Sunday Squibs

You may decline to see your children’s exes in the former places. You will see them though in your grandchildren’s faces

The West Coast has glamour 

The East Coast is old 

Midwestern beauty 

Is there to behold 

Vouchsafe me a vision

Open my eyes 

I me are nothing 

You are the prize

Gossip wouldn’t be bad is it wasn’t so hateful, but drained of its lifeblood it would no longer be gossip. 

When cancer is cured our descendants will view chemo and radiation the way we now view cupping and bleeding. 

The best teachers can enter into the ignorance of their students.

A well regulated militia is a bureaucracy of guns. 

The neurotic’s curse is to not recognize his comfort zone even when he’s in the middle of it. 

The carpenter needs to know two things: a. how to build things, and b. how much to charge. 

I know b: $1,000 per hour. To cover my deficit in a. 

Keep calm and carry on? It’s too late for that. 

Show me the poster that says, “Don’t Panic!”

If you don’t have a Plan B, you may be forced to accept a plan you would have considered Plan Z. 

My TV is the succubus 

That lies upon my brain 

Dazed, I have lost track of all

The hours down the drain

I should have bought up Google 

Oh dang it, bloody hell

I should have bet on the horse that won

Before the starting bell

My ideas met your ideas 

And our ideas had babies 

The kids grew up

And bit the world

And gave the poor thing rabies

This world is grass 

And soon shall pass

It’s been a gas

So said my lass

Now pack a bag

Offload your swag

No need to shave 

Enjoy your grave

Then grab a star

And ride it far

A road in the forest diverged. One path led to the world and its horrors. The other, to more forest. 

As my belief in evolution grows, so grows my disbelief in atheism. 

Beware the person who can’t say no

His passive aggression soon will blow

Is love what we want? The Inquisition thought it was acting lovingly when it burned heretics to save them from the eternal flames. 

Some people fake having a sense of humor the way I feign seriousness, but it’s hopeless. If I hear poor Mary has lost her husband, I can’t help wondering if she’s looked everywhere for him. 

The Zen master told us not to try to save the world, but just to polish the corner we find ourselves in. Is it an inside corner or an outside one, I ask. 

“Both,” he said. 

“And neither.”

The perfect crime is the one left undone. 

The foolproof plan is the one just for fun. 

Realizing there’s not enough time to savor everything the world has to offer, a person becomes a connoisseur… or a snob. 

That our faces should reveal our souls would be too drastic. 

Therefore the devil is the patron saint of surgeons plastic.

The Butchering of the Butchering Tree

   On a recent Sunday my brother-in-law Pete was driving from his home in Moorhead to the family farm southwest of Roseau when he received a disturbing photo from the neighbor, Dennis. Dennis rents the land at the farm and keeps his equipment in the big shed there. He had noticed that one of the old oaks in the yard had blown down in the recent wind storm and landed on Pete's new trailer.

Could be worse

  Pete likes to drive the three hours to the farm on a regular basis. It gives him a chance to visit his father in his assisted living apartment, see a friend or two, and maybe join us for pizza night. What he really likes is to load his ATV onto his trailer and take it out to the trails in Beltrami Forest for a little wheelin'.

  Having a massive oak land on his trailer was not part of his plan. If Pete had known there was a tree on his trailer before he left home he would have brought his chain saw along. But Pete had options. He called his sister. Teresa and I are always looking for firewood and oak is the best. We loaded up the truck and headed to the farm.

  No one has lived at the farm since Enar moved to assisted living a dozen years ago. But another brother-in-law, Jack, drives out faithfully from Roseau and maintains the place for family to use on visits home. The house and outbuildings are surrounded by ancient oaks. Some of the oaks are dying and have already been taken down. 

  The oak that fell on Pete's trailer was called "the butchering tree." When Enar used to kill a steer for meat for the family he would hoist up the carcass on a sturdy branch of this tree for butchering. The rusty chains Enar used were still visible. Teresa and I arrived at the farm about the same time Pete did. A thick branch was pushing down on the middle of the trailer bed, but the upper branches were holding most of the weight of the tree off the trailer. Pete was greatly relived. A tree this size and weight could have totally flattened the trailer.

