Rainy Days & Mondays

Today's forecast calls for temps just above freezing, and a chance of rain (which will, of course, freeze when it hits our cold ground). Morning drive-time should be a thing of beauty and a joy forever, if the rain starts before it's over. I'm gonna pray for dry roads ... the frost on the lesser-used byways is slick enough, already.

Update: the morning drive was 1/4" of ice on every surface. Lovely.

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I met with Jenny for another wide-ranging chat yesterday.  I started talking about our recent visit to Pearl Harbor, and the conversation was all over the place, after that.

During the Pearl Harbor portion of the discourse, I mentioned encountering two USS Arizona survivors outside the visitors' center bookstore. Those gentlemen were a joy, and they were there to autograph anything purchased at the store. I found myself fascinated - even during our fairly brief encounter. They were humble and unassuming - as has been every WWII vet I've ever met, including a couple of guys still on active duty when I was in the Navy - and yet the sense of destiny about them was tangible.

One of the things mentioned by tour guides at the center was that the remaining survivors (there are only 94 now, I believe) have made a pact: as they die, they are cremated and their ashes placed in canisters which Navy divers take down to the Arizona and place inside. That way, these brave men can be buried with their shipmates ... and it's all they've ever wanted.

I posted once about a neighbor, Charlie Grech, who participated in D-Day and had been an ambulance driver in the Battle of the Bulge. These two gentlemen were cut from the same cloth, and I'll treasure that meeting for the rest of my life.

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Yesterday was the first day in a month on which I didn't wake up feeling as though I needed a nap.  Posting has been erratic, but I hope to remedy that in the days ahead. Heaven knows this country's current conditions offer plenty to blog about.