Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

What Sort of Holiday?

Memorial Day Weekend. The official start of summer. Memorial Day (Observed). Three-Day Weekend. No mail service on Monday. Garbage pickup delayed by one day all week.

What are we to make of Memorial Day? Well, I guess we do a better job of commemorating the official job of it than we do Veterans Day.

Of course not everyone makes it to parades. Or to cemeteries. Not everyone has served in the military, though my dad did and most of my uncles, a couple of cousins. Many, many friends. In the U.S. we give such short shrift to many working people in terms of vacation days and holidays, that making a big commercial deal of Memorial Day is inevitable.

It's the Indianapolis 500 -- won this year under caution as one driver tried a bold move on the start of the last lap and ended up crashing. It's baseball -- with the Cubs swept by the Pirates to complete a 12-game losing skid, mollified only by a dramatic 11-7 win on Monday against the Evil Padres. (If you don't know why they're evil, then you don't know Cubs history.) (grin)

It's the National Memorial Day Concert on the Mall in Washington DC, hosted by Joe Mantegna and Gary Senise, with dramatic readings of letters of those left behind by war, carried live by PBS... well up until the point that they had to switch to a tape of last year's concert, due to severe weather rolling in and having to clear the space.

Even were I to wish to go to any of the public celebrations, parking and my left leg and crowds would have made it difficult. We mostly stayed home.

War Movies

AMC in particular spent quite a lot of the weekend showing war movies -- it's how a lot of people who don't read, serve or talk to those who do, know anything about war. The weekend started, as I recalled, with Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, which we hadn't seen before. Wikipedia says it's "Tarantino's highest-grossing film to date." More than Kill Bill? Amazing. And quite an entertaining train wreck of a movie. Think of it as The Dirty Dozen but more improbable. (grin) Then there's Midway, which aside from some silly personal plotlines, I've always liked Midway more than Pearl Harbor's Tora! Tora! Tora! *** -- you can't beat not knowing how many carriers there are, or "sinking" the Yorktown twice, to turn an assured defeat into a great victory. And thank goodness no one seemed to be showing that stinker Pearl Harbor. Patton, always a personal favorite of mine and George C. Scott's greatest, gravelly role. Heartbreak Ridge, is also improbable and implausible, but there's very little else that covers the invasion of Grenada to free the American medical school students. Call it a guilty pleasure, especially to watch Clint & Co. chew up the scenery. The Great Escape, a romanticized version of an actual breakout during WW II. From the age of Big Epic Movies. I'm surprised it isn't paired up with Stalag 17 for a killer POW double-feature every time.

Then they ran Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers followed by Letters From Iwo Jima, his bookend movies about Iwo Jima -- one about the American invasion and the using of the publicity machine regarding the raising of the flag(s) over Iwo Jima to sell War Bonds, and the other about the Japanese essentially abandoned in place and dug in to delay the Americans and die for the Emperor. I saw most of both, Mrs. Dr. Phil packed it in because the second was running into the early morning hours. We hadn't seen either in the theatres, particularly since (mostly) B&W films don't get booked much and I swear Letters From Iwo Jima was only shown for a couple of days shy of a week on one screen in one theatre-plex in Grand Rapids.

History Channel's six part/three-night miniseries Hatfields & McCoys also began airing on Monday, and given that the roots for the feud began during the American Civil War, which also prompted the historical roots for Memorial Day itself, I suppose it could also be grandfathered into the Memorial Day war movie filmfest.

So there you have it -- a day (or weekend) of Memorial and remembrance of those who have fallen, distilled down to a few public events and hours of movies. Thanks to all who have served, who are serving and who will someday sign up to serve.

From others in the UCF:
David on family who served.
Vince in a poignant Ken Burns moment.
Random Michelle starts with a WW I sad comment.
And then there's Jim Wright from last year, as only Jim can put it.

