Close Call With Kitchen Floor Gives Me Pause

 Early in the Morning od Jun e 11th, on which my late mother would be turning 86, while chasing down a roach before heading to the back of the house,, I lost my balance and collided, nose-first, with the hard kitchen floor. At first I was convinced that a tooth had been broken, but the effect was to violenty twist the cartilage of my nose, bringing on some scary, acute nosebleed before the needed clotting set in. Melissa quickly drove my sorry ass down to the UFHealh Emergency room on  NW 39th Avenue.    After my session there, I returned home and slept off the rest o the morning, grateful to God for His divine protection during that time of my personal foolishness that I hope I learned something important from.  The rest of the day saw me being much more careful with my movements while honoring my wonderful mother's memory..Now onward to June 12th..    

g                                                   

First Anniversary of My Prostatectomy

 Today marks the one-year anniversary of when I underwent a radical prostatectomy operation at the UF Health Cancer Hospital on the south side of Archer Road.  My dear, late sister-in-law Krista was staying in the same building when I entered it, climbing up its winding stairway to the second floor.  The procedure went smoothly enough, but in the early evening when I fully awoke it was very sharply painful for me 'down there'.  Melissa promptly got me on my feet for a brief post-op walk around the floor, and the Foley catheter had already been inserted.  For the next ten full days I would have little trouble with my urinating and emptying the bag...on the 17h all pain disappeared when it was removed.  Dr. Joseph performed the meticulous surgery, which took a few hours.  We left the hospital for home early on the 7th.  Krista remained there until she was released into hospice in early July.  God bless her, I miss her so much.  A few weeks after the catheter was gone, I speed-walked another Depot Parkrun 5K. The Director, Shauna...who has yet to give me volunteer credit for the end of last September when she asked me go far up and beyond the call of duty for a simple tail-walker assignment...was not at all happy with my participation, claiming health concerns. Too bad she treats it all like a competitive race whenever she runs it.  So today I got up early, ran in place a few minutes, and brewed some coffee.  And what do you know, here's Melissa! And what do you know, it's 4:30...

Good Early Morning at Home So Far

 It's now a little past five in the morning, I'm up, and my FitBit has so far given me a little over three hours of sleep credit.  Ran in place for 7 minutes, brewed coffee, and ate a couple of toaster strudels. unless we find ourselves going out today, I'm gonna be a homebody.  The news of this ongoing missile war is disconcerting and I'm tired of reaching news channels that dwell on it.  My hunger level is almost non-existent, so unless whether we go through a Dunkin' drive-through comes up from another in conversation, i'm planning to play it all cool.  Now back to my exercise and rest.  Oh, and Happy Rebecca Anniversary Day and Casimir Pulaski Day. So will I try taking out the white Camry for aa short neighborhood spin today? We'll see...

On This Anniverary of the Pearl Harbor Attack

Right now it's morning in Gainesville.  I'm sheltered in place within my house and it's raining quite a bit, predicted to do so for hours.  I think I did sleep some last night, although I'm not counting on my FitBit to bear that out.  It is also December 7th, the 84th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that ushered in the United States' entry into World War II.  I thought of the family scene at the close of the movie The Godfather Part II in which Santino (Sonny) rants about "what do you think of the Japs bombing Pearl Harbor on Pop's birthday".  Fredo replies, "They didn't know it was Pop's birthday", bringing a round of laughter.  Later Michael, played by Al Pacino, reveals that he had just enlisted in the Marines, greatly angering his volatile older brother.  This flashback scene comes right after the end of a planned murder spree in which Michael has not only disgraced his own family but has effectively destroyed it.  The scene to me is one of the best in the Godfather series, not just this movie.  Well, Pearl Harbor has NOT just been attacked, and today is before me although I plan to stay at home for most of it.  Blessings to all...

