Love grandson Robert! A winner. He has a head on his shoulders.

Robert is now in his junior year at Florida State. His first two years were basically the same each semester. All As and one B.

His goal in life appears to be either a sports writer or announcer. When he was at Key West High School, he was an announcer for three years. His responsibility was to chat various things on the school intercom each day. Turned him on!

His first two years at Florida State found him writing for the FSU paper. Primarily football articles. He continues doing it his third year. He already has written 20 football articles this season. A non-paying position.

Robert and I spoke yesterday on the phone. He has an additional job this year. He will be announcing all Florida State swimming and diving meets. For whatever reason, even practice rounds are announced. He is paid $13 an hour for his announcing work. He is directly on the payroll of Florida State for the announcing work.

That’s not all. Come next semester when the tennis season begins, Robert will be announcing FSU’s tennis matches. Again for Florida State and he will be getting paid $13 an hour for that work also.

My young man is doing terrific! God bless him! You may recall I have shared in the past that he was born with cancer of the liver. He had two major surgeries at Miami Children’s Hospital the first eight days of his life. Fine today, thank God!

Doctors advised his parents that Robert was limited in what sports he would be able to play. He has two major stomach scars from the surgeries and they were concerned severe sport contact could rupture them internally and he could unknowingly bleed to death. So a sport he would enjoy and could handle had to be found. It was tennis.

Robert was a pretty good tennis player in high school. He was All County three years in a row. For some inexplicable reason, he decided not to continue with tennis in college. He still plays, but only for pleasure. He decided to pursue his sport writing/announcing options. Appears he may have made the correct decision.

I came across an article on the internet yesterday that puzzled me. Concerned greenery growing on the Sahara Desert. An oasis, in effect.

My dear friends Buffalo’s Fran and Tom Dixon were recently on an Egyptian trip. Telephoned them to see what if anything they knew.

Surprisingly, they are still in Egypt. Fran answered the phone. She was on a cruise on the Nile River. She was up to date from her perspective re my inquiry. The issue had come up on the trip. 

There are areas of greenery. Large areas. A straight line where it begins/ends. The cause, the water supply feeding the greenery. Generally river water seeping underground. Also water from other sources. When there is no more water, the greenery no longer grows and becomes desert. Fran said the change was instantaneous and remarkable. A straight line.

I did a little internet digging, also. For some reason, the Earth wobbles on its axis every 21,000 years. The wobbling affects the water supply and greenery growth. I could not understand much more and stopped there.

Actual voting began yesterday in three states. Virginia, Minnesota and South Dakota.

Virginia was reported on a major basis. Probably because of the large volume of people who were voting. TV pics revealed long lines wrapping around blocks in effect in Virginia. Also photos of voting places packed inside.

Republicans were visible with get out to vote groups at polling places. It was not only Democrats who were working Virginia to get out the vote. Someone reported on TV it was expected that with the volume of early voters, Virginia will have at least half of its vote cast before Election Day.

North Carolina’s Robinson coming up BAD! Not a nice guy. Lacking in normality. He wrote along the way that “Mein Kampf is a good read.” Trump enjoyed reading Hitler’s work also. Perhaps that is why Trump supported him. Both enjoyed an unusual interest in sex. Contributing factors to their being birds of a feather?

Came across a strange statement on the internet: “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.” Desperate? Scary? I don’t know.

World War II impacted me. I was 5-10 year old at the time. Everything was the War! It had to mark me and others in some fashion.

Yesterday was a day of discovery for me on the internet. The topic best described as facts and stories from World War II that would not be found in history books. A ton of them. I share a few with you today, more tomorrow.

Hiroshima was hit with the first atomic bomb. Effectively wiped out the city. Killed some 100,000 plus.

There was one significant survivor. Several trees. No particular type. Known in Japanese as “Hibakujumoku,” in English “A-bombed tree.”

No one knows why they survived. Just did. Today they stand as powerful symbols of endurance and hope, silently narrating the story of a city that literally rose from ashes.

The next story is hard to believe. This man was extremely lucky. God had to have been on his side.

His name Tsutomu Yamaguchi. He was in Hiroshima on business when the atomic bomb fell. He returned to his Nagasaki home and was recording his Hiroshima experience when the Nagasaki bomb went off.

He survived both atomic bombings.

One of the reasons the U.S. was successful in World War II was how quickly it invented/improvised manufacturing processes to produce an abnormal number of war machines. By 1944, production peak saw the U.S. manufacturing 2,000 planes, 500 tanks and 10 ships weekly.

Significant was the work force. The men went to war, the women remained home. The female work force did it!

Winston Churchill loved to smoke cigars and drink alcohol. He refused to do without either. World War II was not going to hinder his ability to do so. He “pulled rank” and got what he wanted.

He had a special oxygen mask designed so he could fly at high levels, smoke and wear a mask at the same time. Re drinking, when he visited Roosevelt in the U.S. during Prohibition, he brought a doctor’s prescription with him from England so he could legally consume alcohol in the U.S.

Syracuse lost to Stanford last night 26-24. I am not a happy camper!

Syracuse had no ground game. Stanford’s defense effectively shut it down. McCord did not have his usual passing agility till the middle of the second quarter. He came alive when Syracuse was two scores behind. He was himself after that. However, Stanford was a better team than most expected and did the necessary to win. The game was decided with a Stanford field goal in the last 3 seconds of the game.

Saw Dr. Ayad from Mount Sinai yesterday. He gave me the report on my ultrasound test taken last month. The three heart surgeries had left me with three blood clots. We had to know if they had resolved themselves. Pills could not be taken since the heart was involved.

Dr. Ayad said the blood clots are gone. From a vascular perspective, I am fine. There remains the aortic aneurysm however. A serious problem. Could be a very serious one. If the numbers increase to a certain point, then I am off to Miami for more surgery. In the meantime, April Gallagher will follow the aneurysm problem locally.

I am about three weeks from a full set of teeth. Then I am going out and having a steak dinner. The dinner will be a celebratory one. All my surgeries and teeth problems began with my heart attack on January 31. I will truly be a new man again!

Enjoy your day!