Good Morning All & Happy Wednesday!
Happy Birthday wishes go to friend Sara in Spokane and Juan in Michigan, who celebrate their birthdays today! And here’s to friends Joan, Jeff & Aubrie in Spokane and to friend Doug in Boise, Idaho, who all celebrate their birthdays this coming Saturday, Feb. 4th! Enjoy your special day of celebration and remember…eat lots of cake!
Praise the Lord for good news for Arianna (Ari), granddaughter of friends Mark & Jan who farm in the Edwall WA area! She fell from playground equipment at school and injured her back. Arianna was seen by an orthopedic specialist at Shriner’s Hospital in Spokane the other day and determined that she has several wedge compression fractures. However, it doesn’t appear to be effecting any of Ari’s nerve responses and the specialist is optimistic that it can heal on its own with minimal to no long-term effects, which is what we have been specifically praying for during these past few days. Ari will just need to rest and not do anything to aggravate her injury. This is the best news possible! Here’s to Ari and her continued healing!
You may remember that I’ve been quite involved with “Firewise Community” efforts at our place in Montana…working with fellow property owners there to help make their land more “fire-resilient.” We had a fellow by the name of Tai Foley of “Safe Lands Forestry” do thinning and dead tree and slash removal on our property in 2016-17 and it made a huge difference in opening up the landscape and attracting more wildlife activity, while at the same time helping protect structures on our property from possible damage from wildfire, should that ever occur in the future. In 1929 a wildfire came through our area and burned the land at that time, so we know it can happen, even though the odds of it happening again are low. Native Americans used proscribed burning for many years before the white man came to remove fuels and provide a more inviting habitat for deer, moose and elk…primary sources of protein for Native American tribes throughout their history. “Safe Lands Forestry” was founded by Tai Foley in 2008 and provides wildfire mitigation and forest management services. Tai spent quite a few years as a fire fighter with the “Flathead Hotshots.” His motto is: “Why not prevention instead of suppression?” Tai uses specialized equipment designed to remove vegetation from more confined spaces…he bought his first mini-excavator like those used in Europe and outfitted it with a fully rotating log grapple from the Finnish company “Kesla.” These machines allow “Safe Lands Forestry” to take on residential projects that are too small for larger logging companies, but big enough that more specialized equipment is needed to properly complete the job. Tai’s company does a great job of combining aesthetics, habitat and wildfire mitigation in its work. It’s been a game changer for us in helping make our property at Glacier Hills more “fire resilient”!
Over the course of time, I’ve been sharing some excerpts from my Dad’s (Don Newbold’s) oral interview that was done as part of the Washington State World War II Memorial project. Here’s some more of that interview…in this segment, my Dad describes what it was like to be a Marine Corps radio operator on a naval fire team on the ground during the assault on Iwo Jima in February-March, 1945:
“…And then we pulled over and down more below the first airfield (on Iwo Jima) and dug in. And then started calling fire (naval fire) in from there. And—we had a ship—we used to call in—my call in sign generally was “Charlie263”, which is 263—26th Regiment, 3rd Battalion, and Charlie was just a code name, Charlie263. And so then I’d get a ship and it could be—I don’t remember all the code names we had now, but one I remember well, we had it on line for two or three days, four days maybe, “Foxfire.” So I’d call out “Foxfire, this is Charlie263,” and they’d—they’d answer “Affirmative.” And then I’d say coordinates (location of Japanese positions) are—and I’d give the coordinates, given me by the lieutenant (Lt. Owen Cone) to whatever he thought was a target. This is telephone line running from him, or—or my friend, John (Vaughn) Shaw, who was his lineman. Or they had—he also had with him most of the time a sergeant who carried a Thompson submachine gun. And he was kind of—protect the lieutenant while he craned his neck to find targets. I mean. And those were the three, and then they’d give it to me and then I would, (gestures) you know, send the message out to the ship. Or—and then transport it—from there I would give them the telephone if there’s something they wanted to know. Most of the time then we’d move—was wrong, then we’d say “Foxfire, Charlie 263, last—no, just say “down 20, left 20.” So it would pull it on the target. Soon as we thought we were on the target, then I might call “rapid fire, five salvos.” Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, out they’d pump them you know. And then we’d assess damage and see if we still needed more, why we’d do it or maybe say mission, no I wouldn’t even—see, I wouldn’t even call them back if everything’s okay. I didn’t want to be on the air because I’ve got this radio and this antenna and I’ve got to try to hide it because I didn’t want them (the Japanese) to put, one, a sniper could see me, two, a range finder get on you. You stay around too long, and ships used to get nervous at night cause we’d fire star shells, see to illuminate the front. The artillery did some of that, but they would gunfire a lot of it over our battalion. We had star shells every night. So they would call in if they didn’t hear from me for awhile. They’d say, “Charlie 263, this is Foxfire,” or whatever the ship was (usually a destroyer or cruiser). Living good and happy days, or whatever it was And I wouldn’t answer them, wouldn’t answer them. They’d get kind of panicky after awhile, you know. Finally I, you know, connect power and say, grind up and at night, and the generator we had, sounded like a thrasher machine. “Karoom, karoom.” so I didn’t want that thing cranking at night, particularly any more than I had to. But I’d tell them, “stay off the air, I’ll call you, don’t call me…”
Pfc. Donald (Don) M. Newbold, 5th Marine Division, 26th Regiment, 3rd Battalion — on Iwo Jima
I saw an article in our local newspaper (The Spokesman-Review) some time back entitled “Win or lose, baseball is good for some laughs” and it provided some hilarious quotes from baseball history…among them were:
Gates Brown, Detroit Tigers outfielder, reflecting on his high school days: “I took a little English, a little Math, some Science , a few hubcaps and some wheel covers.”
Mickey Mantle, New York Yankees legend, discussing former teammate Billy Martin’s knack for getting into bar fights: “This is the only man I know in the world who can HEAR somebody giving him the finger.” (Our family saw Billy Martin at the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma one mid-week summer day with a beautiful young woman on his arm…we guessed that he had the day off from managing the Yankees against the Seattle Mariners due to getting thrown out of the game…as he was often prone to do!).
Here’s the trivia question for the day:
Question: Which of these was declared a vegetable in a famous 1893 Supreme Court case?…Tomato?…Pumpkin?…Avacado?…or Eggplant???
Answer: Tomatoes, despite being botanically a fruit, are classified as a “vegetable,” according to the Supreme Court. The high court issued this 1893 tomato ruling in the case Nix v. Hedden. Nix filed the suit under the Tarriff of 1893, which required taxes on imported vegetables—but not fruit. Nix challenged the tax on the grounds that tomatoes are not technically vegetables. The Court’s unanimous opinion held that people neither eat nor prepare tomatoes like fruits—and they should be taxed accordingly. While the Court acknowledged that although the tomato is botanically a fruit, they should be viewed as vegetables because they are usually eaten as a main course instead of eaten as a dessert.
Here are some thoughts for the day:
“Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”
—Douglas Casey, classmate of President Bill Clinton at Georgetown University
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
—P.J. O’Rourke, civil libertarian
Here’s to a great Wednesday and lots of love and good wishes always!
Press on,
Papa ‘a (Dad, Uncle Mark, Mark, etc.)