Memorial Day, 2023

Locator: 44771ARCH.

If her signature song doesn't "move you," nothing will. Link here. Dame Vera Lynn died at age 103, in the year 2020, the plague-year.

Saturday night, three-day Memorial Day weekend, over-shadowed by the recurring Charlie Brown - Lucy Van Pelt football gag in Washington, DC, this time starring Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy.

Lots of memories. But they don't come to the surface unless I consciously bring them to the surface.

Perhaps over the next forty-eight hours I might post random vignettes for the archives for the great-grandchildren.

A reader sent me a note tonight regarding Memorial Day. My not-ready-for-prime-time reply:

Never planned, just coincidental: I'm reading Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, 1948 -- the invasion of the Philippines in WWII.

It was one of eight books I bought at Powell Bookstore, Portland, earlier this year, and started reading it this past week. Until your note, I had not noted the coincidence of reading it this weekend.

It's a collector's edition, 75th anniversary of the original publication, and includes 23 letters Norman Mailer wrote his family when he was in the Philippines. I won't read those letters until I finish the book.

I'll post my notes on the book on the blog after I complete the book.

Thank you for your kind comments.

I've read three of Tim O'Brien's four books. Tim O'Brien -- a Vietnam vet -- perhaps the best author / soldier that came out of Vietnam -- he had a great story with regard to protests and thoughts of fleeing to Canada to avoid the war -- gave me a completely different perspective. Read his books years ago.  [Hunter S Thompson also came out of the Vietnam War, but not as a soldier.]

Just rambling. Not much to say. I was very fortunate to have had the opportunities I had. I think that's why I'm content with very few material things. In the big scheme of things, at my age, all I need outside of my family are my memories and my books. And the blog.

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WWII Authors

WWII authors that I've read and that come to mind:

• Ernest Hemingway, of course, but not like the rest; 
• Martha Gellhorn -- even better
  
• J. D. Salinger -- continues to haunt me
  
• Joseph Heller -- another remarkable patriot
  
• Kurt Vonnegut -- a writer's writer
  
• Graham Greene -- perhaps the best? 
• British; the rest in this list, American; I forget who led him to me; my favorite
  
• Norman Mailer -- one book that gives Graham Greene "a run for his money," as they say

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Medical School

A reader sent me a link to an article which brought back this memory:

A patient with multiple myeloma was the very first patient I was ever "assigned" in medical school  -- first year medical student -- Introduction to Clinical Medicine.

My physician / preceptor was a Dr Rhea, I forget her first name but. could find it in my journal if I looked. Wow, she was incredible. And she did not receive a salary from the medical school ... just a "certificate" as a professor.

Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Hollywood.

#1 in California.

#2 in the nation.

https://www.cedars-sinai.org/

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Maternal Grandfather, WWI, And Spanish Flu

Remembrance: for my maternal grandfather who spent much of the war -- WWI -- in a French hospital recovering from the Spanish flu. No pathogen was ever identified and no vaccine was ever developed. In four months:

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The Naked And The Dead

 

Wow, how I love the US and the military. 

I'm not sure there's a better book on "the US and the military in combat" than Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. More on that later, perhaps. When I saw the "story" below, I immediately thought of Maj General Cummings and the invasion of Anopopei, south Pacific, early days of WWII.

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Ms Harris

 

A three-striper who worked for / with me when I was a colonel and the assistant Surgeon General of Air Combat Command.

 

She became a nurse.

 

I received a "thank-you" letter from her some years later, long after our paths diverged.