About Parkrun Strategies, What They Say About Themselves and my Retirement Anniversary

Today, Friday November 28th is a day sandwiched between two in which Gainesville is holding its Depot Parkrun 5Ks.  Melissa and I did yesterday's special Thanksgiving event, and we're planning on going back again tomorrow morning.  I usually feel a bit stiff and uncomfortable during the minutes preceding their starts, and if I run the race the first two laps are often grueling.  That's what I felt yesterday, as if I was hauling so much weight with every step that I would soon poop out.  There's a standout, clear explanation for these negative feelings I'm going through.  The weather is usually either too cold or too hot and/or too humid.  But more impactful is the fact that there are too many people attending, and they are really LOUD, TRIBAL (cliquish) and IN MY WAY.  My pre-race priority is to treat it as a running workout and do the 3.1-mile course's four laps, keep true to the pathway and avoid obnoxious (often tribal) people who are liable to interfere with me.  I don't know whether my dear Melissa will walk the event, but I deeply value and appreciate her support.  I don't think anyone else generally going there even remotely understands or cares about the medical predicaments I have been in, either with regard to my prostate cancer from months ago to my currently diagnosed brain cancer, which is now being treated with a six-week regimen of chemotherapy and radiation.  Furthermore, I am NOT upbeat about being expected (by the directors) to act like a cheerleader and perform much clapping pre-race on cue.  Whether Parkrun is a competition or not is problematic and based on the perspective that folks have about it.  Runners are in fact racing each other, as are the walkers, whether they say so or not.  And the posted results rank the finishers in numeric order of finish against each other (by name) while rating their "performances" with percentage numbers implying how they should have done within their gender/age groups: if this isn't COMPETITION then I don't know what is.  Yesterday some 190 attended the Depot Parkrun...way, way too crowded!  I'd much prefer the number to hover around 50. I expect some more insomnia tonight, but maybe if I could just relax...

Since today is the day after Thanksgiving, then had I not retired from 37 years with the United States Postal Service in 2024 when I clocked out of work at ten that evening, I would more likely be starting my retirement tonight after I finished my shift focused on receiving, processing and dispatching registered mail.  I've never felt any regret about retiring when I did, and I am grateful to have absolutely no hassles or concerns about trying to account for what might have been my 2025 medical absences from work had I still been on "active duty" with my official photo identification badge and scan card...  

Passing Through Personal Anniversary Dates, for Better or for Worse

So today is November the twenty-third, which according to my memory is right next to two significant dates in my life.  11/22 is, of course, the date of the brutally infamous sniper assassination of president John Fitzgerald Kennedy that occurred early that Friday afternoon in Dallas, Texas 62 years ago...I was seven at the time and just returning to my classroom from lunchtime in the second grade.  The other day is primarily personal: 11/24.  For with the advent of tomorrow morning, it will mark the one-year anniversary of my reckoning with the frustration of not finishing a marathon race on my own terms.  On November 24th, 2024 I hobbled across the finish line at the Mega-Cupcake Marathon in Hawthorne at the eastern end of the Hawthorne Trail.  Then, open entering my car to drive home, my legs suddenly cramped up in extreme pain.  It took upwards to a half hour to be able to relax them enough to bravely attempt to drive the fifteen miles back home on that cold, cold day.  Yet despite the painful cramps, I regard the 24th of November as a very positive date in my personal memory, something to be cherished and appreciated.  Now I'm thinking that only eleven months after that race, my prognosis for a fit, healthy life with some promise for longevity plummeted severely when I underwent brain surgery on October 24th to remove a cancerous tumor (almost all of it, that is). I cringe whenever I hear anyone describe its aggressive nature in medically technical terms, for I am only interested in the ramifications it has in store for me and my future here on Earth.  My hope and prayer is that the treatment I am currently undergoing will stop the disease in its tracks and allow me to return to a fitness lifestyle whereby I could regularly go on training runs for long distances and even enter some of these types of races. By long distance, I mean 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) or longer. The most optimistic scenario has the door opening to me for distances up to marathon (26.2 miles) length.  Still, being a realist is a good thing and, for a while, I'll tolerate having to hear talk about my condition before I speak up for myself and start pissing people off. In the immediate future, the Season of Hope charity organization to help those afflicted with dystonia are continuing, on December 6th, their annual Tyler's Hope 5K.  If I'm able to attend, then sign me up. And in Junuary the Florida Track Club will hold their Mary Andrews Marathon/half marathon event.  I'll try to keep a positive, albeit realistic, attitude going about possibly entering these events.  Still, it's all "one day at a time" for me as I plod ahead with the treatments... 

