It must be... 22 years

I never thought I'd miss you
Half as much as I do
And I never thought I'd feel this way
The way I feel
About you
As soon as I wake up
Every night, every day
I know that it's you I need
To take the blues away

It must be love, love, love
It must be love, love, love
Nothing more, nothing less
Love is the best

How can it be that we can
Say so much without words?
Bless you and bless me
Bless the bees
And the birds
I've got to be near you
Every night, every day
I couldn't be happy
Any other way

It must be love, love, love
It must be love, love, love
Nothing more, nothing less
Love is the best

As soon as I wake up
Every night, every day
I know that it's you I need
To take the blues away

It must be love, love, love
It must be love, love, love
Nothing more, nothing less
Love is the best

It must be love, love, love...

 

 

Here a word, there a word

There has been much lamenting and handwringing over the isolating effect technology has on us - and rightly so.  (This video is my favorite.)  Human interactions are reduced to texting and messaging, sometimes even when we're in the same room.  We witness birthdays and events through tiny screens instead of watching them happen in front of us.  We post what we ate for lunch and share pithy memes, political rants, and cat pictures for all the world to see.  But I wonder who really cares what our score was on Pet Rescue Saga, what song we're listening to, or if we just saw a clown make a balloon animal.  How often do we go back and watch those videos, and how do they compare to half-missing the real thing?  It's kind of pathetic when you think about it, or as Syndrome might say: "Lame, lame, lame!"

And yet, it's not all lame.  Apparently, some of us who are staring at our phones while in line at Burger King aren't playing BubbleLand but are actually reading Emily Bronte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Willa Cather, or even M.M. Hastings.  It's being called interstitial reading - using those fragmented moments of otherwise wasted time to read - and many of us are reading the classics we slept through in high school.  After all, you can download them for free (or nearly so), and who cares if it takes three or four months to finish?  Personally, I just finished Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.  No, Miss Haltiner didn't assign it in high school, but it's one of those books you hear quoted often enough and is worth reading.

Pip is being "raised by hand" by his older sister (which apparently means she was pretty hard on him), and she is none to happy about it.  Luckily her husband, Joe, takes a liking to the small boy and occasionally intervenes on his behalf.  A couple of notable events happen to young Pip: first, he runs into a frightening escaped convict while wandering the marshes and helps him with food and a file to remove the leg iron.  Second, a neighbor arranges for him to visit Miss Havisham, the wealthy and eccentric old woman who has wasted away in perpetual bitterness at having been left at the altar.  But as he grows into a young man he is informed that he has "great expectations" and has come into a future inheritance from an unknown benefactor.  His life changes drastically; he leaves Joe's blacksmith forge and moves to London, where he begins his training as a gentleman, but with limited guidance he frequently falls into debt and folly.  

Dickens is a master of the English language, and in the beginning I often found myself laughing and highlighting humorous comments.  The story, however, languished for me in the middle while Pip is in London.  I imagine this could be why some critics complain that since Dickens was being paid by the word, his writing becomes a bit wordy and the story drags a little at this point (and maybe that's why it took me several months).  Still, the characters are fascinating and add to the eventual conclusion - which I found very satisfying.  I've previously admitted that it's not often I guess the mystery before it's revealed, but I didn't think Pip's "great expectations" were hard to figure out.  Nonetheless, that didn't detract from the story and I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone with a little interstitial time while in line at Burger King, waiting at the doctor's office, or... wherever.

Brave men

Several years ago when my son was still in elementary school, he had to interview a hero.  He chose my wife's grandfather who had served in the Navy during WWII.  I still remember that afternoon when he said many times with a distant look in his eyes that he wasn't a hero – the guys who didn't make it back were the heroes to him.  Then he quietly talked about driving a landing craft full of Marines toward beaches in the Pacific, trying to get them in as close as possible to the sand because the more water they had to run through the less likely it was they'd make it.  He'd never even told his family about those experiences, and I feel grateful to have heard it at all.  Jack passed away a few years ago, and there's probably a lot more to the story that he kept to himself.

