Collections

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There’s the largest ball of twine and dryer lint, Coke bottles, and spectacles, but for most people collecting is a little more subdued. For each of us collectors we all have our origin stories, how we began collecting our treasures, our first whatever. We get all excited and starry eyed talking about our things and hope in our reverie that our audience’s eyes haven’t glazed over while they go over their shopping list in their heads.

For me, I’ve had several collections over the years for a multitude of reasons. When I did historical re-enactment, I collected all manner of books on the Middle Ages: art, children’s history, fiction. When I was a teacher, I collected children’s cooks. I’m always on the lookout for Jewish stories for children. After my first visit to Wales. I’ve collected both history books and travel ones. Books are big in our family. My husband and middle son collect comic books (and action figures). My daughter’s love is fashion – reading about it, wearing it, and designing it.

When I travel, I still collect pins and postcards and foreign money, especially coins, and ask friends to collect it for me since I travel so infrequently. I also collect griffins and pewter pieces.

My mother collected stamps. My brother has her collection, and she started getting my son some when he was a baby, like dinosaurs, comic strips, super heroes, etc. We still do that, but we’re more selective as they relate to our interests (Batman, Star Wars, and the like. I recently bought a sheet of Harvey Milk.) There is something for everyone.

I have a couple of church friends who collect Mary (the Blessed Mother) statues from their world travels.

In an informal poll on my Facebook, I was surprised by the diversity of people’s collections, some I’d heard of, but many I had not even considered. Demographically speaking, not including myself, respondents were ten female and two male, ages between 21 and 71. Orientation was evenly split for those that identify publicly and all but two were the same race. Most religious practices were unknown to me, but two are Jewish and five are practicing Christians with various degrees of devotion. All but one are college educated with four still in college. Jobs include administrative assistant, nurse/LPN, teacher, nanny, EMT, with two in the insurance industry.

Here is a rundown of the collections; maybe you’ll find one of your collections on this list:

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Christopher Lee dies at the age of 93

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Christopher Lee dies at the age of 93

This is so so sad. What a wonderful human being. If all we look at is his acting, that would be enough to remember but Christopher Lee was so much more. I’ll post all of that later when I find the words. For this moment, the world has lost an incredible treasure and one of the finest people known.

Rest in peace; you’ve earned the respite. For the rest of us, sadness.

Collecting

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I have collections of quirky things from places I’ve been to, like a set of Russian dolls.

–Emma Watson

To create is to relate. We trust in the artist in everybody to make his own connections, his own juxtapositions.

–Sister Corita

Collectors are happy people.

–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The art one chooses to collect becomes a self-portrait.

– Dennis Heckler

What is a collector? It’s an innate trait. We start as children collecting leaves, or stamps or stones and, as we get older, teens collect friends, CDs and, as an adult, it can be anything.

-Edgar Paulik

Honoring Them

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This began as my memoir workshop homework. It was my third attempt, but it seems as though the third time’s the charm. Our prompt was Uniform. I really had such a hard time, but then I realized that this past week had been unusually full of men in uniform, beginning seven days ago with Beau Biden.

Beau Biden is the son of the Vice President, and I’ve followed his family since my infant days as a political junkie. Joe Biden, then Senator wasn’t from my state, but I knew his name. He spoke his mind. Often. He was almost just as often ridiculed for it and mocked at his many slips – being honest has that effect – sometimes you put your foot in your mouth, and Joe Biden was kind of an expert at that, at least where the media was concerned. I still liked him. He said what he thought and he stood by that.

I found out later that between being elected (youngest in fact) and Christmas, his family was in a devastating car accident. They were hit by a tractor trailer, and his wife and daughter died. His two boys, Beau and Hunter were seriously injured. In fact, Joe took his oath of office in their hospital room.

He was a single father traveling between Washington and Wilmington daily so he could put his kids to bed and be there when they woke up. This was the example the Beau (and his brother) saw growing up.

When Beau Biden was Attorney General of Delaware he took a leave when his National Guard unit was called up to active duty for a tour in Iraq. Tour. They make it sound so pleasant, don’t they?

There’s a picture of when he returned of he and his father facing each other, standing eye to eye, and I get emotional every time I see it from that first moment. Beau is standing tall, military straight-backed as he looks at his father the Vice President with respect and his father looking at him with that same respect but the added pride of a father knowing that his son has done good. It’s hard to imagine that much emotion coming from a still picture.

He introduced me, through his work to the Darkness to Light Foundation which empowers people to prevent child sexual abuse.

He was 46, and the word was that he intended to run for governor of Delaware in 2016. He probably would have won; he was a fine man, a good and decent man. He would have made an excellent President one day.

Sadly, he died one week ago after his brain cancer recurred. Today was his funeral, a full military funeral. He had been ill for several weeks, but like his whole family, this was kept quiet from the media.His family was there with him, and he leaves behind a young family – a wife, and two children, ages 11 and 9, the ages of my two youngest kids.

As President Obama eulogized him, he called him a “consummate public servant.” That is a summation that I’m sure Beau would appreciate.

His family has asked in lieu of flowers that donations be made to The Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children.

I could end this here, and it would be enough, but Beau Biden wasn’t the only Army serviceman in the news this week.

Later in the week, we had a 180 degree turn from our sadness for and with the Biden family. On Tuesday, men in uniform were uplifted to places of honor after being ignored for nearly one hundred years. Sgt. William Shemin, a Jewish serviceman from Syracuse, NY and Pvt. Henry Johnson, African-American from Albany, NY were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor from President Obama. Both enlisted during World War I; both fought in France. Henry Johnson’s unit was assigned to the French government because white soldiers wouldn’t work alongside Black troops, even though they were all Americans.

