Month: November 2015

7:15 am Tuesday, I went out on the lanai and watched the neighborhood stir. I don’t usually do that. We People of a Certain Age can enjoy such luxuries.

A taxi turned south off Makakilo Drive into the new houses, built five years ago. We don’t see taxis much up here. A few minutes later, it came back. Probably headed to the airport.

A woman in her fifties talked on her cell phone as her dog, tethered to an expanding leash, pulled her downhill. The dog did not miss a tree. The woman took little notice. Probably both were happy.

First came the yellow bus to pick up the elementary school kids. Two boys there, one whose mom had walked him to the pick-up spot. He looked relieved that only one other boy was there to see his mom when she wanted to give him a hug. Aw, Mom!

The second was escorted by his older sister. She went across the street to her bus when he was safely on board his. All the kids were laden with heavy-looking backpacks.

I’m not sorry we didn’t use backpacks in elementary school. Our books stayed in our desks, the ones with the ink wells that held no ink. You HAVE to be of a Certain Age to remember those. We started to carry Peechees around in junior high school, and a few books. No backpacks, though.

Carrying books home meant high school. Boys carried girls’ books sometimes if they were smitten. The well-off kids’ books had plastic school-sold book covers. My crowd made covers from paper bags. Status was easy to tell in those days.

The second bus sneezed the way buses do and stopped for the older kids. Several hustled the last few yards to be sure not to miss it.

I didn’t ride a bus to school until high school. We walked to grade school and rode bikes to junior high school. Now, it seems most kids ride buses or are dropped off by their parents. Kids miss something these days because of this.

When the elementary bus met the secondary school bus at the corner below, the buses stopped so that the drivers could chat until a car drove up.

Ordinary stuff.

I thought about the people I know whose various infirmities have confined them to bed or the hospital. Wouldn’t they welcome the chance to watch ordinary stuff? If you are not one of these this Thanksgiving, there’s one blessing for you.

The fellow who rides his Harley to work fired up the engine. He’s one of the polite ones who doesn’t blast the neighborhood with scores of decibels as he accelerates up the hill. He’s dressed in fatigues. I had not realized he was military.

Cement truck. On the hill opposite our place, more houses are going up, one by one, at the edge of the development where the houses had sprouted earlier fifty at a time. When the driver braked to make the turn, the truck seemed to want to head downhill with a mind of its own that needed to be tamed.

No problem. The driver does this every day. Relatively few cement trucks run out of control and crash.

Everyday. A crossword clue for quotidian. A fifty-cent word that sounds like it should mean something other than everyday. Have I ever actually heard anyone use quotidian in a sentence?

Three dogs follow a young man toward me. Two look like pit bulls from my perch. The third seems a poi dog, mixed and unknown parentage. The man seems quite in control, the alpha being clear to all concerned. They must all be his. They don’t stop as much at the trees.

A steady stream of SUVs thread their way out of the neighborhood. Ferrying kids to school most likely. The sportier cars mark the solo drivers, mostly men, headed to work in town. From here, I can see the H-1 freeway backed up to the North-South Road. So could the drivers as they left home. They’re used to it.

The cattle egrets fly the opposite direction, from their nightly roost at Pearl Harbor to the hills behind my house. To where the cattle are, and the bugs they’ll eat today.

I wonder if the drivers ever watch the egrets with envy?

For most of my life, I was one of the drivers at 7:15 am on Tuesday. I feel more like an egret these days.

A lot of good people I have known have died, just since I retired. Are they on some higher lanai, watching? I know that a few of them, as they accepted the nearness of death, came to value their 7:15 a.m. Tuesday moments.

Sometimes the little things mean a lot.

By 7:30 the street had quieted. There came the dog walkers again, headed home. A delivery truck rumbled down the hill.

Time for my coffee and the crossword.

Daniel E. White

November 22, 2015

Andrew Carnegie funded many charitable causes. His philanthropy has enabled myriad educational enterprises, including libraries, universities and research programs.

The cause he funded which, according to the expert on “Antiques Roadshow,” was nearest and dearest to him, the one in which he invested personal interest most intently, recognized acts of heroism. To date, over 9000 such acts have been honored, the hero receiving a bronze medal and a cash prize.

The specific medal on the “Roadshow” honored a man who was lowered into a well to rescue an 18 month-old boy. The man had come across a crowd standing around the well, trying to figure out what to do. He was small in stature, so he persuaded the others to lower him into the well on a rope, despite the fact that the walls of the well were crumbling. The father of a son just a few years older than the boy in the well, the man was determined and, happily, successful. A great story.

Around the circumference of the medal’s back surface is the verse from John 15:13—“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Synchronistically, the “Roadshow “episode aired ten days before Veteran’s Day and the same day as my visit to a retirement community that displays photos of residents who have served in one of the U.S. armed forces.

I have been in several retirement communities, sharing my book with the residents, where there is a similar wall of honor. What a great way to recognize service to the nation and to make the point that such service should not be forgotten. I can only imagine how proud a man or woman might be to have such a picture on the wall.

Two thoughts emerged. First, I doubt that many, if any, of the folks whose pictures are displayed would consider themselves heroes. They would demur, if so described, saying that they were “just doing their duty.”

I never served in the military, but I take no offense at a veteran saying that he or she was just doing their duty. I can envision a life of duty that does not involve military service. I also know that my opportunity to fulfill the duty in my life has been enhanced throughout our country’s history by the fact that there have been men and women who did their duty through military service.

That is one reason I value Veteran’s Day. People dedicated time from their lives to serve in the armed forces. I salute them for that gift, to the country and to me.

A subset of all those who have put on a uniform have faced the possibility of death or disability in a live war with real bullets and bombs. Placing one’s life in imminent danger to save the life of another is a paraphrase of the words on the Carnegie Medal for Heroism.

I don’t mind calling them heroes. And far too many have carried in their brains burdens from that service that impede their living their lives to the fullest. These folks earn special gratitude.

The second thought derives from my experience with countless parents in schools I have headed who have held together families while a loved one, often a dad, was in a foreign land facing those real bullets and bombs. Those parents cannot have had an easy task.

Single parenting is tough enough. Being the one of a pair of parents left behind while the other is off to war must compound the challenge. How does one keep children away from the anxiety the home-front spouse inevitably feels? Would every television report about American casualties cause a knot in one’s stomach?

This is not a new phenomenon. Remember the world wars? Vietnam?

The home front parent would not consider herself or himself a hero, either. And, in fact, these folks do not place their lives in imminent physical danger to save the life of another.

Theirs is a different commitment. They strive to protect their children to the extent possible from the wrenching worry of war endured by the folks at home. Is there a special niche in the wall of heroes for such as these?

Veteran’s Day is a terrific tradition. Thank you, all of you who took time from your lives to serve. A special thanks to those who put their lives on the line in a shooting war.

And thanks to those who served on the home front, too. Maybe there could be a special day for them, too.

I wonder what Mr. Carnegie might think about that?

Daniel E. White

November 4, 2015