Vision? Nary!

When I lived in Portland there was a pigeon out every day in the courtyard. The pigeon featured a shooting dart that went all the way through its neck.
People occasionally tried to catch it but the pigeon was too wary.

This was near a large apartment complex. Living in the complex was a WWI veteran who was, at the time, 99 years old. He, too, could often be seen walking in the courtyard. Whether he was too wary to be caught was a question not taken up by the local pigeon watchers.

When he was in WWI he was a member of the fearsome US balloon brigade. One of the great letdowns in modern warfare is that there are no more balloon brigades or balloon squads anymore. Balloonmanship left the field of battle as suddenly as it had arrived and we are culturally the worse for it. There have been no great balloon advancements in the years since. No one has pushed the boundaries of ballooning.

Anyway, the old man had been gravely injured in the balloon brigade. While ballooning he had been crushed. They said he wouldn’t live, but he did. They said he wouldn’t walk, but he did. And he still walked as the century was near its turn; because the balloonist is resilient, like the pigeon.

And this is what we have lost by forsaking the balloon.