Today marks the 65th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy. D-Day.
If you’ve watched TV or read a newspaper, you’ll have seen the coverage. Those frail old men making the pilgrimage one final time to touch the sand of the beaches where they and their comrades swam and crawled and climbed through hell to start the juggernaut towards Germany from the French coast. They are fewer and fewer every year, but they keep coming back to honor those who never left Calvados.
There are three military cemeteries within a few kilometers of one another near Omaha Beach: Colleville-sur-mer, American; Bayeux, British; and La Cambe, German. I’ve walked them all, several times.
The American cemetery is situated on the bluff above Omaha Beach. You can stand at the edge and look down on the scene of the slaughter. And wonder how the hell they ever made it up to where you are. The graves are marked with white marble crosses, with the occasional Star of David interspersed. It’s quiet, usually, except for the wind. More than 9300 men lie there—not all fallen at Normandy, but congregated there in the fellowship of death.
The British cemetery, run by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, is in the heart of Bayeux, the town they took on 7 June. The headstones are like those at all CWGC graveyards—identically-sized slabs of white marble engraved with the soldier’s name, regiment and date of death (if known; otherwise a cross and “known but to God” inscribed); a centrally-located Cross of Sacrifice (tall marble cross with a sword inset), and a Stone of Remembrance, inscribed “Their Name Liveth Forevermore”. More than 4000 Brits, Commonwealth, Poles, French and others lie there.
La Cambe is outside Bayeux; you get to it down a quiet road that seems to have no other purpose but to lead you to the dead. The cemetery is maintained by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the German counterpart to the CWGC. It’s not as large space-wise as the two Allied graveyards. That’s because when you look at the inscriptions on the black metal markers set into the earth, you see there are often two to five men buried in a single spot. Plus, there are the nearly 300 known and unknown under the central mound. More than 21,000 men lie there.
The thing that struck me almost from the first in these three cemeteries was the ages on the markers—you almost never see anyone who’d reached 24. Most were in the 19-22-year age range. When you’d expect them to be in college, or working their first jobs.
I’ve often wondered what the world lost through those early deaths. What music never was composed? What scientific breakthroughs never made? What civic gains, feats of sportsmanship, family enrichment just disappeared from the future in June 1944?
That, of course, is in addition to the anguish and sorrow that engulfed their families. Parents, siblings, wives, children—bereft and left alone to sort out a world gone mad. No one to repair the gutter or fix the bike; to guide a grandchild’s hands tying a bow knot; to comfort a friend; to surprise a lover with flowers.
It had to be done—it always seems to need doing. But take a few moments this weekend to think on those 30,000 lives cut short in Normandy 65 years ago. The boys of D-Day who put their lives on the line for their generation and those that followed.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Signs of the times
This droll visual commentary came through the email & I tracked it down on the Net to share with you.
I must say it’s an extremely good use of graphics software. &, sadly, all too true in our current economy.
I must say it’s an extremely good use of graphics software. &, sadly, all too true in our current economy.
A modest proposal for GM
As you’d expect, Michael Moore has a few things to say about the state of GM. The filmmaker/whackjob (depending on your level of investment in corporate propaganda) who made Roger and Me 20 years ago to document GM’s catastrophic oblivion to the world immediately about it, thinks we all lose if the bankruptcy just allows the company to keep on keeping on (albeit on a smaller scale), seeing as to how “keeping on” has caused far more damage to our society than just making cars people really don’t like.
Growing up in LA, I was told that before WWII there was a nice system of light rail electric transport to get people around the area. Post-war, the oil and auto companies (GM in particular) lobbied heavily that the city should replace that “old-fashioned” system with nice, new, gas-burning buses. And that’s what they did.
And between the buses and the 12,437,677 cars on the roads, it became damned near impossible to get from here to there even on brand-new freeways. And LA for decades wore the crown of the smog capital of the country. (Growing up, I can well recall that painful limit on the depth of breaths you could take in the summer, when smog filled your lungs and; burned your eyes.)
Moore has some suggestions about what the bankruptcy executives could do with GM's remaining resources that don't involve continuing to build internal-combustion cars with the old GM mindset of tail-fins and planned obsolescence.
In general I agree with Moore.
But, as with Roger, probably no one involved in the GM bankruptcy will pay any attention.
Plus ça change…
Growing up in LA, I was told that before WWII there was a nice system of light rail electric transport to get people around the area. Post-war, the oil and auto companies (GM in particular) lobbied heavily that the city should replace that “old-fashioned” system with nice, new, gas-burning buses. And that’s what they did.
And between the buses and the 12,437,677 cars on the roads, it became damned near impossible to get from here to there even on brand-new freeways. And LA for decades wore the crown of the smog capital of the country. (Growing up, I can well recall that painful limit on the depth of breaths you could take in the summer, when smog filled your lungs and; burned your eyes.)
