Happy Easter 2024!

Wallpaper.com

 A beautiful wind-swept day after another storm. We're enjoying coffee and lemon cake. May your day be blessed plus or minus lemon cake.

Fifteen Years Ago on Thanksgiving Day

Ancient Blogging: 2005

Yes, the Internet Existed Then

I was living in a house and training for my first marathon. I'd been blogging for ten days at this point and didn't think much of it.  Here's what I had to say:

This morning I met some chums from Team in Training. We ran a 5K (3.1 mile) race in La Cañada, a northern LA suburb. I'd driven through there several times. The little hills sloped gradually, so it appeared. I predicted EZ running. Oh, they were sly, unpleasant hills. Steeper than they looked. Finish-time eaters. If it were possible, I'd cuff them sharply. 

This was very much a neighborhood race: families, parents with strollers, teenage girls running five across, and people running with leashed dogs — which I don't get. Walk the dog or run the race. Later, Ronald MacDonald — clown, spokesman, bon vivant — led youngsters in a warm up prior to a children's race. After that, a child warmed up Ronald MacDonald prior to a fast food spokesman's race. In any event, Happy Thanksgiving!

Despite sore arthritic knees, I'm grateful for the many good things in my life. And I still wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!

A Most Solemn Memorial Day

As a kid, I remember attending a Memorial Day parade in Wisconsin. Featured were men who'd survived the Bataan Death March eighteen years earlier. Bands played, people cheered, and the veterans, most in their forties, strolled down the street and waved. God knows what they thought of the horrendous brutality and starvation they'd undergone, or the absent comrades bayonetted because they'd collapsed with exhaustion. Still, that sunny day, sacrifices were recalled. By their presence, the survivors called to mind the fallen.

Today in the Philippines, there exists the Manilla American Cemetery. Here sits the largest gathering of Americans slain in World War II—a popular war, as such things go—consisting mostly of men killed in New Guinea and the Philippines, including on the Bataan Death March. Interred are 17, 184 dead. Also listed are the names of the missing, to the tune of 36, 286. (Among the dead are a number of Filipino Scouts.)

Here's one name from the roles of the deceased: Private James L. Aaron, U.S. Army, Service Number 14047056. Private Aaron was from Tennessee and served in the 31st Infantry Regiment. The 31st was one of the units that fought for months before finally surrendering to the Japanese. He may well have fought along side some of the men who walked in that parade almost two decades later. Starving, racked with dysentry, Private Aaron may well have been among those force-marched 65 miles from the peninsula of Bataan to San Fernando. Private Aaron may've perished on the Bataan Death March.

Today, Memorial Day seems memorable for being a long weekend and the unofficial start of summer and barbecues. Parades are reserved for winning sports teams, or, perhaps, the 4th of July. ("The dead? You mean like The Walking Dead? Seriously, dude, the dead?')

So today, just for a moment, I elect to remember Private Aaron and all the other Private Aarons who stood in the gap for our country during dark times, in less popular wars, who continue dying today.

May Perpetual Light shine upon them all.

Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson

Happy Birthday, USA!

I'm reading David McCullough's 1776 and feel grateful to those who believed freedom and individual liberty were important enough to risk everything on 236 years ago. For example, Henry Knox was 25-years old and owned a book shop in Boston. Yet he conceived and supervised a plan to drag cannon from upstate New York in the winter and over mountains to Boston where their presence compelled the British to evacuate. Thus he became Washington's Chief of Artillery. Thank you Henry Knox and many others for your dream and the courage to pursue it.

Thank You Some For Giving All

And a pleasant Memorial Day to everyone else.

h/t: themcglynn.com

Merry Christmas!

Drunks are mangling Karaoke across the street. It's not the same as a choir of angels, but it might be louder. None the less, a most blessed and joyful Christmas to all my family, friends, and social media chums. May the coming year be filled with good fortune for you and bad fortune for Mayan calendar doom-sayers. In the meantime, enjoy the worst Christmas tear-jerker ever.

h/t: theartofmancraft

Tuba Christmas Explained

According to regular poster—and crack euphonium player—Luke:

"Tuba Christmas is a city -wide gathering of euphonium and tuba players. Players gather in the morning and practice familiar Christmas songs, which are then performed in a public pla ce such as a local mall, or public park. The best part is, Tuba Christmas travels all over the country, allowing tuba player AND euphonium players from across the United States a chance to show off their chops. Players are encouraged to wear their best Christmas sweater, and decorate their instrument in a festive manner."

A list of cities featuring Tuba Christmas may be found here:

tubachristmas.com/

Luke closed by adding that the sound is "powerful, dark, and, majestic."