Dr. Phil

*** Ack! I knew it was Tora not Toro. Thanks! Corrected 5-31-2012.

The Apartment Is Emptied and Cleaned

There comes a time, when faced with a large and daunting job with a limited timetable that one alternately faces despair and satisfaction. First, it's when you show up the day after 90% of the apartment is cleared out -- all the big pieces and hundreds of pounds of clothes, dishes, books, etc. -- and you can't quite figure out what needs to be sorted, what someone was going to take, what's to be disposed of, and just how much of the stuff you've assigned yourself to take is actually going to fit in the Bravada. You can't quite stuff it to the gills because you still have the suitcase and gear at the hotel to load up when you leave in a day or two.

And you're alone. The kind volunteers who are going to help you -- or rather help their friend one last time -- haven't arrived. And you don't know where to start.

But then the help arrives and things are being moved. And the rooms are cleared one by one. And the Bravada is loaded and it will fit. And maybe. just maybe this is going to work.

And out of the blue someone shows up, but it isn't the person you just met the other night who was going to help clean, but an old friend and roommate of Wendy's. And who just found about out Wendy today and still came over to help clean the place. Without having found an address book, I know there are people in Wendy's life who don't know she's died. And I was so glad this person came.

Sometimes getting that second or even third wind is hard. But then you suddenly discover that there is nothing left to do. That it's all done. And you managed to get the rooms done that didn't have lamps done before the daylight left. And you can turn out the lights and close the door. And use the key for one last time.

Today's Amusement

Any house or apartment begins to look sad as it is emptied out. Just as there's a magic point in moving in where an empty space suddenly becomes a home. Or at least looks habitable. Late in the afternoon a U-Haul truck showed up and some young guy began moving into an apartment downstairs. He was an entrepreneur who decided to leave his fancy trendy apartment and pay a lower rent to save money to buy something. His crew were organized and he had plenty of help. There was a symmetry to this and the moving in raised the energy level in the neighborhood and people passed carrying things in opposite directions, chatting and, for some, sharing smokes.

We had three of the four guys from yesterday working today for a number of hours. We'd given them the cans and dried goods from the kitchen yesterday -- today they were going to take the unopened food from the refrigerator. But it got forgotten.

So we invited the new neighbor to come upstairs and load up on whatever he wanted. Actually there was a chilled bottle of Riesling which we sent downstairs as sort of a housewarming present first. Yes there was a lot of stuff we ultimately threw away, but so much stuff which found or will find a new home.

A job well done.

Dr. Phil

56

My sister Wendy died over the weekend.


For many years we got together once a year in Greensboro NC at Christmas. We always did Christmas very well -- and especially had fun with "stocking stuffers", which you can see never could fit in just the stockings. Jackie/Mother, Wendy, Harry/Daddy, Mrs. Dr. Phil


More recent picture from another member of the UCF.

Dr. Phil

Far Better Story Than I Can Say

Stonekettle Station blogger and fellow UCFer Jim Wright put up a link on Facebook to his 7 December 2007 post on Remembering December 7th.

They say that today you get a dividing line age-wise as to whether December 7th is "a day which shall live in infamy" or the day "they shot John Lennon" or, I suppose, the inevitable "who? what?". (sigh) But of course we need to be cognizant of both the impacts on our world, one national and one artistic.

Still, does anyone out there think that the recent movie Pearl Harbor has anything on Jim's telling of his story? Because every year when I've read this story about Edwin J. Hill, Chief Warrant Officer, United States Navy, Chief Boatswain of USS Nevada, moored at battleship row off Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, I get chills.

That is all. Carry on.

Dr. Phil

Nine Years Out From Nine-Eleven

9/11 falls on a Saturday this year. It's the weekend, it's Fall (or at least Fall Semester), and with the kids back in school, colleges in full swing and businesses working as much as they are working in this economy, weekends are made for outside activities. Our schedules are too crowded to give much room for maneuvering, so though there will be some remembrances, much will dissolve into the excitement of college football games, minor league playoff baseball, the winding down of the major leagues and the anticipation of the first real Sunday of the NFL season. There will be the fifth annual Tomato War in downtown Grand Rapids, with two tons of red, ripe tomatoes available for throwing and many bloody Marys will be consumed.

