Gargoyle Explanation and Vietnam

Finally I was able to swim yesterday, and also got the full scoop. Thanks to all of you for your suggestions, we've acted upon some of them, but some things were unavoidable.

First, the Saturday doors didn't end up being opened until 6:35 am! Apparently the Gate Guardian (Gargoyle) was "too tired" to get out of bed. That was reported to her supervisor. Second, the lifeguard on Monday is usually one of the better ones - very rarely late. He overslept (it's fall, the weather's cooler, and school has started again - not excuses, but perhaps explanations). He rushed out and got to the pool as quickly as he could.

I had such fun finding gargoyles for all of you yesterday, that I'm continuing
with this one today. This alien is on Paisley Abbey. I guess in that Abbey, you're
protected from all manner of extra-terrestrial monsters! 

The Tuesday mess-up was exactly that - a kid in the pool on Monday night had a bad case of diarrhea. ICK! They had to close, filter, chemical the heck out of the water, etc. Our standard lifeguard - Rachel - had texted Meg and a few other regulars whose numbers she had, but she didn't have Rosemary's or my contact numbers. She made sure to get them first thing on Tuesday and we'll be texted if the pool is unexpectedly closed in future. So ... shit happens (in this case, quite literally), but it seems that it was just a very unlucky string of three days at two different locations for me. Now, on to Vietnam.

This was an extraordinary documentary and I want
to see the episodes I missed and maybe watch the
whole thing again a few more times. This is history that I
lived through. My parents had WWII, I had Vietnam. 

The final episode of Ken Burns' "Vietnam" aired last night. DH had tried to watch it earlier in the run, but turned it off. I didn't catch up with it until the 1967 year onward, but watched as much as I could.

Vietnam - 1965 Dong Xoai. As the first war where news photographers
were often with the troops on the front lines, the immediacy of the
war, its effects, and the people involved poured into each home. 

This was MY war. These men and women from the US sent over to fight or work in the support staff and hospitals were people I knew from school, or older siblings of friends and classmates. This was the war I was protesting, the music I was hearing, and the events I saw unfolding as I was in my teenage years. This was the war that was at my dinner table each night - the first televised war, Dad had the TV news on at the dinner table each night specifically to find out about the latest in the war. It was the first war that came directly into the homes of the populace.

I remember Kent State - seeing the photographs of the dead on the
street and this iconic photograph. We held a ceremony at my high
school, planting four trees for the four dead students and hoping
for peace. The trees flourish, peace has been harder to come by. 

Ken Burns did his usual excellent job of bringing a variety of people together to tell the story from very different perspectives. He had soldiers, prisoners-of-war, politicians, members of the South Vietnamese army and government, and even members of the North Vietnamese army and government. He had news clips, sound bites, film bits and pieces. He had Congressional hearings, anti-war TV coverage, and everyone from proud-to-serve Marines to Conscious Objectors and "Draft Dodgers" who crossed over into Canada. He even had Jane Fonda - "Hanoi Jane".

A victim of the napalm bombing in the background, these people fled
from the fires. The young girl in the center was badly burned, but she
survived and they showed a photo of her as an adult, holding a baby of her
own in the documentary. This photo was plastered on the front pages
of newspapers around the world and won a Pulitzer Prize for the photographer. 

Was Vietnam your generation? Your war? I was just slightly too young (by less than five years) to be totally embroiled in this war, but I remember clearly sitting and watching the draft lottery on the television. My husband was lucky - his number was very high. His older brother also got very lucky. Friends of theirs ... some shipped out and didn't come back.

The Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC is different from other war
memorials. The polished stone surface, marred only by the names of
those who didn't return, stretches as a bleak reminder of past
and present. It personalizes the war that created a schism  in society
that still hasn't healed. 

When the US went into the Middle East and Afghanistan for this latest conflict, my thoughts immediately turned to Vietnam. I could see our position once again becoming a long, destined to fail, slog through enemy country with a less than satisfying conclusion. And that's what's happening. I hate it when I'm right about political things like that! When I watched the populace rise up against the politicians and the President in the 1970's and compare those days to now, I'm not seeing a lot that's different. Washington DC hasn't changed and we've only exchanged one crook for another in the White House. Obviously we haven't learned our lessons.

Trump and Nixon - they're not that different and they're both crooks.
It doesn't seem that we've learned a lot in the past 40 years. 

Have an excellent Thursday. Tonight is the next episode of Project Runway, so tomorrow will be the generalized synopsis, with Saturday being the in-depth and spoiler analysis of the top and bottom three. Meanwhile, I'm going to try and make up for all of those days without the pool. I need to shave back my lap times!