  I fired up my saw and began trimming branches. The trunk of the tree was about two feet in diameter at it's base and had broken off about five feet above the ground. Pete said Dennis would be coming with his loader tractor soon to help lift the trunk so we could pull the trailer out. That was good. I dislike cutting through trees with trunks bigger than the length of my saw's bar.

  As I cut off the ends of the branches, Pete and Teresa hauled the debris to the burn pile and stacked the bigger branches for firewood. As I cut further I started moving into the pressure zone. The problem with branches with pressure on them is that as they're cut, they start to pinch the saw's bar. The solution is to cut the bottom side of the branch. But once the pressure is released, there's no telling which way the branch will snap. I always think of the sailors who are dismembered when they get in the way of the giant cable that launches jets off aircraft carriers. 

 Fortunately Dennis showed up with his tractor. He used the fork on the front end of his tractor to lift the trunk a few inches. If he lifted the trunk too high the rear wheels of his tractor came off the ground. Oak is heavy, you bet. With the pressure off, I was able to cut off several branched without trepidation. Pete and Teresa stacked the cobs of beautiful stove length firewood.

  I was also able to remove the branch pinning down the trailer bed. Then we all jockeyed the trailer out of its trap.  One of the trailer's fenders has been dented  and its welding cracked, but that was it. Dennis got his saw out and we continued cutting. Dennis's saw had an extra long bar God bless him so he worked on the trunk while I continued cutting up branches. Dennis burns wood too so he was awarded the trunk. Pete and Kathy have a fire pit back in Moorhead so he took some smaller stuff. 

  Teresa and I filled our truck with cobs from the branches. Most of it would need splitting. By now Dennis had gotten his log splitter going. He offered to help us split our stuff, but we had had enough for the day. We have a splitter at home; the one Jerry Solom made. Our son Matt and his wife Heather would be coming for a visit in a few days. They love splitting wood.

   As I was cutting branches, I kept my eye out for the old butchering chains. Hitting one of them would quickly dull my saw chain. Ah, there they were. I was able to untangle them and pull them off the branch. They'll never be used again to hang up cattle. If Enar was here though, he'd find a way to repurpose them.

To be recycled 

A Little Perspective

   I read somewhere that going through life without understanding nature is like walking through a museum with all the paintings turned towards the wall. I went to good schools that taught me the life cycles of the insects and all that. I got passing grades, but the details didn't stick. I was more interested in reading stories. My father used to carry out little science experiments for my benefit. We'd take his barometer to the cellar and then to the attic. "Look," he'd say. "The needle moved." And so it had. I'd ask to go to the bathroom where I could read the sports section in peace.

  In high school I was offered information on physics and chemistry. I could have gone on to be an engineer or a doctor. Instead I went to college and studied English literature. Later on when I read that thing above about the pictures in museums I started to make an effort. I learned the names of the trees and birds that had been rustling and chirping overhead all my life. I memorized the names of all the eons back to earth's beginnings, but I couldn't get them to stick. I was more interested in reading history.

  I'm getting down to the final era of the planet I call myself. I need to make my final kick to the finish line. When St. Peter says "Whadda ya know!" it better be something more cogent than, "Tom Brady's signed to play another season." I took up the chart of of the eons again. I realized that the different eons are named for what was going on at the time. 

  Cambrian: first shelled creatures, which gave rise to the corals. Devonian: first amphibians and fish. First forests (evergreens) which in the Carboniferous era turned those forests into coal. Knowing these events helped keep the eons in order. The trouble is that each eon is further subdivided. I needed to keep some perspective.

  The big question is when and how life began at all. Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. At first it was a mass of bubbling magma. Once things cooled off about 3.7 billion years ago life got started as a single celled bacterium. It wasn't much to look at but its DNA had a penchant for experimentation. After a few hundreds of millions of years, it invented photosynthesis, which led to oxygen.  Then it invented sex which led to us.

(Please single tap one of the images. You can then scroll through the thumbnails at the bottom.)

Here's a kids eye view of life on earth. The interesting stuff starts half a billion years ago. This squashes the four billion previous years into three layers at the bottom. 

Putting earth's 4.5 billion years on a calendar put things in proportion. The bacteria got to work in March. Things were quiet on the surface until November. Humans don't show up till the last few days in December.