We've Had Our Dog Daisy for Three Years Today

 

 

Daisy is a mix-breed rescue dog that Melissa and I picked up at a pet adoption fair held at a PetSmart store in southwest Gainesville on May 12, 2022...exactly three years ago.  Daisy was a tiny puppy back then at 7 lbs...but she had a loud, menacing bark even back then.  She's grown to full adult size for some time now, leveling off at 50 lbs.  She's a sweetie, for sure, and is sitting right now on my favorite recliner in the living room.  Even though Daisy is an adult dog, to me she is a big baby, especially whenever her "mommy" steps out of the room for a few minutes and Daisy starts her pathetic whimpering, just as she did on adoption day three years earlier when I was holding her and she wanted me to lay her back down next to her litter mates...

About the January 6th Insurrection, One Year Later

Today the major media outlets are commemorating the violent attack on our nation's capital and democracy a year ago on January 6th, focusing on the mass assault and occupation on the Capitol building, fomented and praised by sitting-and-defeated president Donald Trump.  Unfortunately, that attack on our cherished freedoms to peacefully and duly elect our leaders didn't end there, though.  After the attack and Congress reassembled to officially count the electoral votes, two thirds of the Republicans in the House of Representatives and seven in the Senate voted to overturn the people's will in the election...for the first time ever in our country's history: pure authoritarian fascism.  Sadly, one of my own state's senators, Rick Scott, and my own representative, Cat Cammack, joined in this travesty...I will always regard them both as fascists, along with the others including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and, of course, the instigator of it all: Donald Trump.  In 2016 I was disappointed in Trump's election but noted...on this blog...that he won it fair and square.  His opponent Hillary Clinton promptly acknowledged her defeat and Trump's win, and sitting president Obama the next day invited the victor to visit him at the White House in order to plan a speedy transition.  There was no sense of return to this graciousness on Trump's part in 2020 as he launched more than 60 frivolous lawsuits against various states that went for his opponent Joe Biden, and even tried to get the Georgia Secretary of State to manufacture more than 11,000 votes for himself...this action alone should have him in prison right now.  Yet Americans by the millions within the Republican Party cannot disengage themselves from this strongman fantasy they're attached to about this dictator-wannabe, and their leaders for the most part are too frightened to speak up against him.  The 2022 elections to me won't be as much a referendum about Biden and his presidency as it will be about whether our country is capable of sustaining its own highly cherished status as a democratically elected republic... 

Eighty Years Ago Today: Pearl Harbor

On the morning of Sunday, December 7th, 1941...eighty years ago...the United States was openly attacked by Japanese bombers at their naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  The attack was intended to destroy the American fleet in advance of a Japanese strategy to forcibly take over much of the Pacific, but crucial American aircraft carriers and other boats were at sea when it happened and escaped to fight another day.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt promptly had Congress declare war on Japan, which was followed by both Japan and Germany in turn declaring war on the United States: American open participation in World War II combat had begun, more than two years and two months after hostilities began following Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939.  The number of people who remember the Pearl Harbor attack when it happened is dwindling rapidly as are those who served the country during the perilous years to follow, both as soldiers and civilians.  I salute the brave men and women who stood up for freedom and put their lives on the line for future generations...God bless them all!

