THE DRIVE TO CAIRO TURNED OUT...

Guess what? Because of flooding, I couldn't get down to Fort Defiance State Park to overlook the joining of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. My drive would have been been spoiled except that I stopped at the historic Cairo Public Library to use their Gateway to enter some more blog stuff. It's a beautiful old building in the heart of Cairo with lots of mahogany wood and friendly librarians and many old old books, plus the smell that only libraries had hundreds of years ago. Of course that smell was the smell of mildewing books which presaged the end of those very books.


MET A YOUTH TODAY

Met Jared at the Admissions building at SIU. He has the distinction of being a man who transfered out of computer science into music.


ABOUT ALL THIS VETERAN STUFF AND CONSEQUENT WHOOP AND HOLLER

Look, I don't want to be a wet blanket, but we must realize that for every one vet who saw combat, nine men supported him with behind the lines efforts. So very few veterans actually experience the Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers stuff. In my own family, two of my dad's brothers were in the military and two brothers were war workers. One military brother became a parachute instructor while the other one was 2nd in command of a destroyer who saw no action even though he arrived on scene after a battle or two. I don't want to be a spoil sport, but I do like reality and truth to be part of the equation at all times. I don't mean to belittle anyone's contribution to war, but neither do I want us to forget that the actual combat falls only to the few.