  And here's a calendar that starts with the Big Bang. We humans show up at 11:52 on December 31. All of civilization occurs in the minute before midnight. Happy New Year! 

Be happy. Don't worry.

Sunday Squibs

 Netflixia: the black mood that settles in the soul when all the good series have been watched and the new ones all stink. 

Sure the old internet was full of rabbit holes, but there was always the promise of a bunny lair full of chocolate Easter eggs. Now your top hits are all tangents straight into John Doe’s store. 

Agape love looks to God, who we cannot see. Philos love looks to the world, which we see all too plainly. And Eros blinds us to everything but the beloved. 

The generation two back was virtuous. The last generation let things go. Our generation did the best it could. The next generation is going to hell. And the one after that is weaving the hand basket. 

Overthinking is never good. Unless you’re on the road to perdition. Then a session in the rear view mirror makes sense. 

Our first meeting was impactful, but I quickly scratched on cue. 

One condition for a long marriage is a willingness to go on each other’s wild goose chases. 

The old memories are the last to go, like initials that were carved into a young tree. Nothing new can be carved onto dementia's rough bark. 

Talk politics to neither foe nor friend. The first can get you killed. The second will waste your time. 

Only seven deadly sins? The scold can think of many more. 

Disclaimer

    When I can’t think of the word I want I can usually come up with a word like it, which I then plug into my favorite synonym site, WordHippo. Other sites give you a handful of words, but WordHippo yields a plethora. And if the word you want is not among them, it will generate another batch and then another. 

   Just the other day I couldn't think of the word disclaimer. I knew that my word was a kind of a warning so I plugged warning into WordHippo and the deluge began: notice portent Mayday, handwriting on the wall. I hit the try again button: tip alarm harbinger admonition. And again: cautionary reminder cautionary tale shot across the bows. Hippo was hot, in fact it was burning up, but it was not hitting the bull's eye.

  So I did what I used to do before the Internet was invented  I got off my butt and pulled my Roget's Thesaurus off the shelf. Of course Roget's provided many fewer synonyms than WordHippo. A search under warning did not produce disclaimer. But it did toss up caveat which I perceived as boiling hot. So I plugged caveat into Hippo and up popped disclaimer. Easy as pie.

  This whole process had taken a quarter of an hour, but it was fun. Roget's gives lots of old fashioned synonyms such as Cassandra and Mother Carey's chickens. I knew Cassandra was the Trojan priestess who had the gift of prophecy, but was cursed with no one believing her. But who or what we're Mother Carey's chickens? 

   The simple answer is that the seabirds storm petrels are called Mother Carey's chickens by sailors who see them as harbingers of storms. And Mother Carey? Mother Carey is the wife of Davy Jones. She and Davy send storms to wreck ships and she and Davy dine on drowned sailors. So I learned something interesting and got a blogpost for my troubles.

The backup team 

  

Bake!

 

   I'm a fan of The Great British Baking Show. In this competition, twelve amateur bakers come together in a big white marquee tent in the British countryside and bake their hearts out. There's no prize money. They are baking for glory and a glass cake stand that says "Winner."

    Each week the bakers must complete three challenges. First: a signature bake, something they would bake for friends and family. Next is a technical challenge. They are able to practice the signature bak at home. The technical challenge is unknown until they lift the cloth on the ingredients. All the bakers are given the same ingredients and a minimalist recipe. It's a test of their  baking instincts and even the best bakers sometimes stumble.  

   The following day the bakers must bake their showstopper. This challenge must look spectacular as well as taste great. The bakers can practice this at home and I can imagine the tons of baked goods the families must consume to support their hero. 

   Each week there's a theme, pastry, bread, biscuits (cookies in Britain), etc. There are two hosts who attempt to lighten things up by asking the bakers silly questions. I read one of the qualifications for being on the show was being able to talk while you bake. Meanwhile, the two judges prowl about the tent making the bakers nervous. The female judge is tough but nice nice. The male judge is also tough and not as stern in reality as he appears on the show.

   The best baker for each week is named Star Baker, one one baker is sent home. This is the worst feature of the show. By the third week I've grown fond of all the bakers and I hate to see any of them leave. The other bad thing is that the show only runs once a year. I find other things to do while they make a new show, but it's like waiting for Christmas.

