“Confront the dark parts of yourself. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.” —August Wilson

I’ve been sitting around with a National Geographic that Marv Repinski dropped off that features the photograph of a young Vietnamese girl on the cover. Inside,”Eyes that have seen war look for peace in a new village for Viet Cong defectors.” I finally opened it up the other day, anxious to see what Vietnam looked like now. The first story was titled “Behind the Headlines in Viet Nam.”

Once I began reading, I discovered it was a published in February 1967, nine months before our troop ship landed at Cam Rahn Bay, coming over from Schofield Barracks. It talks about the French leaving and the Americans coming to eventually take their place until they, too, packed up and flew away aboard a helicopter sitting atop of a Saigon building. Many of you remember that.

I’m still trying to understand Vietnam, and I am not alone. I am still reading the article and learning more about Vietnam than I ever knew while serving there. I could probably go on line and find more information. I will pass on that.

Now that the weather is allowing us to spend more time outside, I’m spending time searching for dandelions to dig out, and last Sunday mildly scolding a neighborhood lad who was throwing a big rock up in the air and letting it crash on the neighbor’s driveway. I asked him where he got the rock, and he said he found it on the driveway, the driveway now layered with small rocks. I wasn’t accepting this.

The rock he was throwing had friend engraved on it. I had my doubts.  I had been out there a short time before this clipping the hedge. There was no rock like this in the driveway.

Skyler, our son and his friend, Rob, were sitting on our cement slab trying to negotiate with the lads. Skyler and Rob were using psychology to tame them. I used the “old Dad” maneuver. Fortunately for them, the neighbor wasn’t home. There might have been a different outcome for these lads. They left the stone on the other side of the neighbor’s garage and headed home.

On Monday, a crowd of youngsters walked by paired up, boys walking with boys and girls with girls, a more organized way, a way I thought to be tighter then the public school students that passed by a week or two ago from Sumner School and low and behold there was Mrs. Taylor near the end of the line, the teacher I had mentioned a few weeks ago who was able to persuade Skyler to come back to St. Augustine after he had dropped out during Christmas vacation due to lack of playtime.

I called Skyler from the back room and said Mrs. Taylor was passing by, and he hurried to the window, but it was too late. They returned before long and by then Skyler was down in the basement.

Last Friday was a day to remember with the “Extra! Extra! Lee Retires” special section. Reporter Lee Bonorden retired after 24 years at the Herald with a number of friends and acquaintances. I was first introduced to Lee when I was hired by the Herald to be the oldest news clerk in Minnesota. I was even older than Lee then. I think my being there made Lee feel younger.

Lee was always available with his”Well, by gollys.” He kept the newsroom alive and the community smiling and some city officials not. And I’m sure Adams will always hold a place in their heart for Lee and greet him at the fair.

Mr. Bonorden was dressed to the nine at his doings, in a shiny light blue, almost plastic, suit, greeting a never-ending line of greeters shaking hands and wishing him well.

It would be nice someday to see a replica of Lee standing outside city hall or anchored on a chair somewhere in the new justice center.

When Einstein’s son, Edward, asked why he was so famous, Einstein replied that gravity was the curving of the fabric of space-time.”When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of a curved branch, it doesn’t notice that the track it has covered is indeed curved,” he said. “I was lucky enough to notice what the beetle didn’t notice.”