Thoughts on D-Day, volume 5

This year is the 75^th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Admittedly, that is a LONG time ago, but the fact of the matter is that it happened just a few years before I was born.

Am I really THAT old?

Although the D-Day invasion was one of the most important events of my lifetime, not every U.S. president has spoken there on the anniversary of the invasion. Surprisingly, Jimmy Carter was actually the FIRST president to speak there, which he did in 1978. Reagan was next in 1984, followed by Bill Clinton is 1994, and Barack Obama in 2009 and 2014.

In the years immediately following WWII, many veterans were reluctant to talk about their brutal experiences, so the invasion became a topic to be avoided. Dwight Eisenhower, the man who organized the event, only wrote a short note on the 10th anniversary in 1954.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/06/05/obama-d-day-roosevelt-carter-reagan-bush-clinton/9967199/

Donald Trump will be making the trip this year. Obviously, I am not a fan, and I doubt that his speech will be as eloquent as the speeches given by his predecessors, but I WILL give him credit for at least making the attempt.

https://nypost.com/2019/04/11/trump-traveling-to-normandy-for-d-day-75th-anniversary/

To all the folks who are part of the “baby boomer” generation, the details of the invasion, and the events leading up to it, are well known. Sadly, many of today’s college students are painfully ignorant about WWII in general.

In 2013, a Pennsylvania woman set out with a video camera to learn what college students in her state know about the Holocaust -- and discovered an incredible lack of knowledge not only of the genocide of the Jews, but of basic facts about U.S. history and World War II.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/2013/10/16/the-incredibly-depressing-answers-college-students-gave-when-asked-what-the-holocaust-was-and-where-it-began

Truth be told, the students interviewed can’t truly be blamed for their ignorance, since training about the Holocaust is only mandatory in six states (California, Illinois, New Jersey, Florida, New York, and Michigan).

It’s also not mandatory in every country either. As you might suspect, teaching about the Holocaust is mandatory in Germany, but it is mandatory in only 7 other countries (Austria, France, Israel, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Poland and Switzerland.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_requiring_teaching_of_the_Holocaust

The fact that teaching about the Holocaust is not mandatory doesn’t mean that today’s high school students get no training at all. I’ve been in numerous classrooms in Arizona where “Slaughterhouse-Five" was required reading, and I have also been in  classrooms where Elie Wiesel’s “Night” was on the required reading list.

There have been some excellent movies made about D-Day, and all of them are worth viewing:

https://www.tripsavvy.com/top-movies-about-d-day-1517342

In my opinion, though, the most realistic movie is “Saving Private Ryan”, which was released in 1998. The Omaha Beach scene comes closest to depicting the horror of war:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Saving+Private+Ryan+Beach+Scene&&view=detail&mid=E8424A755AB3A9E5BC04E8424A755AB3A9E5BC04&&FORM=VRDGAR

You’ll notice that this article is the 5^th in a series. Earlier versions can be found in the links listed below:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2014/06/ (the video in this one ALWAYS brings  tears to my eyes.).

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2012/06/thoughts-on-d-day-volume-three.html

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2010/06/thoughts-on-d-day-volume-2.html

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2009/06/thoughts-on-d-day.html (this video will ALSO bring tears to your eyes).

Next Thursday, take a moment to remember the sacrifices made by our men in uniform long ago in a country far away, as well as the sacrifices that some of them are still making today.

They've all come to look for America

Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together
I've got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner's pies
And we walked off to look for America

Cathy, I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
Michigan seems like a dream to me now
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America

Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said, be careful, his bowtie is really a camera
Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat

We smoked the last one an hour ago
So I looked at the scenery
She read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field

Cathy, I'm lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping
And I'm empty and aching and I don't know why

Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for America
All come to look for America
All come to look for America

If you would like to bring back some fond memories, listen to “America” - and enjoy some great scenery. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pWK9KASwFU

The inspiration for the song was a woman named Kathleen Chitty, who Paul Simon met when he toured England’s pubs and clubs in 1963. “America” describes a fictional tour that he took with her across America on a Greyhound bus. She was also the inspiration for “Kathy’s song”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXZyDtzDJMY

Most of us don’t give much thought to the Greyhound bus company, but it is an institution that has been around for a LONG time. The company was started by a Swedish immigrant named Carl Hickman, and the company’s first route was in Hibbing, Minnesota in 1914. The complete history of the company makes for interesting reading, and can be found at the link below. Part of that history, naturally, includes the company’s involvement in the “freedom riders” of 1961.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyhound_Lines

Due to its longevity, the company has been involved in numerous “incidents and accidents” over the years, and it has also has a prominent place in 10 movies and 19 songs.

