Posted on 06/13/2004 11:07:11 AM PDT by GretchenM
This is a catch-up Dose. Captions will provide the summary of events. Photos will be in no particular order other than as they appear on Yahoo News.
That did it for me, too. I'm tearing up now as I type :( I was wondering what he said to her as he handed her the flag. It was so sweet to see him get down on one knee---like a young man proposing.
I was looking at a magazine in the supermarket earlier today--pictures of the President and Nancy--and I started to cry right there on the checkout line.
You are correct about the flag. The gentleman is the current commander .. the USS Ronald Reagan is due to arrive at her home port of SAN DIEGO on approx July 23rd. We can hardly wait!!
We're going to try to make it a big FReeper event - rumors have it that Jim Robinson may even be there.
These are so cool - thanks.
Saddest, so exquisitely beautiful when once I'd heard the words ... if I were a soldier who'd been in the midst of terrifying combat and seen my friends die, I'm sure it would be the most meaningful, the most poignant, of all songs. The line about "No pleading prayers through the night," well ...
I woke up with it singing in my mind this morning.
I was so happy when that happened.
Ron is married. Maureen was married three times and I think Patti was married once, but is now single. Ron lives in the Seattle area and studied ballet for four years. I don't know if that is his profession now. The media assiduously avoided mentioning that any of the Reagan children worked, which I found odd.
Mike said earlier in the week that he wants to see his brother and sister become born again. I expect there could easily be some antipathy toward him on that count, too (them not understanding spiritual things as Mike does; feeling the conviction of sin while around him, etc.).
I was glad Mrs. Reagan let Mike kiss her head so tenderly at the very last.
I really identify with him because I am the least favorite of my father's four children (because I resemble my mother too much -- his first wife who gave him much cause for grief). There are a lot of things we have to put up with in life; being gracious in the midst of being rejected as a child for reasons that are totally out of one's control requires a great deal of character. Mike Reagan passed the test. As I wrote earlier, he is a very humble man. I find that winsome.
I really identified with him too. I always felt like I was being pushed out of my family because of my problems and I was so upset when I saw that the family was so clearly pushing Michael aside. I know how devastating it can be, especially if it starts from childhood.
FWIW, here's my opinion.
Dysfunctional family. Reagan was a superb president, and husband. Nancy loved him, but did not share the conviction of his faith. Ron and Patti were like Nancy, and were allowed to rebel (by Mom). Michael was a "tag-a-long kid".
Now, that being said, I lose some respect for Ronald Reagan as a father. But not much, because I truly think we are all responsible for ourselves, ultimately.
OTOH, Michael should not have publicly used that forum to "share his faith" with his siblings. I really felt the sting of that. The 3, (Nancy, Ron and Patti) were of one mind about how Michael was handled.
That's just my opinion. But there have been jabs back and forth with Michael for years, and he always felt the strength of his Dad standing with him. Now, he is alone.
It's tough to be the kid of a famous person.
It's tough to be adopted.
It's tough to be a Christian in a family where that is not embraced.
Michael, I believe, has all of the above going against him.
From what I've heard, some of the public accounts (from books, etc) bear that out. They all need our continued prayers.
Thanks for the Dose Pictures Gretchen. It was quite a week wasn't it.
Prairie
To me, it almost seemed like an afterthought, that the Major General handed off the escort duty to the President, because it was in such slow motion and carried out with some seeming uncertainty, but I'm sure it was planned. W was the only one from whom Nancy seemed to draw strength and find a way back to a place where she could exit her numbness for a few seconds. I felt she was showing a tremendous amount of approbation to W during those few moments when he escorted her, and during the eulogy.
In that case, I find it hard to be on live threads, so I agree.
I don't have a journalism degree. I worked on my college newspaper, but as a typist. Back in the days before computers.
While I certainly wouldn't recommend my career route (I didn't get the courage to try to get anything published until I was in my mid-thirties), I do believe that my brief stint as a stringer for the weekly "county" edition of a small-town newspaper did help open doors for me in my other writing. My other writing led to magazine articles and now the books and editing jobs I do today. (Selling the personal stuff is the most difficult, but I still have hope that will happen eventually, too.)
