Julia's Mexico City

Have you been watching THE WAR on PBS?



It's brutal and moving and uplifting and depressing.

We were watching Episode 4: The Pride Of Our Nation and it was mainly about D-Day (June 6, 1944) and the Allied invasion of France. One of the survivors was talking about his experience and how he and his older brother both landed on Omaha beach, the most frakked up of the invasion spots that day. This gentleman's brother didn't survive and he said that he would have rather lost his arms and legs than have lost his brother that day. The scene faded out and Kurt got up to go to the kitchen. We had already finished dinner so I wasn't sure why he was getting up. I said, "what are you getting?" and he said, "I need a drink."

And how.

And yet we (the national "we") are At War. Doesn't feel like it at all. Times are different, politics are different, the world is different. But guess what? War is just exactly the same. What's that saying? War is Hell.

Labels: history

Last weekend, I spent Saturday being a tourist in DC. Here are some more pictures.

Outside the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden sits this huge Lichtenstein. (Brushstroke, 1996)

I love Roy Lichtenstein's work and I wish I knew how to speak "art" so I could tell you why. The graphics and colors and giant images pull me in. And the humor. I bought this print about 17 years ago and still love it.


Across the mall, in front of the National Archives (more on that later) is the National Gallery of Art - Sculpture Garden. And because Washington DC is designed so beautifully, I could see the Brushstroke again:

Love that.

After the museums, I sat outside and had lunch, watching people play all kinds of sports. I like how the mall is everyone's playground.


Then I walked down to the Washington Monument and later to the Vietnam Memorial and Lincoln Memorial. (More about them later.)


HOT freakin' day, and muggy. But suddenly (it seems) it is fall here in Washington DC. It's still quite warm during the day, but less muggy and less intense heat. Yesterday, in the shade in the morning it was surprisingly cool. Amazing to live in a place with proper seasons.

Labels: art, history, Washington DC

The last few weeks have been a bit crazy and busy with visiting my sister and a new job. I'm in DC now for work for a few weeks and thankfully, have had a weekend off! I have also been blogging on Metroblogging DC while I'm here and so you can catch up with what I've seen there too.

Friday afternoon I walked over to the backside of the White House after work and saw this gentlemen. I appreciated his sentiment.

Here's his site. By the way, have I ever mentioned how much I LOATHE MySpace? Not the idea of it, not the popularity of it, but the ugly, lame, poorly designed layout that (I guess) people build so that you can't see or get a clear understanding of what is on anyone's page. Un-readable!

Back to DC:

Yesterday I spent the morning at the Air and Space Museum on the Mall. Just walking in the door and being presented with the first space capsules from Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, then Chuck Yeager's X-1 was almost too much too soon! These are aircraft I've read and studied and watched movies about and here they are! Holy cow. I was blown away by how SMALL the original Mercury capsule was for John Glenn. (Brian would never have done very well in there.) They were truly "Spam in a Can". (Speaking of Mr. Yeager.)

The X-1 (aka "Glamorous Glennis") was fabulous. A man broke the speed of sound in that aircraft. People thought it couldn't be done. People thought you would die, instantly break up into a million pieces, etc etc. But of course not. Awesome. Plus the combination of guts and insanity to be a test pilot. The Wright Brothers were brave since people had barely even begun to understand what flight was all about. But flying is commonplace and you start building aircraft that may or may not stay together in conditions no one has ever been in before, that is what pushing the outside of the envelope is all about.

Here she is in action:


I enjoyed the WWII aircraft and history areas as well. I love going to airshows to see them still fly, nothing like seeing a P-51 Mustang zooming overhead. (Chuck flew Mustangs in WWII. No big surprise!) Here is a restored Mustang that flies in Texas:

Gorgeous!

There was more to the day...I'll get back to it later...stay tuned.

Labels: airplanes, history, travel, Washington DC

I found Steve and all is right with the world.

After the post I wrote in July, I dug around in my closet and pulled out my high school yearbook. On Steve's page (seniors got a whole page) he had written a long note but also included his old address and phone number. So I googled the phone number and lo and behold, his parents run a B&B out of their house and there was an email address. I emailed them, and asked if this was the same family and if so, could they please forward my email address on to Steve as I would like to reconnect. His mom wrote back saying yes and yes and that they would give the email to him the next day. This was around July 26 or 27.

