Dec 7 Pearl Harbor day

[kenlarsson]

good morning. 30 years ago today I was in Pearl Harbor standing at attention in my dress whites on the deck of the USS Cushing as President GHW Bush passed the ship on the admirals barge on the way to the Arizona Memorial for the 50th year commemoration ceremony. A year or so later my parent were visiting after the birth of our daughter. We went to the December 7 museum where they showed a film of the attack. I'll never forget my WWII vet father breaking down in tears when they were showing the film.

Bolts/Habs tonight.

[TKennedy]

A day that was a defining moment in so many parents and grandparents’ lives. What a generation.

[billhammond]

Dec. 7 is the date when I went on active duty in the Navy (1969) and the date I was discharged (1973). It's also the birthday of middle grand-nugget Maddie, who turns 4 today.

Got an e-mail overnight from Steve Baughman, who is in Minneapolis for some reason -- we're gonna try to grab a bite and a beverage this evening somewhere, somehow.

On edit, Steve is here for a political asylum interview with a client.

[Cosmic Wonder]

Greetings from aoregon. To quote a Paul Simon lyric, Gee but it’s great to be back home. Need some groceries, and I believe we will be putting up some Xmas decorations today.

Mike

[Cornflake]

Glad you made it, Mike.

Good morning, everyone. It was a few days after Pearl Harbor that my father left college and enlisted in the Marines. We think we live in difficult times.

This morning I'll have coffee with an old friend. This afternoon I hope to get Christmas lights up. Enjoy your day.

[Shannon]

Good morning, all.

Nothing new here. Just getting these kids patched up enough to finish final exams and waiting to hear the latest COVID news. Influenza is our big problem at the moment.

[paleo]

Busy day, grocery shopping early this morning, I needed some items for the beef soup/stew that is now in the crock pot. Gotta pick up around the house a little before people start showing up for practice.

Made the trip to Iowa City (Coralville) last evening for our song writing group meeting. We're going to shift back to zoom for the next few months.

[Marshall]

Dec 7, 2021 10:10:18 GMT -5 Cornflake said:

Good morning, everyone. It was a few days after Pearl Harbor that my father left college and enlisted in the Marines. We think we live in difficult times.

That's a point I made a few days ago. Each generation has their crises. And the country is never "unified" on anything, until some outside force makes us all forget our differences and pull together for a common cause. As awful as the Great Depression and WWII were, they set the stage for the Post War harmonious world that most of us grew up in. That was more the exception than the rule.

[Marty]

Good morning

12F so not much better than yesterday but I will have to go out at some point today for Meds and minor groceries. Maybe the sooner the better because it has been snowing off and on all morning.

 Kaiah is coming to dinner tomorrow night and I'll be making Shrimp Alfredo with Linguini. She has moved away from her total Vegan diet to include fish. I don't remember what that is called but it sure makes having her over for dinner a hell of a lot easier.

Finishing a small batch of humidifiers this morning.

[billhammond]

By Phil Luciano
Journal Star, Peoria, Ill.

Raised as a poor farm boy in central Illinois, Sterling Cale longed for a change of fortune and scenery.

The 19-year-old thought he might find both with the Navy. After basic training in 1940, thoughts of young ladies in hula skirts swirled in his head.

"Aw, hell!" he blurted to his superiors. "Give me Pearl Harbor!"

He got his wish. And, eventually, he even got a girl.

In between, though, he fought through the stunning tumult of Dec. 7, 1941.

As bombs and bullets rained down like hellfire, he spent an eternity of hours diving into the flaming harbor to try to save fellow sailors. He lugged out body after body, some alive and others not.

Sterling Cale, who turned 100 recently, is one of an estimated fewer than 100 remaining survivors of attack. At the 80th anniversary of the bombing, it's worth recalling his story and honor his urging to keep alive the legacy of Pearl Harbor.

He never knew the details of his earliest days, which began Nov. 29, 1921, in Macomb. He lived in orphanages there and nearby Colchester until age 4, when adopted by Earl and Maida Cale. The family, including two sisters, would live in several burgs in west-central Illinois — Monmouth, New Windsor, Viola and Aledo — before settling in Galesburg, where the elder Cale started a casket-making company.

But crushed by the Depression, he shut down the shop. The family had to sharecrop outside town for a meager $30 a month. The strenuous life made a deep impression on Sterling Cale, who each morning had to milk cows before walking five miles to school.

"It was a lot of work," he once recalled.

But in Cale's teen years, his dad caught a break and got hired by John Deere, in Moline. The family moved again, and Cale attended Moline High School. There, his junior year, a Navy recruiter from Chicago showed up, chatting briefly with Cale and his classmates before simply asking, "Anyone want to join up?"

Cale hesitated for only a half-second. With his graduation pending in a year, jobs remained scarce and farm work loomed as a fallback. He shot his arm skyward, catching the recruiter's eye before yelling, "I do!"

