... NO MATTER WHAT! I am in so much pain in my shoulder and down through my bicep. It keeps being really bad at night, but then the next day it feels fine and I think, "I don't have time to go to the chiropractor! I have too much work to do!!" Well, no more. This is ridiculous. My whole arm feels,like it's burning.
I got up at 7:30 this morning! And stayed up. I know, it's a miracle. But, actually ... I got up because I was hungry and, once I was up I decided to stay up. Give it a whirl! I did fine until about 11:30 when I felt like I hit a wall. Had to lay down for a little while before I went to see the doctor.
He seemed nice enough. I'm only going by his reviews online. We had a long talk about WW1 and WW2, believe it or not. He asked me about my accent (what accent!?). Turns out he married a woman from San Marco, although they are divorced now. We got to talking about central Texas and BBQ and from there about the German communities in Texas (my favorite BBQ place is in Lockhart and is "Kreuze's"). He asked me if I knew why there were so many German communities in Texas and I said no. It turns out that a lot of the German POWs were taken to POW camps in Texas. They thought they had died and gone to heaven! They were out of the war, well fed, and doing farming. When the war was over, 280,000 of the 500,000 POWs decided to stay. Isn't that interesting? Who knew?
From there we were off to the races! I told him that I was finishing The Last Man Out about the Palawan Massacre of American POWs and had gotten The Rape of Nanking to read next. He told me I'd have to have a strong stomach to read the book because it is unbelievable what the Japanese did to these 300,000 Chinese people. Then he told me that the Japanese were also doing medical experiments like the Germans did, though the Japanese made the Germans look like children. He told me about the city where most of the experimentation took place, and how one person who was there said that if he told the names of the people who worked there, no one would believe him because they are now presidents of medical schools and hospitals and things of that nature.
We also talked about the nuclear bombs. He told me about a Japanese historian who has written about them. He says, I can't remember the figures for sure. But he said that it was estimated that 20 million Japanese would die if the Allies went in, because they were going to fight down to the last woman and child. And that an estimated 10 million more would die from starvation. And that it was estimated that one million Allied soldiers would die. So, losing 200,000 in two bombings was, I his eyes, a very small price to pay.
I read a few years ago a speech given by a Japanese Christian pastor from Nagasaki about the bomb. Nagasaki was not the city on which the bomb was supposed to be dropped. I don't remember what all happened that it was bombed, but it seems like it was through a series of circumstances that Nagasaki was bombed. This Japanese pastor said, in essence, that it was God's judgment in the city for all of the Christians they had martyred through the centuries, that led me to a book called Silence, which is a novel about a priest in the 1400's, I think, who is snuck into the area and is being kept hidden. I didn't finish the book, life intruded. But there had already been a lot of crucifixions of Christians. I don't know if anyone would agree with the pastor that the bomb was God's judgment, but it was interesting to find that perspective about it.
Well, that's it for the day. I've been chatting with a niece of mine on Facebook this evening. I'm very grateful for Facebook because it has made it possible for me to get to know her. My brother and her mother divorced when she was around five. She was pretty much a complete brat. After the divorce, I basically never got to see her or her brother again. They lived in another state and their mother hated all of us for some reason. She turned both kids against my brother and he was not able to have anything to do with his son until he was around 18 and started letting my brother be around some. But the daughter remained convinced that we were all terrible, especially her father. My brother would never talk bad to his kids about their mother, so he never told them about all the things she did. Like threaten to put a hit on him. And since her father was involved in the mafia, this was not an empty threat. But, when the daughter was in her late 20's she came across a tape her mother made of an argument with my brother, and the girl's eyes were opened. She has finally formed a relationship with my brother, but I haven't seen her since she was five. We became Facebook friends a few years ago. I started liking some of her posts, and she started liking some one mine. Then we started making short comments. "Cute!" Then I started making longer comments and talking about how much I loved watching her love her kids ... who I have never seen. And now, this evening, we've been having a heart-to-heart about mothering and the difficult choices you have to make. Yeah!! Thank You, Lord! I am grateful for every bit of reconciliation there.
Cheers!
Lisa
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