STRAWBERRY CANDY

We got this day lily last year, but it was too late to bloom. It is named Strawberry Candy and is very spectacular this year. Got it through Oak's Daylilies.

ALPHABETS

My brother in law told us about a game his family used to play on trips when he was a kid. Back in the dark ages before they put DVD players in vehicles.

The trick was toi find the alphabet-in order-on the road signs during the trip. Has anyone else heard of this one? I fooled around with it myself on the way home Monday. Some of the letters are ridiculously easy. Any vowels are easy to find. I'm afraid I had to take my Q out of order. Q's are hard to come by on I-5. I didn't find one until I saw a La Quinta sign. Z's are also hard to come by, but at least it's the last letter of the alphabet. Yaaaay Sizzler. Kept me happy between Salem and Albany to the tune of about twenty fine miles or so.

Had fun a few years ago when we took all five boys to the coast. My oldest, and very inventive, nephew Chris kept the other four going with I Spy with my little eye. Yeah, it takes a little work to keep kids occupied, but what are they going to remember about trips a few years down the road? Games and laughter or which movie they watched?

HAPPY FOURTH

We spent the Fourth at my sister's in Portland. The weather was great, they've gotten some more work done on their house, the pups are growing like small weeds (two boxers-Marley the male reminds me of Winston Churchill and is just short of having a "Hapsburg" jaw). They live next to Powell Butte in Portland. She's looking forward to getting the six foot cyclone fence in and letting the blackberries grow up it. With luck, that way the garden may grow faster than the deer can eat it. Squash leaves and blossoms seem to be the favorites right now.

There wasn't much traffic going up and there was none coming home. My definition of no traffic is about eight to ten cars visible in front of me on a three lane highway, three or four visible behind me and about one truck per mile. I took a vacation day today and I suspect that is was pretty slow at work.

We came home to one seriously pouting cat. Lucky's nose was so far out of joint it was in the next county. I think part of it was the fireworks during the day-she hates loud noises. Misty didn't seem to mind so much. But we left early and came home late and the Phantom Furball was not happy. Oh well, she got happy in the same fur coat she got unhappy in. We brought my nephew and half his worldlies back with us. We got a chance to see his apartment. It's the typical student digs. Small and kind of grungie but only three blocks from campus. He has to be down here for conditioning and weight lifting sessions for football. Besides, if you can swing it, it's the best way to get a place locked in for Fall Term. I suspect he won't be spending all that much time there anyway.

Back to the grind tomorrow. A three day week, whoopie. I like my job but trying to work full time and get over the dental work has been a little more stressful than I anticipated. Just keep putting one foot ahead of the other. It's weird some things are easier to get used to than others. Tomatoes, no problem. Cucumbers, no problem. Lettuce-a wee bit more difficult. Leaf lettuce-now that's another story.

Anyway, I hope everybody else had a good time too. And Lisa, I hope you had time to take a picture or two in Seaside. :-)

"ACTIVIST" JUDGES

It seems that some conservatives can't say or write the word judge without the adjective activist. Lisa over at Coming to Terms with Middle Age has an excellent entry on the budding hysteria on both sides. And, I found this quote from Rush "I managed to beat a drug rap by the skin of my teeth" Limbaugh in the Oregonian this morning.

"....This is a great way to illustrate the point that a number of us have been trying to make for a few weeks now, months, even years on the whole concept of judicial activism, because this hysteria, this interest, this breathlessness, shows how a bunch of enelectded judges have become the final authority in our country....."

I would note that the adjective is usually used only when the results are not what was expected or wanted. Deciding a presidential election was not condemned as "activism." At least not by the right.

Uh, Rush ol' buddy ol' pal, can I recommend a couple of books for you. One, "Miracle in Philidelphia" by Catherine Drinker Bowen and "Novus Ordo Seclorum" by Forrest MacDonald. Both probe the intellectual background of the constitution and why the writers did what they did. And in both you will find that the founders deliberately left the highest court not elected but appointed by the president with the "advice and consent of the senate."

