dallashistory

Okay ... they were not found in Dallas, but they could have been Just thought that someone might enjoy reading and/ or viewing this touching story.

Hopefully, the historian on the case has access to ancestry.com.


http://cbs13.com/local/world.war.love.2.803057.html

Thanks Holly--really wonderful! I hope "family" is found.

Sadly, many World War II veterans have passed on, or will soon do so. I almost wish they wouldn't find out what happened to them. As it is, their love for each other is frozen in time.

Holly and Adam, I went to look for another letter this morning and didn't find one.

However I did find this link to "images of Jesus and Mary and even Moses and Arabic writing".

http://cbs13.com/
http://cbs13.com/slideshows/jesus.chees ... 62845.html

Imaginations are wondrous things--don't know which DNA chemical they come from but they certainly are worthy of farther genetic studies cause they can be woooooooooo.

Quote:
"don't know which ... chemical they come from"

Scientists in various fields have made significant progress understanding the DNA, protein, hormone, and brain chemistry behind human imagination.

For an adequate introduction to the subject from different perspectives.

http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Market-Compa ... 0805078320

http://www.amazon.com/Imagination-Meani ... 026213425X

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Consciousness-B ... 0140281479

I've got a couple of stories and I may have told them before.

One of my cousins was married to a college librarian who recognized that a donated book was out of the ordinary. He investigated and found that the book had been borrowed from the LOC by the a former Congressman representing the district where they lived and never returned. It was donated to the library after his death. Moreover, this particular book had been in the personal library of Thomas Jefferson before going to the LOC. Strange to think that you would casually come upon something that had been handled by Thomas Jefferson. I suppose it has Jefferson's fingerprints and on it and carries his DNA, if you could separate those things from the traces of people who had it subsequently.

Coming back to the original topic, I have nothing to rival a box of WW II love etters retrieved from a trash can. I suspect that a lot of V-mail, no longer recognized by heirs, is going to the landfills nowadays. But I go to book sales. Once I found a copy of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo with dust jacket and bought it. Thought I was paying an outrageous price because it was the book club edition and not a first. I already had the same edition from my familes books and I had read it as a kid. I hunted further and found the registration packet and so on for a Doolittle Raid veterans reunion. I picture the original owner putting the book (I assume it belonged to the same person as the registration packet) and reunion material away after the gathering and perhaps looking at it again when he heard about the death of a comrad. Maybe there were times when he related his experience to family and friends. Then, he died, or his wife and no one gave a thought to the items before donating them to the library. Most like it will be the same when I am gone. No one else is likley to realize that the things in question belonged to and were handled by a Raider.

Some of you may recall a Raider reunion in Dallas recently mentioned in another thread on this message board. There are not many of them left.

I hope that the letters will be preserved in a library or by a historical society.

Assuming that other mammals are conscious and conscious of their feelings, Modell emphasizes evolutionary continuities and discontinuities of emotion. The limbic system, the emotional brain, is of ancient origin, but only humans have the capacity for generative imagination. By means of metaphor, we are able to interpret, displace, and transform our feelings. To bolster his argument, Modell draws on a variety of disciplines--including psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, neurobiology, evolutionary biology, linguistics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. Only by integrating the objectivity of neuroscience, the phenomenology of introspection, and the intersubjective knowledge of psychoanalysis, he claims, will we be able fully to understand how the mind works.

Though dense in places, this book offers much insight into human behavior and rationales regarding money and fairness and will be of interest to serious readers of science or business.

What goes on in our heads when we have a thought? With this book, Edelman and Tononi present an empirically-supported full-scale theory of consciousness. They apply all of the resources and insights of modern neuroscience, from the largest computer models ever constructed to new experiments that detect the changes in brain activity. This pioneering work represents a landmark in our growing understanding of consciousness. Praise for Gerald Edelman: 'The new Darwin...His theory is an enrichment of life itself'

Different strokes for different folks.
All these theories enrich your life and fascinate you.

To me personally this kind of study does not enrich or inspire. To me--the way I am wired or whatever--it quite simply focuses on the mechanics-- the nuts and bolts-- and feeds the intellect but does nothing to assuage the age old yearning and cry of the human heart--why are we here? does life have purpose and meaning? is this all there is? God are you there? Do you love me? Of course I have been beset with spiritual hunger since age 15 and so maybe genetically I am programmed in the brain to "believe" but if so---Who programmed that into me. Who planted the faith gene? Why has mankind always from primitive days on sought the answer, the reason and made something or a someone to worship?

So scientists may believe they will find "how" the mind woks---so what does that do for the betterment of man? Just give him more excuse to focus on Self and be a victim of whatever he chooses with no Absolute Standard. I mean is it knowledge for the sake of knowledge-- and explaining? Where is the heart and soul and spirit? Where is the humanity?

