HAPPY VETERANS DAY, with Gratitude...
I am presently reading The Great Silence by Juliet Nicholson, about the horrors of WWI and the aftermath in Britain. Soldiers lost limbs and even faces due to horrific gas attacks and hand to hand combat. Then they went home to a country that had no idea what they had really been through. But from this terrible time came incredible advances in such areas as prosthetics and plastic surgery. Many thanks to those who served both on and off the battlefield, and worked for peace.
What Alan said:
ReplyDeleteDoctor Dean and medical advances are numbers one.
There are 7 comments on this morning's ROOTS thread that you won't want to miss!!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful beautiful day we've had here ~~ sunny and warm, and I missed most of it as I didn't get to bed till 8 this morning and it's ending as I speak.
ReplyDeleteNice day here, too. Highs in the upper 60s -- we ate on the porch. Hazy sunshine most of the day but becoming more overcast now.
ReplyDeleteNice, but weird, lol! I have many memories of digging out of blizzards on this date. When we were kids there were two weather prayers for the year: that there wouldn't be snow on Halloween so you wouldn't have to wear a coat and galoshes with your costume, and that the snow would be gone by Easter, so your parents could hide the eggs outside.
ReplyDeleteThat said: I'm just going to enjoy this lovely, out of season, weather.
I'm home from work, and have my feet up. Ahhhhh~
ReplyDeleteI hope donna comes by because I got the most wonderful email today from a Librarian in another part of Vermont. I include it below because it says so much about life in a small town.
Good Afternoon,
It is that time of year again, when we attempt to quantify our Libraries. We rush to measure ourselves by finances, holdings, circulation, and patrons. The loss of a much loved patron caused me to take a few moments to think about some uncollected statistics for my Public Library. We have a staff of three, with no volunteers, so we know all of our patrons and interact with them daily. Here is a yearly average of unsolicited, but vitally important, statistics.
6- The number of patrons we hold in our arms while they cry over the loss of a loved one or a bad diagnosis.
10- The number of regular patrons whose death we mourn as if they were family.
700- The number of elderly borrowers whose visit with Library staff was their only social interaction of the day.
150- The number of small children who tug on my pant leg and ask me to read them a story. (I always make fulfilling these requests a priority)
1500- The number of people who ask us for our opinion, not only on books but on vacation plans, life choices, childcare...
25- The number of people we cheerfully give library cards and books to, knowing they'll never be returned, because we believe that it is most important that they want books.
50- The number of people who come into the Library because it is the only place they can get warm (or cool depending on the season)
and 1- for the preschooler visiting from Korea who told me that the Public Library was the happiest place in the world.
These are the statistics that remind me why I wanted to be a Librarian!
Rebecca
Yes, listener, The Great War was horrible beyond horror. One of the more interesting books I have encountered about the society and years leading up to it is Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower. I was recently re-listening to it on CD while at the same time (well, during the same time period) I was reading Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon, a history of modern Pagan witchcraft--the [major] part about the antecedents of same during the same time period Tuchman was treating. The interplay of the two books was incredible. Of course they melded with other things I knew about the period. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is that mankind's behavior, no matter how mad, is inherently understandable to us. If we understand that it is mad, how do we get swept up by it? There is a pious story that Confucius was born sixty years old (and therefore already wise). But even in his time that was considered sufficiently unusual to deserve comment; how much more so today? We are all born foolish, and profit little from the experience of our parents.
ReplyDeleteRe skin cancer, Australia is the biggest (unintentional) experiment in same. Most of the settlers came from northwestern Europe (the British Isles), where there had been evolutionary selection for light skin to enable sufficient production of vitamin D. In Australia they encountered solar radiation out of all proportion to to what their ancestors had known for maybe a hundred thousand years. Result: a high incidence of skin cancer. But they realized the increased risk of skin cancer was among those born in Australia (or very young when they immigrated), not among adult immigrants. Exposure at a young age is a big risk factor.
I started asking around for help getting my old Mac running; I had left it unplugged for a while after installing my new iMac, then it wouldn't boot. (This is evidently a well known phenomenon.) The battery is OK. Can't find a good repair place here, but one of the guys I called suggested:
http://www.powerbookmedic.com/
which looks pretty darn goods He said they can beat just about anybody on price because of their volume. Diagnosis is free, shipping is free both ways. I will let you all know what my experience is.
Just lovely, Love, just lovely. . . .
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Thanks, Alan. I'll be interested to hear how the Mac fixing goes for you. I am very fortunate to know a place near me that fixes all types of computers, and it's a place one of my sons worked for awhile (he's friends with the owners), so I can get in easily and at low cost.
ReplyDeleteSun exposure at a young age is definitely the issue, though teen years could also be a concern for our generation, which thought the thing to do was put on baby oil and go out and sunbathe! Remember that?
:-) I thought so too.
ReplyDeleteIt made me feel that everything in my life had prepared me to be a library clerk.
That sounds nice, Bill!
ReplyDeleteI think we're supposed to have that day tomorrow.
I'll be head-down working on my book,
but I'm still going to find time to soak up some of the beauty of the day.
My mother was bound and determined to get a tan, even though she could no more tan than I--just burn. The result was that in old age her skin was like tissue paper and she bruised SO easily. I grew up in a place where sun was neither plentiful not strong, and generally wore long sleeves and often a hat; but who ever heard of sun screen, or for a long time after that took it seriously? Not me, certainly. So my hands show the signs of overexposure. Not too bad, but not really good either.
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, mostly I wore a hat when working outside after we moved to a much sunnier and warmer area when I was 16.
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