Ron Chester did what good bloggers so often like to do, which is to take the questions, ideas, or experiences of others seriously. In a recent posting I was musing about the communication networks that need to be well in place for democracy to stay healthy, and I made a comparison to semaphore, as an example. Ron talked in the comments to that piece about the fact that ham radio operators have carried out the functions I was speculating about many times over the years. I asked for an example or two, and he produced a posting with seven links, a primer in ham radio crisis operations. In the stories you get the sense of a service ethic and pride in having the tools in a crisis and using them well--take a look. Thanks, Ron.