   I've thought of a solution for both these problems. The eleven eliminated bakers could compete in a follow-up competition right after the first one was done. Then the ten eliminated bakers from that competition would compete against each other and so on until everyone had eventually won. Maybe they could screen one of these completions per month until it was time for a new set of bakers.

   I'm always been amazed by the skills of the bakers in the competition, but I realized if my scheme was in place even I could be on the show (I would need to obtain British citizenship first). Yes, it would mean being eliminated eleven straight times, but in the final competition I'd only be competing against myself. My ineptitude might become a national joke. On the other hand, I might become a hero to those who have trouble running a toaster.  Besides, that winner's plate next to my Kitchen-Aid would make it all worthwhile.

The Son

   Who is this Jesus, anyway? By the early fourth century A.D, almost all the bishops in the Christian Church believed Jesus was God, that is, God's equal. And that the Holy Spirit was God present in the world today. These three persons were God in one person. "It's a mystery," the nuns used to tell us. "You'll understand when you get to heaven," they said.

   Just because the bishops had the Trinity figured out didn't mean the masses understood it rightly. Indeed there was a popular preacher in Egypt named Arius who taught that yes, Jesus was God, but that Jesus had been created and was therefore on a slightly lower level than the Father. The difference may seem slight to us, but back then people were ready to slit each other's throats over semantics  

  What's interesting is that no one had worried about these fine points a few years earlier when Christians were being fed to the lions. In 313 A.D., the Roman emperor Constantine declared toleration for Christianity. Constantine had just gone through a long and bloody struggle to bring the whole empire under his control and he was looking for some peace and quiet.

  To settle the trinitarian controversies that were causing such an uproar, Constantine called an ecumenical council, which opened on this day in 325. Constantine invited all 1,800 bishops in the empire to the council. Traveling expenses were paid by the government and each bishop was allowed to bring along a retinue of five priests and deacons. The council was held in the important city of Nicaea in northwestern Turkey. About 300 of the 1,800 bishops, mostly from the eastern part of the empire attended. 

  There's a juicy story about Arius being slapped by a bishop during the debates about the nature of the Trinity. But Arius would not have been present since he was not a bishop.  On June 19, the bishops came up with the Nicean Creed we're familiar with today, though the lines at the end cursing those who disagreed with the creed were dropped a dropped a few years later.

  As for Arius, his books were burned and he was excommunicated and exiled to the boondocks of Illyria, though he was later rehabilitated.  Constantine's mother St. Helena wanted him to become a Christian, but he had to placate both his pagan and his Christian subjects so he held off on baptism till he was on his deathbed. He was christened by an Arian bishop of all people. 

  The Council of Nicaea did not attempt to explain the mystery of the Trinity. The nuns at Holy Name School liked to point to St. Patrick's use of a shamrock to explain how a thing could be three in one. On last Trinity Sunday, Father John said the Father was like the sun, Jesus, like the sun's light, and the Holy Spirit was like it's warmth. That I can understand.

The Celts neatly knotted up the Trinity.

  

Sunday Squibs

 If you got it, it came in a truck. That’s why it’ll cost you an additional buck 

I've go lots to do, so I like to keep my departure date open ended. But death, like a rogue travel agent, says, “You’re going today.”

A green thumb is caused by dirt under the nail.

The honeymoon’s over when one member starts speaking truth to romance. 

In the next ice age, the glaciers will crush our trash into the metamorphic rock: landfillite. 

Clichés are the logarithm of prose. 

Nationality most likely to use an iPhone: Syrian. 

If you spend more time looking for holes in the plot than trying to find out ‘whodunnit,’ then murder-mystery is not the genre for you. 

No matter how nice you are, there’s a troll out there with your name on it. 

I ride along merrily

Not doing right.

My sins of omission 

Hid out of sight.

Hang out by the gym and you’ll see the ripped and the buff. Sit in the DQ and you’ll see the results of not going to the gym. 

