Next month I will be an 80-year-old physicist explaining why a LINAC bends electrons, why stars shine, or why time feels like packets in consciousness—that is something a child can carry for life.
I once called myself a "Shade Tree Physicist." I think that title fits remarkably well. The shade-tree physicist asks questions that formal science sometimes forgets to ask:
"All right, the equation works. But what is Nature actually doing under the hood?"
Semper Fly, we said in Marine helicopters. The Universe has always needed both the mathematicians and the mechanics. I appear to have spent a lifetime with one hand on the oscilloscope and the other on spacetime.