Spectre’s Sayings

Had a very slightly skunky aroma, but tasted smooth. A bit heavy, but not overly filling. Not bad.

Interesting tidbit: Why some coins have ridges around the edges.

Mildred Nierhoff passed away today. Mimi was my grandfather’s brother’s wife. She had no blood relatives left - the only family she had left were relatives by marriage. She had spent the last eleven years in a nursing home suffering from alzheimer’s, and faded quickly during the past couple of days. My mother and my grandmother spent hours and hours there with her these past couple of days. May the angels lead her to paradise, and may she rest in peace.

Yesterday, while the family was talking, my grandmother mentioned how Millie’s husband had been wounded in Italy during World War II. That led my brother to ask questions about what my grandfather had done. I told him that grandpa had been in the 95th Infantry Division, and he had been wounded in Metz, France, and that there was a lot of information about that unit available on the internet.

It seems to me that we need to do a better job in keeping family stories alive, because all too quickly they become forgotten.

My name was in the newspaper today.

No, not in Police Beat.

It was in the “building permits” section, saying that a building permit had been issued to me for my address (a couple of weeks ago.)

Speaking of not-so-current events, the entire front section of the newspaper wasn’t news at all, but rather dealt with historical issues. For instance, there was a large front-page story about the diaries kept by a man for many years in the latter part of the 19th and the early part of the 20th centuries. One of the events recorded in the diary was the 1908 race riots in Springfield, Illinois. Now, I grew up in Springfield, so I find it a bit of a travesty that I hadn’t even heard of these riots until I had gone away to college in another state. As I was growing up, it was never mentioned on TV, nor was it spoken about in my presence. I wonder, how I could have NOT heard about it, when you can’t walk down the street without tripping over history - after all, Abe Lincoln lived here. And had an office over there. And had an outhouse over there. But the race riots? Seems to have been swept under the rug for decades.

There was also a story about the Marquis de LaFayette, the young aide-de-camp of General Washington in the Revolutionary War, and a story about a World War II airplane found again on a beach in Wales.

I’m guessing it was a slow news day.