- Alex McKenzie
- Personal
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Autobiographical Anecdotes
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- Breakfast - 1940s & 50s
- Those Were the Days - 1950s
- Building Underwater Gear, 1950's
- Can't Let Go - 1953
- The Turning Point, 1957
- Mexico, October 1965
- Bilbo Baggins 1971
- A brush with death? 1977
- What I didn't do, 1979
- Brazil 1996
- Family Dinner Time
- Forbidden Fruit
- Solo Sailing Incident, ca 2000
- Joel Nichols - 2013
- Manatees, January 2014
- Motorcycle Incident, June 2014
- Time is a Thief, 2015
- Never Too Old to Learn, 2015
- Two Weeks in Rockport MA 2015
- A Fork in the Road - 2016
- The Winos
- Smooth Stones
- Change
- No One Would Have Guessed ... - 2017
- What I Discovered ...
- At This Time of Year ... 2017
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AMC Trail Crew
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The Trail Crew in Appalachia
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- With the Trail Gang
- Recovery of the Old Bridle Path on Mt. Lafayette
- The Trail Spree of 1929
- Webster Cliff Trail 1912-1914
- Trail Bridges
- The Story of the Mahoosuc
- 1939 trail report
- June 1940 trail report
- Dec 1940 trail report
- 1941 trail plan
- A Vacation With Pay
- 25 Years of the AMC Trail Crew
- Five Thousand Trail Signs
- The AMC Trail System
- The Pace of the Grub-Hoe
- 1953 trails report
- 1954 trails report
- trail report - call for volunteers
- Trail Erosion
- Ethan Pond Shelter
- An Early AMC Trail Crew
- Great Gulf Shelter
- The AMC Trail Crew 1919-1964
- The Evolution of a Trailman
- Trail Crew Thoughts
- Trail Design. Construction & Maintenance
- Of Mules, Mice, and Madison
- The Green Plate Special
- 1980-81 trails report
- Trail Blazers
- White Mountain Trail Crew - 75 Years
- 1960 Trail Crew Resignation
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The Trail Crew in Appalachia
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- 2017 Summer Trip
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Autobiographical Anecdotes
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- Professional
- INWG Documents
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Alexander A. McKenzie II
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- Mount Washington >
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LORAN
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- Crusing the Labrador
- Acquisition of Canadian sites for Long-Range-Navigation Stations
- Sites #1 and #2: Loran Memo #108
- LRN Site No. 3
- Report of Construction at L.R.N. Site #3, 8/10-11/5 1942
- LRN Site No. 4 (Bonavista Point, Newfoundland)
- Supplies for Site 4
- Drawings Left at Site #4 by A.A. McKenzie
- Site 4 Letter of March 24, 1943
- LRN Site No. 5
- LRN Site No. 8
- LRN Site No. 9
- Test Plan - Eastern US
- LORAN - Part 1
- LORAN - Part 2
- LORAN - Part 3
- End of LORAN
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Alexander A. McKenzie II
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Europe 2015 -first half
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- Barcelona April 2015
- Pont du Gard France - April 24, 2015
- Nimes France - April 27, 2015
- Aix-en Provence - April 28, 2015
- Cote d'Azur - April 29, 2015
- Vence to Gourdon - April 30, 2015
- Eze France - May 1, 2015
- Milano - May 3, 2015
- Parco Burchina - May 6, 2015
- Ivrea & Aosta Valley - May 7, 2015
- Torino - May 9, 2015
- Europe 2015 - second half >
- Indianapolis Art Museum - July 2015
- Ringling Estate
- Oak Park 2017
- Frank Lloyd Wright in Florida
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Europe 2015 -first half
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- Edit Website
The Turning Point
The first thing I can remember wanting to be when I grew up was a deep sea diver. Right after World War II, when I was beginning to choose books from the library, I devoured the stories of helmeted divers building bridge foundations, rescuing people from sunken submarines, and searching wrecks for treasure. It sounded like a great job, requiring a lot of initiative, attention to detail, and the spice of danger.
Then I discovered Roy Chapman Andrews and his expeditions to the Gobi desert in the 1920's, his discovery of fossilized dinosaur eggs, and the fossils of many previously unknown dinosaurs. I decided I wanted to be a paleontologist. Not only did it incorporate the features that attracted me to deep sea diving, but also the rewards of travel to exotic locales, even if they were deserts.
By the time I was in junior high school I had become exposed to glimpses of the lost civilizations of the Americas, particularly the Inca, Maya, and Aztec. I was particularly attracted by the Maya civilization, and wrote a history term paper about it in eighth grade. I got carried away with the paper which ended up over ten thousand words. It was clear to me by then that a career as an archeologist was preferable to being a paleontologist.