Happy Anniversary, Sweet Melissa

It's now been 34 years since my dear wife Melissa and I have been married.  Besides her beauty and compassion, she has been a unending source of encouragement and has inspired me to be more of what I am capable of being. What a wonderful, caring woman...Happy Anniversary, Sweetheart!!!

On This Tuesday, 9/11

Seventeen years ago on both this date and day Islamic extremist terrorists of Al Qaeda...15 of the 19 involved from Saudi Arabia...hijacked four American passenger jets and crashed them, bringing down the two World Trade Center towers, damaging the Pentagon, and one plane intended for the Capitol or White House taken down into a remote Pennsylvania field when its passengers bravely revolted.  The deaths from these attacks totaled about 3,000 with several thousands more injured...a great number of them were first responders at the Towers, killed or injured when they collapsed.  Since then the United States has been in a perpetual state of war in Afghanistan, where the then-ruling Taliban had been giving sanctuary and support to Osama Bin-Laden and his organization.  As I usually do on this date each successive year, I went through the TV channels looking for shows about this event which should never be forgotten or diminished...I was surprised to see that MSNBC, which had for years been faithfully rebroadcasting the NBC live ongoing account of that day's events, wasn't showing it anymore.  There were the events at the Trade Center site with the readings of the names of the dead from 9/11, the news channels were showing recaps of the attacks, and the History and Discovery channels had special 9/11 programming as well.  Maybe some of the other channels will devote something to it later, but I'll be at work then.  This year it seems to me like the "reading of the names" ceremony is being pushed as the main media remembrance, as opposed to the attacks themselves and the importance for us to remain vigilant and uncompromising in the face of terrorism.  I'll never forget 9/11 and get very frustrated when I hear political correctness about the source of most of our terrorism used to confuse people about the ideological background of its perpetrators.  And terrorism is still here as much as we might like to pretend that we are insulated from it...the tactics have changed but their violent, delusional hatred hasn't...

Happy Anniversary, My Dear Melissa

For my wonderful wife Melissa, with whom I've been so blessed to be married for the last thirty-two years, I say "Happy Anniversary, Sweetheart!" I'm no Ralph Kramden, but Baby, you're the Greatest!!!

The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs

My work shift ends at midnight and I waste no time getting to my car and skedaddling on home...Fred Flintstone would be proud of me.  During my eight-mile drive I listen to the radio, my favorite station being on 102.7, which plays classical music here in Gainesville.  After midnight they tend to play shorter pieces and excerpts from longer ones...some of them with vocals, to my annoyance.  One night last week I was listening on my way home and one of these was on the air...but it had a completely different effect on me.  The woman's singing was slow, haunting, and sad...no way was I going to switch to a different station.  Afterwards the announcer said that it was the second movement of the late Polish composer Henryk Górecki's Third Symphony, also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.  This 1976 composition has three movements, all of which I have subsequently heard...each one features a different "sorrowful song", all performed by the same soloist in Polish.  The first song is a lament of Mary, mother of Jesus.  The second, which I first heard that night driving home, is of a girl's prayer written on the wall of a concentration camp during World War II asking for her family.  And the third is of a mother searching for her lost soldier son during the Silesian Uprising in eastern Germany immediately following World War I.  All three involve the separation of families and their longing to be reunited...the last two are a searing indictment of war, something that easily comes to my mind on this 72nd anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima...

Górecki's Third Symphony, musically speaking, is relatively simple even to my untrained, amateur ears...but the slow buildup at the beginning and the repetitiveness at its close somehow enhance the experience of the mournful singing in the middle.  It is around 55 minutes in length, a good span for a CD recording.  In fact, when a recording of  Górecki's masterpiece was released in 1992, it set all kinds of records in sales for classical music.  But until that night last week I had never heard of it...now I understand that part of it was put on the soundtrack for the superhero movie Suicide Squad...

I don't have as extensive a listening experience with classical music as I do with rock, and I'm confident that a lot of folks out there could compile a much more comprehensive list of classical greats, many of which I am unfamiliar with.  But I still have my own list of favorites, which I plan to put out on this blog in a couple of days.  And rest assured: the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs will be very highly placed on it...