Declining ridership, and competition from cheap airfares, forced the company into bankruptcy twice in the 1990’s. In 2007, it was acquired by the Scottish transport group FirstGroup.

In recent years, the company has benefited from a wave of immigrants from south and central America. Ironically, the crisis in central America was caused by our own government. During the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, our government supported more than 40 coups in that area in order to defeat communist rulers, and the government was also heavily influenced by “the banana man”.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-banana-man_5.html

Today, more than 5000 refugees a day arrive from the violent countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Once they arrive here, they quickly are dispersed from our border towns to other cities in America. In the vast majority of cases, their transportation is on a Greyhound bus.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/26/us/greyhound-immigration.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Our country has long had a tortured view of immigrants, starting with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which was followed by the Immigration Act of 1924, and the Japanese internment camps of 1942-1945. “Operation Wetback” was set into motion in 1957. Today, we have the “Muslim ban” of 2017.

The refuges from Central America are the latest group who fit into the group mentioned on the plague attached to the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

We really need to be more accepting of the folks coming from “south of the border”. After all, they’ve all just come to look for America.

Söt liten 16

Det har funnits massor av låtar om flickor som fyller 16. Den bästa versionen är överlägset den version som Chuck Berry spelade in 1958.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLV4NGpoy_E&feature=youtu.be

Låtet kom ihåg denna vecka när jag fick min senaste kopia av TIME i posten (lita på mig, det finns en anslutning här).

Titeln på omslaget av tidningen 27 maj var "nästa generations ledare". Historien i tidningen lyfte fram prestationerna på 10 "up and comers". För att vara ärlig hade jag bara hört talas om en av dem.

Hennes namn är Greta Thunberg, och hon är från Sverige. Hon är 16 år och hennes passion är klimatförändringar.

Hon talas med parlamentets parlament och FN: s klimatkonferens i Polen. Hon har också berated miljonärerna på World Economic Forum i Davos, Schweiz, och hon har också träffat påven (som har skrivit en bok om klimatförändringar med titeln Laudato Si). Den 24 november 2018 talade hon på TEDxStockholm

Inspirerad av överlevande av skolskytten i Parkland, Florida, började hon varje fredag ​​varje vecka en veckovis skolverksteg och vänder sig till sociala medier för att bäda politiker för att stödja och vidta åtgärder för att stoppa koldioxidutsläppen.
Efter att hon talade vid FN: s klimatkonferens exploderade hennes anhängare på Twitter, och numera numera över 600.000. Hon har också 1,6 miljoner följare på Instagram. Den 15 mars deltog cirka 1,6 miljoner människor i 133 länder i en klimatpåverkan inspirerad av hennes soloaktion. I mars 2019 nominerade tre ledamöter av riksdagen Thunberg till Nobelpriset.

Förutom alla ovanstående har hon också gjort en hel del mer, som du kan läsa på Wikipedia-artikeln nedan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg

När du tittar på videon på länken nedan, påminna dig själv om att hon är autistisk, vilket borde skingra någon idé om vad du kanske tror "speciella behov" betyder. Hon är också flytande på två språk, vilka få vuxna i vårt land skulle kunna hävda att vara.

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-sz-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=sz&p=greta+thunberg+-+trump#id=8&vid=4871e3631c7a03a0ca5b7015375043bb&action=view

När jag var 16 år kunde jag inte begripa att jag försökte göra vad den här unga tjejen från Sverige gör, men hon är definitivt en inspiration. Eftersom jag arbetar i stor utsträckning med 16 åriga barn ungefär 9 månader på året, garanterar jag dig att åtminstone några av dem kommer att veta vem Greta Thunberg är. Om vi ​​hade fler barn som Greta eller de överlevande i Parkland skulle världen vara en mycket bättre plats.

