So this morning I rolled out of bed and drove over the mountains
to see the Pacific Ocean, at Half Moon Bay. I stood on the bluffs
overlooking both "Venice" and "Redondo" beaches, both completely
natural and empty, the former with wave-beaten rocks and tidal-pools.
<1>
Now I know where to go should I ever want to ride a horse on the beach.
On the way back one of my new tires failed - not a blow-out, but a flat
anyway, when I pulled over on the 101 near Redwood City. A half-hour later
I was on my way on the baby spare, not at all perturbed since it's a holiday and I had
no particular schedule to follow - just means I couldn't use the car for the rest of the
day, and lunch tomorrow will be taken up with auto maintenance. I made mental plans to
bike around & do stuff but instead I just stayed around doing housecleaning, listening
to my new Frank Sinatra CD ("A Swingin' Affair") and tapes of old
Joe Frank radio shows.
"...the war in Europe came to an end and fifty years ago, in
August, the war in the Pacific... men and women who're with
us who'll remember those days as clearly as if it were today.
And many of them with stories, vivid and terrible stories
they've never told, about friends and brothers who met Death
in a distant land. The people we remember on Memorial Day
did not mean to die - they went over, afraid of dying, and
when they got there they knew the danger, but they lived with
the danger by believing in their own survival - they somehow
knew that they would escape, and come back home and life
would be wonderful and boring again, and across Europe and
over Germany and in the Pacific they kept going, by dreaming
about America and about owning a car and having great meals
and going dancing to a good band, and with all those
thoughts of the Good Life they sustained themselves through
terrible terror right up to the moments of their deaths.
They didn't mean to give their lives for their country, but
they did, and for that they deserve to be remembered. We're
living the life they hoped to live, and we should stop
and think about them."
MEMORIAL DAY
-
- Garrison Keillor on the 1995 Memorial Day Weekend "Prairie Home
Companion" broadcast from San Diego
Yesterday I
mentioned something I heard on this weekend's "This American Life" radio
show, which concerned Compulsive Liars. Today I discovered that this show was
actually first broadcast over a year ago. Here's a few more excerpts: