GET TO KNOW LORETTA SANCHEZ.

 

Loretta Sanchez met with locals at the Murphys Hotel. She has served in the House of Representatives for 19 years and is aiming to win Barbara Boxer's seat in the Senate when Boxer retires. It is rare that we find someone of her caliber in our small rural county. She didn't whiz in and whiz out with a canned speech like so many of them do. She spent the whole day. She got a tour of government center, visited the Butte Fire burn area. Talked to people frustrated and discouraged over issues in rebuilding their houses at their property. Next, at the Angels Camp   Arts Emporium, she listened while fire victims shared their stories. Some are taking debris from the fire and making it into a memorial art piece as a way of dealing with devastating loss. Last evening, she spent several hours with people, listening and answering questions before, during and after her speech.
 

Loretta's background has all the elements of a Horatio Alger story. Her parents were Mexican immigrants who came to the United States for a better life. Like most immigrants, her father worked hard, with determination to achieve middle class comforts while her mother cared for their seven children.  In 1956, Loretta was the first child entered into Project Head Start, a pilot program to give disadvantaged children a chance to close the gap in beginning education. She credits that government program with her success today. All seven of the Sanchez children graduated college.  A first in the country, Loretta and her sister, Linda Sanchez, both serve in the House of Representatives. When her children were launched, Mrs. Sanchez got her college degree and taught in public schools for 17 years. The family is from Orange County.
 

I took pictures of a cross-section of the community. Middle aged marrieds.


Local women of stature.


Young students from Bret Harte High School.

I don't know all of the people I photographed.  Beth De Lima told me she is a staunch republican as she talks to Will Moore, a Democratic Delegate.  
I need to tell you about Loretta's unusual background and service. 

(Photo, Merita Calloway and Jack Garamendi).  Sanchez is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee. She fashions herself as a moderate who sees a strong role for government programs in some places, but not in others. She also says, "I'm a bean counter. I like to know, if a colleague is proposing a program, I ask, can we afford this? And, if we can't, can we do it another way?" She earned a masters in business and finance and worked as a financial adviser before becoming a Rep.
 

When answering questions, one person asked about the Government's threat to throw Tim Cook, Apple CEO, in jail if he doesn't open the encryption of the terrorists phone?  Her answer, is probably news by now. She said, "We have to respect individual privacy. No one can come and search your house without getting a court supported warrant. Likewise, the government cannot peek into people's phones. The answer is that Apple can open this one phone for the information without giving the government a back door to everyone's phone."


She spoke about ISIS, and the crumbling of states in other countries hosting terror and why dealing with them must include their boots on the ground. She works as a NATO representative making sure that other world nations cooperate and invest in these areas to bring them back into the economy and into a positive position of cooperation with neighbor nations. You can't just go to war continually to solve problems. 
 

Sanchez has a reputation for working the aisle and the experience to hit the ground ready "day-one" as Barbara Boxer's replacement. She's pro-business and works well with Republicans and Democrats. Her stance is what we expect of our representatives, work it out and get the job done. 

SUPERIOR, WISCONSIN, WAR AND CLIMATE

Leaving Ashland, we stopped at the Northern Great Lakes Visitors Center. They were celebrating the grand opening of a new exhibit about Aldo Leopold and the docent teasingly said this fall basket of mums matched my clothes and I should have my picture taken with it. The building is quite impressive but I found the displays rather plastic. A voices about Native Americans film was poorly done. The see-through lighted-from-behind screen was shadowed by the exit sign lights and other invasive light made it difficult to see.  The exhibits are designed to play with and press buttons and the story and pictures, except for a 75 foot tall mural, just didn’t give me a satisfied feel, or peak my curiosity, except for this sign:

Just the sign, then very little about people settling here and struggling to make it. Duluth is in Minnesota, maybe that is why. But, Highway 2 is on a direct line to Duluth. I guess I’m jaded. I’ve seen so many wonderful visitors centers that give you a strong feel for where you are.

