70 Years Ago

My better half, Martha, and I sitting on the Spanish Steps in Roma Italia

Hi,

First of all I really appreciate your stopping by my blog site.  It took me a while to think of a ‘theme’ but I finally decided that I was most interested in the ‘war years’ and why not use the gimmick of  ‘what happened 70 years ago today’.  Or at least maybe this week.  I am getting on to 52 years old and my dad was 12 if we go back in time to the Spring of 1940.  He graduated from high school at the beginning of the summer 1945 and assumed he would be drafted to help finish off the Japanese.  Then we dropped the Big One and it was finally over.  My older brother missed the Vietnam draft days by only a couple of  years so we have been pretty fortunate when it comes to conscription.   Both my grandparents fought in World War One.  My fathers side grandpa was Canadian so he served a few years more than my other grandfather who was shipped over to England with the Army Air Service but was never sent across the channel.  He did see at least a few ugly plane accidents during his stay in England.  Back then it was a little more of a gamble to go up in a flying machine.  I wish I had been old enough to interrogate him on his service.

In any case I am, as you may have already imagined, fascinated with the first half of the decade of the 1940’s.   Everyone seems to think that today is the most dangerous time ever but I cannot imagine living during the early to mid 40’s of  the last century.  So much serious stuff going on with a world war that I believe killed more civilians then soldiers.   I am not a real historian.  I am just playing one here on blog. I admit to having just  small bits and pieces of what was going on during this time period but I am really hoping to learn alot doing this blog.   After these first few days I have learned much already.  For example, I did not know that Norway fought so hard against the Nazi occupation.  What I am really hoping is that you folks out there in the so called blogosphere will add commentary and teach me and anyone else checking this blog out.   That is my primary hope.  That folks will join in and make this a real learning environment.  I think it is a very important time that everyone should know more about.  Especially the ‘youngsters’ who allegedly have a hard time placing the Civil War in history.

I am using Wordpress and am really impressed with it.  I was a technical support analyst for a major software company for the last 20 years so I cannot say I am not a  little technically capable but Wordpress has really wowed me with its ease of use and power.  I used Artisteer software to create my theme/template.  It gets updated almost on a daily basis as I learn more about what I can do with it.  I am in the process of discovering the dividing line between what Artisteer controls versus what Wordpress controls.  The plug-ins are amazing.  I have not really gotten up to speed on the Widgets deal.  I am sure it will come in time and I will wonder how I managed to do without it for so long.

I will continue to mess around with this page but this is my opening salvo just to give you and idea of where I am coming from.

Thanks again for stopping by and please tell your friends to stop by when they have a minute.

Take care,

Jim Lee

sasjzl@earthlink.net

ps  – Contrary to the image of myself at the top of  this page, I do have teeth.

pps  – Also, the hat on my head saying “SWAT” has no pretensions to my being on any sort of SWAT team.  It represents Swarthmore College in Swarthmore Pennsylvania which is where my daughter recently graduated from with high honors.  It is the best liberal arts college in the world as designated by me…and my daughter Marissa Lee.

ppps -  I promise to get a better picture of myself soon.  I am not really that goofy looking.  I hope.

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