When the Longest Day Saved the World

If there was any doubt that I am getting old it’s been put to rest on this anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Those Americans, British and Canadians who participated in the most massive military operation in the history of the world and the Frenchmen who scanned the horizon in anticipation are mostly gone. It is not hyperbole to say that had the Normandy Invasion failed the world likely would have been a very different place.

While the 65th anniversary of that Longest Day is being honored in the villages and on the beaches of Normandy it seems to be getting short shrift in this country. I hope that people will stop to take stock of what that event meant to the freedom of Europe and probably North America. Had their mission failed the Allies would have lost the element of surprise and possibly Europe. How long could Britain have held out? If fascism had won the day in Europe how long would it have been before tyranny came knocking on our door? How many more Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and disabled would have died before Hitler turned his eyes on the minorities of this country? I like to believe that we could have prevented Hitler from devouring North America the way he had much of Europe before anyone thought to stop appeasing him, but what kind of a world would we be living in had Operation Overlord failed?

As a Baby Boomer I was raised on stories of WWII, but the passage of time has dimmed the immediacy of what happened in that conflict and what D-Day meant. Young people are not cognoscente of what they owe. All people who enjoy freedom and Democracy owe a debt of gratitude to those brave men who lived and died on the beaches of Normandy. Thank you for literally saving the world.

An Activist is Born

Art Linkletter said, “Kids say the darnedest things.” The Bible says, “Out of the mouths of babes…” One of the beauties of living with a child is that they constantly come up with observations and remarks that help us to see the world through fresh eyes. Our grandson is having his first civics lesson and it was all his own idea.

We took five-year-old Gabriel out of town two weeks ago for a quick trip to the beach. While eating dinner one night he suddenly said, “Grammy, if all the soldiers just went home then there would be peace wouldn’t there?” Now we hadn’t been talking about the war that particular night. I don’t even remember what we were talking about, but his remark came out of the blue. “Why, yes,” I said, “if all the soldiers went home there’d be peace.”

Gabriel didn’t bring it up again on the trip, but after we returned home we were having dinner with his parents when he made the same remark. “I think you should write a letter to the president with your idea, Gabriel,” I said. That was three weeks ago. After work today Gabriel came to me with a pencil and paper and asked how to spell “Barak Obama.” “I’m going to write to the President that if all the soldiers just come home there’d be no war.”

My daughter-in-law sat down with Gabriel and had him sound out each word of his note to President Obama making his civics lesson into a phonetics lesson as well. I was a teenager when I began writing letters about the War in Vietnam. I stand in awe of my grandson. Together we went to Grandpa’s den and got an envelope to put his note in and voila, an activist was born.

Senior Exhibitions

For about eight years I have had the privilege of listening to the Senior Exhibitions at Gig Harbor High School. It is always a fun day to see the seniors all dressed up and looking appropriate and to see and hear the culminating project of their public school career. Yesterday was exhibition day at GHHS.

In the past there have been projects that were self-serving. Students have learned a new leisure skill with dubious community service involved. Over the years the quality of service has improved and yesterdays exhibitions were a joy. It was delightful to see what great kids we are sending out into the world. I wish it was into a better economy.

I strongly urge community members to volunteer to judge exhibitions next year.

What Happened to the History on the History Channel

I was thrilled when the History Channel went on the air. History is one of my great loves and to have an entire television channel devoted to history was divine. Unfortunately, I believe that the History Channel and its parent company A&E have lost their rudder. They used to have great programs and now a lot of it is schlock.

My husband says that reality programming is cheap and seems to be what the public wants. What in the heck is wrong with the American public? But to get back to the History Channel, I was appalled when for Memorial Weekend, with all the programs they have achieved from the days when they actually were a history channel; they chose to have a “Monster Quest” marathon. A part from the fact that I would argue that a program devoted to the mythology of monsters in various cultures hardly qualifies as history in the first place, I cannot imagine why the History Channel would devote three days to showing it 24/7 for something like Memorial Weekend.

I would also argue that “Axe Men,” a program about present day loggers, and “Ice Road Truckers,” about truck drivers who drive big rigs over arctic ice for a living, is not history. A little of it is interesting, but it is not history. Their new “African Expedition” is also interesting, but only a half-step up from “Survivor” and “The Great Race,” two more programs I do not watch. The only reality programming I found engaging had a beginning, middle and end. Those were some BBC and PBS series that set volunteers into situation meant to recreate various periods of history and follow how they dealt with it. Watching people have to build dwellings from scratch on the American plains or deal with the class structure of Victorian England was compelling to me, but it didn’t drag on forever.

The anniversary of D-Day is tomorrow. I’ve checked and the History Channel has some little programming devoted to it. Maybe the email I sent then on Memorial Day had an effect. I may actually turn on the History Channel this weekend, but judging by their line up, I won’t be going back to being a regular viewer any time soon. Thank goodness for books!

