This morning, I did something I don’t normally do in LA.  I scanned (& read) the New York Times (my Mom subscribes to the print edition).  While the paper’s bias is palpable, one can still get a good sense of what’s going on in the world by perusing its pages.

Something struck me when I read the front-page article on the bomb blast in Kabul.  No, not the paper’s claim of a deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan (perhaps due to NATO’s leadership of the military operations there?).  Instead what I noticed was this fact:  combat deaths in Afghanistan “have surpassed Iraq’s in the past two months.“

Another reminder that media silence notwithstanding, we are winning in Iraq.  And to think that President Bush authorized the surge only after his party lost control of Congress to an opposition committed to ending the war.  

Quite an accomplishment to shift strategy in that conflict which, in 2006, seemed unlikely to produce a victory.   Not just that, the president managed to get several funding bills through a legislature whose leadership was anti-war while defeating bills favoring timetables for retreat and defeat.

The president has been far from perfect, as the latest troubles in Afghanistan show.  And he has hardly promoted a conservative domestic agenda, but, against great odds, we are succeeding in Iraq.  

The left may be determined to dub him a failure and the worst president in US history.  George W. may not rank with Reagan or either Roosevelt, but the facts about his White House tenure tell a different story than that offered in the MSM and on left-wing blogs.

After my sister returned to the hospital to spend the balance of the evening with my Mom, I returned on I-71 to my brother’s where I am currently staying. All around me, as I traversed Hamilton County, I could see — and hear — fireworks and regretted that I would miss seeing them this year.

But, I was eager to return here so I could enjoy the leftovers from my brother’s Independence Day party. Just as I was about to get the food out of the fridge, my brother invite me to join him on his front porch as he watched the fireworks. We saw an amazing display just over the trees in the neighboring subdivision.

My sister-in-law soon joined us downstairs to tell us that her son, the youngest PatriotNephewWest, was watching from his bathroom and was offering most interesting commentary. Apparently frightened by the sound, he had retreated inside as soon as the show had started.

Following her upstairs, I joined my nephew and his maternal Grandma and heard the best color commentary on a fireworks display I have ever heard. This adorable and intelligent two-year-old called this one, “awesome,” that one “amazing,” another “spectacular” (at least that was what it sounded like he was trying to say–he gave each word his own unique pronunciation). A few were so overwhelming him that all he could do was say, “Wow.”

After the grand finale, he said, “all done,” then concluded, “that’s a wrap,” causing my sister-in-law to wonder where her son had learned that expression.

And making his uncle feel very lucky that he got to spend this Independence Day in his hometown.

550 metric tons of “yellowcake” uraninium, the “last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program” removed from Iraq.

Today, as my Mom, now at home, has been doing much better, I decided to visit the two houses where I lived as a child. As I approached the first, up a windy lane, I observed that except for one house which I didn’t remember, the houses all seemed the same. Sure, a few, notably our one-time home, had different landscaping another was painted a darker shade, but little had changed.

The house looked different. I was spared the embarrassment of asking to see the room I shared with my brother (until I was seven) as no one answered the door when I rang.

I took the long route to my old house and was saddened to see that the Old Town Ice Cream Parlor where my Dad used to treat us on many a summer evening had disappeared as had the Daily Donoughts. I can still remember the daisy on its neon sign.

I parked just up the street from the house where I had spent the better part of my childhood. Situated next to the large wooded estate of a Midwestern mattress magnate, it had been an ideal place for a young boy to grow up. We could explore those woods as we made up stories about the old lady who lived in the castle-like stone house. If she caught us on her property, we had convinced ourselves, she’d imprison in her drafty cellar, perhaps torturing us with the old rusty farm equipment we found near a dilapidated building on the grounds.

Woods to explore! And an old house which helped activate our young imaginations. What a place to grow up.

I walked those woods today, now a local park. They no longer seemed to go on forever as they once had. If we got lost, we might never find our way home. But, just today, I followed one path to its end–on a suburban street. Those big woods had gotten a lot smaller since I last explored them.

It was good fortune that friends of the family bought the house, the younger brother of a girl with whom I once played in nursery school.

As I approached the house, I saw her mother, a woman I probably hadn’t seen since I was the age of her oldest grandchild. She remembered me; she still talked with my Mom every now and again. (The owner, a friend of my brother, was taking a romantic vacation with his wife.)

She invited me in, showed me the home. It was weird going through that house, now someone else’s home. They had done a nice job, fixing it up, correcting some of its flaws. I reminded her grandsons how lucky they were to live near such a big woods.