"I want to tell you what the [D-Day invasion] entailed, so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those both dead and alive who did it for you." — Ernie Pyle

At the beginning of The Longest Day: June 6, 1944 by Cornelius Ryan, he says the book is "not a military history" but "the story of people."  Published in 1959, it was based upon the accounts of actual participants (who were still living) and is probably one of the best accounts of D-Day. It starts with a few stories immediately prior to the invasion but the main focus is on the events of June 6, 1944.  It does not give extensive detail about the strategies or even full accounts of each and every unit or battalion involved but instead weaves the experiences of both generals and soldiers into a very readable account. It can feel somewhat confusing at times, mixing both broad plans with on the ground accounts, but this style gives the book a very human feel. And it's not just confined to the Allies' viewpoint, but includes many stories from German soldiers and officers as well as a few from French civilians and the Underground Resistance. And all are presented in a surprisingly even and fair manner, without demonizing either side, which also gives it a somewhat detached feel at times. 

Another "classic" on WWII is Brave Men by Ernie Pyle, published in 1944.  Pyle was a war correspondent and this is a compilation of his newspaper columns while he was with soldiers fighting in Europe. Pyle was killed the following year on Iwo Jima, but he was especially popular for his intimate style of reporting that focused on the perspective of soldiers.  Reading this book really gives you a feeling for what they went through, both the grueling horror and the intense boredom. He covers not only the infantrymen on the front lines but the artillerymen behind them and the fighter and bomber pilots above. He tells what their days were like, what they ate, what kind of reception the locals gave. He shares his experiences at sea with the Italian invasion, how the supply chain worked, and how difficult it was to rebuild bridges that were blown up by retreating Germans. He tells not only of "GI Joe" but of "Sad Sack" and all the others who served, no matter how gloriously or not. It was surprising to see the names and home addresses of soldiers, but I can imagine people back home watching his columns, hoping to see a familiar name or maybe even writing to strangers. It's all done in a folksy way that must have forged a stronger connection between home and the front.  

I'm amazed at the sacrifices of the earlier generation and what they accomplished, and just as amazed at how little we sometimes seem to appreciate it now.  And I think Jack was a hero not just for what he did during the war but for his life afterward.  He came home, became a school teacher and later a principal, and raised his family – which I'm honored to be a part of now.

The BIG picture

When you read war histories you find they often fall into a couple of different perspectives: the leaders and their strategies, and the soldiers and the action.  And while it might be tempting to dismiss books that focus more on strategy as academic, scholarly, and even boring, it's also a valuable perspective to better understand the course of history and why events unfolded as they did.

Most WWII history buffs are familiar with Operation Overlord.  It was the largest seaborne invasion and included over 6,000 ships and landed over a million men on the beaches of Normandy beginning June 6, 1944 – it was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.  But Overlord was part of a larger operation called Neptune which encompassed the entire plan to take the battle to Continental Europe, including the Mediterranean.

Even before Pearl Harbor, the US was involved in the war in Europe by providing armaments to Britain and Russia.  And once the US was committed to joining the war, Roosevelt agreed with Churchill that defeating Hitler needed to be the priority.  But Churchill had little faith in the untested and green US troops – and with good reason it turned out.  So even though Roosevelt, Marshall, and Eisenhower urged for a mainland cross-Channel assault, Churchill consistently redirected the attention toward the Mediterranean.  Initial fighting was in North Africa and eventually moved up into Italy, where it stalled.  Part of this British reluctance was a desire to keep Germany from controlling the Mediterranean and the important Suez Canal in Egypt (the shortest route to the British colonies in the Pacific).  But another influence was the British disaster at Dunkirk, where they barely got off the continent alive and able to fight another day.  The issue from the American perspective was that it wasn't facing the problem head-on and seemed to be dragging out the conflict.  Also, and perhaps more significantly, it didn't provide enough relief for the Russian troops fighting on the Eastern Front – a problem Stalin never hesitated to complain about.

