Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

   When I was  a little kid, I used to tell folks my dad was a carpenter. When he found out, he got mad and corrected me, mentioning that he was a contractor. I didn't understand the difference at the time, but know now that the knowledge he possessed was far beyond carpentry.   One Christmas I received an Erector Set. For those who aren't familiar with such a thing, it was a set that had numerous thin, flat bars of aluminum or steel, all of which were drilled with multiple holes up and down the length of the bars, which were about twelve inches long and maybe 3/8 inches wide. Also included was a number of little screws, as well as nuts, and an illustrated catalogue that showed the various things you could make; towers and small buildings and cranes and  I don't recall what all else. I suppose the idea behind the set was to encourage future engineers and architects or iron workers. It all fell flat with me. For a short while, when I was bored on a rainy day, I w...

    I was on Fan Story today reading some posts by various authors that I follow when I read one by a friend named Jim Wile. He's writing a book about a fellow who finds himself working on some innovative idea to miniaturize a camera to assist people who have dyslexia. For reasons beyond my comprehension, I was reminded of an incident that occurred back when I was in Great Lakes Illinois at Radarman "A" school. A whole bunch of us had flunked out in the third or fourth week during a class on maneuvering boards.  They were basically just sheets of paper with concentric circles about an inch apart. A circle of course consists of 360 degrees, and on the paper, each degree had a mark on the outside so that you could get an accurate bearing on a contact on the radar. With the maneuvering board a pair of dividers and a parallel ruler,  you could trace the contact for three minutes, and determine what it's course, speed and closest point of approach would be. Now of co...