Learning I lived in LA, the eldest commiserated with me about the fate of the Lakers. I told him my friend Lucy took it harder as she was a bigger fan than I. They also asked if I knew any famous people.

When I spoke with the man who lived across the street from my childhood home and mentioned that I had once lived there, it seemed he was new to the neighborhood. I guess I assumed he had just moved in as he had bought the home for his family shortly before I started college. His home would always be Mrs. McCoy’s house, Mrs. McCoy being the nice old lady who lived there when we were kids and frequently gave us candy. It seemed I would always associate every house on the street not with its current owner, but with the families who lived there when I did.

From there, I drove back toward my brother’s who lives on the other side of town, not far from the private school I had attended. I retraced the route I had driven for over a decade (well, for most of that time, not at the wheel). While much has remained the same, there were a number of changes.

The old mattress factory was boarded up, part of it in the process of being torn down, a few trendy(-looking) cafes and bistros where once there had been shops. Some homes, however, looked exactly the same. Exactly. It seemed they even had the same exact landscaping, that the trees had barely grown at all.

Every time I drive through Cincinnati as I did today, exploring quite a bit of my home town, I see things I barely notice — or took for granted — as a child. Given where my Mom lives, not far from the Ohio River, I traversed a good deal of the town to get to our old house, seeing wonderful green spaces and pleasant homes with interesting architecture, even in the less affluent sections of town.

No wonder Winston Churchill called Cincinnati “America’s most beautiful inland city.”

I wonder if it’s being around my family where the women are Democrats, the men Republicans that has made me less inclined to write about politics. To be sure, when we do get together, there is often much political banter, though others might use a stronger word to describe our exchanges.

Just over five years ago, during all the hoopla over the release of the Lord of the Rings movies, my passion for the story (and its surrounding mythology) was rekindled (well, it had never been extinguished). I re-read the trilogy, the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales while exploring the various volumes of his notes, drafts and sketches.

I bought the box set of The History of the Lord of the Rings even as I had previously perused the volumes, thought I would never read them as they were merely his original drafts of the story, never fully fleshed out. When I was cleaning my apartment at the beginning of 2007, I decided to give these to a local thrift store, given that I already had the hardcover editions.

Well, a few weeks ago, while browsing in an LA bookstore, I chanced upon the first volume, I chanced (if chance it was) on the first volume of that set, The Return of the Shadow, and started reading. I was fascinated both by how much of the original story was there in Tolkien’s original drafts, yet how much of the tale’s essence had yet to emerge. I wanted to read on.

Feeling I owed something to the bookstore for allowing me the pleasure and privilege of perusing their treasures, I decided to buy the book and have been hooked ever since. Normally, I read the trilogy (or listen to it in my car) every year or so. This reading will be a bit different as I’ll be reading the drafts rather than the final version.

What an amazing story–how it stands up over time. Much like the great myths that I have been studying in my graduate work.

This morning, I did something I don’t normally do in LA.  I scanned (& read) the New York Times (my Mom subscribes to the print edition).  While the paper’s bias is palpable, one can still get a good sense of what’s going on in the world by perusing its pages.

Something struck me when I read the front-page article on the bomb blast in Kabul.  No, not the paper’s claim of a deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan (perhaps due to NATO’s leadership of the military operations there?).  Instead what I noticed was this fact:  combat deaths in Afghanistan “have surpassed Iraq’s in the past two months.“

Another reminder that media silence notwithstanding, we are winning in Iraq.  And to think that President Bush authorized the surge only after his party lost control of Congress to an opposition committed to ending the war.  

Quite an accomplishment to shift strategy in that conflict which, in 2006, seemed unlikely to produce a victory.   Not just that, the president managed to get several funding bills through a legislature whose leadership was anti-war while defeating bills favoring timetables for retreat and defeat.

The president has been far from perfect, as the latest troubles in Afghanistan show.  And he has hardly promoted a conservative domestic agenda, but, against great odds, we are succeeding in Iraq.  

The left may be determined to dub him a failure and the worst president in US history.  George W. may not rank with Reagan or either Roosevelt, but the facts about his White House tenure tell a different story than that offered in the MSM and on left-wing blogs.

After my sister returned to the hospital to spend the balance of the evening with my Mom, I returned on I-71 to my brother’s where I am currently staying. All around me, as I traversed Hamilton County, I could see — and hear — fireworks and regretted that I would miss seeing them this year.