This Blog Ten Years Old Today

Today marks the tenth anniversary of this blog of mine, with the number of articles contained within it now totaling 3,161...all of them still accessible.  It's been a long-term exercise for me with this writing discipline...not only to attempt (sometimes unsuccessfully) to get something out there on a daily basis, but also to maintain a sense of decorum and reasonableness with my writing while showing a personal side to it without my personality being the main topic.  Naturally, I've written about subjects I've been interested in (like running, star-gazing, music, soccer, books I've read, etc.) while consistently ignoring those areas that I like to ignore (like gardening, reality television, and most arts and crafts).  Some days I get a little philosophical and others a little political...but I try to keep interpersonal relationships out of the picture when I'm writing.  And if I'm sitting down to write and can only draw a blank, there's always the weather to discuss!

Blogger (run by Google) is the site I've used for this blog of mine, and I laud them for their consistency and simplicity of use over the years.  When I am looking at my blog on my laptop computer, Blogger has an option at the top of the page called "Next Blog" that I can click on and view a random blog from someone else.  Usually the blog is relatively current, but sometimes they show one in which the last entry was years ago.  Which leads me to wonder at the myriad of abandoned blogs...many from well over a decade ago...that are "floating" around in cyberspace, forgotten but still accessible if you happen to know their titles or URLs.  Some of this detached material...not just old blogs but deserted websites in general...contains information that might be useful to someone, but how do you get to it?  Sounds like a job for a new field: cyberarchaelogy, a term which I just coined, although I have to acknowledge that someone else may have already, coincidentally, beaten me to it...

In any event, I'm happy with this blog and plan to keep it going as long as I have the ability and resources to do so.  And, I suppose, as long as Google doesn't ever change their policies that allow me easy use of Blogger without cost.  Hope you enjoy reading it...

Since 9/11

The horrendous coordinated terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 were done in the name of Islam by Al-Qaeda, using nineteen mass-murderers to hijack four passenger jet planes and bring down the two World Trade Center towers, hit the Pentagon, and unsuccessfully attempt to hit either the White House or Capitol building.  Some 3,000 people died from this abominable perversion of a great world religion by a few. And a few of us here in America may sometimes come to the erroneous conclusion that we brought it on as retaliation for something we had done, like supporting Israel or stationing troops in Saudi Arabia in order to drive Saddam Hussein's Iraq out of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War.  Or maybe they just didn't like our liberal society with social freedoms of which they disapprove with their distorted view of the way things should be.  But before some of us go too far with this self-assessment...and before any of us condemns the entire religion of Islam for the actions of some who seem to be demonically-possessed and who commit their atrocities in that name, let's just take a look at the list of countries since that infamous day in 2001 who have likewise been victimized by Islamic extremist terrorism, whether by Al-Qaeda, ISIS (or Daesh, as Muslims derogatorily call it), Boko Haram, other terrorist organizations, or lone-wolf attackers (the list comes courtesy of Wikipedia):

India, Israel, Pakistan, Tunisia, Philippines, Indonesia, Russia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, Spain, Iraq, Bangladesh, Egypt, Netherlands, Lebanon, United Kingdom, Jordan, Yemen, Somalia, Uganda, Iran, Sweden, Germany, China, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nigeria, France, Bulgaria, Libya, Algeria, Niger, Afghanistan, Syria, Australia, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Cameroon, Denmark, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Belgium,...and of course, the United States...

These terrorist attacks over the span of the last fifteen years have happened on five continents and in at least forty-six countries, of which twenty-two...nearly half of the total...have majority Muslim populations.  So, you see, it isn't just us in the U.S.A. they're fighting...don't you think it's about high time the world came together to firmly stand up against this perversion...and openly recognize it for what it is?

