My Hospital Visits - Fall 2007
Spent most of from 9/18 to 10/30 in Barnes West county and Barnes on Kingshighway. A simple 7 day surgery stay turned into 40 days due to a bad infection. No fun at all but at least I don't remember much of it. On the mend now....slowly.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Childhood Memories of World War II
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The following was dictated into my PC and then edited. It has been published to the KETC War Stories website.(search Alaska)
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The following was dictated into my PC and then edited. It has been published to the KETC War Stories website.(search Alaska)
WW II helped form most of my childhood memories. I was six when the U.S. went to war. It entered our home through the radio. Mom, Dad & I were in the kitchen that Sunday. We were listening to the radio waiting for the Jack Benny show, but instead heard about Pearl Harbor. My parents knew difficult times were our future.
Dad devoted one half of our backyard to planting vegetables and the other half to raising chickens and rabbits. He built a henhouse for the chickens and a rooster and a hutch for the rabbit. The vegetable gardens and animals were now a part of my city life.
Every day war headlines splattered across our newspaper with important meetings, battles, victory and defeat. With the Atomic Bomb came VJ day. The war headlines ended as quickly as they came. I wondered what the newspaper headlines would be without the war?
The war required metal. My friends and I loaded our red wagons with scrap metal for Scrap Metal Drives. We dumped the contents of the wagons on the school playground where a hill of metal would form. There were wheels, cans, barrels etc. destined to become jeeps, tanks, guns, and more.
Tires and gasoline were strictly rationed. Carpooling was a necessity.
Daily, news broadcasters brought the war into our home. I vividly remember Walter Winchell with his machine gun like delivery starting each show with “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press." The war came to my weekly movies. I saw “To Be or Not to Be” with Jack Benny in a Hitler parody and “Mrs. Miniver” starring Greer Garson. Seeing the bombing of London made the war a reality.
The war affected every day life. Candy and gum were scarce. I chewed the same piece of bubble gum for days. Nightly planting it carefully on wax paper in the icebox. After a week the gum was tasteless! Dad rolled his own cigarettes due to supply shortages. Savings Stamps were sold at school. I licked them to paste in a book. Eventually they were converted to a U.S. War Bond. A war poster read “Help Stamp Them Out”.
My cousin was in the Army Air Force, stationed on Attu, the furthermost Aleutian island of Alaska. As an aerial photographer he came home with exciting tales. He brought a bear rug home that soon found its place on his mother’s living room floor and became my favorite place to listen to his stories. His brother was a flight engineer on B-29's in the Pacific. For years he kept his flight engineer’s circular slide rule close by. Their sister worked for Delta Airlines testing instruments. Sometimes workers were required to fly the planes on which they worked. Could that be true? We were given plane-spotting cards so we could identify enemy planes overhead. Was it is a Messerschmitt, a Stuka, or a Japanese Zero? Fortunately, no planes came close to the lower 48. However Attu was attacked and occupied briefly by the Japanese in 1942. American planes were also included so we could be assured they were not a threat. I can still identify a Flying Fortress and a Liberator plane.
Dad was an air raid warden. He wore an armband and maybe a helmet when performing his duties. When the sirens roared there was a blackout. He was responsible for assuring that all homes on his watch were dark.
The war home front was much different then, different than it is with our war today. But the killing and suffering haven’t changed.
Dad devoted one half of our backyard to planting vegetables and the other half to raising chickens and rabbits. He built a henhouse for the chickens and a rooster and a hutch for the rabbit. The vegetable gardens and animals were now a part of my city life.
Every day war headlines splattered across our newspaper with important meetings, battles, victory and defeat. With the Atomic Bomb came VJ day. The war headlines ended as quickly as they came. I wondered what the newspaper headlines would be without the war?
The war required metal. My friends and I loaded our red wagons with scrap metal for Scrap Metal Drives. We dumped the contents of the wagons on the school playground where a hill of metal would form. There were wheels, cans, barrels etc. destined to become jeeps, tanks, guns, and more.
Tires and gasoline were strictly rationed. Carpooling was a necessity.
Daily, news broadcasters brought the war into our home. I vividly remember Walter Winchell with his machine gun like delivery starting each show with “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press." The war came to my weekly movies. I saw “To Be or Not to Be” with Jack Benny in a Hitler parody and “Mrs. Miniver” starring Greer Garson. Seeing the bombing of London made the war a reality.
The war affected every day life. Candy and gum were scarce. I chewed the same piece of bubble gum for days. Nightly planting it carefully on wax paper in the icebox. After a week the gum was tasteless! Dad rolled his own cigarettes due to supply shortages. Savings Stamps were sold at school. I licked them to paste in a book. Eventually they were converted to a U.S. War Bond. A war poster read “Help Stamp Them Out”.
