Autobiography
A while back I noted that I was following my son’s request that I try to come up with a record of my growing up. Additionally, I said I thought it would be interesting to compare experiences with other old people in the area. After a lot of thought and reflecting, I think writing is a marvelous opportunity to recount what experiences one has had and to pass them on. Well worth the while even if your progeny use it to light fires.
I had a wonderful “growing up!” But compare and contrast my experiences with others, I think not. I can only see it as stirring up trouble because we are all individuals, with different abilities, traits, and interests, growing up in widely different environments and family cultures and values. Beyond that, most young people growing up have very little influence guiding that process.
To illustrate. I might have grown up in vanilla Wilmington, Delaware, had not the depression not forced the elimination of the entire business my father was doing well in. It broke him, and he was never the same person after as he was before, extraordinarily risk averse and conservative. New Haven, Connecticut, where we moved in with my mother’s parents was a marvelous place for a lively 4-5 year old with a lot of freedom. If there was a problem, it was finding one’s self in a kindergarten class taught by one’s mother’s best friend, whom she visited often and played the piano.
Dad got offered a position with a New York management consulting firm and we moved to Flushing, where I learned it was possible to walk in deep snow to school (both ways). We lived in an apartment across a boulevard from an immense estate long gone to wild. In the Revolution it had been (part of) the site of the Flushing Meadows battle and all sorts of relics were to be found.
Dad got assigned to the Pacific Coast, the client liked him, offered him a permanent job, and we moved to Los Angeles. We settled in part of “west Los Angeles” and I could not have grown up in a better place. All sorts of things to do, mischief to make, trolley cars and interurban cars to take you virtually anywhere for a dime. Things were so fine that Hollywood was boring. Going through all of this, my thought is to enjoy the experiences of others, perhaps to let them enjoy mine — but not to compare. Again, we are individuals and, really, not comparable.
Guff Worth, Lakeport
Here now
In answer to Dean Sparks letter of 7/25, first it is obvious that Mr. Hammer has passed him by. Next, Mr. Webster’s definition of intellectual does not apply to the computer generation of today. Now it means: how fast can you push the right buttons. Mr. Google has all the answers; just ask him. There’s not much need to think anymore. Right now most 13 year olds have me beat. My present goal is just to “be here now,” not there then — not the future’s where or what or when.
Carolyn Hawley, Nice
Iran deal
I just read, with disbelief, Mike Huckabee’s comments concerning the multi-State deal with Iran. He said, “It is so naive that he (Obama) would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven. This is the most idiotic thing, this Iran deal.”
I find it hard to believe that the Iranian’s would trust the US after we gave them the Shah; the illegal arms deal; the war with Iraq. The Iranian’s are looking out for their own self interest, just like, what is that country? Oh, yeah. The US.
If we elect a republican in 2016, will we be attacking another nation in the evil axis?
Kevin Bracken, Kelseyville
