All Purls. No Swine.
It's Memorial Day weekend here in the USA. The approved Memorial Day for 2023 is Monday, May 29, although my mother-in-law never called the actual day anything but Decoration Day, and never commemorated it on any day other than May 30 in any given year. Unfortunately, in 1971, as part of a mad rush at… Continue reading Memorial Day, 2023
Eighty years ago, on May 16-17 1943, an elite group of airmen, mostly from the Royal Air Force, but also with contingents from Canada and Australia, took off in nineteen Lancaster bombers from the RAF station in Scampton, Lincolnshire. Their mission was clear: Destroy three dams in Germany’s Ruhr valley, thus taking out the hydroelectric… Continue reading Dam Busters +80
...US President George W. Bush ordered air strikes on Baghdad, launching the war for "regime change," and for the ousting of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The war was premised on the the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies. Such a belief is now deemed… Continue reading Twenty Years Ago Today, on March 19, 2003…
She was born in Birmingham on January 23, 1912, into an England that was rending itself apart. Suffragettes demanding a woman’s right to vote were chaining themselves to Parliament’s railings, smashing storefront windows in Oxford Street, and living-room windows in Downing Street. Newly-empowered Socialist labor unions were flexing their muscle, threatening strikes in coal mining,… Continue reading For Jenny Alice May Mapson (Auntie Betty): 2023
...is to tell their stories. That's what I've tried to do, over the years, with my family members--father, mother, husband, stepson Sam, stepson Mike, friend Colleen, Mr. Right's first wife, Auntie Pat, and many others I've lost over the years. Some of them certainly didn't start out as natural allies. But they ended up as… Continue reading The Best Way to Memorialize the Dead…
Thomas Herbert Mapson was my Auntie Betty’s father. (Strictly speaking, she wasn’t my auntie–being my great-grandmother’s niece–and her given name wasn’t Betty–they were Jenny Alice May–but “close enough for gubmint work,” as they say. He was born and baptized in Bilston, Staffordshire in the UK, on July 4, 1878. Given what I’ve found out about my… Continue reading In Memory, Thomas Herbert Mapson
The United States of America abolished the draft (most recently) in 1973. Subsequent to that date, all the forces have been all-voluntary. Previous to that date, conscription had been an on-and-off sort of thing, occurring between the Revolutionary War and the Vietnam War, as convenient and as required. In these most recent days, as we… Continue reading What About The Draft?
Oh, Gosh. Eighty years ago today, Glenn Miller and his Orchestra made their last live radio broadcast: https://youtu.be/xQY3Qc_CM7E I'm a bit younger than many who might remember this (I was 68 this past week). But I grew up in the British West African colonies, and we were a bit behind the eight-ball when it came… Continue reading Sweet-Sounding Saturday: Eighty Years Ago Today
Thus spoke President Harry Truman of Ernest Taylor Pyle. Ernie Pyle was born 122 years ago today, on August 3, 1900 in Dana, Indiana. He died not quite 45 years later, on April 18, 1945, in the Iejima Okinawa Prefecture of the Empire of Japan, killed in action while doing what he loved. Having missed… Continue reading “He deserves the gratitude of all of his countrymen”
One of the touchstones of my life has always been the story of how my dad met the Pope, in Rome, on June 5, 1944. Truth be told, my mother always pooh-poohed the whole thing a bit (not unusual for Mum to do something like that, especially for an event in which she wasn’t the main… Continue reading “His Holiness Will Receive You in a Few Moments. I could Have Dropped Dead!”