Happy 30th Anniversary, My Sweet Melissa

Wow, today I've been married thirty years.  It could only have happened with such a wonderful, precious woman like my sweet Melissa...I love you so much, honey!  I'm eagerly looking forward to the next thirty!

My Blog Nine Years Old Today

Two thousand eight hundred eighteen posts later, this blog of mine today celebrates nine years of existence.  In it over the years I've discussed items of interest to me, with the topics differing from day to day.  Music, politics, philosophy, language, society, news, sports, weather, running, holidays/anniversaries, history, astronomy, idle speculation, education, health, memories, books I've read, television, movies...these are the general areas I've explored.  But mostly, this blog has served me as a kind of personal discipline to write consistently and make it available for public inspection.  For the first few years of my blog, personal blogs were very popular on the Internet...but then Facebook entered the scene and I noticed that folks were using that application more or less to replace blogging.  In 2013, although I had already been on Facebook without actually participating in it, I finally decided to put links to my blog articles on my Facebook page.  This brought about an increase in my readership, but something was lacking: the random reader, whoever he or she may be and wherever in the world they may happen to live, who might come across an article I wrote by means of a topic-based web search.  That happened often in the early years of this blog, but only rarely after Facebook essentially took over social media...

Twitter is another popular outlet for writing in social media, but it seems to be more useful for me as a tool for following the news and the news-makers than for others to access me and my blog as followers.  Maybe I should conjure up some strategies for getting more Twitter followers...

JFK Assassinated 52 Years Ago This Date

On this date 52 years ago, our 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was assassinated while on an early Friday afternoon motorcade down the streets of downtown Dallas, Texas as crowds of well-wishers welcomed and cheered him and his beautiful wife Jackie.  The event forever changed the politics and history of this country...and condemned to death more than 58,000 Americans in the ensuing Vietnamese "police action"...many of them draftees forced by the government to serve in the succeeding Commander-in-Chief Lyndon Johnson's war...a war that he knew in advance he couldn't win, as his own recorded words attest...Nixon then dragged it out four more years after he was elected.  As ill-advised as I believe George W. Bush's 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq was, it pales in terms of the callousness and dishonesty of Johnson's actions.  This hindsight alone is enough to make me grieve Kennedy's death, but back then in November, 1963 people in general just knew that they had lost a good man and a leader whom they respected, admired, and liked.  I myself at the time didn't even know that: I had just turned seven and was in the second grade...

On that fateful day in 1963, I was a student at West Hollywood, Florida's Boulevard Heights Elementary School, in Miss Etling's second grade class, which included future Nova High classmates James Azar and Clint Morris.  In subsequent days, we would all have to go sit in the back of the cafeteria/auditorium while she would, as the director, rehearse the school's upcoming Christmas program ad nauseam.  But this day, we had just eaten our lunch there and returned to our room when a kid from a classroom across the hall came over to tell our teacher the horrible news:  President Kennedy had just been shot.  No one knew at that point if he was still alive, and a debate started floating among us as to whether he had been shot in the back or the eye.  It wasn't until after school, when I got home, that I received the full news of his death: my mother had the TV tuned continually in to Channel 4, which then was the CBS affiliate in Miami.

At the time of John Kennedy's death, I remember recognizing that our president was a man named Kennedy...but I had known nothing more about him.  Nevertheless, in my personal memory this is the earliest ongoing news story about which, as a little kid, I was aware.  Many years later, though, I recalled an event from a year earlier, while I was in the first grade.  As a class, we'd had fire drills before, but one day we were all lined up and exited the classroom and made to walk down the interior hall of the building.  The teacher then had each of us get on our knees next to the wall...and then put our hands over our bowed-down heads.  Having established that we knew the procedure should the real need to do this happened, we were marched back into the classroom...with no explanation ever given.  This certainly was no fire drill.  It was only much later, looking back, that I realized that this must have occurred in October of 1962, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis when a real danger existed of a nuclear attack against the U.S., especially on South Florida.  The tough, but ultimately peaceful way that President Kennedy had managed this crisis is another reason to grieve his untimely passing...  

