(Football Fans with plastic trumpets- Photo Coca Cola of South Africa)   I was chatting with a pal in Germany over the weekend when she remembered that England was playing the U.S. in that strange game that everyone cares about except us. It is in South Africa, as you may have heard. I have had […]

(The site of the previous really big deposit of strategic minerals, before this morning) This is a whole new ballgame Up North, and in the Theater of Operations as well. Odd that they come together as they have.   I can’t get away from the war, it appears, or rather either one of them. I […]

(First Ranger image of the Lunar surface. NASA photo.)   Being Up North this time is about the collision of the past and the future, me being stuck in the eternal now. It is a challenge, but not in a bad way. Just confusing. Mom came out last night looking to see if I was […]

The faces around the table last night have known one another for nearly sixty years. Mom and Dad were there at the beginning, of course, and they are the last ones left of their generation. The Cousins are here as a sort of interim valedictory visit.   Can’t tell what is going to happen, and […]

(B-29s with Mt. Fuji. USAAF picture.) November of 1944 was a tough month for all the rookie crews on Saipan. They had crossed the vast pacific in their virgin aircraft and were now confronting the dual enemies of distance and Japan. This month was the baptism of combat, since it included strikes against heavily defended […]

  (“Tokyo burns under B-29 firebomb assault.” May 26, 1945. Army Air Forces picture)   Bill McCullough wants to get out the story of his first cousin, Harold. It was first told a long time ago in an Air Corps in-house organ commemorating the day the first two crews of Brigadier General Emmet O’Donnell’s bomb […]

(Isley Field, Saipan, filled with Super Forts. Late 1945. Army Air Corps picture)   Bill McCullough is a Great American. So is his cousin Hal, a survivor of Crew 17. I will tell you more about his crew tomorrow, but the stories of how they bombed Japan and survived their thirty-mission compact with fire and […]

(B-29 formation enroute Tokyo from Saipan under attack by Japanese fighters, 1944)   There is a lot to talk about this morning, but I don’t have time to get to it all. I had a throw-down in the Big Pink lobby with one of the Board members about the smoking ban at the pool, and […]

The Severe Thunderstorm Alert had passed and it looked like we were not going to get the Tornado that they had set a watch for earlier in the day, but you could sense the potential for violence in the swirling gray clouds that advanced from the west with short gusts of wind.   I just […]

    I was sitting with the Admiral the other night on the eve of the Battle of Midway, the Navy’s greatest triumph. I was embarrassed the significance of the date did not come up, and that was sort of strange, since the Admiral is one of the last people alive who contributed to the […]