It's raining here in West Michigan. Very different than that perfect blue sky day from nine years ago. Last year I wrote this about the realization that my college students were by and large children when 9/11 happened, and while we are all affected by 9/11 and its aftermath, those who were children may not yet fully understand what happened. A decade from now, my college freshmen will all have been born after 9/11, and will have a very different view of things as those freshmen today don't share my feelings about JFK, Viet Nam, the Apollo Moon landings or the space shuttle Challenger.

A Not Every Year Thing

I went back and located my previous postings on 9/11 -- since I started this blog in 2005, it hasn't been every year. But that's all right. Sometimes one doesn't have anything new to say and it is better to leave the ether waves uncluttered. And though I have NOT gotten very far with my retrospective LJ Tagging project, I have now tagged all those 9/11 entries so if you want to, you can read them all here.

Retired Navy Chief Warrant Officer Jim Wright over on Stonekettle Station has "nothing to add to what I said on the 7th anniversary of 9-11, a piece I strongly recommend to you.

I shall close with what I posted on Jim's piece two years ago, of my own personal 9/11:

Dr. Phil (Physics) said...

9/11 was a day of spectacular high clear blue skies. Just before 9am, and just south of 100th Street on US-131, there was a news blip that a "light commuter plane" had hit one of the WTC towers and that weather was not an issue. My thought was "how stupid did you have to be..."

WOOD-AM was using ABC News as a feed in those days, and they had an architect on the line from another high rise describing in great detail the fire, when he clearly and unbleeped said, "Oh shit, there's another plane." And my blood went cold. One could be an accident, two is deliberate.

By the time I got to Kalamazoo, we had three planes hit, reports of another possibly down -- and rumors of five more hijackings. I went to my 10am class and told them we were under attack and that if anyone wanted to leave and try to learn more, I had no objection. A couple of guys I knew were Guardsmen left. By 11am, returning back to the Physics Dept they'd dug up two ancient portable TVs, and word was the university was closing. The traffic jam lasted over an hour.

When I left after 1pm, there were almost no vehicles on the road, and in flyover Michigan, not one contrail in the perfect clear blue sky. Twice I came over hills and saw zero cars on the road -- it was an SF moment.

About that time it was reported that fighters were scrambling out of Indiana because radar had an aircraft without a transponder coming south down Michigan. Turned out it was some DEA or Border Patrol bizjet with a malfunction -- and not properly cleared. That may have been it for the Battle of Michigan.

I've a lot of students rotating in and out of tours -- happens at a university with science, engineering and a top aviation program. The university has really softened the rules to help them, when they have to deploy in the middle of a semester.

Nowhere close to the front lines, but definitely a nationwide day of infamy which some of us will never forget.

Thanks, Jim.

Dr. Phil
September 11, 2008 6:50 PM

Dr. Phil

Eight Years Out From Nine-Eleven

On the eighth remembrance of the events on 9/11 in the U.S., I note in passing that the times are changing. It would be so easy to just say, "Well, it's a new Administration and...", but that's not it. It's the eight years.

Realize that a typical age for a college freshman is eighteen. 18 - 8 = 10. Ten years old is about fifth grade. So today's freshman might've been in elementary school on 11 September 2001. While I was a pretty aware ten year old, I freely admit that I am weird and an outlier. The impact of that day's events on them would've been, I think, more about seeing the worry on the faces of the adults.

How many fifth graders would've notice how empty and quiet the skies got in the couple of days after 9/11?

I have a clear memory of Eisenhower giving a speech on television. I apparently pointed at the screen and declared, "I like Ike," which got a lot of amusement at the time. This had to have been 1960, when I was two. It is more typical, I am told, to have clear memories of events when one is three or four. 2 + 8 = 10. 4 + 8 = 12. Children who were just aware of the world around them are now finishing elementary school and are in middle school.

Because of the impact of the day's events on schools, this cohort differs from the rest of the elementary school children, who grew up or were born in a post-9/11 world. This latter group has always lived with excessive airport screen procedures and lived with a Department of Homeland Security -- an organization whose purpose I understand, but whose name still makes me uncomfortable.