Sweet Little 16

There have been  LOTS of songs about girls turning 16. The best version, by far, is the version that Chuck Berry recorded in  1958.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLV4NGpoy_E&feature=youtu.be

The song came to mind this week when I got my latest copy of TIME in the mail (trust me, there IS a connection here).

The title on the cover of the May 27 issue of the magazine was “next generation leaders”. The story inside the magazine highlighted the accomplishments of 10 “up and comers”. To be honest, I had only heard of one of them.

Her name is Greta Thunberg, and she is from Sweden. She is 16 years old, and her passion is climate change.

She’s spoken to the U.K House of Parliament and the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Poland. She has also berated the billionaires at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and she has also met with the Pope (who’s written a book about climate change titled Laudato Si). On 24 November 2018, she spoke at TEDxStockholm

Inspired by the survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, she began a weekly schoolwork strike every Friday, turning to social media to implore politicians to support and take steps toward halting carbon emissions.

After she spoke at the U.N. Climate Conference, her followers on Twitter exploded, and now number over 600.000. She also has 1.6 million followers on Instagram. On March 15, an estimated 1.6 million people in 133 countries participated in a climate strike inspired by her solo action.   In March 2019, three members of the Norwegian parliament nominated Thunberg for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In addition to all of the above, she has also done a LOT more, which you can read at the Wikipedia article below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg

As you watch the video at the link below, remind yourself that she is autistic, which should dispel any idea of what you might think “special needs” means. She is also fluent in two languages, which few adults in our country could claim to be.

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-sz-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=sz&p=greta+thunberg+-+trump#id=8&vid=4871e3631c7a03a0ca5b7015375043bb&action=view

When I was 16, I couldn’t possibly comprehend attempting to do what this  young girl from Sweden is doing, but she is DEFINITELY an inspiration. Since I work largely with 16 years old kids roughly 9 months of the year, I guarantee you that at least some of them are going to know who Greta Thunberg is. If we had more kids like Greta or the survivors in Parkland, the world would be a LOT better place.

The 5 C’s of Arizona

Anyone who has lived in Arizona for a while knows that the 5 C’s are copper, cattle, cotton, citrus and climate. All 5 of these were the core of Arizona’s economy when it first became a state, and all of them are still a major part of the economy today, although less so then they were in 1912.

https://azbigmedia.com/five-cs-arizona/

In terms of employment, though, the top 5 industries today would be the unpronounceable acronym of TGPLF, which stand for trade, government, professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and financial activity.

https://www.newsmax.com/FastFeatures/industries-in-arizona-strongest/2015/02/23/id/626413/

One of the reasons that tariffs are always a bad idea is that Arizona exports $9 billion a year to Mexico, and over $2 billion a year to Canada. The state also exports over $1 billion a year to China. Overall, Arizona exports 22% of all the exports produced in the United States.

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/state/data/az.html

The Arizona Office of Tourism is still enamored of the glamour of “the old West”, since the office considers the major industries to be manufacturing, mining and tourism.

Flying “under the radar” are a few surprising facts about the state’s economy:

1)    Arizona was ranked first in the United States by the Solar Energy Industries Association in terms of employment per capita in the solar energy industry in 2012. The Arizona Commerce Authority cited more than 300 days of sunshine a year and a renewable energy tax incentive program that offered up to a 10 percent credit on income taxes and a 75 percent tax reduction on property taxes.

2)   Bioscience is a rapidly growing industry in Arizona, and it currently employs 100,000 people.

3)   High tech manufacturing (including defense) is also a rapidly growing industry. One example of this manufacturing is a company formerly known as Hughes Missile Systems Co. Today, it’s known as Raytheon, and it is the world’s largest supplier of guided missiles. 