These studies while velly scientific and erudite and elitist do not answer any of my questions but only add to my angst--least at one time they would have--now I am at rest and peace and am content to stay unenlightened in the scientific sense for the last few years I will be breathing this atmosphere. Guess ignorance is bliss after all--at least for most of us.

Bill
After my dad died in 1985 we found a small very old box in the bottom of his closet. Inside were were all kinds of WWII citations and medals including a bronze star with cluster . We also found a card on which was printed the prayer Patton had written on their way to Bastone.
Dad was a war hero and we never knew it.
Mom says dad didn't wear his medals and came home from the war with them in his pockets. He put some of his stuff in the box and never opened it again. Some of his ribbons and medals lay around the house until I came along and he gave them to me to play with and to lose. He didn't care.
I have all his things now and someday will pass them on to my grandchildren.

Bill, very moving --thanks. I love books and old ones always arouse the thought in me of who might have owned it and loved the contents.

I found the Marsalis genealogy book that has been out of print since the 70s on google. It was offered for sale by a book store in England!! When the book came, the main compiler whom I had researched had signed it. Then last week a young man who had contacted me found another copy on google and when it came he said it was signed by the same man and a woman who had helped.

Ronnie, that is so special about your dad. I know you are so proud of him. His generation truly were "heroes".
Mike told me the other day how one of the guys on one of his gun boards posted that he had just discovered on google that his daughter's boyfriend's grandfather was a Medal of Honor winner (Korea. I believe)! The kid didn't even know it--guess his parents never bothered to tell him

RONNIE, Thank you for sharing that story. You have a very personal and real reason for remembering Menorial Day as well as (evidently) VE Day.

It sounds like your Dad was a forward looking man who put the war behind him and moved on. My wife's father was a World War II veteran with similar outlook.

adam wrote:Sadly, many World War II veterans have passed on, or will soon do so. I almost wish they wouldn't find out what happened to them. As it is, their love for each other is frozen in time.

Yes Frozen in time, and bound only by eternity ...

Sharon Marsalis wrote:Thanks Holly--really wonderful! I hope "family" is found.

Hi, Sharon

I covet (the Lord knows) letters like these. I never have stumbled upon a cache of so many, but do archive a sweet series which comes to mind.

The correspondence was between a courting couple: he, a student muralist at the University of Oklahoma, and she, a student teacher up Tulsa-way. The letters flew steadily from he .... during the late 1930s. At one point, the suggestion was raised -- hinted at -- that the steam had blown out of their romance. The whole thing was taking far too long (almost five years!). Even I became worried

But a quick trip to ancestry.com (sounds like a commercial, but it is not) provided assurance that indeed, these two had tied the knot .... and had lived together for the rest of their lives!

Beyond that sweet resolution, I know nothing. It is their story. *

* Still, I was relieved .... I hope that the details of their lives carried many sweet moments, if beset by challenges ~ and trust they were via that eternal gaze.

Some may have seen this story on Yahoo, but thought I would post ~ a semi-related discovery of a message in a bottle ... though bittersweet:

http://tinyurl.com/yasvges

This bottle was set afloat in 2003; I wonder what the oldest message to be written, bottled and found might be?

Ah ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_in_a_bottle

Something about finding a message in a bottle really captures the imagination.

Song:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_in_a_Bottle_(song)

Film:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139462/

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_in_a_bottle

Quote:
The first recorded messages in bottles were released around 310 BC by the Ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus, as part of an experiment to show that the Mediterranean Sea was formed by the inflowing Atlantic Ocean.[verification needed]

On his journey back to Spain after discovering the New World, Christopher Columbus's ship entered a severe storm. Columbus threw a report of his discovery along with a note asking it to be passed on to the Queen of Spain, in a sealed cask into the sea, hoping the news would make it back even if he did not survive. In fact, Columbus survived and the sealed report was never found.[verification needed]

In the 16th century, the English navy, among others, used bottle messages to send ashore information about enemy positions. Queen Elizabeth I even created an official position of "Uncorker of Ocean Bottles", and anyone else opening the bottles could face the death penalty.[1]

In May 2005 eighty-eight shipwrecked migrants were rescued off the coast of Costa Rica. They had placed an SOS message in a bottle and tied it to one of the long lines of a passing fishing boat.[2]

In 1914, British World War I soldier, Private Thomas Hughes, tossed a green ginger beer bottle containing a letter to his wife into the English Channel. He was killed two days later fighting in France. In 1999, fisherman Steve Gowan dredged up the bottle in the River Thames. Although the intended recipient of the letter had died in 1979, it was delivered in 1999 to Private Hughes' 86-year old daughter living in New Zealand. [3]

The oldest message in a bottle spent 92 years 229 days at sea. A bottom drift bottle, numbered 423B, was released at 60º 50'N 00º 38'W on 25 April 1914 and recovered by fisherman, Mark Anderson of Bixter, Shetland, UK, at 60º 50'N 00º 37'W on December 10, 2006.[4]
End quote.