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: Hi "Yawl" (spelling for Laurel...whom I've missed of recent hours). : Sensing that I may have tread a bit heavily of late, and feeling somewhat sheepish about it, I hope you will : pardon my using a bit more memory space to apologize and explain. Maybe I can do that best by way of biography. : A few years back a friend of, oh, 47 years now, retired after 20 years as a Navy pilot. His last duty station was : as an instructor at one of the Navy's two "TOP GUN" schools. Before retiring he invited my wife and I for a visit, : during which he gave us a tour of the base including the room where the pilots debrief after their missions. It : was an amazing room, not at all like the high-tech, electronic marvel that appeared in the film. It was small. The : walls, made of concrete block, were bare but for a black board in the front. Hanging from the chalk tray were a : dozen or so long, thin pointers. At the end of each was a small, to-scale model of each of the different types of : aircraft that were flown by the school. But for chairs, the remainder of the room was given over entirely to the hopes : and fears of the men who, to paraphrase The Psalms, went down to the sea to do business on the great waters. As my : friend described to me what went on in that room he took great pains to describe the care the pilots hads to take when : describing, by using the little models, what they did or did not do right in the air. He was talking : about "self", "ego", "pride", whatever you want to call it, and how it works itself to the surface of a man or woman : through their craft. I had known him for over forty years and yet during those few minutes with him in that tiny, ugly : little room I learned things about him that I had never known. Moving on, what little success, and I underline little, I : have had with my poetry is due in no small way to my occupation. I learned my trade by sitting, for four years, at the : elbow of a man who was in the twilight of his career as a marine insurance claims adjuster. Being a college man, when I : first sat down beside him I fancied that I knew how to put the English language on paper with precision. I had a lot to : learn...as I still do. I guess the point of this ramble is to apologize for failing to appreciate that this : site serves many functions. It is not a ready/debriefing room. Nor would you want it to be. You learn in such a : place, but the chairs are not comfortable and life and death drives the lecture. You are a club. But poetry is about many : things. If I correctly remember my philosophy it was Eric Hoffer who once wrote that perhap it will all turn out that the : truly fullfilled man is one who is not ambitious or aspiring. Mr. Hoffer was a longshoreman so you would think that I should : agree with him. However, I don't. A poet must be more than a prophet. He must also be an engineer. This is my very first time : ever to be a part of a group of poets. For that matter, never before have I been able to get more than a "ho-hum" from either : family or friends on the subject. So forgive my excess zeal. I have much to learn from all of you. JAG, I liked your "draft" :) : of "Something to Think About", but I liked the "re-write" more. You folks back east look out for "GEORGE". : Bob

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