Probably only Leos broadcast their birthdays in advance. No, not to get presents or put on airs — Leos don’t have to — but because they feel free to do so. It’s natural. The last thing my wife would do, or would have done even many years ago, is talk up her birthday, except privately to intimates. Not me! On the other hand…
Nagasaki
Today is Hiroshima Day, and I was born on August 9th, the day we dropped the second a-bomb on Nagasaki. The actual day, not the anniversary. That’s always felt significant to me, although there had to have been many thousands of other people born that day all over the world. (I wonder how we’re doing?)
I take my birthdays very seriously. They’re like portals, you know. Because of that, while I sometimes like to get raucous, I generally try to think of something personally important to do on those days, as opposed to merely seeking entertainment. Not that I have anything against a blow-out party, nosirree, it’s just that some of the best things happen in the all-alone. That may make me one weird Leo [see above], but that’s the way it goes.
This might be the year I climb a mountain, or go up as far as I can get. I might even spend the night out there. My wife actually suggested that, which shows how much she’d like a little peace and quiet. I have minimal Wal-Mart dilettante outdoor equipment, which is to say cheap shoes, ordinary clothes, a decent backpack, a couple of water bottles, and not much sense. I’m also not in shape, but then how many of my contemporaries are even standing? Besides, it’s part of the transcendental experience, what with sweating off 10 pounds and over-stressing every joint. And the long hot bath after I come home is to die for, irony intended.
How cold could it be this time of year at 11,000 feet, anyway?
Comment by Schro
1 August 6, 2008, 5:55 am o'clock |
Happy Birthday, Juan!! And Kate, and Kent, and Jeff and Joe and McBride and Obama and all the other gazillion Leos in our small world.
Comment by John H. Farr
2 August 6, 2008, 9:41 am o'clock |
Hi Katy!
Yeah, ain’t it sumpin’. I don’t seem to have a similar constellation of Leo friends here in Taos. Kinda weird! I miss all you guys, and I especially miss us all having a party together. Happy Birthday to you too!
Comment by frank powell
3 August 6, 2008, 10:26 am o'clock |
My day is the 7th, but at this age I don’t bring it up to often.
After I read John Hersey’s book “Day Of Infamy” about the bombing of Hiroshima and seeing the pictures of the people that
lived through that, I no longer made much noise about my birthday! I was born a few years later,1948, but still too close.
That book had a strong effect on me back in 1963 when I read it.
I am still a “Leo’ in every way!.
Happy Birthday all.
Comment by K.J. Webb
4 August 6, 2008, 12:51 pm o'clock |
Something awful entered the world with the destruction of those two little cities. But history is full of ironies and unintended consequences. The sheer horror not only kept the bomb from being used thereafter, but probably deterred conventional wars between the large powers which would have produced horrors of even greater magnitude. Maybe the existence of the bomb saved us from ourselves.
And if it hadn’t been used in 1945, how much longer would the war have lasted and how many more lives would it have consumed? That was the consideration that persuaded Truman, of course. He said he never lost sleep over what he had done.
We could make a distinction between the deaths of civilians and the deaths of soldiers - we could say that men have always lost their lives in battle and that the deaths of civilians of all ages and genders can’t be compared to the deaths of soldiers. That’s easy to feel in the abstract, but dubiously moral. Some of us had fathers in the Pacific Theater who wouldn’t have come home but for Truman’s decision. The same could be said of countless thousands of Japanese soldiers, many of them no more than boys.
For me it’s essentially a tragedy without a meaning or a villain.
Comment by frank powell
5 August 6, 2008, 3:45 pm o'clock |
MR.Webb,
I couldn’t agree more!
Frank