goodbye, farewell, auf wiedersehen goodnight
Is it tomorrow yet, or is it still yesterday?
So the last of our American troops are out of Iraq after what is a lifeTime for many and death for tens of thousands. Judgment on whether we should have been there or not is moot, we're out, and the Iraqi people should be relieved because once America gets in and a foothold, it's not easy to get shed of us. I've wondered how Germans really feel, even with the Russian threat, about American soldiers still being there, now eighty-one years after our World War Two victory and occupation.
And Japan, the Japanese. Living in Japan in the mid-1960s, I watched as hordes of Japanese demonstrators danced and chanted and moved against the main gate of the U.S. Naval Base, Yokosuka (a major Imperial Japanese Navy base during WW2, but ever since then the homeport of the US 7th Fleet), the weight of the immense crowds bowing the gate and fence inward while I stood and watched as the evening duty officer. I was a US Navy lieutenant, there was an admiral to phone if the demonstrators broke through the gate.
The Korean War started summer 1950, we are still there.
American troops are not in Vietnam, or Afghanistan, or, now, Iraq. I remember my father, when I was stationed in a US Navy warship operating off Danang - - now Ho Chi Minh City - - during the Vietnam War, railing that the United States had no business there, sending young Americans to fight and die for something that was not in America's vital national interest. Of course we left in due course, driven out and our Vietnam allies scrambling over walls and fences as they fled to safety just ahead of avenging enemy forces overrunning them. We were kicked out. If we'd won that war we'd still have troops there in a situation identical to Korea; as it is, we're on good terms with the unified Vietnam. Maybe it could have been so with Korea?
And in fact we rushed out of Afghanistan, fleeing and getting shot at as the Taliban rode back in on their pickup trucks and motorcycles, didn't we.
IDK. In fact, for all my opinions, IDK nothing, not one blasted thing.
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Thursday coming up this morning. Mondays and Thursdays the wound care specialist, an RN, comes to 7H to check on the leg wounds that put me in the hospital for four days and four incredibly miserable, wretched nights during my birthday month. Now, from a home health care service, a nurse comes by appointment the two days a week. Takes off the bandage, checks the sores, which are healing; cleans and administers medicine, bandages, then wraps up afresh until next Time. Because the bandage isn't to be wet, I can't shower between their visits, but I can remove the dressing and shower just before the nurse comes, which will be my treat this morning.
A shower is a treat? Listen, this is life, it's a gracious gift, every moment of Time is to be relished. A shower twice a week is a happiness!
Are you interested? My bathroom has a standard tub and shower, which as I've aged has given me huge uneasiness about being safe and not falling, so now I use the step-in shower in Linda's bathroom. We have it doctored up with so many safety features, including a seat. Never in my life before age ninety-one did I sit down to shower, but that Time is here. The inclination is to just sit there and let the hot water rain down on head, shoulders, back. It's a new feeling of being safe that I'd never have thought.
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But war, Venezuela, Iran, railing threats at Cuba and to wipe Iran from the face of the Earth. We thought we'd elected a peace prize candidate? I remember my father's anger at George Bush that taxes were raised after the president promised during his campaign, "READ MY LIPS: NO NEW TAXES." Just so, 2024 campaign promises: peace, no foreign wars, reduced prices and slowing inflation. It's all exactly the opposite. This is "turning America around"? I'm telling you, boy! Rounding up legal immigrants and shipping them off to prison in crappy countries they never heard of is "making America great again" AYKM? And we think AI is a threat?
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Today is our day this week to visit Malinda at Pruitt Health, then Linda, Kristen and I will eat out somewhere. Maybe here in St Andrews, maybe elsewhere. I like to graze at Chow Time, the seafood offerings; the sushi used to be okay, our last Time there it was a huge offering but not my taste, which is slices of raw seafood over lumps of sushi rice; but the other seafood offerings are consistent and interesting. A couple kinds of mussels, shrimp, fish, now and then frog legs, king crab legs. The spicy hot & sour soup that I load with mushrooms. We may go there again. Or here on Beck Avenue for seafood, or Tex-American, or pizza; not likely sushi and curry but conceivably, I suppose.
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It's two-oh-six a.m. and I'm here, outside on 7H porch yesterday this Time, inside today this Time, thinking lightly not heavily, and sipping club hot & black from my magic mug. Friends, we haven't much Time, and Life is Good. How might you explain to your Maker that you used it?
RSF&PTL
T91