My cousin was in the Army Air Force, stationed on Attu, the furthermost Aleutian island of Alaska. As an aerial photographer he came home with exciting tales. He brought a bear rug home that soon found its place on his mother’s living room floor and became my favorite place to listen to his stories. His brother was a flight engineer on B-29's in the Pacific. For years he kept his flight engineer’s circular slide rule close by. Their sister worked for Delta Airlines testing instruments. Sometimes workers were required to fly the planes on which they worked. Could that be true? We were given plane-spotting cards so we could identify enemy planes overhead. Was it is a Messerschmitt, a Stuka, or a Japanese Zero? Fortunately, no planes came close to the lower 48. However Attu was attacked and occupied briefly by the Japanese in 1942. American planes were also included so we could be assured they were not a threat. I can still identify a Flying Fortress and a Liberator plane.
Dad was an air raid warden. He wore an armband and maybe a helmet when performing his duties. When the sirens roared there was a blackout. He was responsible for assuring that all homes on his watch were dark.
The war home front was much different then, different than it is with our war today. But the killing and suffering haven’t changed.
Monday, August 13, 2007
I didn't realize.......................
China,supplies 75 percent of its energy with coal as it hurtles toward industrialization. Due to mining of its vast coal fields, fires are spreading. Estimates vary, but some scientists believe that anywhere from 20 million to 200 million tons burn there each year, producing as much carbon dioxide as about 1 percent of the total carbon dioxide from fossil fuels burned on earth.
from the Smithsonian Magazine http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2005/may/firehole.php
China,supplies 75 percent of its energy with coal as it hurtles toward industrialization. Due to mining of its vast coal fields, fires are spreading. Estimates vary, but some scientists believe that anywhere from 20 million to 200 million tons burn there each year, producing as much carbon dioxide as about 1 percent of the total carbon dioxide from fossil fuels burned on earth.
from the Smithsonian Magazine http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2005/may/firehole.php
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Books I've read in 2006& 7. Favorites are BOLD
Freakonomics
Blink
No ordinary time
The American axis
Never have your dog stuffed
Davinci code
Meaning of everyt hing
Saturday
Laws of Invisible
Little Children
Hole in the Earth
boyhood-wyoming ?
Swimming to Anarctica
Know it All
Lydon Johnson
You can be happy
Personal history - Graham autobio
The worst time ever
Lite only by the fire
Nader
Luckiest Man
Team of Rivals
Defining Moment
stumbbling on happiness
Night Watch
the Road
Cod, a biography
Amesterdam
a world on fire - lavosier
give me a break
e=mc2 - einstein
Galileos Daughter
Hard Drive - microsoft
the God Delusion
Knife Man
Naked Economics
Ride of our lives
Finding my voice
Freakonomics
Blink
No ordinary time
The American axis
Never have your dog stuffed
Davinci code
Meaning of everyt hing
Saturday
Laws of Invisible
Little Children
Hole in the Earth
boyhood-wyoming ?
Swimming to Anarctica
Know it All
Lydon Johnson
You can be happy
Personal history - Graham autobio
The worst time ever
Lite only by the fire
Nader
Luckiest Man
Team of Rivals
Defining Moment
stumbbling on happiness
Night Watch
the Road
Cod, a biography
Amesterdam
a world on fire - lavosier
give me a break
e=mc2 - einstein
Galileos Daughter
Hard Drive - microsoft
the God Delusion
Knife Man
Naked Economics
Ride of our lives
Finding my voice
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
50 Years Ago - 1957 –
I made my first trip to NY to interview for an Engineering job at IBM in Poughkeepsie. But visiting the famous Birdland Jazz club in NYC was what it was really all about. http://www.birdlandjazz.com
(Ended up with strep throat and almost hospitalized in Manhattan)
Graduated from St. Louis U.
Entered the Army and took basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in July-August. hot,hot, hot!
In the fall the Asian Flu swept the country. At Ft. Leonard Wood many switchboard operators were out with the flu so I volunteered for switchboard duty. "Post Exchange?"
Eisenhower ordered the 101 Airborne to prevent violence at a high school being desegregated in Arkansas.
The Dodgers moved to L.A.
The Soviet Union launched Sputnik
AND .....the Edsel arrived and flopped
p.s. 2007
The Post Disptach reported that there are over 70 million Blogs. They suggested we use "conversation" instead. But the opposite is happening. Facebook is a social networking web site which was launched in 2004 and has become very popular. You see faces as well as text and get to associate with your friends and friends of your friends.
I made my first trip to NY to interview for an Engineering job at IBM in Poughkeepsie. But visiting the famous Birdland Jazz club in NYC was what it was really all about. http://www.birdlandjazz.com
(Ended up with strep throat and almost hospitalized in Manhattan)
Graduated from St. Louis U.
Entered the Army and took basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in July-August. hot,hot, hot!
In the fall the Asian Flu swept the country. At Ft. Leonard Wood many switchboard operators were out with the flu so I volunteered for switchboard duty. "Post Exchange?"
Eisenhower ordered the 101 Airborne to prevent violence at a high school being desegregated in Arkansas.
The Dodgers moved to L.A.
The Soviet Union launched Sputnik
AND .....the Edsel arrived and flopped
p.s. 2007
The Post Disptach reported that there are over 70 million Blogs. They suggested we use "conversation" instead. But the opposite is happening. Facebook is a social networking web site which was launched in 2004 and has become very popular. You see faces as well as text and get to associate with your friends and friends of your friends.
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