Random Thoughts
M grandmother was in her old age when sometimes she gave me a dollar. That was a lot of money then. Saturday night, sometimes we would buy an ice cream cone for a nickel! Anyway, my grandfather had died years before that. I'm sure it was a sacrifice for her to part with a dollar. I don't know where her income came from. I know it wasn't made.
Now, I'm in her position. I give small gifts of money to graduates and am always glad to get a "thank you" note from them. When young people, especially grandchildren, don't acknowledge a gift and don't respond I feel like the grandmother who sent checks but didn't sign them. When her grandchildren called it to her attention, she told them she would sign it when she received a "thank you" for her last gift.
When visiting in Hawaii I have never visited Pearl Harbor. That makes me feel guilty. I know why I didn't, I just couldn't bear to visit such a tragic place.
Now I'm reading a book called "Pearl Harbor," by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen. It is about the way the Japanese worked up to the assault and the way the Americans ignored the danger.
We were in a strange situation. The Nazis across the Atlantic and the Japanese across the Pacific. We felt well-protected but that was before the war with airplanes. Modern aircraft changed the whole picture.
Everything can be used for good or for bad. Will we ever learn?
— NORMA HANNAFORD
