if you could....

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As it's that time of year......
If you could, name a couple of people you would like to meet just for an hour.....dead or alive....?.......reasons, if u want.....
for me it would be
Sam Maloof, great designs and workmanship.....reminds me of my time in California working wood and metal........
Richard Feynman, brilliant outlook on life.....just a great bloke.....

have a good holiday......
OK, intriguing idea and one I've followed at various time in various motorcycling magazines I've edited but as I'm a time served joiner with an interest in the way things were done in the old days - which my kids insist were the 70s when I was an apprentice - I'll pick out a couple of woodworking influences. The first would be George Ellis the author of Modern Practical Joinery. I was loaned an original copy of his book when I was an apprentice and as soon as I found it had been reprinted I bought a copy, added his staircasing and handrailing book too.
Second would be Nigel Voisey who's wood machining book ensured I kept my fingers on and remain mostly unscathed when using all sorts of wood machines including the quaint vintage ones where I served my time.
 
My dad was among the first troops to enter Belsen after it was liberated. He still had nightmares about it until he died. He always used to say that nowadays we seem to have lost sight of the fact that some people are just evil, and delight in inflicting suffering on others.
I visited Belsen in '97, it really hit me knowing what a horrendous past it held, In 2005 I visited Dachau, but that was still used int the 60's (I believe) as a displaced person's camp, but after I swore I could NEVER bring myself to visit Auswitz.
 
I visited Belsen in '97, it really hit me knowing what a horrendous past it held, In 2005 I visited Dachau, but that was still used int the 60's (I believe) as a displaced person's camp, but after I swore I could NEVER bring myself to visit Auswitz.
Yes, it is a very spooky place, certainly sent shivers up my spine.
 
Mike Collins, the Apollo 11 astronaut that didn’t descend to the moon. His book ”Carrying the fire” is a brilliant very well written book and got me interested in him.
Richard Feynman. His books are also well written and don’t waste words. Learnt a lot from some of them, but also have a couple that found the limits of my abilities re the maths.
IK Brunel
Beethoven ((if the language barrier vanished)
and as an agnostic, Jesus of Nathareth to make my own mind up! (was that thunder I just heard outside?
maybe also Yuri Gagarin, Telford and Joseph Whitworth. For me, with my interest in clocks and watches, would have to add Thomas Mudge, John Harrison and Daniel Buck.
 
About Stuart Littles and Fergie's posts above
I have wanted to visit the places mentioned but fear it would affect me mentally more than I can handle.
 
My lad went to the Menin Gate when he was thirteen on a school trip. It must have affected him - he never once spoke a word about it.

I went to the German/Czech border when I was sixteen, part of a school trip. It was scary - after the war the road had been dug up, the power lines and phone lines cut and left hanging, the railway lines had been cut and bent back. It was like a different world. The actual border was a single strand of barbed wire, behind which was about ¾ mile of flat, ploughed land and a row of gun turrets. We were warned under circumstances were we to ass about ............................. but I couldn't resist going to Czechoslovakia for a few seconds.
 
Travelled through the Normandy cemeteries in the 80s with my stepfather, who was crew of a D day landing craft, the only time he ever spoke of that experience and it has stayed with me. Amazing and terrifying in equal measure
 
I can't imagine anyone would not be a bit choked up visiting any of the war graves sites in France. All those crosses, each somebody's father, brother or son. Such a waste.
I went to the Imperial War Museum in Auckland about 25 years ago just before Anzac Day. It was staffed by uniformed veterans, and walking through one of the corridors of memorial plaques I was behind a French couple and their three young children. The children were running through the corridors laughing and the parents said absolutely nothing. The old man shook his head slowly as he caught my eye - I could have cried for him. One of the saddest places I've ever been.
At the tiny church where my mother's funeral was held and my sister got married there are in the middle of a long neglected 19c graveyard about 25 graves that are perfectly manicured - they are the war graves, Kiwis, Canucks, Brits and Poles, nearly all nineteen or twenty years old boys, bigger men than most of us. There was an airfield about a mile away. I took my children to see them when they were young, lest they forget.
 
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I can't think of anyone I don't know. I'd love to have an hour with my maternal grandmother again, or an hour with my paternal grandfather, who had a hard life and always seemed to be able to weather it - to have him "review his notes" and give me advice. not because i'm spinning out of control or having a hard time or anything, but to see what useful advice he'd have to help with perspective. He carved out time for himself when he needed it but managed to make it in a way that left is resources for everyone else.

And my mother has moderate dementia - still conversational, but struggling. Unless i could trade the hour with someone who gave me a vial of something to stop that...
 
I would like an hour with my long dead Mother, so I could ask her who my real Father was as the man she married never seemed to like me much and I spent a childhood wondering why. He died before her and only after her death did I find out he wasn't my real father.
 

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