Wednesday, October 3, 2007

The End of the War

Whew! It's finally over. At about Episode 5, I was starting to feel like it would never end and had a glimpse of what it must have been like for the people who actually lived through it. I am talking about Ken Burns's The War, a documentary concerning World War II, which has just finished on my PBS station. Episode 6, the final episode dealt with the horror of the concentration camps, the death of Roosevelt, and the dropping of the atom bomb. Heavy stuff. You don't quite know how to deal with the immensity of these events even if you were well aware of all the facts before viewing the show. The soldiers that they interviewed, and who now must be in their 80s at least, were very eloquent about their feelings. Watching the show has helped me to appreciate even more my parents and other older relatives who had to deal with not only The War but the depression that came before it. My life has been a piece of cake in comparison.

On a lighter note, I saw an Orange-crowned Warbler in my yard last Sunday, the first of the winter birds to arrive. The Orange-crowns are always first and I expect the White-crowned Sparrows will be arriving by the end of the week. Life goes on.

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