5/30/2021

 

Weekly Update 5/30/2021

I started out the week with a visit to BC and the grave sites of John and Dessie. I had written a short letter to the BHS newsletter, explaining about “my soldiers” and what I had found on my search for information about them. I guess because I’d found it interesting, I assumed others who are Bonaventure-phobics might be interested as well. I don’t know if it will be included in an upcoming newsletter, but the editor responded by asking if I had any photos of myself visiting those headstones. Well, no; why would I? But I went Monday to remove the spring tulips and replace them with red, white and blue carnations. Another member of BHS was there, so I asked Stacy if she would take a couple of photos for me. It will be interesting to see if this story is ever published.

The world’s largest container ship arrived in Savannah on Wednesday. There was much about this event in the news, and I had actually toyed with the idea of getting up incredibly early to be downtown along the river at 8:30 am, but of course I didn’t do that. I can see container ships any time I want, and this will not be the last mega ship coming to port in the years ahead. I did watch a video on the news as the ship passed under the Talmadge Bridge. And I found a terrific photo online, taken at Old Fort Jackson.

On Thursday, there was an interesting lecture at The Learning Center on The Rise and Fall of Kodak. I really wanted to attend, but Thursday is the day when I meet friends in Green Square, and I’m reluctant to pass that up. Because of the pandemic, and the vulnerability of seniors, most lectures are now recorded and available online if a member opts not to attend in person. So I did that. It was interesting, with a history of Eastman Kodak, and analysis of what went wrong.  

On Sunday, I went to the Mighty 8^th Museum because they added 26,000 flags to the memorial gardens – each flag representing an 8^th Air Force Airman killed in World War II. There were so many, my little iphone camera couldn’t possibly include all of them in one shot. It was an impressive sea of small flags, and truly humbling to see how may there were.

In a somewhat related story, the book I read this week was Facing the Mountain, by Daniel James Brown. It told in brutal detail about the 442^nd Infantry Regiment, which was composed almost entirely of second-generation American soldiers of Japanese ancestry, who served as many of their family members were incarcerated in camps in the Western US.

I put away my spring flowers and set out my red, white and blue stuff this weekend. I have a wooden flag that I have hung on my door in the past, but I just couldn’t do it this year because of all the patriotism that is associated with flag waving, and I just can’t be part of that. I put a wreath of summer flowers on the door, instead. And a door mat of flip flops.