Melissa and I Celebrate Our 29th Anniversary

It was 29 years ago on this date, on a Sunday afternoon, that my sweetheart Melissa and I got married in a small southwest Gainesville church.  And now, in 2015, I can say that my love for her has only gotten stronger as we have gone through many seasons in our lives together.  She is a priceless treasure!

Happy Anniversary, my dear Melissa!

Tomorrow Marks 70th Anniversary of Atomic Bomb Drop Over Hiroshima

Tomorrow, August 6, 2015, will mark the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan by the United States in its quest to quickly end World War II and avoid its remaining stated option of invading the island nation.  Such an invasion would doubtless have cost many, many more lives....not just of Americans, but also of the Japanese, both soldiers and civilians...and would have completely devastated that country.  Three months earlier, the Allies accepted the unconditional surrender of Germany after its leader, Adolf Hitler, had committed suicide and the country was already invaded and militarily conquered.  In early August of 1945, neither condition was applicable to Japan...its military rulers not only were still firmly entrenched in power with the nation essentially intact (although badly scarred from Allied bombing), but it still occupied the bulk of populated China and Indo-China (including Vietnam) at that time.  The Japanese did not practice surrender, instead fighting to the death even when their situation was hopeless and choosing suicide over surrendering in battle after battle on the Pacific Islands over which they fought the Americans.  With this scenario facing the United States, its leaders opted for the nuclear strike in hopes of convincing the Japanese militarists that their chances for remaining in power were fruitless.  But even after seeing the horrible effects of the atomic bomb on one of their cities, they still refused.  Three days later, Nagasaki was hit by the second, and hopefully last ever, atomic bomb dropped on a populated area.  Finally, they surrendered almost unconditionally: their emperor, who reportedly had pushed for the surrender in the end to save his people, was allowed to remain as such, at least in a titular, ceremonial role...

The development of the atomic bomb in the United States during World War II came after Albert Einstein, a Jewish emigre from Hitler's Germany and his anti-semitic policies, wrote a letter to President Roosevelt warning him that the Germans had already split the atom and were very possibly engaged in an effort of their own to develop such a weapon from this process.  The irony is that it was Japan that ultimately was hit, not Germany.  Another twist in all this was the gross underestimation of the devastating effects that the radiation from the bomb had on the population surviving the initial impact, especially that from the fallout that descended from the skies for days after the explosion.  Even after all this, the American military, when they dropped a demonstration A-bomb on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific the following year, did not realize that the ships they had placed in proximity to the bomb would be hopelessly contaminated with radiation...the Naval authorities in charge of this explosion had wanted to put sailors back on them and guide them back into American ports to show that ships could withstand nuclear attacks. It was very sobering to see the level of contamination the bomb had produced.

In spite of all the rhetoric these days about how countries like Iran want to get the "bomb" in order to attack others...like Israel...it is obvious to me that self-defense from invasion is the primary goal.  Ukraine had the atomic bomb, left in their control when the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991...but they voluntarily gave it up...and now, they've had to suffer an invasion indirectly instigated by their neighbor, Russia.  Name me one country that, after developing nuclear warfare technology, has been invaded by another.  You can't, I bet.  Now look at a place like Iran, which was brutally invaded in 1980 by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.  Then they watched as the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in 1991 following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.  And then after 9/11, the invasion and long occupation on either side of Iran...Iraq on the west and Afghanistan on the east.  Speaking of the latter, of course the USSR was earlier engaged in a protracted, fruitless occupation and struggle in that country after invading it in 1980.  So if you're the Iranian leader and see all of this going on around you, wouldn't you, too, want to protect yourself and your people against invasion?  And that's the problem I see nowadays with nuclear proliferation.  We can rant and rave all we want about how evil the nuclear bomb is, but we are still creating conditions that motivate others to get it for themselves...