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Showing posts with label Memorial weekend. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Memorial weekend. Show all posts
Sunday, May 29, 2016
Saturday, May 28, 2016
KLEM FM
Marlene's German lyrics closely follow the very simple English ones. Test your German familiarity. I do like one distinction, however:
Wann wird man je verstehen, [When will they ever learn,]
Wann wird man je verstehen? [When will they ever learn?]
The original phrase "when will they ever learn" grates on me because it blames others for the human condition. In the context of the original song, it was very much an "us vs. them" mentality. According to Pete Seeger and a very eager postwar generation, war was what other people did. Nowadays, war is what the US does; "others" are freedom fighters. The German version is one step closer to the truth and Google is a full measure closer to the truth:
Not "when will they ever learn"; not "when will one ever learn"; but rather -- when will we ever learn? It's the pronoun, you see.
Pete Seeger is credited with writing most of the song, but a lesser-known songwriter named Joe Hickerson (who is still alive?) nearly perfected it by turning the song into a circle. Another example of such a circular song is Zager and Evans' "In The Year 2525." Can anyone think of others?
The song is also an example of a now rare artistic device called Ubi Sunt.
"Why A German Pilot Escorted An American Bomber To Safety During World War II"
Jalopnik: It was a few days before Christmas in 1943, and the Allied bombing campaign in Germany was going at full tilt. Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown was a freshly minted bomber pilot, and he and his crew were about to embark upon their first mission — to hit an aircraft factory in northern Germany.
Brown’s B-17F Flying Fortress, dubbed Ye Olde Pub, was typical of American heavy bombers of the time. Along with an 8,000-pound bomb capacity, the four-engine plane was armed with 11 machine guns and strategically placed armor plating. B-17s cruised at about 27,000 feet, but weren’t pressurized. At that altitude, the air is thin and cold — 60 degrees below zero. Pilots and crew relied upon an onboard oxygen system and really warm flight suits with heated shoes.
As Ye Old Pub approached Bremen, Germany, German anti-aircraft batteries opened up on the formation. Unfortunately for the pilots and crew of Ye Olde Pub, one of the anti-aircraft rounds exploded right in front of their plane, destroying the number two engine and damaging number four. Missing one engine and with another throttled back due to damage, Ye Olde Pub could no longer keep up with the formation. (read the rest here)
Sunday, May 24, 2015
"My Son Died for Ramadi. Now ISIS Has It"
"Debbie Lee says she’s sickened that the city her son sacrificed his life defending has fallen—and furious at the Joint Chiefs chairman’s insistence Ramadi is ‘not symbolic in any way.’"
A continuing comfort to her is her son’s last letter, an email that arrived a fortnight before his death. She had been amazed by the depth and power of these words from the homeschooled son who had always needed extra nudging when a subject did not interest him.
“Language was not one of the strong ones,” she recalled on Monday.
His was now a soul seared to eloquence.
“You can feel the deep impact of being in Ramadi, being in the war zone,” his mother said.
In the letter, the son wrote of the elusiveness of glory and of the enormity of violent death.
“I have seen death, the sorrow that encompasses your entire being as a man breathes his last,” he said. “I can only pray and hope that none of you will ever have to experience some of these things I have seen and felt here.”
But amid the worst, he had seen the importance of kindness and decency, moments when America was at its shining best. He urged those back home to do their part in the struggle to make our country realize its full greatness:
Ask yourself when was the last time you donated clothes that you hadn’t worn out. When was the last time you paid for a random stranger’s cup of coffee, meal or maybe even a tank of gas? When was the last time you helped a person with the groceries into or out of their car?
Think to yourself and wonder what it would feel like if when the bill for the meal came and you were told it was already paid for.
More random acts of kindness like this would change our country and our reputation as a country.
It is not unknown to most of us that the rest of the world looks at us with doubt towards our humanity and morals.
I am not here to preach or to say look at me, because I am just as at fault as the next person. I find that being here makes me realize the great country we have and the obligation we have to keep it that way.
The 4th has just come and gone and I received many emails thanking me for helping keep America great and free. I take no credit for the career path I have chosen; I can only give it to those of you who are reading this, because each one of you has contributed to me and who I am.
However what I do over here is only a small percent of what keeps our country great. I think the truth to our greatness is each other. Purity, morals and kindness, passed down to each generation through example. So to all my family and friends, do me a favor and pass on the kindness, the love, the precious gift of human life to each other so that when your children come into contact with a great conflict that we are now faced with here in Iraq, that they are people of humanity, of pure motives, of compassion.
This is our real part to keep America free! HAPPY 4th Love Ya
Marc Lee
P.S. Half way through the deployment can’t wait to see all of your faces
On August 2, 2006, Lee and his team got into a gun battle with a large force of insurgents in south-central Ramadi.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Memorial weekend
Official twitter account of Democratic party, so it says.
We're glad you're happy. We do realize this is the best you can manage. Enjoy your ice cream, your photo op while eating it on this national funeral weekend of remembrance.
The faces that go across the screen of young men who have died in service to our country used to look so mature and advanced, disciplined, well put together in their uniforms and their home activities, and now as I age they all look to me like children, the flower of our nation.
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