Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

    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...

This is my son Brian. He was a bit of a surprise when he was born. Even though Jan had been to the doctor's  we had no idea that there were two babies in the womb. Everything about his birth was unique. First, of course was the fact that he was even there with no one's knowledge.  After Jan delivered Ben and  the doctor was waiting for the placenta, he stuck his fist out , I guess just to let everyone know he was here. Everyone in the delivery room was in a bit of a state of shock, but it was a nice surprise in any event.  God in all his wisdom gave us two boys. One would never have done it for us. Jan mentioned that if there were only one she feared that he would either be a wimp or a bully. To this day they are each other's best friend. They've always been each other's best friend and fiercest competitor. Both boys excelled in wrestling and it wasn't unusual to hear an argument start upstairs between the two and before you know it the scuffling and thumping wo...