Rush, the Supreme Court was designed to be unelected and the first Chief Justice, John Marshall was able to stake a claim to the right for the court to be the final arbiter on whether national laws were in line with the contstitution. Just because a law manages to get passed doesn't make it fair, right or constitutional. Generations of Jim Crow laws, laws to restrict Asian immigration and laws forbidding public school teachers to wear religious dress or symbols while teaching (Oregon had the last one) are proof of that.

The idea that the law is what the judges, (not the king, the president or popular opinion) say it is had its beginnings with the reign of Henry II. This protects us. We've all watched the political philosophy of this country go one way and then the other over the years. While the court also goes one step left, two steps forward, a step and a half right, one forward it doesn't go as far in either direction. I'd say that the volume of gnashing of teeth on both sides is a measure of its success.

ANNIVERSARY

Well, it's been a year since I dipped my toe in the Journal pond. My site has been visited over 2600 times and at least half of those are probably mine. My version of MAC AOL makes each paragraph a single line. This is not conducive (hmmm, that word is worth at least a buck and a quarter) to editing or proof reading. If I can, I do the entry in Word and paste it. And ya know I still end up going in and out a few times until I'm happy.

I think I've written a few things that were pretty darn good, and quite a bit that's passable. The yard looks totally different from last year. The little digital that came with the video camera does NOT take good shots in full sun, they overexpose very badly. The next batch of  35MM  shots will be in next week. The weird weather and the gimpy knees have not made it easy to take pictures. And, unless you want to take extreme closeups lavender doesn't make good pictures unless you have half an acre of it.

The day lilies will be fantastic. The plants are much larger this year and the flower stocks are standing much higher. Yippee! I don't kneel well and you can only do so much bent in half.

I think the biggest change in the last year is dental. From the abcess in late March to I don't know how may follow up visits it's taken until now to get these chompers fairly comfortable. I worked my way through my first salad yesterday and I didn't have any problems today. Biting down in front is still a little weird. Trying to keep everything in place while you move things around is........interesting.

I've read a lot of good writing over the last year. Don't have time to read as much I would like. Thank you Lisa in Scappoose (you know who you are) for encouraging me to get my feet wet and for stopping by regularly with additional virtual "milk and cookies." Thanks to everyone who has stopped by. And here's to another year.

(I'm being zinged by a cat who wants a lap. She does telepathy and if that doesn't work she flexes one delicate claw in the back of my front. Bye for now.)

A MODERN BAND OF BROTHERS

I started out this evening with an entry that was short and snarky. I took it out and put it back in. But, this is a great story and I wanted to post it separately.

I’d love someone from our security establishment to tell me how national security was helped out by this incident and I’m sure the whole story will play really well with the Dutch.

This story is by Mike Francis of the Portland Oregonian.

NEW ‘BAND OF BROTHERS’ JOINS BATTLE TO RETRIEVE LIGHTER FOR WWII VET

The Zippo lighter rests, gleaming, comfortably in the palm, no bigger than a combat medal. It is a small, silvery thing with a thumb wheel and a hinged lid, but this one has no flint or lighter fluid.

What makes it special is who it belongs to, where it’s been and what it says on the outside.

On one polished side, it has an insignia showing a bald eagle with its talons extended, landing between a pair of dice on a cream colored, fan-shaped field, surrounded by a circle of navy blue. On the other side is an engraved map, showing spots named Son, Veghel, Grave, Nijmegen, and Arnheim.

One side of the lid says “Operation Market Garden,” “60 years." the other side says “Bill Wingett.”

For about a week, the lighter was in the luggage of Wingett, a member of Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, a legendary unit known to most Americans as “The Band of Brothers.”

Wingett, who will turn 83 Sunday, lives in Salem. On June 16, he was returning from a trip to Europe as a guest of a group of Dutch people who wanted to celebrate the World War II exploits of Easy Company, from the invasion of Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge. Wingett had been back so tome of the places, but this was his first time to return to Bastogne, where Easy Company endured a brutally harsh and deadly winter in 1944.

“I didn’t enjoy the feeling that friends of mine had died there in the vicinity,” Wingett said Thursday, from the home of his daughter in Southern California.