The Leopold exhibit was sparse. Aldo Leopold was one of America’s foremost conservationists.  He is renowned for starting the national wilderness system, founding the field of wildlife management and ecology, and writing the conservation classic A Sand County Almanac. He devoted his life to the question, “How do we live on the land without spoiling it?”  A question we are still asking today.  But, no counterpart of what Wisconsin has done to fulfill that goal. I asked the docent where I could see some big sugar maples, some huge hemlocks and pines and birches. She said there are a few stands here and there, on an island, or a park. Except for a nice garden in front of the center, it is surrounded by grass. A beautiful viewing tower to look at twigs for trees and grass. It makes me wonder, is this state way behind in recognizing the very lessons that Leopold brought to American consciousness? I was truly disappointed.


This map is suggesting that climate change is a reality and this is what could happen. While we travel around the country we hear people everywhere, say:  “This is unusual weather. It isn’t usually like this.” At Ashland, a storm blew up like a veritable tornado. Campers commented at how unusual it is to get so many violent storms. In Michigan, the humidity and weeks on end of higher than normal temps? people were shaking their heads, “don’t know, this weather. My barley heads are bigger this year, but my corn is destroyed,” etc. etc.

The center had an artists rendering  of the extinct American Carrier Pigeons that were so important during WW1. I was amazed at how beautiful they were and wonder how our society let them die out. It bothers me still that these things happened. In fact, one poster of a former Wisconsin governor claimed, “We have enough great forests to last our population forever.”  If only they knew what greed could do.

When we reached Superior, we spent the night at the Richard Bong Veterans Historical Center. Richard Ira Bong above was a WWII fighter pilot who surpassed Eddie Rickenbacker’s record for downing 27 enemy planes. Just a young kid of 18, his  first battle netted 6 kills. They stopped him at 22 kills thinking their new, young hero would make a better emissary for selling war bonds.  He got bored with that and asked to go back to battle. Then they stopped him at 40, for fear they’d lose their hero as the war just about over. This center is unusual in that it is mostly devoted to this one man’s exploits with a lot of war statistics and memorabilia to fill a huge three-story building. It is located here because Richard Bong was born and raised in Poplar, WI, just  a few miles away from this center. His control of the Japanese air attacks made a huge difference in the outcome of the war. Many battle plans rested on his ability to perform and he is fittingly a great American Hero. Well worth a visit. This visit came as a positive, in one way because I’d just finished reading In Harms Way, by Doug Stanton, about the horrible shafting the Navy dealt Major McVay, the commanding officer of the Indianapolis when it was sunk by a Japanese sub. It took until 2001, 56 years after the sinking, to exonerate McVay.

And, a negative because I am so anti-war. Not that WWII wasn’t necessary, it was. But most wars are over American expansionism, our corporate interests in foreign countries, intervention in foreign countries leadership, ideology, religion, lack of tolerance for other nations culture, oil, business.  Look at these statistics of World War II:
Of a global population at the time of 2.3 billion people, 85 million served as soldiers. Sixty million died, 38 million of them civilians.
2/3 rds of the Jewish Population was annihilated.  The Soviet Union lost 27.5 % of their population. 17% of Poles died. 19.4% of Germans died. 3.67 % of Japanese lost their lives.  All countries lost some.
I read here General MacArthur’s  statement after the war:


We do have a better world. But we don’t have freedom, tolerance or justice. We give our freedoms away, piece by piece. We are at war on our city streets. Tolerance and justice are still unmet goals as a nation.

Protesters then were women and had I been old enough, I’d have been there with them.  I do appreciate that I had the right to protest, a freedom much diminished, narrowing and threatened as I write.
Amen!

LADY LEX

The USS Lexington is fondly called Lady Lex around Corpus Christi, Texas. She served valiantly in WWII and served a total of 48 years. The Japanese kept broadcasting her sinking, never true. She became known as the ghost ship that came back to life.


Here she sits in the harbor.