In ninth grade every student in my school was required to take a test which “scientifically” told us what career we were best suited for. The test mostly consisted of hundreds of questions similar to “Would you rather visit an art museum or a zoo?” My results showed that I should pursue a career as either a forest ranger or an agronomist. I thought I knew what a forest ranger job might be like, but an agronomist? I found that “agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants for food, fuel, fiber, and land reclamation.” So it seemed that an agronomist might be more science-oriented than a forest ranger, but otherwise somewhat similar.
My career-planning turning point came on October 4, 1957. I had just started my senior year in high school, and was beginning to think about where to go to college. On that date the Soviet Union, which America thought of as a belligerent but uneducated rival for world power, launched Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. Americans panicked. We didn't have the capability to put a satellite in orbit. If the Russians were that far ahead of us in rocket science, maybe they would start a nuclear war with us and win it. Every adult who had any influence over me – parents, teachers, clergy, scout leaders, neighbors, and relatives – told me in no uncertain terms that my country needed me to become an engineer! I applied to Dartmouth College (which my father and grandfather had attended), MIT, and Stevens Institute of Technology near my home in New Jersey. I was accepted at all three places. Dartmouth and MIT sent me course catalogs which indicated I would need to select my engineering specialty before the second half of my freshman year. Stevens had a single program that only allowed the selection of electives in the senior year. None of the adults in my life could tell me what kind of an engineer the country needed me to become, and I hadn't a clue, so I enrolled at Stevens.
By the time I graduated from Stevens with a BS in 1962 I was hooked on computer programming. I attended Stanford University and earned a Masters Degree in Computer Science. I wanted to live in New England, where I had spent many happy summers, so I took a computer programming job at Honeywell near Boston, the largest computer manufacturer in the area. I stayed in the computer field for the rest of my professional career, with no regrets about the twists of fate that had landed me in that field.
Then I discovered Roy Chapman Andrews and his expeditions to the Gobi desert in the 1920's, his discovery of fossilized dinosaur eggs, and the fossils of many previously unknown dinosaurs. I decided I wanted to be a paleontologist. Not only did it incorporate the features that attracted me to deep sea diving, but also the rewards of travel to exotic locales, even if they were deserts.
By the time I was in junior high school I had become exposed to glimpses of the lost civilizations of the Americas, particularly the Inca, Maya, and Aztec. I was particularly attracted by the Maya civilization, and wrote a history term paper about it in eighth grade. I got carried away with the paper which ended up over ten thousand words. It was clear to me by then that a career as an archeologist was preferable to being a paleontologist.
In ninth grade every student in my school was required to take a test which “scientifically” told us what career we were best suited for. The test mostly consisted of hundreds of questions similar to “Would you rather visit an art museum or a zoo?” My results showed that I should pursue a career as either a forest ranger or an agronomist. I thought I knew what a forest ranger job might be like, but an agronomist? I found that “agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants for food, fuel, fiber, and land reclamation.” So it seemed that an agronomist might be more science-oriented than a forest ranger, but otherwise somewhat similar.
My career-planning turning point came on October 4, 1957. I had just started my senior year in high school, and was beginning to think about where to go to college. On that date the Soviet Union, which America thought of as a belligerent but uneducated rival for world power, launched Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. Americans panicked. We didn't have the capability to put a satellite in orbit. If the Russians were that far ahead of us in rocket science, maybe they would start a nuclear war with us and win it. Every adult who had any influence over me – parents, teachers, clergy, scout leaders, neighbors, and relatives – told me in no uncertain terms that my country needed me to become an engineer! I applied to Dartmouth College (which my father and grandfather had attended), MIT, and Stevens Institute of Technology near my home in New Jersey. I was accepted at all three places. Dartmouth and MIT sent me course catalogs which indicated I would need to select my engineering specialty before the second half of my freshman year. Stevens had a single program that only allowed the selection of electives in the senior year. None of the adults in my life could tell me what kind of an engineer the country needed me to become, and I hadn't a clue, so I enrolled at Stevens.
By the time I graduated from Stevens with a BS in 1962 I was hooked on computer programming. I attended Stanford University and earned a Masters Degree in Computer Science. I wanted to live in New England, where I had spent many happy summers, so I took a computer programming job at Honeywell near Boston, the largest computer manufacturer in the area. I stayed in the computer field for the rest of my professional career, with no regrets about the twists of fate that had landed me in that field.
Written as an assignment for the writers' group at The Fountains in September 2014. The assignment was to write on the topic "The Turning Point".