Meg.....#100!!
Posted on 03/01/2014 5:00:26 PM PST by Kathy in Alaska
Meg.....#100!!
Thoughtlessness? Look in your own mirror.
Southern California and Arizona have been fighting over the water of the Colorado River for ages. My mother, R.I.P. at 94 years, worked for the Arizona side of the fight WAY back in the 1940's.
There simply WASN'T enough water for both states and it's WORSE now as Southern California is so populous. California is the world's 9th largest economy. There are over 40 million of us here in California....WAY, WAY too many people.
People ALWAYS go on about, say how WONDERFUL North Dakota is, but TOO many non-Californians KEEP coming here.
When I was growing up here, in the Dark Ages, there were only 10 million people here. Now: YIKES!
Your opinion is more than clear.
You have your right to say, I have mine to reply.
We’ve both had our say, so see you around.
I was born and raised in mostly southern California long ago. The water war with the Colorado River was going on then.
Maybe learning how to desalinate would help?
The problem is TOO many people fighting over too little water. Overpopulation in southern California. The mighty Colorado is a TRICKLE now, thanks to the THIRSTY folks in the most populous state in the union.
Folks back in the Midwest, say North Dakota, drone ON and ON about how WONderful their state is.
Well, if their state were SO fabulous they would have more that 700,000 folks in the ENTIRE state. San Francisco has more people than the ENTIRE state of North Dakota.
They know their winters are bad...duh, but can't understand why the state is so small.
Obvious comparison: California weather and North Dakota weather....duh.
I knew a couple interesting fellows, long ago; one had been a German parachute regiment soldier in 1944-1945, and the other had been a U.S. Army Air Force services techncian at a steel mat field up off of Omaha Beach shortly after D-Day, June 6, 1944.
They were good and longtime friends, having been brought together to work on projects for a firm in New England after World War II. Both men were very skilled at their work.
I found it funny, speaking with the German vet, because his accent was still strong though it had been decades since the end of the war. His accent and past experience was in contrast to his having become an American citizen, raising a family, and his kids becoming *so American* in almost too many ways ... that kind of boggled his mind.
All I know of the German vet’s experience, was that his technical skills had kept him from military service in Germany, until the Allied invasion of France, after which, he’d been ordered to duty with the parachute regiment. After training, he was among troops facing Brits and Canadians along the northernmost approaches to the border between Denmark and Germany, in 1945.
The American USAAF vet was assigned to an steel mat emergency airfield built above Omaha Beach, where he worked on P-38’s and P-47’s that could not make it back to England.
That was really intriguing, as an old friend of our family, had the same assignment, and I wondered if the two USAAF vets had known each other.
I can still picture the German, smoking a pipe and muttering to himself about “kids” and how the “boob tube” and drugs were messing up the lives of “today’s youth.”
The German vet and the American vet who worked together in New England, both had silver hair, and it was difficult to know exactly their respective ages ... because exposure to combat can turn a man’s hair to silver-near-white.
The first U.S. Navy SEAL whom I met in 1971 had such hair, and he was only 25 years old.
I had a feeling that the German vet was older than he let on, but he seemed to be at peace and happy with his work, and I did not wish to upset that, so I did not enquire much, in any attempt to clarify some of what I was told.
My Grandfather was a Civil Engineer who commanded a Heer Heavy Engineers Unit, and later a Company, in the Russian Campaign, mostly in the North, just south of Leningrad, and around Staraya Russa. He used to joke that he built bridges all of the way across Russia, then blew them up on the way out.
After being wounded near Narva, he was sent West to be Staff Officer for a Volksgrenadier Regiment, and captured in Early 1945.
My uncles (Shoe makers) had left Germany in the mid-30’s after a run-in with the local gestapo, settling with the German Catholics of Southern Indiana. They secured his release after the war ended, and had his family (my father) brought out of Germany immediately after the War ended. They had some influence with the Catholic Church, and the Oldenburg Academy, I guess.
Decades ago, I drove west from Oxford, OH, home of Miami University (The Redskins) of Ohio, and wandering around on an old country road ... came upon Oldenburg, IN, with its German street signs. I’d never heard of the place. I stopped to make a phone call (traditional Indiana Bell Telephone booth at a gas station); the telephone book was in English and German.
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