The Door

   For 20 or 30 years Teresa's been suggesting a visit to Door County. I dragged my feet because I couldn't understand what was so special about a county in Wisconsin. We have plenty of good counties right here in Minnesota. Then I looked on the map and saw that Door County was a 70 mile long peninsula pointing northwards into Lake Michigan. Door County is only half the size of Roseau County. As you'd expect of a peninsula, it has lots of lakeshore, almost three hundred miles. Roseau county has twenty.

  I did my research and discovered that Door County is a tourist trap, but I know from experience that a tourist trap can also have good points if you can manage to avoid the tourists.  According to my guidebook, the worst time to visit was in July and August. I figured the first week in May would be safe. 

  I almost played it too safe. It's been a cold, wet spring in the Midwest this year. We arrived at our Airbnb in Egg Harbor after an eleven hour drive spread over two days. This is one reason we hadn't visited Door County previously. It's a bit out of the way. It was cool and windy over Green Bay, the bay not the city, the evening we arrived. But at least it was sunny. 

  Thanks to all the tourists, Door County is blessed with dozens and dozens of restaurants; far more than its permanent population of 26,000 could support. Many of the restaurants only open in late May. On a Tuesday evening in Egg Harbor only Casey's BBQ was open, which worked just fine. 

  The next morning we visited another restaurant that stays open all year round: Al Johnson's in Sister Bay, a few miles north of Egg Harbor. Sister Bay (pop. 1,100) is the epicenter of tourism in Door County. And Al Johnson's is the epicenter of Sister Bay. The restaurant is a series of several Swedish style log buildings with grass roofs, famous for goats grazing on top.

  The goats wouldn't arrive till later in the month. In discussing Al Johnson's, the guidebook mentioned alternative restaurants if the wait at Al's was too long. We were seated immediately in the huge but cozy dining room. The coffee came presto and our food arrived a couple of minutes after we placed our order. This place knew how to handle mobs.  Al's had two tastefully stocked Scandinavian gift shops with a beer garden on the goat-free lawn between the shops.

  No matter where we are, Teresa likes to get in a good hike. So we drove to the Peninsula State Park. We followed the park road to Eagle Tower to get the lay off the land. The old tower had been torn down in 2016 and this new one was only a couple of years old. We climbed the hundred steps to the top for a view of Green Bay and islands. We followed the winding wheelchair ramp through the canopy to get down.

Green Bay from Eagle Tower

  As the day was salubrious, we decided to follow one of the loop trails that started at the tower. The mostly deciduous woods in the forest had not yet started to leaf out and we were able to see the trees through the forest. We had a map, but a map could not show all the zigs and zags the trail took. We should have been heading north to hit the lake, but when I checked the compass on my phone we were headed east.

  We had gotten on the wrong trail at a crossing and had to backtrack to the trail that went north. When we came in view of the lake we realized we had to descend a rock face to reach the trail that ran along the lake and back to where our car was. By going astray, our invigorating hike was becoming a slog. This didn't bother Teresa. I usually go along for security and to humor her and this wasn't funny to me anymore.

  There was a sort of a path down the rock face. I wished I had brought my walking stick along. The lake trail was under a canopy of cedars. The shore was rocky like along much of Lake Superior. It's hard to imagine that if you keep following this wild shore you'll eventually come to Chicago. After a mile we were opposite the tower where our car was parked. Now we had to reascend the cliff, but at least here some long-ago CCC crew had build a stairway of rocks up the path.  

  We drove through the rest of the extensive park then headed northwards looking for a restaurant. We estimated about a third of the restaurants and lodgings were open. The staff at the rest were painting trim and planting flowers. It was now 3:00. We realized we had missed lunch and decided to settle for ice cream to tide us over. But ice cream is definitely tourist driven and all the shops were still closed. At length we reached Gills Rock, the tip of the thumb of Door County. The only place open was Charley's Smoked Fish House. Across a narrow strait we could see Washington Island.

  There was also in Gills Rock the Death's Door Museum. The strait between the mainland and the island is subject to sudden violent squalls which have claimed many ships and lives. The early settlers dropped the "Death’s" part when naming their county.