After he graduated high school in 1940, the Navy sent him to San Diego for pharmacy training. Graduating as a hospital pharmacist's mate, Cale was given options as to his first assignment. One was Hawaii, a faraway place he'd read about in books that seemed almost a fantasy land.

He shuddered with memories of frigid childhood winters in central Illinois. He opted for Hawaii, and soon found himself shipped out to Pearl Harbor. The first day there, with the temperature 40 below in Macomb, the mercury hit 85 at Pearl Harbor.

It felt like heaven. Hell wouldn't come for a few more months.

Cale was assigned to third-shift duty in the dispensary in the U.S. Naval Hospital, filling prescriptions. At 7 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941 — a Sunday — Cale ended his shift and strolled to his barracks, about three-fourths of a mile away. Almost home, he glimpsed Battleship Row to see a slew of planes overhead. He figured it was a drill, but then paused.

"That's strange," he thought to himself. "We don't train on Sunday."

Cale peered more closely as the planes bore down on the battleships. His eyes widened in shock as he spotted red circles on the wings and fuselages.

"My God!" he cried. "Those are Japanese planes!"

He dashed to an armory and bashed open a locked door. As Japanese bombs began to fall, Cale grabbed the only guns there: old, single-shot rifles. He handed the weapons to other sailors scrambling amid the growing chaos. As they fired bullets skyward, aerial torpedoes plummeted down.

Cale watched in horror as three of the first torpedoes blasted the USS Oklahoma, soon followed by two more. Twelve minutes after the attack began, the ship rolled over, her masts touching bottom and her keel exposed.

As the ship's surviving crew rushed to the adjacent USS Maryland to help launch anti-aircraft volleys, Cale and others sprinted toward the Oklahoma to help rescue the wounded. As bullets and bombs showered down, oil leaking from the ship sparked and burned in the harbor.

"It was very difficult," Cale later told the Journal Star. "The water was on fire."

Cale, who had training as a frogman, dived again and again into the water, trying to save others.

"A lot of the men were dead already," he recalled. "A few times I got lucky and got to throw a rope to (survivors)."

The attack lasted for about 90 minutes. Still, he kept pulling comrades out of the water.

"Some were badly burned," he said. "Their skin came off in my hands."

Over four hours, Cale pulled out 46 men. He never knew how many lived. All told, 429 aboard the Oklahoma died.

Two days later, an admiral — noting Cale's tireless work on the Oklahoma — told him to round up 10 other sailors and head to the USS Arizona. In the attack, the ship exploded in a terrible roar, then sank. Cale's team was tasked with finding the remains of crewmen still inside.

The team worked hard for six weeks, recovering whatever they could. Some of the crew had been incinerated by the blast, as if cremated.

"Most of them were just little piles of ashes," Cale said.

He retrieved the remains of 109 crewmen. All told on the Arizona, 1,177 men died — of 2,403 U.S. personnel, including civilians, killed in the attack.

After the bombing, Cale's military career was just beginning.

Amid other assignments, in 1942, Cale was attached to the 1st Marine Division at Guadalcanal. After the war, though he remained in pharmacology, he switched to the Army for career opportunities. In 1950 and 1951 he saw action with the 5th Regimental Combat Team in Korea. As a sergeant major, he served intermediate duty in Vietnam from 1955 to 1974. Between assignments there, he served with the Defense Language Institute (part of the Department of Defense) in California. Taking time off to get an MBA from Chaminade University in Hawaii in the 1970s, he spent 57 years serving the federal government, retiring in 2005.

Meanwhile, a year after the attack, Cale married one of those lovely gals he'd hoped to meet in Hawaii — though she wasn't a hula girl. He and Virginia raised two children and enjoyed four grandchildren.

Aside from military assignments, Cale has made Hawaii his home since he first set foot there. In 2005, he started volunteering at the USS Arizona Memorial, thrice weekly talking to visitors about his experiences on Dec. 7, 1941. He'd always honored requests for his autograph, above which he would scrawl the word Illinois.

"That's where I'm from!" he'd chirp.

In 2019, after 77 years of marriage, Cale became a widower. Since then, he has declined most interviews, as part of slower pace, said Emily Pruett, spokeswoman for the National Park Service.

"Sterling is doing well!" Pruett told the Journal Star recently. " He has slowed his ... volunteering, given his age, health and safety concerns."

There is no official tally as to the number of Pearl Harbor survivors still alive. However, a story this year in the Des Moines Register estimated there are fewer than 100. At this 80th anniversary of the attack, and in the wake of Sterling Cale's 100th birthday, his words echo as a warning to not forget the past:

"When we're gone, there will be no one to tell the story."

[epaul]

Morning. Dishes await.

Christmas band concert last night (I got to wrap up the concert by fronting the band and singing "What a Wonderful World". Got a handshake and a 'well done' from our hard to please retired army band director. Felt good.) Sons' of Norway Christmas gig and the Messiah concert on deck. Time to loosen up my guitar fingers and figure out which parts of the Messiah program I had better sing very indiscreetly on.