She was attacked by two kamikazes. One was shot down, the other hit her island, did huge damage, killed 47 and wounded 123 men. The kamikazes were a desperate measure by the Japanese. They recruited young men do die for their country and offered the great honor of wearing a head band (hackamachi)  used by respected feudal samurai. Kamikaze means Divine Wind, a wind god said to have repelled a Mongol fleet heading toward Japan in 1281.


The Japanese distributed these flyers to demoralize the men. You can barely read at the top, The bearer is entitled to honorable treatment as prescribed by the Geneva Convention.


This is a very personal museum. Many letters described the attack and the subsequent sadness of burying their friends at sea.


One survivor sent in his dog tags and a piece of shrapnel from the “Zeke” they shot down.


The four self guided tours take you all over the ship and while I walked I had this sense of deja vu as though I’d seen this ship before. I could see men running through the hatch doors;


water oozing up though the hatches as the ship flounders in flood mode.

I see the men running, as the horrible piercing sirens go off and some sailor struggles to turn off these valves. I was running all of those WWII movies through my brain only to learn later that indeed, the Lex had been used in several movies.


Sailors slept in hammocks like this, only 18 inches from each other.


A later refurbishment gave much improved sleeping arrangements, but the men who used them referred to them as coffins.


An old swabbie looked like this.


And a modern swabbie we recognize.


If you like models, there were rooms full of them, every size, every ship and plane.


I preferred pictures and paintings of ships.


Here is the Lex going through the Panama Canal with planes like toys littering her deck.

As you walk into a room, a sensor starts a recording and in this spot I heard Roosevelt sadly delineate the number of ships wounded and sunk at Pearl Harbor. The casualties in men. It was about 300 men and 316 ships, if memory serves me.


You can see the fear and sadness in these young faces as they prepare for battle.

And, the wonderful moments of relief and joy at liberty.


Other duties than war.


It was cold and windy and we viewed the deck last. Three football teams could play on this deck at the same time.

The island, the control tower, is the highest part of the ship which from bottom to top is 19 stories high.

I climbed into this wheel well and Jim took my picture.


I liked the painted personality of the Skyhawk, the plane I crawled into.

The navigation room, again gave me that deja vu. The compass on the right, with the huge compensating  ball-magnets keeps the compass functioning. So, I got to massage the navigator’s balls, as they are called.


The life rafts are now reversible, so no matter what side they fall on you can get in. But, it isn’t water proof. Brr, that’s cold.


There was so much to see here. We spent four and one-half hours on the ship. Pricey, we thought, at $11.95 each, senior price, plus $3.50 for parking.  We also ate a delicious cafeteria style lunch on board. But, they also show two major movies wearing 3-D glasses that were absolutely stupendous and worth the price of the ticket on their own. So,  go see the Lex if it is the only thing you have time for.

POLITICS FRONT AND CENTER.