I didn't hear a thing from him and I was worried that maybe he didn't want to be in touch with anyone from high school. That would have made me sad, but I also would understand. I know I'm in a very small minority of people who loved high school. Was I popular? A cheerleader? No. We didn't have cheerleaders and even if we did, I wouldn't have gone out for it. I just went to an amazing small school and had great experiences there. Full disclosure -- I was Social Committee Chairperson for two years and then Student Body President in my senior year. I was involved.

But back to Steve. As the days turned into weeks, I also thought that he would write but it would just take time. I've had a few unexpected emails float in over the transom from people I hadn't heard from in ages and often it takes a few days to wrap my head around all the memories that come up around that person. I think email is good for that. People can contact you but its not like getting a phone call and being put right on the spot. Hate that.

Saturday was the day. I got an email from him just as we were about to leave for a dinner party. His note was warm and full of love and fond memories as well as a mini update on his life. We wrote a few emails over the weekend and will continue to do so this week, I'm sure. I'm so glad he is well and happy and just as sweet as ever.

Hooray for the series of tubes!

Labels: high school, history, Seabury Hall

I hit "publish post" too soon!

I looked through the bracelet - how and when to return website and found a full page of information on Sherman, Peter W.!!
And best of all, Jen, here's his picture:



Wow.

He was lost June 10, 1967 in North Vietnam, status: MIA in 1973. His remains were returned to the US in January of 1991.

Labels: hawaii, history, jen

I knew Jen would know the name of her MIA/POW: Captain Peter Sherman of the US Navy.

Bonus! She still has her bracelet:


We were IMing about it this morning and she said:
Mine was a Navy Man that Died in Vietnam....when we were at the wall I found his name and talked to one of the people there who told me where to look on the wall and that he was a navy guy...made me cry

So I looked up the The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Wall site online and found this info:

PETER WOODBURY SHERMAN
CAPT - O6 - Navy - Regular
Length of service 22 years
Casualty was on Oct 17, 1973
In , NORTH VIETNAM
Hostile, died while missing, FIXED WING - PILOT
AIR LOSS, CRASH ON LAND
Body was recovered

You can click through to this page to add personal rememberances or photos. There are three there for Captain Sherman and these comments brought tears to my eyes.

I'm writing this post while I'm clicking through the Vietnam Memorial Wall site (Live blogging my blogging, I guess) and just found this page about Bracelets. Here is a history of the bracelets (quick read) which was an idea of a college student and became a national program. And even more amazing, if you have a bracelet you want to return, you can go here to see if the family is looking for it. There are 8 people listed saying they have Peter Sherman's bracelet with their email addresses. What if they all became pen-pals with my sister and they shared their memories about who they are and where they were when they got the bracelets?

Jen would have to tell it in her own words, and I've never been to the Vietnam Memorial (I've haven't been to DC yet) so I imagine that the experience is intense to begin with. But going to the memorial where the only person's name you might know is from a bracelet you've had for over 30 years, then finding his name and a bit more information about him, must be wonderful and sad. What a connection.

I'm an old sentimental softy. No argument from me there. I just love this kind of thing, the stories, the connections, the history. The internets and all the people behind each page, are amazing.

Thanks for sharing, Jen!

Labels: hawaii, history, jen

While writing about "Walk For Mankind" and my sister and living in Kahala, I remembered that Jen (and all her friends) had MIA/POW bracelets for soldiers in Vietnam. I'm sure Jen still remembers the name of her soldier. To my 7 or 8 year old mind, they were pretty cool and I wanted one. I wanted to wear the name of a soldier in Vietnam on my wrist, to think about him far away. I really don't think I quite understood the reality of all that was going on at the time, but the bracelet brought an immediacy to this hazy "war" thing to my young mind.

I googled around for the bracelets and found this picture:


It came from this website posting from May 2006: Family History Circle: Get Out Your POW Bracelet

You can buy new ones now for people currently serving, but you have to provide the name of the person to have the bracelet made. POW-MIA Memorial Bracelets

I'm not sure where Jen got the one she got, but I like that you were given a random name. Seems nice to send positive thoughts to people you don't even know, remembering them without having met them.