Both continued fighting after they were wounded. Sgt. Shemin took command after all of the commanders and non-commissioned officers became casualties. Pvt. Johnson took on 20 Germans. The French government awarded him the Croix de Guerre, the first American to receive that with star and Gold Palm. He died in 1929 with no recognition from his own government. Finally, ,in 1996 and 2003, respectively, he was awarded the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Service Cross. His son, Herman was a Tuskegee Airman, and received the Distinguished Cross for his father.

His Medal of Honor was presented on Tuesday to a member of the New York National Guard while Sgt. Shemin’s was presented to his daughters, age 83 and 86.

Today we continue to talk about our troops, cheer at parades, offer a military discount here or there, but many of our troops come back broken, some in ways that can’t be seen, and they are fighting tooth and nail to get their needs taken care of, almost as much as they fought the enemy in the combat theatre.

They are not a group that tends to complain. They wait, but they are misdiagnosed and discharged from service with no resources or support for housing, food, or health care. Men (and women) with PTSD remain on waiting lists for therapy and service animals. They are directed to private organizations that cost money and have even longer waiting lists. They will forever be burdened with what they endured in combat. Flashbacks and nightmares are only the tip of a very large iceberg. Many of their families live in poverty, houses foreclosed on. Many are homeless. Many commit suicide. They need, and should be given as much support as they gave their country when it called them. Giving so much, they should not be on anybody’s waiting list.

History Recs

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Partial list of links posted this week:

The D-Day Memorial and Museum
Wikipedia – Normandy Landings
Wikipedia – USS Slater
USS Slater
The Washington Post article about Dutch WWII American Cemeteries
These Women Pilots During World War II Went Unrecognized for Nearly 35 Years
Henry Johnson at Arlington Cemetery
Harlem Hellfighters Visit Henry Johnson’s Grave
It Took 97 Years to Get These Soldiers the Medal of Honor
Two World War I Soldiers to Posthumously Receive Medal of Honor
Video of Medal of Honor Ceremony, June 3, 2015
Shaker Site
Mother Ann Lee
Video of Simple Gifts

Books (including Historical Fiction (HF)):

1014: Brian Boru & The Battle for Ireland – Morgan Llewellyn
4000 Years of Uppity Women: Rebellious Belles, Daring Dames, and Headstrong Heroines Through the Ages – Vicki Leon
A History of the World in Six Glasses – Tom Standage
Anything by Bernard Cornwell (HF)
Anything by Sharon Kay Penman (HF)
Castle – David Macaulay
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawning of a New America – Gilbert King
Did Prince Madog discover America? – an investigation by Michael Senior
Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World – Matthew Goodman
History Decoded: The 10 Greatest Conspiracies of all Time – Brad Meltzer with Keith Ferrell
How the Scots Invented the Modern World – Arthur Herman
Johnny Tremain – Esther Forbes
Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies – Herb Reich
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer – James L. Swanson
Moon Shot – Alan Shepard & Deke Slayton with Jay Barbree
My Beloved World – Sonia Sotomayor
Summer of ’49 – David Halberstam
The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt
The Dust Bowl – also a documentary
The Jet Sex – Victoria Vantoch
The List (fictionalized) – Martin Fletcher
The Man Who Would Not Be Washington: Robert E. Lee’s Civil War and His Decision That Changed American History – Jonathan Horn
The Presidents’ War: Six Presidents and the Civil War that Divided Them – Chris DeRose
The Truth and Legend of Lily Martindale – Mary Sanders Shartle  (HF)
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration – Isabel Wilkerson
Twelve Years a Slave – Solomon Northrup
Upstairs at the White House: My Life With the First Ladies by J. B. West with Mary Lynn Kotz
While the World Watched – Carolyn Maull McKinstry

Visual Media:

The Dust Bowl
John Adams
Ken Burns’ The Civil War
Prince of Egypt

Tomorrow is the Anniversary of D-Day

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The military uses the codes, D-Day and H-Hour when the day and hour have not been decided or announced. That was the case in 1944 when the Allies were planning their invasion of the European continent. There were deception plans in place and troops were either moved or left in places to make the deception plans remain secretive and on the Nazi’s “radar”.

They were getting their plans ready for an assault of Nazi forces who were invading and taking over Europe with executions, concentration camps, and new laws forcing their sovereignty across the landscape.

That began to change with the amphibious attacks on the French coast in 1944.

Planning for the invasion began long before a date had been thought of, let alone set. So much depended on so many factors that the plans needed to be set, the logistics considered, alternatives, at what point to go ahead or abort. In the case of this preparation, the phases of the moon and tides were a major consideration as well as the time of day. This limited how many opportunities they had to make their assault. Preceding the landings were airstrikes, naval bombardments and an air assault just after midnight.

June 6, 1944. The Allied Invasion of Normandy during Operation Overlord during World War II. Now it is commonly known as D-Day. It was (and continues to be)  the largest seaborne invasion in history, landing 24,000 British, US, and Canadian forces at 6:30am.

Out of 156,000 troops, there were at least 10,000 casualties with 4414 confirmed dead.

I can’t give this decisive victory the proper justice it deserves on my own, so please, please visit the D-Day website and support the national museum.

Or begin your reading about the Normandy landings and invasion, but remember Wikipedia is a starting point.

The USS Slater is the only remaining destroyer class ship that fought Nazi U-boats during World War II that remains afloat. It is a national historic landmark and museum ship moored on the Hudson River in the port of Albany, the capital of New York State.

More than 70 years later, there continues to be a profound gratitude to the American Servicemen and Women who liberated the Dutch and who sacrificed their lives: Washington Post article: Americans Gave their LIves to Defeat the Nazis. The Dutch Have Never Forgotten.

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
– Winston Churchill