But, I was eager to return here so I could enjoy the leftovers from my brother’s Independence Day party. Just as I was about to get the food out of the fridge, my brother invite me to join him on his front porch as he watched the fireworks. We saw an amazing display just over the trees in the neighboring subdivision.

My sister-in-law soon joined us downstairs to tell us that her son, the youngest PatriotNephewWest, was watching from his bathroom and was offering most interesting commentary. Apparently frightened by the sound, he had retreated inside as soon as the show had started.

Following her upstairs, I joined my nephew and his maternal Grandma and heard the best color commentary on a fireworks display I have ever heard. This adorable and intelligent two-year-old called this one, “awesome,” that one “amazing,” another “spectacular” (at least that was what it sounded like he was trying to say–he gave each word his own unique pronunciation). A few were so overwhelming him that all he could do was say, “Wow.”

After the grand finale, he said, “all done,” then concluded, “that’s a wrap,” causing my sister-in-law to wonder where her son had learned that expression.

And making his uncle feel very lucky that he got to spend this Independence Day in his hometown.

550 metric tons of “yellowcake” uraninium, the “last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program” removed from Iraq.

Today, as my Mom, now at home, has been doing much better, I decided to visit the two houses where I lived as a child. As I approached the first, up a windy lane, I observed that except for one house which I didn’t remember, the houses all seemed the same. Sure, a few, notably our one-time home, had different landscaping another was painted a darker shade, but little had changed.

The house looked different. I was spared the embarrassment of asking to see the room I shared with my brother (until I was seven) as no one answered the door when I rang.

I took the long route to my old house and was saddened to see that the Old Town Ice Cream Parlor where my Dad used to treat us on many a summer evening had disappeared as had the Daily Donoughts. I can still remember the daisy on its neon sign.

I parked just up the street from the house where I had spent the better part of my childhood. Situated next to the large wooded estate of a Midwestern mattress magnate, it had been an ideal place for a young boy to grow up. We could explore those woods as we made up stories about the old lady who lived in the castle-like stone house. If she caught us on her property, we had convinced ourselves, she’d imprison in her drafty cellar, perhaps torturing us with the old rusty farm equipment we found near a dilapidated building on the grounds.

Woods to explore! And an old house which helped activate our young imaginations. What a place to grow up.

I walked those woods today, now a local park. They no longer seemed to go on forever as they once had. If we got lost, we might never find our way home. But, just today, I followed one path to its end–on a suburban street. Those big woods had gotten a lot smaller since I last explored them.

It was good fortune that friends of the family bought the house, the younger brother of a girl with whom I once played in nursery school.

As I approached the house, I saw her mother, a woman I probably hadn’t seen since I was the age of her oldest grandchild. She remembered me; she still talked with my Mom every now and again. (The owner, a friend of my brother, was taking a romantic vacation with his wife.)

She invited me in, showed me the home. It was weird going through that house, now someone else’s home. They had done a nice job, fixing it up, correcting some of its flaws. I reminded her grandsons how lucky they were to live near such a big woods.

Learning I lived in LA, the eldest commiserated with me about the fate of the Lakers. I told him my friend Lucy took it harder as she was a bigger fan than I. They also asked if I knew any famous people.

When I spoke with the man who lived across the street from my childhood home and mentioned that I had once lived there, it seemed he was new to the neighborhood. I guess I assumed he had just moved in as he had bought the home for his family shortly before I started college. His home would always be Mrs. McCoy’s house, Mrs. McCoy being the nice old lady who lived there when we were kids and frequently gave us candy. It seemed I would always associate every house on the street not with its current owner, but with the families who lived there when I did.

From there, I drove back toward my brother’s who lives on the other side of town, not far from the private school I had attended. I retraced the route I had driven for over a decade (well, for most of that time, not at the wheel). While much has remained the same, there were a number of changes.

The old mattress factory was boarded up, part of it in the process of being torn down, a few trendy(-looking) cafes and bistros where once there had been shops. Some homes, however, looked exactly the same. Exactly. It seemed they even had the same exact landscaping, that the trees had barely grown at all.

Every time I drive through Cincinnati as I did today, exploring quite a bit of my home town, I see things I barely notice — or took for granted — as a child. Given where my Mom lives, not far from the Ohio River, I traversed a good deal of the town to get to our old house, seeing wonderful green spaces and pleasant homes with interesting architecture, even in the less affluent sections of town.

No wonder Winston Churchill called Cincinnati “America’s most beautiful inland city.”