Reading & Comprehension… “So, Grade Me!”

All-righty, let's see how well she who purports to be so diligent about absorbing what she reads does on this little test I'm about to present.

And oh by the way, I've never flat out failed a test. At least not one I’ve gone back to see the results. I mean, like how off my rocker must I be to return to retrieve a test I know good and well I've failed. Like what do 'we' say to each other... me and the inescapable unstoppable academic who has risked life, limb, and liberty to brighten my outlook? "I'm sorry," and "you morass!?!”

Think about that though. A brilliant scholar has gone through all this quagmire to wizen us up, and then we show up with the unremitting audacity to look this learnt professional straight in the face, to accept a test result that openly manifests our morass didn't get it. How off a compass must we be? ...To face anyone under these dire originations, after so blandly and boldly failing to recognize some 300-plus hard boiled labor printed on plain recycled paper in regular font?

I'm not sorry, ashamed, or in any way abashed, not for even a hot millisecond of a keystroke, to post what I took from reading Fate is the Hunter. (...ugh, I think?) 

...Gosh, if I'm wrong about this... oh boy, that will be bad. About as bad as the time I received this really mean-spirited, wickedly debasing letter to my house. This certain department was very angry with me because... well because I wasn't paying attention to some very common rules and regulations. So they demanded I come in to see them at once. Ya'll, I went into the building shaking very badly. I was pretty scared. I wasn't sure how things were going to turn out, when to my wits-end chagrin this scrolls gets flipped out in front of me. The scroll zipped down to the floor and then rolled right by me and on out the door. 'Wow—' me musing in slim disbelief. Why would anyone be keeping a running tab on me like that? And double that WoW! I did all that!?!         

At any rate, I was directed under some suspiciously stiff terms to take my reckless behind over to a Window C, and retake this test. This is where this post comes in. I really want to do well summarizing what I took from reading Gann's book.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, Fate is the Hunter began a little too artsy for one of my more uptight moods. Right away I noticed Gann had a way with wielding words. And oh, I’m writing this summary with the book closed and any notes put away... a detail you'll just have to trust me on.

Ten months later I picked up this same book, only to realize this time around Gann was telling one heck of a story. After the artsy intro he launched into the start of his career, which began with numbers, and quite shaky. And I do mean this literally. I got my first chuckle laughing at one captain (calmly) remarking on one of his early landings, words to the effect, 'that wasn't a landing. That was an arrival.’

So Gann had some learning to do, which he does from the co-pilot seat for a while, and then for the military, during wartime, where he gains the bulk of his experience. And let me insert here, only because a friend and I questioned this prior to me reading this book. 'Who would we rather have flying the plane we were on? The pilot who read the book? Or the pilot who flew those old ships during wartime?'

I won't answer this question, however if you have not read the book, then you may want to before selecting an answer.

There were two parts towards the tail end of the book; or actually, the next to the last chapter of the book which really buoys Gann's remarkable autobiographical account. In short, since it might take two or three additional blog posts to unravel, my thoughts catapulted over to want versus need; as in the want to explore technologies necessary for human sustainment... or the need to do so? And this isn't about bad versus good. Like I said, it would take two or three additional posts to explore. It was just a little tadpole I picked up on as Gann's recounted a flight that ended disastrously for two other pilots and its passengers, but by 'sheer' fate (through his flying experiences), escapable for him, his crew, and passengers.

Fate is the Hunter is an incredible account of how experience and knowledge collectively melds into what (on occasions) misguidedly is tipped to fate.