Travels And Tribulations: QUARANTINE BLOG # 512

August 24, 2021

53 years ago today. They were so young.

25 years ago today. They were young.

Skinny Pappy was born on this day in 1918. He would have been 103 today.

👉 To borrow from Paul Harvey, this video is closed-circuit for those who have heard a different version of Eddy Arnold's 1947 “Seven Years with the Wrong Woman.” This one is performed by Gene Autry.

👉 And for those celebrating their honeymoon +25, "Kokomo" by the Beach Boys.

👉 Our look at United States monuments, memorials, and spectacular constructions continues with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which honors the 58,318 men and women gave their lives in service to their country, and all who served.

1,422 proposed designs were submitted for the Memorial. The winning design was done by Maya Lin, a 21 year old undergraduate at Yale. The V-shaped granite wall has one side pointing toward the Lincoln Memorial and the other toward the Washington Monument. The memorial was completed in late October 1982 and dedicated in November 1982.

The Three Soldiers, a bronze depiction of a group of soldiers and an American flag were placed to the side of Lin’s design.

Lin’s design was controversial because of her age (21), ethnicity (Ross Perot called her an “egg roll”), and lack of experience (this was her first submission), but the memorial has become an important pilgrimage site for relatives and friends of the dead soldiers, many of whom leave personal tokens and mementos in memory of their loved ones.

Among the mementos left was a pair of combat boots and a note with it dedicated to the veterans of the Vietnam War, that reads “If your generation of Marines had not come home to jeers, insults, and protests, my generation would not come home to thanks, handshakes and hugs.”

I could not find a verification of this, but I have always thought that Lin’s design was inspired by the many protests of our involvement in Vietnam which featured the reading of the names of the fallen.

The first time I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, I had flown up early to Columbia, Maryland for a managers’ meeting (Reliable Jewelry Stores, Taber’s Jewelers) so I could spend some time with The Bro. Kyle and I met near the Memorial and walked up to it. The side we approached begins 8 inches high with only one or two names (it gradually rises to 10 feet). We had been joking, laughing, and generally catching up since it had been a while since we’d seen each other. With no signal, no word of any kind, about two steps in, we fell silent and didn’t speak until we had reached the other side, frequently stopping to read the names, frequently wiping tears.

👎 Yesterday I told you about the Freedmen’s Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln. Not wanting to spoil the good feeling garnered from the fact that it was paid for entirely by freed slaves, I did not tell you about Renee Ater.

Ater, who taught in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, says of the Freedmen’s Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln, “I view it as a complete failure of representation, rooted in nineteenth-century Neoclassical image-making based in racial type; condescending gesture in the guise of equality; and a celebration of mythic republican ideals that were never upheld. This monument should be taken down.”

👉 Let’s change gears and look at some different “monuments” and infrastructure.

Located in Longkamp, Germany, is a highway with the construction of a unique ecoduct. These bridges are created to allow animals to cross human-made roadways safely, decreasing the chance for vehicle and animal collision. This eco-bridge is just one of 15 in this general area of Germany.

How about a boat bridge, built over a 4-lane highway. The Veluwemeer Aqueduct, also referred to as the water bridge, was built over Veluwemeer Lake in Harderwijk, Netherlands. It’s an 82-foot long structure that allows the travel of water vehicles over roads, railways, rivers, or valleys.

Talk about living in a cul-de-sac! The residents of these circular village settlements in Denmark each have pizza-slice-shaped yards and homes all pretty equal in size. You wouldn’t want to come home on a dark and stormy night and get lost in one of these establishments.

👉 Yesterday the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for people 16 and older, making it the first to move beyond emergency use status in the United States. If you haven’t been vaccinated because it was technically experimental and the final approval had not been given, your wait is over. Go get vaccinated!

👉 I’ve been saving some comics, and here’s looking at them, kid.