sept 13

So today  we are two days away from the eleventh.
Good.
Like veterans day and memorial day we indeed should reflect on the wqars that have besieged us, mainly if you are in yourneigthies  and remember Korea and the vietnam war s and the loss of indochina in 1954 and our current conflicts in the Middle east.
The tenth anniversary of 9/11 was a little overdone.
Good, because many people remember that day.
The first time in more than a hundred years that5 thre americn public had experienced the horror of a losing battle.
All other recent conflicta had been fought on a foreigh soil. But that day for the first time since the British  burned the Whitehouse in 1862, I think, the American population  witnessed the horror of war on their own soil - home!!
 This indelible witnessing of the American soil violated by enemy forces has scarred the mind of our population and tyhis is why this event is paramount in our psyche and supplants all fears we may have of conflicts in foreign lands.

Jacques

jUNE 6 1944

JUNE 6, 1944

June 6, 1944, more than sixty five years ago, D-Day, the landing of the Allied Forces in Normandy. 

I will always remember that day.  I was then a young teenager living with my parents in Paris in occupied France.  In 1940, France had collapsed under the onslaught of the German Panzer divisions and of the screaming of the diving stuka planes.  The British had scampered out at Dunkerque and the Yanks sat home in neutral isolation.  Suddenly, over France, in 1940 and for the next four years, a huge lid of oppression had fallen.  A nightly curfew, restricted travel, censored mail, controlled press, hostages, identity check points, rationing were ruling our lives.  Cold, hunger, misery, fear, danger became our daily lot. Those next four years were going to be a long dark tunnel.

Some nights, air raids on the Renault factory in the north of Paris where Germans manufactured tanks illuminated the sky and we could see the lights and hear the rumble of the explosions.  Most often, lying in my bed, I would hear the air-raid warning of the sirens wailing up and down but I would go back to sleep.  After a while you get tired and fatalistic; might as well die in bed.

Of course there were the German posters, plastered all over the city announcing reprisals, execution or deportation of hostages.  And there were those stories whispered between my parents about their friends denounced to the Gestapo by their neighbour, their mother-in-law, their wife!

Every evening we would gather close to our TSF (radio set) to  listen to Radio London our only link to the free world.  We had to listen intensely, for the  broadcast was jammed by the Germans in two ways.  First, there was the  background noise of a buzzing saw.  Then, superimposed over it, was the  repeating sound of a child's music box, tee-ta-ta-tee-ta-ta-ta. In the background the  voice of the announcers would rise and fall as if carried by the waves  of the English channel. The broadcast opened with the characteristic beat of Bethoven  Fifth on the drums:  ta-ta-ta-dum, ta-ta-ta-dom.  The program always started the same way: first "Les Français  parlent aux Français," intoned the announcer. "The  French people speak to the French people."  Then the daily count of our struggle:  "Aujourd'hui, six Juin 1944, le mille quatre cent quarante neuvième  jour de la lutte du peuple Français pour sa libération."  Yes, from day one, back in 1940, they had been counting the days and today, June the  6th 1944 was "the 1449th day of the struggle of the French people for  its liberation."  Usually,the news came after that standard opening. 

On that day, June the sixth, suddenly, after four years of hope and  prayer, we heard the amazing announcement, a terse statement:  "Today,  at dawn, the Allied Forces have landed in Normandy."

The impact of those few words was tremendous. The weight of those years of desolation and despair suddenly disappeared; we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. We had been in a huge jail for four years, under extreme jeopardy, with hunger and arbitrary arrests, but the doors were opening, our liberators were coming.  The sense of relief was immense and hard to describe. Soon, we would again live without fear. We had not endured in vain.

 At sixteen, suddenly my life came to a momentous turning point.  I was going to be free to live again, not simply to survive from day to day.

The sixth of June 1944 is a date I remember vividly.  It embodies the sadness of war and the sacrifices of many.  The feeling of liberation and of relief on that day, sixty five years ago, is unforgettable because it marked the culmination of our fight for freedom.

Freedom, the essence of our reason on earth.    ****   

  JMG -     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~      

THE WORLD AS IT SHOULD BE

              On a recent morning I had an early appointment in Boca so I was

         driving down Military Trail from Delray in that beautiful section around the Polo Club with the majestic palm trees, perfect grass and the manicured

flower beds.

              The Pheasant Walk light turned red; I had to stop, so did a few

          other cars.  A man with white hair and a white moustache quickly moved    to the median of the road; he was the school crossing guard, with

         arms outstreched in his bright colored vest.  The waiting group of

         children started walking across the road in front of our stopped cars

         pushing their small bikes.

              They were young boys accompanied by a mother chaperon also with a bicycle.  All boys wore a large T-shirt and those oversized shorts then  in fashion that look like their father's pants with the bottom of the

         legs cut off.  Each was wearing a ribbed helmet and carrying his school

         books in a backpack.

              I was struck by the vision of that calm, uniform, ordered group of

         youngsters, quietly crossing the road like ducklings going to the pond.

         A few minutes before, during breakfast, I had scanned the headlines of

         assassination in Mexico, fighting in the Middle East, a cataclysmic gas

         explosion in New Jersey, stalled Bosnia peace, troubled Whitewaters. 

    I needed to clear my mind from those catastrophic events.  And now here

         it was, passing in front of us in those idyllic surroundings, the

         quintessential vision of what life should really be all about.

              The light was changing.  The guard, still with his hands raised in

         his bright orange gloves, nimbly side-stepped back to the curb.  The

         boys had crossed the perils of Military Trail and were riding down on

         the bike trail.  Our pack of cars took off leaving behind us that

         vision of innocent youth, that vision of the world as it should be...

                                                                JMG

Boca Raton News 1995

SPIKE

MICROSOFT WORD:

Better than the clipboard, Spike can hold together several portions of text or pictures from the same or separate documents.

For instance to move three non adjacent portions of text to the top of your document:

1. Select the first portion and cut to Spike with Ctrl + F3

2. Repeat the Spiking for portions 2 and 3. Each time, your selected text is cut and added to the existing contents of the Spike clipboard.

Finally, to drop the three selected portions on top of the document for instance:

3. Ctrl + Home to move your cursor to the beginning of your document,

Ctrl + Shift + F3 inserts the contents of Spike. Spike is cleared.

Undue Impact

The terror inspired by rising gas price is somewhat strange since gas is one of many household expenses and not the most significant. Still this increase psychologically has a significant impact on the level of happiness of the consumers.

The main worry should be about the unrest in the Midddle East particularly if it should spread to Saudi Arabia.

The dreaded 4 0 0

The Price of GAS

The popular mood is affected by the price of gasoline. People read and hear about expenses in the millions and billions without batting an eye but an increase of a few cents in the price of a gallon of gas conjures visions of a faulting economy, unemployment, large budget deficits, and inflation galore.

The price of milk also goes up but a few extra cents there are not readily noticeable in a total grocery bill in the fifties or higher. But the gas tank requires twelve to twenty gallons at a time. The higher price now becomes visible.

Particularly since it is posted on large signs at gas stations along your city driving route.The bad news are flashed every few blocks, begging you to watch for the dreaded 400 .

Jacques

Cleaning WIdows

You should periodically clean up your Windows computer: the Directory and the Disk.
Use the Glary utilities obtainable at Glarysoft.com. Download and instal the free version (the professional version is free after you purchase other software!!)
Run the Disk cleaner program and then the Directory Cleaner.
This should improve the performance of your system.

Jacques