Unspeakable

Last evening's spectacular, blood-red sunset and even this morning's glorious sunrise are not enough to obliterate the sorrow I feel for Kurt Husted's family. It is unspeakable that a Loomis armored car guard was murdered and so many other people simultaneously traumatized. I did not know him, but he had been one of my daughter's classmates at Lincoln. It doesn't matter whether I ever knew him or never knew him.

It is beyond my ability to comprehend how not just one individual, but two, three, four individuals (I cannot bring myself to call them 'people') found each other, got together, hatched a plan that they all bought in on, and apparently decided was a good idea or perhaps a quick fix for all of their problems.

All that I know for certain is:

• They took his life

• They've thrown away their own
  

• All of it was for nothing

• All of their lives completely wasted, squandered
  

• And nothing is left in their wake but heartache.

Dem Bones..Dem Joints..Dem Dry Docs....

It isn't fair. I didn't know I was being stalked from the bushes by an old and crazy woman. I didn't notice (being forty-five and fabulous!) as she took her knife and fork to me, eating in little slices over the next five years, until I was consumed...like the little gingerbread girl! Help, I've been eaten by an old woman and I can't get up! I know I'm in here somewhere...but no mirror shows it, instead I think I'm passing a portrait of my grandmother. If I lift my glasses up to peer through the reading part, it's sometimes a portrait of my father...something about the Clark Gable moustache I suppose!

Did I miss the part in the Pre-Being Contract where preemies hit fifty...and jumped immediately to seventy as penance for being too eager? I was always eager. I ate life in large delicious bites, singing and dancing my way across the continent more times than I can count. I have the tailbone of a long-distance trucker; once journeyed across Canada in March, sitting sideways on top of the old truck's engine and staring into the hypnotizing, never-ending snow. My tailbone never quite forgave me for that trip.

What business does this old woman have, eating me? What chutzpah to chow-down on me yout' and then begin to crumble around me! I try to fight to rebuild bones with those nasty weekly pills that feel like setting cement in the endless half-hour wait before I can get to my cuppa and come alive. Doc said I needed extra calcium too but then there was too much in my blood and still not enough in the styrofoam bones. Oh, here comes the fun part....

Now they tell me I have become a little oyster, trying to make pearls of calcium deposits! I'm wearing them but they're not half as pretty as my Auntie Mary's little double-string with the antique-iffy catch. I suppose it's the only dressed-up part of me as I head through the revolving daktari doors! A few more x-rays and I should be able to get a part-time job as a standing lamp for room ambiance, pearls on the shade.

Don't you just love when a young doctor comes bouncing into the room, obviously oiled and with correct moving parts, tells you that you're a degenerate...bones, joints and discs...and then tells you that you SHOULDN'T be in this pain, as if you are a naughty wee girl vying for some attention. Excuse me young man, do you not see this old woman who ate me and is crumbling? I don't suppose you know what it feels like to lose two inches in height because of stress-fractures do you? I don't suppose you have knees and hips that can tell my local weather FAR more accurately than KING 5?

The bones are going missing under the porcelain tombstones of my teeth, leaving them to tilt and fall like vandals have come and gone under cover of darkness. Next Monday three molars will hit the scrap-heap...at an inflated cost that makes my poor grey matter deflate alongside our already fashionably skinny piggy-bank. The uber-expensive upper denture has never been able to fit...and of course it was the ol' woman's fault for having deformed bones...pay the bill please...ca-ching!

For the last month I have felt old, sore, stressed and tired like never before. I'm a little weak and shaky from the "suck-food" diet BUT...everyone tells me how fabulous I look with the drastic weight-loss....woo-hooo....*faint*

I won't go quietly, old woman...and I'll hold onto my sense of humour till the last. Oh, I'm gonna be a character alright...a tiny wee bent amputeeth sucker fish in pearls!

Warren Drive Road Closure

The section of Warren Drive between 70th Ave. N.W. and the Fox Island Bridge has been closed for roadwork, diverting Fox Island traffic on up 40th and past Areletta in a large loop before arriving ath the Fox Island Bridge from the other direction. For some the closure has brought irritation and frustration, but for others it brought peace and quiet.

We are in heaven and don’t mind the extra driving to get to our PO Box on Fox Island. Suddenly our busy 70th has become a quiet country road. It is possible to walk the dog during the late afternoon and early evening without fear for your life or that you’re breathing in tons of pollutants. It is quieter than it was 19 years ago when we moved to the Greater Gig Harbor Area, also known as unincorporated Pierce County.

Of course, not everyone is pleased with the Warren Drive road closure. I imagine that those living on that stretch are more than a little irritated and students living along there have to walk farther to catch school buses which are being rerouted around the construction. A friend in the Peninsula School District Transportation Department tells me it’s been a nightmare.

My son and his family have taken to strolling down 70th of an evening to the new wooded park where the road tees into 32nd or Warren. If they were to just keep that section of road closed forever we’d be pleased, but the party is to be over on the 7th.