   The next morning we drove to Cave Point County Park, which my guidebook said was the most photographed spot in Door County. I took lots of photos of the caves along the eroded dolomite shore line. It helped that it was a mild windless day. A helpful sign said that Wisconsin was on the equator half a billion years ago and at the bottom of a tropical sea. Over the eons as Wisconsin slid into its present location, sea creatures piled up on the sea bottom. Later the glaciers crushed them into dolomite. When the glaciers disappeared, Lake Michigan filled the void and began digging caves into  the rocky shoreline.

Cave Point State Park

  Our last must see spot was the Cana Island lighthouse, also on the Lake Michigan side. The lighthouse was built in 1869 to help ships avoid running aground on the reef offshore. There's a great view of the lake from the top of the 89' tower. The nine acre island is connected to the mainland by a rocky causeway. My guidebook had warned that part of the causeway was usually under water so we had brought our water boots along.

  At the visitor center, the employee took our credit card and gave us our wristbands then told us the lighthouse was closed for repairs till August. We wondered why we had to pay since the lighthouse was the main attraction. We learned we were helping support the lighthouse. Ok, I guess. We did wander around the grounds and I learned that in the early days they had to melt lard to power the light because whale oil had gotten expensive because the whales had been almost exterminated.  Lard is sooty so the keeper was kept busy cleaning the glass.

  We only spent two full days in Door County. A couple of locals told us this was the best time of the year to visit before the hordes arrived. The locals realize the economy depends on tourists, but during the season they studiously avoid the tourist zone between EggHarbor, Sister Bay and up to Gills Rock. They know all the back roads, the locals do. Was our trip worth it. Yes. Will we go back? We're like those visitors who fall in love with Roseau County but never return because life has too many attractions closer to home.

Death County

   Death County? Let me clear that up. We've wanted to visit Death, I mean Door, County for years. I always wondered why it was called Door County. Was there an early Marvin's Door and Window factory there? 

  We decided to visit Door County this spring and find out what was going on. On May 4 we arrived in Egg Harbor. Now there's a strange name. Where did that name come from?  I've found the best place to get local history is in the bar. 

  The denizens of Casey's Bar & BBQ were happy to delve into the etymology of their town after I bought a round for the house. I bellied up to the bar next to Johnny (no last name) who told me about some early visitors to the area who as they rowed ashore for a picnic, began throwing hard boiled eggs at each other. Johnny thought alcohol was involved, which he said was appropriate since the area was going to eventually become part of the future state of Wisconsin. This story sounded so ridiculous, I decided it could be true. Johnny had no clue where the name Door County came from. I bought him a bag of Mexican crisps for his trouble and we went on our way. 

  The next morning we went for breakfast at a Swedish restaurant in Sister Bay. Our waitress told us there were two tiny islands called the Sisters out in the bay after which the town was named. She knew nothing about the Door name. So we kept moving north. The locals all knew the etymology of their own town or village but were hazy about the big picture.

  After much driving, we reached Gills Rock at the tip of the peninsula. Across a narrow channel we could see Washington Island. I noticed a building called Porte de Mort Museum. I have a smattering of French and translated it to Door of Death. Hmmmm. 

  Charley, the curator of the museum, was the man we were looking for. He said long long ago, two hundred Potawatomi warriors drowned during a squall in the strait between Washington Island and the mainland while on their way to attack a Winnebago village. When the French speaking Voyageurs arrived in the early 1700s they heard the story and started losing men themselves in the unpredictable channel. Thus the name.

The Voyageurs moved on, but when the Scandinavian settlers arrived, they thought the name Death's Door too morbid for their permanent home so they shortened it to Door. And that's the unvarnished truth.

Just south of Death's Door

Sunday Squibs May 1-7

 Womansplaining doesn’t exist because men aren’t looking for information about makeup, couture, and intimacy.

We spend money, a. To survive, then, b. To enjoy life. The miser merges these two into one. 

You meet an uncle you haven't seen in 10 years and think, wow, he has aged.

He's thinking the same about you.

A dead end with enough persistence can become a lead to someplace else. 

Spelunkers please ignore this advice.

Let us give thanks for our personal patch of myopia with its semi-satisfied desires. We’ll never know the blindness of the rich nor the hunger of the poor. 

A poem’s a thing that’s unmade 

Which together the poet and reader upgrade. 

