Aging techies

Went out to the local ham radio get-together this morning, and counted heads. Fewer of them, and grayer. Amateur radio seems to be headed for oblivion. When I first got my license back in the neolithic, I built my own gear -- transmitters, receivers, you name it, soldering iron and pliers and flint nodules and all. I'd need an electron microscope to do the same work today. And if I want to talk to strangers on the other side of the world, I just hop in the internet and post blither like this.

But ham radio takes Real Men. Have to be, to move equipment like my old Hallicrafters SX-28 -- the damn thing must weigh nearly a hundred pounds, WWII veteran. At least it keeps us warm in the long Maine winters.

Real radios glow in the dark.

Mortality and Ronald Reagan

Having lost my own mother at least three years before she "died," I suspect this came as a relief to his family as well as a loss.