Today, there are some interesting twists to the copper mining industry in Arizona . As recently as 2007, Arizona was still the leading copper producing state in the country. As of 2012, there were 10 active copper mines in the state, and another mine (the Resolution Copper project) is still under consideration, but not without controversy. Part of the controversy about the Resolution project is that it is a joint venture owned by two foreign companies. More importantly, the mine would destroy an area set aside in 1955 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower which is sacred to the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. Both the Oak Flat Campground, an area dotted with petroglyphs and historic and prehistoric sites, and the steep cliffs at Apache Leap would be affected. In July 2015, a march protesting the land swap arrived in Washington DC.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_mining_in_Arizona

Another little known fact is that Winston Churchill has a connection to the former mining town of Jerome, Arizona. When Jerome was just a small mining camp, financing was needed to pull the copper out of the ground. New York financier Eugene Jerome provided the financing, but never visited the town. He was a nephew of Leonard Jerome, who was Jennie Jerome’s father. When Jennie married Lord Randolph Churchill, their first child was named Winston Churchill, and he went on to become the Prime Minister of England – twice.

https://jeromehistoricalsociety.com/eugene-jerome-and-winston-churchill/

Jerome, incidentally, is just one of the many “ghost towns” in Arizona, Jerome has numerous ghosts, including a spectral cat that is still seen by guests at the Mile High Inn today.  

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/az-jeromehaunting/ 

If “the spirit moves you”, you can also explore the rest of the Arizona ghost towns in a book titled, “Arizona Ghost Towns and Mining Camps”

https://www.amazon.com/Arizona-Ghost-Mining-Travel-History/dp/1932082468

It seems just like yesterday

I graduated from college in May of 1969, almost exactly 50 years ago. The year  was a very memorable one, in ways both good  and bad. The link below contains a listing of all of the major events of the year. However, since all of us get enough bad news just about every day, I’ll just list a few of the more memorable (and happy) events of each month, as we travel backwards  through time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969

January – One of rock’s best groups, Led Zeppelin, released their first album on January 12. (Their 4^th album two years later included Stairway to Heaven, considered by many people to be one of the greatest rock songs of all time). On the same day, “Broadway Joe” Namath and his Jets upset the Baltimore Colts in Superbowl III 16-7.

February – In a case that still has relevance today, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District was ruled on in favor of the dependents on February 24. The defendants (the Tinkers) wore black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam war, and the Supreme Court ruled in their favor. In recent months, students in a Phoenix suburb wore MAGA hats to school. The court allowed them to wear the hats, but prohibited their banners.

March – On March 3, the United States Navy established the Top Gun Program at Naval Air Station Miramar, allowing brave pilots to venture further into “the danger zone”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUsFWO08CO0

On March 30, the body of Dwight Eisenhower is brought by caisson to the United States Capital.

April – On April 8, the Montreal Expos debut as the Major League Baseball’s first team outside the United States.

May – On May 25, Midnight Cowboy, an X-rated Oscar- winning film, is released.

June – On June 22, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland catches fire. The event so galvanized the nation that an avalanche of water control regulations (the Clean Water Act, Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and the EPA) were passed within a year. On June 28, the Stonewall riots in New York City started the gay rights movement in the United States.

July – On July 14, “Easy Rider” is released in theatres. Costing no more than $400,000, the movie ultimately grossed $60 million worldwide, making Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper very wealthy men.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXBAgAxn1x4

On July 18, Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne drove off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, casting a shadow on his political career that lasted for decades. On July 20, Neil Armstrong took a giant step for mankind by walking on the surface of the moon

August – The Woodstock Festival is held at Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York from August 15-18.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_raXzIRgsA

September – On September 1, Muammar Gaddafi benefited from a bloodless coup d’etat, and came to power in Libya. On September , the first ATM machine is installed in Rockville Center, New York. On September 23, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid opens to limited release in the United States.

October – The New York Mets defeat the Baltimore Orioles four games to one in one of the greatest upsets in baseball history. On October 29, the first message is sent over ARPANENT, the forerunner of the internet.  On October 31, Wal-Mart incorporates as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

November – On November 9, a group of American Indians seizes Alcatraz Island, and offers to buy the land from the federal government for $24, roughly what the government paid the natives for Manhattan Island. Sesame Street airs its first episode on the NET network on November 10.

On December 1, the new draft lottery begins, and September 14 was the first date drawn. (My number was 165, which caused me to join the National Guard in February of 1970, Since 30 dates were being drawn each month, I would would have been drafted sometime in May). On December 2, the Boeing 747 makes its first passenger flight.

In 1965, Frank Sinatra released a Grammy award-winning song titled, “It Was a Very Good Year”. 1969 was definitely one of those years.