Comments Posted By dymphna
Displaying 21 To 30 Of 30 Comments
HOMAGE DUE OUR SECRET WARRIORS
Thanks for listing all the names and homeplaces of these men. They cannot be replaced -- a large, sucking hole in our midst.
BTW, your childhood profile of such people was spot on.
Comment Posted By dymphna On 14.07.2005 @ 11:14
REMEMBERING WHY I LOVE HISTORY
Well, I know what our first course at dinner will be tonight: "Was D-Day the most important event of the 20th century"?
I'll let you know how well it was digested.
Comment Posted By dymphna On 8.06.2005 @ 19:17
TEN MOST HARMFUL BOOKS OF THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES
How about Sartre? Or Rousseau? Or that dumb Bishop Berkley who tried to refute Darwin on religious terms, thus making a serious categorical mistake and enlarging the science/faith chasm...dumb.
Oh yeah...Chomsky. Anything out of the mind of that man...
But when you think about it, if these particular excresences didn't exist, someone else would've written equally bad ideas...gullibility, thy name is half-educated.
Comment Posted By dymphna On 4.06.2005 @ 09:31
MEMORIAL DAY SHOULD BE FOR THE LIVING TOO
Memorial Day was extra-special this year in our small rural county. We remembered our vets...and life went on "in endless song..." as the hymn goes.
Come celebrate with us.
~D
Comment Posted By dymphna On 30.05.2005 @ 13:32
Thanks for the link to the DVD... the flu epidemic so shattered my family that I don't think I could watch fiction about it. A documentary wouldn't be so difficult, though. Don't know why...
Comment Posted By dymphna On 1.06.2005 @ 19:57
The story of the flu in America is a real stunner. It's almost ignored today. Philadelphia was one of the hardest hit: people were stealing coffins for their families. I believe we lost 625,000 people in a matter of six weeks. World-wdie the statistics vary from 12 to 20 million. Don't know what our population was at the time so what percentage 625,000 is of that is also open to question.
It is claimed that the flu is what caused us to be more distant publicly from one another -- i.e., our "personal space" is larger than it was before the flu.
As a country, we never really mourned that episode of our lives. Perhaps it was the war's upheaval that made it get forgotten for so long...though America entered late with fewer losses. At any rate, I think the "Roaring Twenties" was an cultural rebound effect to the horrors of 1918.
My grandmother and her first-born son died within a few weeks of each other, devastating the family. My lawyer grandfather, an American living in Ireland, came back here with his three remaining children. He never recovered from the loss. Neither did the kids.
Wish someone would do a book that not only describes the havoc the flu wreaked but also does a kind of anthropological study of the next generation's aftermath. For example, there were orphanages erected then to taken in the children left.
Comment Posted By dymphna On 27.05.2005 @ 07:55
I loved this post. My paw print is obvious on Watcher's list.
Comment Posted By dymphna On 28.05.2005 @ 22:23
Got a birthday card yesterday with this quote from Mark Twain:
"If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat."Yeah.
Comment Posted By dymphna On 27.05.2005 @ 08:03
We once had a calico named Geneivieve. My son named her after the school secretary. He once named a dog Mary, so I figured he didn't 'get' the naming of pets. However, it was his cat soo...
We took G. to the vet, who upon examining her told us that Genevieve was a boy. But that can't be! Calicos are always female (we were so sure of this, we hadn't bothered to look at her -- now 'his'-- pertinent parts). The vet agreed that this was so. However, Genevieve was a genetic sport, a ten thousand in one calico male. In addition, the vet told us, Genevieve would be sterile but wouldn't know it so we'd have to get him neutered to prevent having everything in sight sprayed.
On the way out the door, the vet asked Will what he was now going to call the cat. Will asked the vet what his name was. "George," was the reply. So Genevieve morphed into his real name --George -- right before our eyes.
Fortunately, we didn't have to change the monogram on his linen.
Comment Posted By dymphna On 25.05.2005 @ 13:56
This articulates many of my concerns about Mr. Gingrich, but from a much more up-front and closer angle than I could have. Mine was merely intuition after reading him and listening to him speak. I agree with his political view, but he doesn't have the personal integrity or temperance required for the office of President.
Bill Clinton didn't either, but he had the added disadvantage of political principles driven by poll numbers. We will be a long time recovering from *that* train wreck. One hardly wants to experience another.
Not to worry -- he'd never make it past the primaries. But he's got a big enough political ego to make a run anyway and deflect from other, worthier candidates.
Comment Posted By dymphna On 18.05.2005 @ 14:04