The memories of 9/11 have softened and faded somewhat, jarred back into reality if one sees a really good 9/11 documentary. Quite a number have shown up on cable in the last week, but surprisingly, a quick scan of channels around 1pm EDT showed only the History Channel showing a line-up of 9/11 shows. It is interesting to me that I can still learn things about the events of that day -- one show documented the calls made by the flight attendants on American Flight 11, essentially the first salvo of a new war. A second documentary showing pictures from Ground Zero in New York brought back the apocalyptic hell-on-earth nightmare of the scene deep into the collapse and debris zones. How does an aluminum street light manage to stand upright and seemingly undisturbed in the same frame as the starkly unreal peeled metal bark of one of the World Trade Center towers?

The other thing about the post-9/11 world of 2009 is that I still see a great deal of respect and honor paid to fire fighters, soldiers and, to what I think is a lesser extent, police officers. In the last few years I've had a lot of my students at WMU either in ROTC, National Guard or having just returned from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one blinks when a trio of students comes into a lecture hall wearing digital camouflage fatigues or a uniform and jacket over shirt and tie. High-and-tight haircuts on men, whether in the service or not, are as mainstream as any other hair style.

Meanwhile the rest of the channels go on with TV judge shows, soap operas, sports events, reruns of comedy and reality shows, etc. As it should be, probably, recognizing that life goes on. Others may spout and vent about the sacrilege of this tragic day, but it will continue to be a generational thing. A where-were-you-on-9/11 thing. A defining moment thing. And eventually just a faded memory thing, like Appomattox or Flanders Fields or Bastogne or Desert One.

Of course on this eighth remembrance of 9/11, we still have considerable troops in the fields and have not neutralized the threats against us completely -- and perhaps never will. Hate is a commodity which can circulate with great rapidity and raining down destruction on civilians is a favorite tactic/pastime of too much of the world's violent minority of haters.

The world exists, as it has for several years, in an odd mixed quantum state of peace and war. I am not so naive as to believe that the terrorists have been stopped and will never attack us again. But Tuesday 11 September 2001 dawned as a beautiful blue sky day over much of the United States, and continued so even into the afternoon. Even after our world had changed forever.

Dr. Phil

Our schizophrenic nation is again... "commemorating" I think is the word I think I want between "celebrating" and "memorializing"... commemorating the events of Tuesday 11 September 2001. There'd been a clear build-up this year, what with probably progress towards building some sort of Freedom Tower at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, a design for a bell tower at the Pennsylvania site and The Discovery Channel's airing of the docudrama The Flight That Fought Back.

I Have Mixed Feelings...

... about TDC's show. I don't know if it is too soon to talk about this. Whether it will spawn trashier made-for-TV versions, etc. Still, it is, I have read, a powerful telling of one of the powerful stories of 9-11, and the advertising on air and in print (see today's Parade magazine supplement in many American Sunday newspapers) has a relentless inevitability which clearly points to the tipping point which those on that flight experienced.

A New Shock To The System

After NY, DC and PA, the scene soon shifted to Afghanistan. The Iraq. And Iraq. And Iraq. And Madrid. And London. Our attention keeps getting divided, we don't always remember to pay attention to everyone all over the world who deserves our thoughts and prayers.

Then Hurricane Katrina came to the front.

Today's Grand Rapids Press' had a wire services story about NYC fire fighters and policemen serving in New Orleans right now, and how despite living and working through 9-11, they are surprised by the extent of the devastation over something like 90,000 square miles.

It's not that we can't feel for all these people and all these incidents, but we do better dealing with stories one at a time. Serial, not multiplexed. It's human nature and human capacity.

So I don't know if the media and politicians were gearing up to hype the fourth anniversary of September the 11th more than was necessary or appropriate, or whether those efforts will be blown by the wayside with our also necessary concerns for the present and those who still need the help now.

Maybe it's not important that we rank our care -- only that we still do.

Dr. Phil