I test the sincerity of the Christian. After walking an extra mile with me I ask him for his cloak. And friend Louie gives him a slap on his way home. 

From bacteria to creepy-crawlies on up to the beasts of the jungle, mankind has been nothing but one amendment after another. 

We feel sorry for the rich who pay hundreds of dollars for a series of minuscule bites at a three star restaurant. We’re not told how they go home and eat a pint of Hagen-Dazs before bed. 

Death March

 

   In the waiting room at Clark Air Force base in the center of Luzon Island in the Philippines, there's a huge mural of General McArthur striding ashore ahead of his troops. Written below were the words "I have returned." Two years earlier McArthur had said "I shall return," after he had been forced out of the Philippines by the invading Japanese army.

   McArthur had to leave most of his army behind; ten thousand American soldiers and 66,000 Filipino allies. Things were not at all pleasant for these men as they waited in POW CAMPS for McArthur's return. Thousands of them died while waiting.

   I got to see the mural in 1971, a mere 26 years after the event depicted. I was on my way to a small naval base on the west coast of Luzon. After our overnight flight from California, we had to wait a couple of hours in the terminal for the bus to our final destination. 

   I wandered around the waiting room and found a plaque saying the main POW camp was not far from the airbase. Most of the American and Filipino army had retreated to the Bataan peninsula on the west side of Manila Bay. Our bus crossed over part of the route the prisoners had marched along on their way to the POW camp. I began seeing metal signs every kilometer commemorating the march.

   It was only a 66 mile hike, 5-10 days depending on where a prisoner joined the march, but the brutality of the Japanese captors led to the deaths of 500 Americans and up to 18,000 Filipinos. Things weren't much better in the camp where another 26,000 Filipino and 1,500 Americans died of disease and starvation.

   Today is the day in 1942 that the last American troops in surrendered to the Japanese in the Philippines. Learning that reminded me of the Death March and when I looked for the metal signs on Google what I mostly found were white concrete markers. I came across an article about an American who had made it his mission to maintain the markers.

  This American's father had been on the Death March and on his deathbed, told his son that he had been engaged to a Filipino woman and that they had had a daughter. He made his son promise he would go to the Philippines and look for his other family.

   The son traveled to the Philippines and discovered that the woman had been killed by the Japanese and the daughter had grown up and married, but that she was now dead. The American was able to connect with his nieces and nephews. 

   When he retraced the Death March route he discovered most of the metal signs had been taken by souvenir hunters or destroyed by traffic. He settled in the Philippines, married a local woman and they made it their mission to erect and maintain the concrete markers. His father's ghost should be able to rest quietly.

Original metal marker.

   

Sunday Squibs April 24-30

The people in Heaven, disturbed by the gulf between themselves and hell, built a bridge. When they arrived, they found everyone gone and the fire cold.

My past accomplishments hold me back like laurels that have fallen round my feet and have rooted to the ground. 

Freud said sex is the main thing. Fortunately it’s not the only thing. 

The bad thing about not being a narcissist is having to watch the antics of all the narcissists.

Death is not the worst thing. Enduring the deaths of others is the worst thing. 

 We will sometimes be cruel  to protect our reputation for goodness. 

Jesus said remove the log in your eye which can be tricky when I am the log.

We can stay the course and stagnate, or experiment and wreck stuff.

How can I relate to a billion?

Am I able to picture a neutron?

You cannot my boy, you flunked out of math

Sit down and enjoy your fig newton 

The alcoholic never forgets his first drink and never remembers his last. 

The lazy employee must work an extra thirty minutes for free to make up for the time wasted watching the clock. 

Fear of the alarm clock is a starter fear. 

                        To a comet

We all ooh and ah as you streak 'cross the sky

Though you’re naught but a snowball from hell

You live your life backwards like all us down here

Though the future your passage foretells 

I keep my family and my friends in two overlapping circles. My goal is for the two to merge into one, though some few will always lie out. 

Online I find a hotel with so many free perks, I assume the place is a dump. 

At rummage sales these days, everything I see is something I too would be wanting to get rid of. 

I want my religion to do well just as I want my team to do well, knowing that at times both will slump. 

Before starting to write your book consider that one future day your book will sit in an ancient library which on another day will be burned by barbarians.