Brian Gallagher. Joe Boardman. Amtrak. Hudson River. West Point. X-tra Mart murder. IS. COP21. Climate Change Conference. Producer’s Guild of America.“Tut” SpikeTV. Christ Church. Hope.
It’s a grey day, chill and gloomy. The train is crawling south toward the city. In front of me is Brian Gallagher, who is the sidekick of Joe Boardman, President of Amtrak, who is sitting across from him. Brian is by way of being a friend and I went up to say hello to Brian when I saw him, realized that Boardman was across from him and said hello to him too. He seems a very shy man, something Brian is not. Perhaps that’s why they seem to make a good team.
The Hudson River is smooth as a mirror, reflecting the muted colors on the banks above it.
With me I am carrying twenty pounds of textbooks from which I must choose the one I will use in the class I will be teaching at our local community college near the cottage. It’s challenging and I have to make the plunge by Friday.
That said, I’m excited about teaching the class.
Waking up around seven, I almost immediately plunged into emails and got lost in them. Before I drove to the train station, I organized all the Christmas presents I’ve purchased during the year in piles for the person for which they are intended. With Christmas carols playing, I found myself in a festive mood.
Which is the mood in which I intend to stay.
It was, as you know, a harsh weekend out there. Our local tragedy was that a woman, working at the X-tra Mart not far from my local grocery store, allegedly went into the restroom, gave birth to a baby boy, strangled him and disposed of his body in a trash bin outside the store and then returned to work.
She is currently in the hospital receiving a mental evaluation.
As is the man who shot dead three in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
We’re all a little crazy. I think it is part of the human condition but these folks are really crazy, in tragic ways.
Crazy zealous are the members of IS, who, I think, honestly believe they are doing what God wants of them. How you believe in such a crazy God is another question, but they do.
On a brighter note, COP21, the Climate Change Conference, has begun meetings in Paris. Out of this might come good news, of nations agreeing to work together to cool the planet, which was warmer last year than any other year in recorded history.
That’s important to remember that we’re talking about “recorded history.” The planet has gone through much colder and warmer times.
As I am a member of the Producer’s Guild of America, I get screening copies of movies and television shows to watch for judging purposes. One of them I got was “Tut,” the massive SpikeTV mini-series. As I was watching, it occurred to me that it is amazing how humans seemed to make a leap toward civilization about 10,000 years ago and haven’t looked back.
The time we have wandered the planet as beings you and I would recognize, has been an incredibly short amount of time.
As I am choosing to be joyous, nature has chosen to support me with a burst of sunshine. We have just sped past West Point and the sun is glittering off the river water.
Every Sunday that I go to Christ Church, I light a candle for myself, for a friend who is struggling with brain cancer and one for all the things I should be lighting a candle for, like world peace and the eradication of poverty.
I’m older now than I have ever been and will only continue down that path and as age piles upon me [with attendant wisdom, one hopes] I will continue to seek to be grateful for all the wonders of the world, those which I have experienced and the ones which lie ahead of me.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 12 07 15 Pearl Harbor Day…
December 7, 2015Pearl Harbor Day. December 7th. Japanese Empire. Second World War. Russia. England. United States. “The New History of World War II.” CL Sulzberger. Stephen E. Ambrose. Axis Powers. Hitler. Italy. Germany. Gestapo. SS. General Winter. John D. McCormick.
The heavy fog that blanketed the world this morning is dissipating in the afternoon. Sun has replaced the grey. When I drove to the gym this morning, it was hard to see far down the road.
It is December 7th and today is the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, resulting in the US entering the Second World War.
As it happens, I am reading “The New History of World War II” by Stephen E. Ambrose and CL Sulzberger. The book does an excellent job of following the course of the war, point by point.
One of the things about the War that I had never really thought about was that Russia, England and the US coordinated their efforts through communications and meetings, bound by a single goal: to win the war and, particularly, to gain the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers.
The Axis powers, Germany, Italy and Japan had no coordination between them. Japan didn’t inform their allies they were going to attack at Pearl Harbor and there was no wartime coordination between them.
The book also clearly points out the number of disastrous military decisions made by Hitler, who, after his early successes, began to think of himself as the greatest general to have ever lived.
He listened to no one and no one stood up to him. Terror is effective in silencing critics. You don’t need the Gestapo knocking on your door in the middle of the night.
That happened often enough without disagreeing with Hitler.
Germany and Japan were brutal to the citizens of the countries they conquered. Had Hitler not been such a monster to the Russians, they might well have rallied behind him. When the Nazis first rolled into Russian towns, they were hailed as liberators. Then the soldiers were followed by the SS and things got ugly.
The Japanese were equally brutal.
What I am also getting out of reading this history is what life was like for the ordinary soldier on both sides of the war. It was a horrific business that required enduring, in the deepest sense of that word, horrific situations and surviving if one could, conditions that are almost unimaginable but for that fact they were endured.
And that was true for both sides, particularly in the Asian jungles and in the bitter Russian winters. “General Winter” is what defeated Napoleon and went a long way to breaking Hitler.
Knowing that this anniversary was coming, I have thought about World War II and the sacrifices it demanded of everyone. Since Korea, we’ve been fighting without asking sacrifices on the home front. In World War II, everyone was contributing.
John D. McCormick, patriarch of the McCormick clan of which I am an “honorary” member stood on the deck of the battleship upon which the Japanese surrendered. I didn’t know that until his Memorial Service.
And it connects me to that war in a way I didn’t feel connected before knowing that. This wonderful man who gave me piggyback rides and twirled me through his legs along with his own children fought in the Pacific and was there to watch the final surrender of the Japanese Empire.
It is with his two oldest daughters and their families I will spend the Holidays.
The ancient Egyptians used to say that to speak the name of the dead is to make them live again.
Today I speak John’s name and thank him for the sacrifices he endured so that I didn’t grow up speaking German or Japanese. I think of Eileen McCormick’s brother who was an airman and did not return from the war, shot down on a mission.
Perhaps today we should all take the time to think, for a moment, of the people of which we know, who participated in that struggle, while the fate of the world hung in the balance. Speak their names to yourself so that they live again, for a moment.
Tags:"General Winter", "The New History Of World War II", CL Sulzberger, Dec 7th, Hitler, Japanese Empire, John D. McCormick, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Pearl Harbor Day, Stephen E. Ambrose, WW II
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