The debates have everyone atwitter, Biden smiled and chuckled too much, Ryan hesitated too long before answering a question he clearly didn’t expect about abortion, yatta ta yatta ta yatta. I guess the pundits have to earn their money someway, but not one of them mentioned the most telling line from Biden:
The next president will pick two jurists to serve on the United States Supreme Court. If the Romney ticket wins, you can expect a conservative court to be even more conservative. I think having such an unbalanced court is a disaster as in their recent decision giving corporations the same rights as a human. That is something to think about.
Ryan avoids answering the direct question, what is their plan to bring 12 million higher-paying jobs to Americans.  He says they will do it, but he can’t explain how. Biden says the way to get back to work is to let the Bush tax cuts expire and level the playing field for middle class Americans. Help out where needed just like the banks were helped. Working people PAY taxes.
It makes me nervous to watch the debates. I don’t watch the horrible ads I hear about. But, we have so much to lose and be concerned about if our leaders fail us. If there was only some way we could be guaranteed what we hear is honest, and hear plans to solve problems that are clear and concise. This campaign has given the fact checkers a lot of business. There are more, and more fact checkers needed. We should require our congressional leaders to take ethics classes before they take their oath. I would just once like to see a fact checker at a debate slap one of them across the knuckles with a ruler when he or she lies. And, I’d just once like to hear an ad that says, “This message has passed the fact checker for truthfulness.”
(I didn’t hear from the pundits that there was a proliferation of lies at this debate like the Presidential debate.)
And, no one mentioned Republican Senator Larry Pressler’s endorsement of President Obama, and the positive things the Obama Administration has done for veterans.
Yesterday, I proudly endorsed President Obama.
As a combat veteran of two tours of Vietnam with 22 years of service as a Republican member of the U.S. House and Senate, the choice was not easy.
But it is clear: President Obama recognizes that our sacred trust with those who serve starts when they take their oath, and never ends.
That’s why he’s enacted tax credits to spur businesses to hire unemployed veterans and wounded warriors. He implemented and improved the post-9/11 GI Bill, the largest investment in veterans education since the original GI Bill more than 60 years ago. He’s proposing a Veterans Jobs Corps that would help put returning service members to work as police officers, firefighters, and first responders.
President Obama ended the war in Iraq, and has a plan to responsibly end the war in Afghanistan. He’s laid out a clear plan that would reduce the deficit and prevent the mandatory arbitrary military spending cuts that no one wants.
And something that hits close to home: President Obama secured the largest increase in VA investments in decades, so veterans get the care and benefits they earned, like treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury. As someone with service-related PTSD, I meet with younger veterans weekly to help them through the treatment and transition. It makes a difference for them knowing their president has their back.
And let me be clear: Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would be disastrous for America’s service members, veterans, and military families.
When you fail to mention an ongoing war in accepting your party’s nomination to be president, or veterans in a so-called jobs plan, the public praise rings hollow.
Mitt Romney has time and again failed the test to be commander-in-chief of our nation’s military. When he politicized the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other brave Americans in Libya, he demonstrated that he lacks the required resolve and steadiness. He sowed division between “us” and “them” when he wrote off 47 percent of Americans, including any veteran collecting disability like myself. He has still failed to outline any plan to end the war in Afghanistan or bring our troops home.
He has not proven himself fit to serve as commander-in-chief of this nation.
Now, that is clear and concise.

FROM A WRONG NUMBER.

Some days are fast-moving and adventurous. My daughter, Kris and Son Ken share a family plan for their phones since they live in the same city. While driving to work, Kris got a phone call meant for her brother’s family. The caller was asking her if she could take on an exchange student from Italy. She stopped the car and said, Yes!  Her brother had done it the year before. Why not? The woman asking explained that she had to place two boys in 24 hours or they would lose their right to exchange. Zoom, Kris had a mountain of paperwork to fill out, proof of employment. She had to take pictures of her house and family and the dogs. Fax it to Italy. They approved her and asked if she knew anyone who would take the other boy.
“My brother and his wife,” of course.   Ken said yes before he could consult with Laurie. And, just as fast, they were approved.
For Kris, as it turned out, it was her son’s birthday and they would be celebrating his birthday that day and picking up their student that night at midnight. When I get pictures, I’ll give an update.
We had an exchange student from Indonesia in 1986, that turned into a wonderful learning and exciting experience for all of us. We still keep in touch with Linda and her family. I visited them for the first time in 2004.

This is Linda with her daughter and son.
My youngest daughter was an exchange student to France in 1987. The son of one of her French sisters visited us last year.  Now she is hosting a graduate student from Brazil. I will get to meet him at Thanksgiving.
Hosting students from all over the world is such an enriching experience. Understanding other cultures is an advance toward peace between nations, which is what got the initial public exchange program going after WWII. It was named AFS, which stands for American Field Service,  an idea from soldiers who, like today, find people wonderful and endearing in  an “enemy” country. I’m sorry to say, it hasn’t stopped wars. But, I’m pleased to say, there are many, many student exchange organizations still making inroads to peace.
I’m glad my kids are spreading the tradition to their families. If you ever feel you have time to have a temporary addition to your family, having an exchange student is a wonderfully rewarding experience. In fact students report that their exchanges have been life changing events when they learn how others live.

