The years go by

Posted

An early coastal defense cannon is installed at Fort Worden about 1914. This photo is as good as any to illustrate how quickly history goes by, as it’s a Port Townsend event of about 108 years ago. The installation of this and similar guns marked the early years of World War I, and in the early 1970s, I served as an officer in American Legion Post 26 with several aging veterans of that conflict.

It was some seven years later (1921) that U.S. women (including my two grandmothers) got the vote, and a mere eight years later (1929) that I was born . . . about only 15 years after this photo. President Calvin Coolidge was about to hold open the White House door for Herbert Hoover and my childhood was highlighted by the Great Depression of the 1930s.

My mother died in her 80s, hadn’t finished high school and never learned to drive a car. When I reached my early teens, gasoline, tires, a number of foods and other items were rationed by World war II and we had a submarine net across Port Townsend Bay. The local bus for mill workers made a stop at San Juan Avenue and F Street.

Guns such as the one pictured above engaged in target practice at Fort Worden. My father was too old and family ridden for the draft — and I was too young. He was an air raid warden, and my mother sent CARE packages to Greece. Other wars followed. I served in one of those, and thousands of Americans continued to die.

So here we are many years later.

Years have passed and there have been some major changes. But much of our government still is fighting fiercely to keep women “in their place . . . barefoot and pregnant” with control still in the hands of a white male superiority. Women are being ordered, against their will, to become mothers. They have little voice against being used as handy conveniences.

And I look askance at short-sighted and right-now greedy Republicans. Specifically those who are facing only temporary inflation and no rationing as we participate in a war against Russia that involves commitment of no American lives . . . but strong allied involvements.

President Joe Biden, I feel, is doing quite well while facing opposition on two fronts — as he seeks to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources, while the business community is largely blaming him for inflation while jumping aboard the Big Oil gravy train.

Hopefully, before the Congressional mid-term elections a mere five-plus months from now we’ll have a more-favorable effect of sanctions on Russian oil — as the home-heating season gets under way.

Meanwhile, the latest rumor is that Putin has cancer —  and it’s a bit scary that he might not care if he takes the rest of the world with him when he goes. I’d like to hear more on this, but the press has been silenced in Russia. Ukraine's head of military intelligence, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, told Sky News that Putin was in a "very bad psychological and physical condition and he is very sick." He added that Putin has "cancer and other illnesses," and when Sky News asked if he was merely spreading propaganda, Budanov replied, "It's my job, it's my work, if not me, who will know this?"

And what does the Trump family thinks of all this? Donald Trump Jr. fancies himself “THE GREAT MAGA PRINCE” in the manner of Russian royalty in an image he posted on Truth Social on Sunday of last weekend. Yeah, sure. Buy a little red cap and everything will be OK.