Snow all cleared away. Final total must have been close to nine inches with some nice drifts. But, all is now tidy and white. The gardener in me feels very relaxed now that there is a nice thick comfy bed of snow keeping my lilies and other vulnerables safe from winter harm.

[TKennedy]

My dad was an Army Doctor at the time of the attack. He had signed up for the reserves to help get through medical school and had been in practice with my mom’s father for several years when he got called up.

His unit deployed to the Philippines before Pearl Harbor but my my mom’s father who was swamped with a solo practice died just before the unit left and dad was given hardship leave to go home and help close the medical practice so he didn’t go.

His outfit was captured on Corregidor and endured the Bataan death March and many of his colleagues didn’t make it.

He did return to the Philippines in early 1945 and worked in a field hospital. Talk about luck!

[Dan McLaughlin]

I made myself a promise to play a little guitar every day. Slowly, calluses and hand/finger strength are starting
to come back, after over 2 years of not really playing and dealing with my health issues. I decided that if I don't do
this it will never get better. Now that I have a 00-15M and have gotten over the "let me get the guitar I always
wanted" baloney and actually have the guitar that has always suited me, I feel better about playing and getting
better at it again.

Have good ones.

[Hobson]

Back from a grocery run. More empty shelves than we've seen lately. To be fair,this was Bashas', a family chain of grocery stores that was recently purchased by another regional chain. So I don't know whether there's a problem because of the transition or it's general supply chain issues.

I've been figuring out chords for a lesser known Christmas song that my choir is doing. I used to do this all the time for my community chorus, but I'm out of practice and it's taking me longer than it should. I may or may not get summoned to play, but I want to allow myself plenty of time.

[Marshall]

[Dub]

Dec 7, 2021 14:31:50 GMT -5 Hobson said:

Back from a grocery run. More empty shelves than we've seen lately. To be fair,this was Bashas', a family chain of grocery stores that was recently purchased by another regional chain. So I don't know whether there's a problem because of the transition or it's general supply chain issues.

I've been figuring out chords for a lesser known Christmas song that my choir is doing. I used to do this all the time for my community chorus, but I'm out of practice and it's taking me longer than it should. I may or may not get summoned to play, but I want to allow myself plenty of time.

Empty shelves here too. We shopped today at New Pioneer Co-op and several things we usually buy were absent. Especially obvious we’re the bulk coffee bean dispensers. All the Fair Trade bins were empty and many of the local roasters’ bins as well.

[billhammond]

Dec 7, 2021 8:51:52 GMT -5 billhammond said:

Dec. 7 is the date when I went on active duty in the Navy (1969) and the date I was discharged (1973). It's also the birthday of middle grand-nugget Maddie, who turns 4 today.

Just got off the phone with Madeline, who told me that Dad took her to breakfast at "Waffled House." She is just a stitch, that one.

[jdd2]

interestingengineering.com/study-finds-viagra-usage-could-reduce-alzheimers-risk-by-70-percent

[t-bob]

not december 7th


Just Announced! Season 2 begins Sunday, January 9, 2022, 9/8c on MASTERPIECE on PBS.

All Creatures Great and Small returns for an all-new season of heartfelt moments, friendship, and mischief! Transport yourself back to the Yorkshire Dales once again with James, Siegfried Farnon, Tristan Farnon, Helen Alderson, Mrs. Hall, and more. After the events of the Season 1 finale, will James and Helen find their way together? Will James decide to call the Dales home? And can Siegfried and Tristan manage to work together without complete and utter disaster? More laughs, more love, and more animals (and yes, more Tricki Woo) await in Season 2!

The acclaimed ensemble includes Nicholas Ralph, Samuel West, Callum Woodhouse, Anna Madeley and Rachel Shenton, all returning for the second season. Matthew Lewis will also return as jilted aristocrat Hugh Hulton. Actress Patricia Hodge (Miranda, A Very English Scandal) will step into the role of the eccentric, larger than life Mrs. Pumphrey, with the lovably spoiled Pekingese Tricki Woo right by her side.

Season 2 will run for 6 episodes, plus a bonus Christmas episode, for a grand total of 7 all-new episodes coming in 2022! Season 1 aired January 10 – February 21, 2021 on MASTERPIECE on PBS.

[howard lee]

Dec 7, 2021 16:34:48 GMT -5 billhammond said:

Dec 7, 2021 8:51:52 GMT -5 billhammond said:

Dec. 7 is the date when I went on active duty in the Navy (1969) and the date I was discharged (1973). It's also the birthday of middle grand-nugget Maddie, who turns 4 today.

Just got off the phone with Madeline, who told me that Dad took her to breakfast at "Waffled House." She is just a stitch, that one.

So sorry to take a left turn here, but...