Behold Tuba Christmas!


h/t: the baltimorehorn

Indo-Jew Bowl Results

Jewish and folks from the sub-continent square off every year in the Indo-Jew Bowl. It's played in my old hometown of Skokie, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago best known for opposing a march by Nazis who never made it off the Expressway. Observe this past contest.


h/t IllinoisNinth via Big Peace

Note: The Jews won decisively this year 19 to 6.

Happy Chowing

Here's my T-Day six years ago, shortly after this blog opened for business.

One of My Two Favorite Weeks

I love the rump week of Thanksgiving. When I worked in-house, the routine was usually: drink coffee all morning, shoot the breeze, take long lunches, then leave early on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday we'd have a half-day.

My other fav is the week between Christmas and New Years. At Warner Bros. Jean MacCurdy usually gave us the time off with pay.

I notice that my two happiest weeks involved jobs with ritualized social routines but little actual labor.

That could explain much.

Happy Birthday USMC!

236 years of shooting people and breaking stuff on behalf of the United States of America. In 1950 10,000 men of the First Marine Division were surrounded by 120,000 Chinese troops near the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea. Below is a trailer for a 2010 documentary detailing the Marines' fight to break free. An amazing tribute to amazing men.

Happy Ghostbusting Halloween!

A day of spooks and kooks only slightly different than most days in Los Angeles. Last night on Hollywood Boulevard 100 people in costume duked it out. They'll probably do the same next week. A pleasant Halloween to all!


h/t: scottymyshkin

Happy July 4th!

Though weakened, our republic endures. How the Founding Fathers established a nation without benefit of air conditioning continues to mesmerize me.

Non-stop marketing work for the last ten days. My boss is a young guy who has never had to give notes to writers outside the marketing world. Thus he delivers insights such, "this is no good" or the refreshingly delightful "you need to do this over." We lurch forward together.

Writing today on the outline for my online book. My employer's company is similar to choose your own adventure. My job now is to fan out the story in multiple directions and think of interesting characters for avatars of all ages to foil-outwit-escape-or date.

Be cool today.
(Image: loot-ninja.com)

Memorial Day 2011

American cemetery at Omaha Beach in Normandy. Like the man said, "freedom isn't free." Memorial Day should contain an element of remembrance for all who served and especially those who fell.

As a kid in the Midwest, our parents once took us to a Memorial Day parade in a small town outside Chicago. In addition to the high school marching bands and cheerleaders, the stars of the day were a large group of survivors from the Bataan Death March. At the time, they were middle-aged guys, mostly in their forties, and seemed relaxed, walking along in a loose knot and waving to the cheering crowd. Only later did I learn what they had endured fighting on Bataan and how they had been treated on the march to prisoner-of-war camps. Freedom certainly wasn't free for them.

So I thank our veterans, past and present, including my second cousin Marty Smith serving in the Air Force. Thanks for watching our backs and allowing us to barbecue in peace.

Forgot to mention Colin Wells of the Army's Stryker Brigade, home safe from Afghanistan and based in Ft. Lewis. Thanks on behalf of the Write Enough family.
Image: Travelpod.com

Happy Mother's Day!

To moms: We wouldn't be anywhere without you and we certainly wouldn't be on time.

Happy Easter!

Lunch today with my wife and mom-in-law. The only eggs we'll be searching for are the ones on our plates.
(Image: stjohnsmcc.org)

A Day for Green Activism

Don Rickles once described the Irish as "a wonderful people. Their lives consist of beer and parades." Ah, but he forgot poetry and grumbling. Happy St. Patrick's Day to all!
Image: Caplan Miller

Ha!

Ha, ha! Ha! More writing today and more on the burner for tomorrow. Non-animated, but paying nonetheless. What a plump Christmas bonanza of TV last night. LOR-2 plus Christmas Story plus Wizard of Oz; the channel changer was on fire.

Merry Christmas!

To one and all, old and young, sober and awash in eggnog.

D-Day Kudos

Sixty-six years ago they went ashore on beaches called Gold, Sword (British), Juno (Canadians), Utah and Omaha (Americans). Thanks to the men who invaded Normandy and ended Nazi rule of France, ensuring the world's supply of depressing literature would continue on into a new century. Freedom must include poor usage or it isn't really freedom. Observe college students. Anyway, the Allies rocked big time that far-off day. Their memory lives on.

stage
BTW: An interesting footnote I probably learned from the History Channel, ie. numerous 16 mm reels of great D-Day battle footage lie at the bottom of the English Channel. A U.S. Army cameraman reported his film, and that of other combat cameramen, were collected by a colonel who stuffed the canisters in a duffel bag, then accidentally dropped the bag into the sea. I feel something similar happens to most of my tax dollars.