Hi. My name is Alma, and I’m addicted to learning.

It’s sort of like being addicted to aviation*. A wise mentor was only half joking when he warned, “If you have a choice between getting addicted to drugs and booze, or addicted to airplanes, choose the booze. They can cure that.” I have to learn, to read, to see new things and places and study them. I’m the person who reads every tag in the museum, and sometimes takes notes. (“What do you mean, you got through the Nimitz Museum in two hours?!? I was there eight and had to skim the last few rooms! And missed the other three parts of the museum complex.”)

Now, I’m also curious, and have never had my curiosity crushed by schools, parents, or others. Or if they tried, my curiosity squirmed out the side like mustard and pickles escaping a burger. So I ask “what if?” and “Why” and “how does that work?” Which means I read all over, something that frustrated my academic advisor and others. Graduate school is about specialization … which I just cannot do. So I found a field where you have to read all over, and research all over, and did very well. And I keep reading and writing all over.

At the moment, I have a book on the dinosaurs and ecology of North Africa in the stack, just finished a book about applied fire science, have two histories of Asia and the Holy Roman Empire I’m working through, an anthropology/history of Brittany by one of my favorite archaeologists, a book about Japan in the time of the Tales of Genji, and am about to resume a slog through a very, very academic work on the genus of pre-mammalian creatures that has confused South African paleontologists for at least two academic generations. And reading US history, because it is cool, but that’s off to the side at the moment. Oh, and a German language book about a Neolithic settlement and what’s been learned there arrived yesterday.

Being curious, and an avid learner, gives you lots of material for stories. It also means you tend to combine odd bits and pieces into new things, or to refresh and take a new look at old things. Sarah Hoyt looked at global birth rates, political patterns, and technology, and asked, “So, what would someone do to ‘fix’ this, and where might it lead?” And the Earth Revolution series (and Darkships) was born. I looked at Kipling and H. Rider Haggard, rolled my eyes at something I read on-line, and asked, “What if a caste system existed for a biological reason? What if a colonized people wanted the imperialists to stay? Why might that be?” And Shikhari was born.

Learning goes along with the sense-o-wonder. We can learn from fiction, either facts and stories lightly disguised, or how other people think, feel, and react to the wild and wonderful. That is, if the World has not crushed curiosity and wonder beyond hope of recussitation.

*Yes, this is Wright Brothers Day. They were not the first to leave the ground, but the first to do it in a heavier than air machine, self-propelled, and under control. All of which totally counts, and they deserve all the glory they and their mechanic, Charlie Taylor, have gotten over the years.