If you do get the job as a stringer, ask around to make certain that you're collecting all your pay. The pay is lousy, but mine was lousier still because I found out several years after the fact that I was also to have been paid for EACH photograph they ran. The newspaper supplied the film and they developed the pictures; however, I found out later that the editor not only pocketed the money for the pictures that had run with my articles but also the ones she'd asked me to "drop by and take when you're in the area." (Liberals! Never trust 'em!)
I primarily did human interest stories. I loved interviewing gardeners. (I'm still pleased with the b&w gardening pictures I took!) My favorites articles though were the ones when I interviewed different teachers at different schools and asked them how they'd spent their summer vacations. ;)
Get your "real job" to support your habit and do the part-time stringer job/s as ways to hone your skills. (When the newspaper isn't paying any of your expenses, you can often retain the copyright to your stories. That leaves you freer to redevelop them and submit them to noncompeting newspapers and publications elsewhere. You can do it if the newspaper buys "all rights"; it just takes more work to do so.)
Good luck!
I watched PBS' two-part series on Reagan's life this week and one interviewee said that Reagan displayed the classic symptoms of a child of an alcoholic (in his case, his father), in being unable to form deep attachments -- but this excepts Nancy, of course, and Reagan was close to his mother. Perhaps because Mike, at a young age, was removed from this aloofness and given quality time in short amounts, he was able to develop more warmly.
I have seen the pattern many times that the interviewee describes; alcoholic parents have a devastating effect on the emotional development, and at times, the reasoning skill, of their children. It can be a different effect even than wholesale abuse that doesn't involve alcohol. I think it has something to do with the fact that a non-drinking parent can be very abusive and yet still have times when they are able to love their children. Alcoholic parents tend to be unable to give the most minimal affection and consistent love to their offspring, which makes the children withdraw to avoid pain. President Reagan couldn't give what he didn't have.
Judging from the comments made by Patti and Ron in the PBS documentary, it doesn't surprise me that they didn't seem to feel the loss as deeply as Mike. They said in a number of different ways that they'd spent their lives banging their head against a wall trying, and never succeeding, to get through to find their dad's love. Their answer, they finally realized, was in accepting things as they were. As Ron said, Alzheimer's was easier for him to live with because he wasn't losing something he'd already had.
"Your beach shot at #80 looks like the Moai on Easter Island."
The first thing that went through my mind was the Wise Men. I know there were 9 pictured and only 3 Wise Men, but I hadn't had time to count before that thought materalized!
Oh man! I am so jealous! Thanks for posting the photo of Chamberlain's home. You have a knack of picking a lot of places to go on vacation that are on my list of "some day."
Love the T-shirt.
Did you go inside Chamberlain's house? If so, how did it "feel"?
I thought Patti's goldfish story was endearing.
Ron tried to be clever -- in his denial that it takes anything special to join his father in heaven and his "responsibility" versus "mandate" comments, and that irked me. (But, I've decided to choose to believe that he was referring to Carter and Clinton when he made the mandate comments and that's helped me soften my opinion of him.)
I appreciate both your comments. I feel bad that, for whatever reasons, President Reagan seemed to be estranged from his children. He seemed to be someone so full of love- for Nancy, for even our country and its citizens. It's tragic if they did not feel some of that - as a child I even felt close to him in some grandfatherly, caring way.
I find interesting the connection between an alcoholic parent and an inability to form personal bonds. How terribly sad. I had not known about that before about President Reagan.
I think Nancy laughed at President George H. W. Bush's "so-so" anecdote. ;)
I thought the escort by Pres. Bush of Nancy was very touching, too. I didn't think of it as "passing the mantle" but it did make that statement.
Thank you for the Dose!! I'm a long-time lurker who "knows" most of you here, and who loves you all very much. I finally signed up today. God bless you all!
Yes, it certainly bothered me. I was especially upset when, after Nancy was presented the flag, went to the casket and lost it, that Michael was almost forced out of the family. He finally just pushed his way forward and placed his hand, lovingly, on Nancy. Ron didn't seem to happy about it.
Did you notice that Ron took off with Patti and Nancy and left his sobbing wife at the coffin. Michael did double duty with his family and Ron's wife.
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