AJO, ARIZONA

Yesterday, before we left Painted Rock, this little fox came out of a hole and decided to catch the last rays of  sunshine.

As the sun went down, a partner popped out of the hole and we watched them cavort, and peek and scamper in and out of their den which is right next to the road in the park.  Then, when it got dark, they took off and went hunting. Taking pictures was tough with the low light and their quick movements, but, doncha know?  We  love this kind of entertainment.

As we were leaving the park, and on arriving, too, we saw gigantic power lines being installed. Jim speculated it was a new solar installation. As we rounded the bend, there was the sign.  ABENGOA, Solana Generating Station.  We love to see that happen. It is interesting that at Painted Rock, and at every campground or boondocking site we stay, we are the only RV with lights on in the early morning.  Thanks to our solar. We get up and enjoy the quiet mornings with plenty of power.


We  drove to Ajo, Arizona, did our laundry, drove around town, went to the visitors center for sight seeing  information and visited the VFW. They allowed us to park overnight .  Jim took a notion to photograph our view from the dining room window every morning, just for the heck of it. Sometimes they are diamonds and sometimes coal.  I kind of chuckled over what is sure to be a coal picture today.  Light is just breaking and he went off to help the post volunteers  set up tables and canopies for a big chili cook off.  Looks like we are in for a fun day!
Last night we had a beer at the VFW bar. For a small town, they lost 16 guys to WWII and they have three graves right on site. I’ve never seen that before. We’ll probably learn more about it today.

WEST COAST WAR

I volunteer for the Alameda County Sheriff's Archive, and when I arrived at Santa Rita on Thursday, I found the book The West Coast Goes To War by Don De Nevi. It was donated by Jay Friberg.
Deputy Marc Lakner , retired, was present, and he donated a piece from the Berlin Wall that was given to him by a relative who was once stationed at Checkpoint Charlie.
The Sheriff's Office has been described as a "semi military organization." Veterans are given five preferential points on exams to enter and promote through the ranks. Many veterans serve in the department, only now they are Viet Nam or Iraqi vets. Since we haven't had a war on American soil since the Civil War, I was surprised at the title of this book until I opened the pages and realized it was an apt title. Not the killing, bombing and bullets we see visited upon civilian populations that all war brings in the occupation, but a war even so, in stark contrast to today's conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Civilians volunteered to man watch towers to spot airplanes all over the Bay Area. Signage like those above were made, paid for and erected by civilians.
My husband lamented the taking of the Japanese as he watched half his friends from his high school basketball team be deported to concentration camps. It was personal ugliness. The evacuations were handled by the Sheriff's Department in Alameda County. I interviewed one Deputy, now deceased, who was part of that. The record is in our archive.
The Japanese family above were required to report to the Sheriff's Department and every car carrying a Japanese person was stopped and searched when traveling over the Bay Area Bridges.
People bought bonds to support the war; canteens were organized for soldiers returning or leaving. Dances were held for them. Women went to city hall and wrapped bandages for the war effort. They had victory gardens and rationing of sugar, gas, and other needed war materials. There were blackouts and curfews and radio silence to be obeyed and enforced by Sheriff's deputies. They covered the patrol cars headlamps with a black cloth that barely allowed them to see the road they were driving on. Production jobs, making bullets, ship building and so on were taken over by women. Many were married women who did it for the cause, and then returned to family duties after the war. (An interesting black note here, only white women were provided with child care while working the war industry. Women of color had to arrange their own child care.)
An escape route was built across the mountain tops of California in the event of bombings and there were various skirmishes in American territory, (subs, air breeches, one firing on a West Coast fort, and an altercation in Alaska)
For all of its support, let us never forget, war is about killing people.