A Day in the Life of Chaos

When I was a young man, maybe 13 years old, I visited my grandfather before he died. He was a salty old man, well he looked old. In truth I don’t think he was much older than 65.  Come to think of it that’s only 13 years older than I am now.  The thought makes looking in the mirror a whole new experience.  How could he have looked so old?  I think people of his generation just looked older.  Maybe they lived harder lives. Maybe it was the years of cigarettes or gallons of booze. Maybe it was being a Navy veteran in a war this world is starting to forget. Maybe he was just a sick man with paper thin skin wrapped like cray paper  over worn and fading tattoos.  A man dying of a disease that took him when war and motorcycles never could.  Before he died, as a young boy, I sat beside him and he presented me with memories he thought I might appreciate. One was his Navy Blue Jacket Manual, a guide to being a seaman.  Another was a large certificate I barely understood. It looked impor

My grandfather died about 8 years ago now, he was in his 80's when he passed.  He was the son of German immigrants and spent his life working for Hughes Aircraft in California.  It was the time when Howard Hughes was in his heyday.  Ideas were flowing like lightning bolting from the sky.  Invention fed modernization and modernization fed more invention.   Government led the way.  It established the context, the mission and brilliant minds lined up to provide the answers. When you are a child you never really appreciate the significance of a life, of a talent, until you grow older and place it within the context of your own life.   A micrometer is a tool that allows a human being to nearly create perfection.  It measures the minute and until computers and lasers it was the guide post for human ingenuity when seeking to create the exact.  My grandfather had countless micrometers and his abilities as a machinist created parts the flew with the Apollo missions to the moon.  They answ