Moore has some suggestions about what the bankruptcy executives could do with GM's remaining resources that don't involve continuing to build internal-combustion cars with the old GM mindset of tail-fins and planned obsolescence.
In general I agree with Moore.
But, as with Roger, probably no one involved in the GM bankruptcy will pay any attention.
Plus ça change…
Monday, June 1, 2009
Motor City's burning
As has been expected for the last 60 days, GM filed for bankruptcy this morning. It was an electronic procedure, almost automated. & the American taxpayers just as automatically forked over another $30B to tide the behemoth over through the expected 60- to 90-day Chapter 11 period.
That’s in addition to the $20B we’ve already flushed down this particular sewer line.
Chrysler, the other automotive welfare mother, has been authorized by its own bankruptcy judge to sell its assets to Fiat. That deal doesn’t involve any real cash, just a promise by Fiat to build cars people will actually buy.
Quelle idée.
People have been watching the Chrysler process to predict what type of bankruptcy we can expect from GM. But the Fiat deal was already circling the body in the water before Chrysler filed, and there’s no one in sight except the US taxpaying chumps for infusing billions into a company that’s shown again and; again that it can’t or won’t reorganize its way out of a paper bag.
So it’s going to be a long, hot summer.
That’s in addition to the $20B we’ve already flushed down this particular sewer line.
Chrysler, the other automotive welfare mother, has been authorized by its own bankruptcy judge to sell its assets to Fiat. That deal doesn’t involve any real cash, just a promise by Fiat to build cars people will actually buy.
Quelle idée.
People have been watching the Chrysler process to predict what type of bankruptcy we can expect from GM. But the Fiat deal was already circling the body in the water before Chrysler filed, and there’s no one in sight except the US taxpaying chumps for infusing billions into a company that’s shown again and; again that it can’t or won’t reorganize its way out of a paper bag.
So it’s going to be a long, hot summer.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Looking in the rear-view mirror
As we wait for GM to announce its descent into bankruptcy, P.J. O’Rourke drives a big car with fins down memory lane for the WSJ.
It doesn’t entirely resonate with me, but I’m sure it represents the Y-chromosome set's attachment to American cars. And it does touch on the massive post-WWII changes in the American national landscape wrought by the auto industry.
You can certainly see it in any housing built after around 1950: there’s always a carport or garage, and usually it’s the first thing you see when you drive up to a residence. Which veritably screams, “We’ve got wheels!”
(Don’t get me wrong—I’m an LA native and where my car goes is pretty much as important to me as whether the place has indoor plumbing. And when I was looking for a house in Seattle I reconciled myself to the fact that there isn’t going to be any street parking for guests because so many of the houses were built in the expectation that no one would have cars, much less three per household, so the curbs are chockablock with residents’ SUVs and Lexuses.)
I myself never owned anything with more than four cylinders, although the vehicle has to be equipped with a sun roof. (A fact that stymied the car dealer in Wales: “But, madam, you’re in the UK!”) Well—and it does need to possess scoot; I’d never drive a Saab without the turbo charge.
But I take O’Rourke’s point: just as Gen-Yers grew up never knowing existence without PCs and video games, I cannot imagine a world without cars, highways and assigned parking spaces. (In my recent house-hunting forays there were townhouses I rejected because it was impossible to get the car into the attached garage.) Even in London that was one of the absolutes of finding a flat.
We’ll see in the next quarter whether GM emerges from its self-inflicted time of trial. But the era O’Rourke reminisces about is definitely long gone.
It doesn’t entirely resonate with me, but I’m sure it represents the Y-chromosome set's attachment to American cars. And it does touch on the massive post-WWII changes in the American national landscape wrought by the auto industry.
You can certainly see it in any housing built after around 1950: there’s always a carport or garage, and usually it’s the first thing you see when you drive up to a residence. Which veritably screams, “We’ve got wheels!”
(Don’t get me wrong—I’m an LA native and where my car goes is pretty much as important to me as whether the place has indoor plumbing. And when I was looking for a house in Seattle I reconciled myself to the fact that there isn’t going to be any street parking for guests because so many of the houses were built in the expectation that no one would have cars, much less three per household, so the curbs are chockablock with residents’ SUVs and Lexuses.)
I myself never owned anything with more than four cylinders, although the vehicle has to be equipped with a sun roof. (A fact that stymied the car dealer in Wales: “But, madam, you’re in the UK!”) Well—and it does need to possess scoot; I’d never drive a Saab without the turbo charge.
But I take O’Rourke’s point: just as Gen-Yers grew up never knowing existence without PCs and video games, I cannot imagine a world without cars, highways and assigned parking spaces. (In my recent house-hunting forays there were townhouses I rejected because it was impossible to get the car into the attached garage.) Even in London that was one of the absolutes of finding a flat.
We’ll see in the next quarter whether GM emerges from its self-inflicted time of trial. But the era O’Rourke reminisces about is definitely long gone.
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