It’s 2025 … and so begins the 21st year of Paul’s Thing. If you wanna get technical, the official anniversary is February the 13th — here’s a link to the inaugural Paul’s Thing post, a short one about ejection seats.
Nine years before starting Paul’s Thing, in 1995, I started the Half-Mind Catalog, an online calendar of upcoming events and contacts for Hash House Harrier clubs around the world (thanks to the efforts and stewardship of fellow hasher Ra, its current webmaster, the HMC is still going strong). It was there I got my start as a blogger, sharing stories and thoughts about hashing. Some of my favorite posts from the HMC are archived here, if you care to read them.
Blogs were popular for a while, then not. But I think they’ll come back … anyway, I’m still at it.
I went to the commissary with Donna today, my job to select something for the snack drawer (two boxes of Cheddar-Blasted® Goldfish, a bag of pistachios, and a jar of dry-roasted salted peanuts, if you must know). Leaving the air base afterward, we pulled alongside a minivan with an F-100 Super Sabre decal on the rear window. I tried to edge ahead at the stoplight so the elderly driver could see the F-15 Eagle sticker on our rear window, and I think he did. Too cool.
Ten-plus years ago I worked with a former Hun pilot, a fellow volunteer at Pima Air and Space Museum. He was in his late 80s then and would be pushing the century mark now, if he’s still kicking. Early F-15 pilots, the men who trained me, are now in their 80s, some even in their 90s. I myself am 78, and the young guys coming in whom I trained have aged out of the airlines and are retired. My god, I remember making plastic models of F-100s as a 12- or 13-year-old. I remember seeing the Thunderbirds in the Hun at Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany when I was 20, and damn was that a show!
What is there to say about New Orleans, Las Vegas, and the airliner crash in South Korea? Plenty I suppose, but I’ve got nothing. Many a year has started off with attacks, terrorism, and catastrophes, and don’t forget those years that dawned during the darkest days of civil and world wars. Oh, and 2020, which kicked off with a global pandemic. Things have been worse, and will be again. Meanwhile we keep plugging away, and that’s my resolution for 2025, to keep plugging away in spite of everything the world (and Trump, and a Republican Congress and Supreme Court) throws my way.
More to come here at Paul’s Thing, so stay tuned.