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An amazing educational site in Oregon is an uplifting impression for many.

Image from the new series, by Glen Bledsoe

(TILLAMOOK, Ore.) - I think we all suffer from a kind of blindness from familiarity. We see and live in our surroundings so long and our minds are so focused on immediate needs and tasks that we don't really see what's there.

Since the dawn of time artists have been "showing" us what has been under our noses all along by taking the familiar and emphasizing some aspect of it to reawaken our eyes. I can't count hands, but how many of you out there have been to the Air Museum in Tillamook, Oregon? I ask people I meet that question, and I get blank stares.

People will spend hours in front of a television screen soaking up pablum, but they won't take the initiative to visit what's perhaps one of the Wonders of the Modern World.

If we measure the size of the museum (it's the world's largest wooden building), it surely is a modern wonder. My wife and I have been there many times. During the 90's we were there soaking up the atmosphere in preparation for writing a series of children's books on aviation.

We returned recently to take photographs for this article.

I own a Garmin GPS which like many GPS owners I love (or at least rely on) too much. I am dependent on it to tell me where to go and how to get there. I call mine Hillary, and I'll leave it to your imagination to guess why. I located the coordinates for the Air Museum somewhere online, entered them into my GPS and pressed Go. We travelled merrily along.

As we approached our destination Hillary gave us instructions to turn and turn again. We moved into unfamiliar territory. Finally she instructed us to move across the range of a gun club shooting range. I turned Hillary off and returned to the highway. We made our way without her aid. I mean how hard can it be to find the world's largest wooden building?

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Leonardo (Glen L. Bledsoe) is Salem-News.com's Cartoonist who has been generating original content since our earliest years. The creator of Nota Bene by Leonardo, was born and raised in Indiana. When he not is creating "Nota Bene by Leonardo," Glen is either teaching, writing a novel, composing music, or reading. Glen graduated from Indiana University with a Bachelors of Art in Fine Arts and was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for several years. He made his home in Oregon in the early 80's where he continues to enjoy the mild climate and lack of sales tax. He and his wife Karen have published seventeen books together for the school library market. Glen has written extensively on the issues of technology and education for the National Education Association and other publications. You can write to Glen Bledsoe at this email address: glenbledsoe@mac.com