Labels: hawaii, history

(Jen is going "Ha! I remember that!" right now and maybe forwarding this post on to Betsy...)

In Honolulu around 1973 or 1974, there was a fundraising thing called "Walk for Mankind." I was only six or seven, so I remember this event more as a tag-along to my sister Jen. It was created by Project Concern and sponsored by the Ala Moana Jaycees. I did some cursory googling and didn't find much else.

I remember it was a long walk, maybe 20 miles and that it required sponsors. (Though I'm sure I didn't walk 20 miles and didn't have my own sponsor list.) So my sister and her friends were going door to door asking for sponsors. Hopefully they made a lot of money since we lived in Kahala and I recall walking down Kahala Avenue (more on that neighborhood here) and having people answer their doors. There is a specific memory that I have about "looking for sponsors" but am not sure if I was actually there, or just heard about it. (You know how family myths can be.) The memory is of my sister and friends knocking on a door and having a man answer, don't recall how the sales pitch went or if he sponsored, but then when we were leaving, someone said, "That was Peter Lawford!" (Or was it Peter Lorre?) Anyway, I had no idea who either was at the time, but remember thinking just how cool that someone famous lived down the street! (Not long after that I would get to meet Jack Lord and take a photo with him.) (Hey Mom, do you know where that picture is?)

I remember the actual walk day as exciting--tons of people on the roads, walking for mankind, with bands playing at parks along the route and aid stations, etc. I'm sure I walked from our house to Triangle park (only about 1/2 mile) to be part of the fun. Here is the visual--click for bigger. The link to the actual map (so you can zoom around Oahu) is here.

(I guess it is actually called "Fort Ruger Park" but I only ever knew it as Triangle Park.)

Funny thing about Triangle Park -- when Kurt and I (and our great AIDS Marathon team) ran the 2001 Honolulu Marathon, the last few miles are down Kahala Avenue and next to Triangle Park, right by our old home and stomping grounds. Fun to take Kurt on a tour of where I grew up while running a marathon! (We had gotten married only a month before...

(What you can't see in this photo is how hard I'm crying right at that moment. The whole experience was intense and wonderful.) On top of getting married and running a marathon, we raised over $6,000 for Aids Project LA! Thanks to all of our sponsors for that achievement!

The reason these thoughts sprang up is that I emailed blogbud Will to see if he wanted to schedule another long walk toward the end of the year. In February he walked the entire length of Sunset Blvd. and had suggested a walk down Western next. It's only 28 miles! Yippee. I need a new exercise goal to look forward to.

Labels: hawaii, history, us

You've done it. We all do it. Can't help it. You can even buy t-shirts about it. But aside from googling yourself, (googling oneself?), and googling for things we might actually be looking for, I think we most often google old friends or lovers or hot mad crushes who we haven't seen or heard from in years.

I went to a very small high school on Maui. There were 33 people in my graduating class. The whole school was 7-12th grade and had about 200 students. Everyone knew everyone. And yes there were the usual high school groups, but because the school was so small, and there were no "homerooms" and lunch was a different assigned table every two weeks, you were kind of friends with everybody. (It's not the same anymore.)

So how is it that I can still not have any idea where Steve is? I spent about an hour yesterday googling and searching for him online. But he has a very very very common last name so when you google him in a certain city, or any city, for that matter, you get a jillion hits. I thought I got pretty close though, yesterday. I found a picture of a man about 40 who looked like how Steve might look. It was a page with his email address at work. So I emailed him, hoping and hoping. But alas, no. An email came back saying "Nope, sorry, wrong Steve." Bummer. I'll keep trying.

Steve was very dear to me, we listened to music a lot (Cyndi Lauper, Missing Persons, Duran Duran--we were so New Wave.) and talked about all those great teenage things: guys, the future, dreams, college, how sex might be some day (not in too many details though!). I adore Steve, I think I still have notes he wrote me that I stuck in my yearbook. But where did he go? I have no real idea and it makes me sad.

If you are out there Steve, I'm looking for you and hoping you are well and happy.



This was the only picture I could find with me and Steve together. 1985.

Labels: google, high school, history, Seabury Hall