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| How cool is this!; Grandma's diary entry, Dec 7th, 1941 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 27 2008, 01:28 PM (385 Views) | |
| jon-nyc | May 27 2008, 01:28 PM Post #1 |
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Cheers
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I took this picture my last trip to my Mom's. I've been meaning to post it. Its her mother's diary open to December 7th, 1941. It reads: "Very cold today. Stayed indoors most of the time and enjoyed our usual Sunday afternoon fire. Heard reports of Jap. invasion on radio this P.M."
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| In my defense, I was left unsupervised. | |
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| Mikhailoh | May 27 2008, 01:35 PM Post #2 |
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
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Awesome piece of history. |
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Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball | |
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| Frank_W | May 27 2008, 01:46 PM Post #3 |
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Resident Misanthrope
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How cool is that?!
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Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin." Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!" | |
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| Dewey | May 27 2008, 01:48 PM Post #4 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Master of understatement, she was. Very, very cool. |
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"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685. "Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous "Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011 I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14 | |
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| DivaDeb | May 27 2008, 02:05 PM Post #5 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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That was my father's 25th birthday. They had just set things out for his birthday lunch. |
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| The 89th Key | May 27 2008, 05:04 PM Post #6 |
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Really cool - Jon do later pages mention anything else of the WWII events? |
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| George K | May 27 2008, 05:33 PM Post #7 |
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Finally
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There's something about (I hate to use the word...) "artifacts" like that which make history so palpable. Mrs. George still has her dad's uniform and memorabilia from WWII (he set up radars in France after D-Day), and simply looking at them makes it all so real and immediate. Treasure that diary, Jon. It's wonderful. |
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A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
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| big al | May 27 2008, 06:13 PM Post #8 |
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Bull-Carp
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[posted elsewhere previously] I have almost 30 years of my grandmother's diaries. I haven't read them for awhile. Most focus on the day to day activities on an Ohio dairy farm. Here is the entry for 7 Dec. 1941. "Fair Cool temp 30 deg. Albert [my father] and I went to Sunday school. Glasses [my grnadmother's brother and his two daughters] came out and stayed for supper. Corbans came in eve and Mr. Coffman spent eve had lunch. Well Japan sank 2 American ships and fired on a large naval base. Beginning of war between U.S.A. and japan. How terrible. I have felt it would not come to this." Most entries in these diaries record the ordinary day to day activities. Here and there world events break through or something out of the ordinary (like my and my sister's birth days). Two things that occurred to me when reading these was how much of living is just doing the routine day-to-day activities and how much more social people were in that time. There are not many entries that don't mention someone stopping by, if only briefly. Mind that this was a farm and not a house on a city street. They had a radio and, for as long as I could remember, a newspaper. We got television when I was in third grade, around 1955. They were not isolated from the world, but the world did not intrude so constantly as it seems to now. Truly, it was a different time. Sometimes, it's hard to imagine how different even though I grew up not so long after this. Big Al |
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Location: Western PA "jesu, der simcha fun der man's farlangen." -bachophile | |
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| justme | May 27 2008, 06:21 PM Post #9 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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that is very COOL! |
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"Men sway more towards hussies." G-D3 | |
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| Red Rice | May 27 2008, 06:24 PM Post #10 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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You bet. One of my most prized possessions is my grandfather's paratrooper uniform. He served in the 82nd Airborne in WWII. |
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Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool. I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss! - Cecil Lewis | |
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| DivaDeb | May 27 2008, 06:31 PM Post #11 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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that's awesome RR we have the flag that decorated my husband's dad's coffin, and his duffel bag. When we first went through it, it had so many cool things in it...patches, his knife, a brass covered Bible (you were supposed to carry it in your chest pocket), lots of leaflets in German. I put a lot of things in a frame on our living room wall, and got one of those triangular frame/boxes for the flag. |
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| Bernard | May 27 2008, 07:00 PM Post #12 |
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Senior Carp
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Cool, jon-nyc. Your grandmother had nice penmanship. My subjective observation is that many people had nice penmanship back then. When I was in early elementary school we had an instructor come around once a week to teach us penmanship. Do they still do that I wonder? |
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| RosemaryTwo | May 28 2008, 03:27 AM Post #13 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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That is really amazing. I wear a wedding ring from 1911 that my great-great grandmother wore. It has the date engraved inside it, with her and my g-g-grandfather's initials. It's pushin' 100 years old. |
| "Perhaps the thing to do is just to let stupid run its course." Aqua | |
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| dolmansaxlil | May 28 2008, 03:29 AM Post #14 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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We don't focus on penmenship at all anymore. They're taught how to print correctly in K/grade 1. In grade 3, they are taught cursive, but it's definitely not a focus. Most of my kids print. But with the vast majority of writing being done on computer now, very few of us have concerns about it. As long as I can read it, I'm happy. |
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"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson My Flickr Photostream | |
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| PhJ | May 28 2008, 03:34 AM Post #15 |
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Senior Carp
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cool indeed ! I wonder, do many people keep a diary these days, in the FB/Myspace age ? |
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| Mikhailoh | May 28 2008, 03:37 AM Post #16 |
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
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So many of us grew up in the 50's, 60's and 70's. These times were largely dominated by men who fought in and women who lived through the war. It loomed large in our lives as a result, and because of the war's aftermath, the Cold War. I will confess I have some fears about when a couple more generations take the reins that see these events as more distant and perhaps less real than we did. It is good to remember. |
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Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball | |
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| Frank_W | May 28 2008, 03:53 AM Post #17 |
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Resident Misanthrope
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Yep. I've got my grandfather's flag, his medals, and his Army records. |
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Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin." Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!" | |
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| Phlebas | May 28 2008, 04:48 AM Post #18 |
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Bull-Carp
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That's very interesting, Jon. A real treasure. |
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Random FML: Today, I was fired by my boss in front of my coworkers. It would have been nice if I could have left the building before they started celebrating. FML The founding of the bulk of the world's nation states post 1914 is based on self-defined nationalisms. The bulk of those national movements involve territory that was ethnically mixed. The foundation of many of those nation states involved population movements in the aftermath. When the only one that is repeatedly held up as unjust and unjustifiable is the Zionist project, the term anti-semitism may very well be appropriate. - P*D | |
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| Frank_W | May 28 2008, 05:17 AM Post #19 |
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Resident Misanthrope
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That is just awesome, R2.
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Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin." Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!" | |
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| apple | May 28 2008, 05:39 AM Post #20 |
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one of the angels
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i envy my sister's memory. she has kept a diary since she was 6. she knows things none of us remember. |
| it behooves me to behold | |
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