Easy Company took part in Operation Market Garden, an effort to capture bridges in German occupied Dutch territory, That campaign became the subject of a book and movie called “A Bridge Too Far.”

While Wingett and his companions were in Europe for the reunion tour, they were presented the custom-made Zippos, which replicate the company’s 1941-style lighters. Wingett had it in his luggage when he flew home. When it showed up on thescreening machines at Washington Dulles International airport – after the flight across the Atlantic – an airport security screener told him he had a lighter in his bag, and he’d have to surrender it. Wingett balked.

It doesn’t have fuel and it doesn’t have flint, he pointed out. How can it be considered a lighter?
Sorry, the screener said. It’s forbidden.

“Maybe we’d better get one of your supervisors,” he said recounting the conversation. The supervisor came over, listened to Wingett’s appeal, and told him he’d have to give up the lighter. So Wingett said, “Look, can we ask the pilot to take it and hold it, then give it to me when we reach San Francisco?”

The group went into a little room to ask another supervisor. “She just shook her head and said no airline is going to take responsibility for it.” Wingett said.

Wingett, who had to board his flight, gave up. He took some brochures that offered instructions about how to reclaim property from the Transportation Security Administration then flew home without the lighter. “It was a comedy of errors,” he said, “and I probably didn’t help by creating a bit of a scene when they took it.”

In Salem the next day, Kevin Coady, an Oregon Army National Guardsman who is a friend and admirer of Wingett’s, heard the story. He said Wingett, who is hard of hearing had tried calling the TSA, but couldn’t hear the commands of the voice-mail system. Stuck, he gave up.

“He had this look in his eye,” said Coady, who resolved to help. “I said, ‘I’ll do my best.’ Who wouldn’t?”

So Coady wrote and rewrote a passionate e-mail to United Air Lines, the TSA and a friend he knew from his Army service in Germany. Matt Kozatek.

When Kozatek, now retired from the Army, got the e-mail, he remembered Coady’s stories about Wingett and another Easy Company veteran from Salem, Don Malarkey.

Kozatek, whose father served in World War II, started called and e-mailing. One of is messages found its way to John Williams, a claims representative for United Air Lines, who told the men his rather is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Williams sent a series of e-mails that detailed his own pursuit of the lighter and his zeal to help Wingett, whom he called a “great American.”

One message caught the eye of Jerry Golladay, a TSA aviation manager whose e-mail said he was a retired Navy veteran. “No amount of effort will be spared until we have this figured out,” Golladay wrote at one point. “It is an extreme honor to be of service to and American Armed Forces veteran, especially WWII.”

TSA employees, prodded by the veterans and determined to help, embarked on an intensive hunt that included an examination of videotapes showing the screening process at Dulles Airport and the sorting of thousands of confiscated items.

“They came up empty-handed,” said Ron Sokolov, the TSA’s executive director in the Office of Customer Service and Education. Another TSA official instructed them to try again.

That second search turned up the lighter, loose on a shelf, Sokolov said.

United's John Williams called Wingett at home to give him the news.

"He said he had it and would forward it to Kevin Coady,” Wingett said, “I said that would be very well.”

Wingett is flying home today and expects to have the lighter this afternoon. He said he’s not surprised by all the help he got from people he’d never met.

“I would say that a veteran will help a veteran whenever he can.” Said Wingett. “I try to do it to veterans new and old myself.”

mikefrancis@news.oregonian.com

I know they have to be consistent. But, I’m willing to bet that if the passengers on the plane with Mr. Wingett had been polled they probably would have been willing to risk flying with the 83 year old veteran and his empty, flintless lighter. I decided to copy the whole story because it names so many people who helped this story have a great ending.

WE?

I posted this and then got to thinking it sounded a little snarky but, I think I'll take my courage in both hands and repost it.

I'm only going to make this comment about the president's speech. I have to admit I only know what I read in the papers. It was on during dinner and I wanted to remain one with the excellent omelett I'd just finished.

We're hearing a lot about how "we" have to stay the course.

"What do you mean 'we' Kemo Sabe?"