption

whittled out of hickory sticks,

gummed together with Arnstein's bicycle cement,

stretched with muslin they'd sewn on their sister's sewingmachine in their own backyard on Hawthorn Street in Dayton, Ohio,

soar into the air

above the dunes and the wide beach

at Kitty Hawk."

At the century mark, that memory comes into bright focus once again.