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The Dark Ages: Remember the Dark Ages that would visit us every year during our time at Camp USAFA? The summer solstice would already be six weeks behind us when we returned from our summer excursions to start our daily routine of classes, marching to meals, intramurals, homework, and tours/confinements. Ergo, the periods from sunup to sundown were continually getting shorter and the darkness would be closing in on us from both sides of the day. It didn’t help that the Rampart Range rose up out of nowhere to blot out the sun on the terrazzo much earlier than it did for the lucky people living on the windy, desolate plains far to the east of the Academy. Then, out of nowhere, moving from Daylight Savings Time (DST) to Standard Time seemed to surprise us every year. One day we’d be walking back from Mitch’s in a twilight glow, and the next day the same walk at the same time would be in pitch darkness. And if we listened closely, we could hear the winds from the hills whispering, “Welcome to the Dark Ages.” Naturally, the chill in those winds would force us to pull out the black parkas with the pointed hoods, which helped to match our uniforms to our mental outlook while also making the tourists on the chapel wall wonder if their taxes were funding an order of druids. By the time you read this in Checkpoints, we’ll already be back in DST, the spring equinox will be knocking at the door, and the Dark Ages of 2024/2025 will have evaporated. But when the call for inputs for this issue went out, the Ghost of the Dark Ages was upon you, which is probably why there weren’t a lot of responses this quarter. The positive side of that is that you won’t have to muddle through an entire 900 words of Scribe drivel this time around, and there are a couple of inputs from classmates we haven’t heard from in almost 50 years.