This is just one of the interesting understandings I gained while reading Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings by Craig L. Symonds.  It's an excellent history of the bigger picture of what was going on, and deals mostly with the higher political and military figures.  It's also very much a view from the Allied perspective – there isn't much about the enemy here.  And while I found it very interesting in it's own way, I'll admit it's kind of dry information and I almost set it aside.  But everything changed when Symonds got to the actual invasion and I found myself unable to put the book down.  Suddenly the men on the ground and in the boats became alive and the action was intense.  There are plenty of individual stories and accounts woven into the narrative, but it still retains an orderly 'big picture' feel to it instead of the chaos that usually comes through in other books on the topic.  And while the paratroopers dropped behind the lines were given scant attention, Symonds tells in excellent detail the saving contribution of the destroyers, which maneuvered inshore in dangerously shallow depths and within range of the big German guns to provide the kind of coverage the air bombing had failed to achieve on that heavily overcast morning.

I've already written about a couple of books about the D-Day invasion of Normandy (The Bedford Boys and The Boys of Pointe du Hoc) that emphasize the fighting men and I'll follow up with a couple more that are considered "classics."  But if you're looking for a book which not only explains the lead-up to D-Day but also gets into the troubles of pulling together such an enormous armada as well as the challenges of getting so many men onto a thin beach with a long shallow approach full of mines, you'll probably enjoy this one and appreciate Symonds' excellent writing.  (I received an advance copy of this book from Amazon Vine.)

Homebodies

Once upon a time kids had the freedom to roam.  Now everything is structured and 'play-dates' have to be scheduled and fun must to be planned ahead of time.  When I was a kid I spent most days outside and at friend's homes.  My mom usually knew sort-of where I was, but often when I left the house I was simply going "bike riding."  Even with such vague destinations she could still track me down with a phone call or two - even without the tether of cell phones.  And although I spent plenty of time each day out and away, I always felt the pull of home and would have to come back periodically.  Not because it was mom's rule or anything; I just felt that need to touch base at "home" for a few minutes or an hour, then I could head back out into the neighborhood and whatever fun or trouble (yeah, right!) I could find.

Interestingly enough, there are corollaries with the idea of "home" in the animal world.  It's pretty well-known that salmon are able to find their way back from the ocean to the exact stream or lake where they were born.  Eels do the opposite: they're born in the ocean but spend their lives in freshwater streams or lakes before returning to a (still undiscovered, I think) central location in the ocean where they spawn and die.  Many birds migrate thousands of miles each year, returning not just to the same general areas but oftentimes to the same exact locations.  Bernd Heinrich discusses this phenomenon in The Homing Instinct: Meaning and Mystery in Animal Migration (which I received from Amazon Vine), and it's a lot more prevalent than you might realize.

Birds and fish aren't the only ones.  Sea turtles migrate as do some butterflies, and although with their short lifespan they may not complete a round-trip journey themselves, their offspring will pick up the same route.  Bees find their way back to the hive, and ants return to the nest.  Heinrich explains that a variety of methods are employed - sometimes animals use polar magnetics to orient themselves (like pigeons) and other times it's the sun and stars.  Sometimes it's visual cues (bees) or scents (ants) or even just the influence of the crowd (grasshoppers, schooling fish, and even passenger pigeons), but frequently our understanding of it all falls a little short.  He takes the concept further, though, and discusses how birds and bees decide upon where to build their nests and hives - and there's a lot more to it than just chance.  He even discusses his own "homing" instincts in returning to the Maine woods where he grew up, and the activities that draw him there.

This is a wide-ranging book that looks at the science behind many of these behaviors and it's so much more than just migration.  But while it's sometimes a fascinating book, it's not always the most compelling and probably won't appeal to everyone.  Heinrich has an easy and poetic style, but parts of it ramble excessively into memoir and I felt the book bogged down a little as he went into unusual detail about his own "homing" and deer hunting each year.  Still, his experiments with planting chestnut trees near his cabin and even the spider living over his cabin desk were interesting, and I mostly found it an inspiring read that made me marvel even more at the wonders of nature.  (And his own illustrations are a nice bonus.)

Maddie liked the painting on the cover so much she painted her own.  I think we've got a budding little artist at our house.