This one’s for Charlie Dills

There have been many movies made about life in post WWII Germany (The Third Man, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, etc., etc.) that portrayed American GIs who stayed behind as profiteers or spies. The reality is, many were broken men who didn’t want to pretend the world would ever be free from evil. They worked for the Army, mostly in logistics, married European women, adopted European traditions and spent too much time at the Officer’s Club enjoying Happy Hour every night.

As a nineteen year old hippy dippy (love will save the world!) I loved hearing their stories and I think they were amused by my naivete. To a point and then I’m sure I was very annoying. It’s one thing to read about the millions of people – Jews, Catholics, Poles, Roma, Sinti, Soviets POWs, gays, priests, members of the resistance – targeted for elimination by the Nazis. It’s quite another to talk to someone who helped liberate one of those camps.

“I saw thousands of people whom the Red Army has saved – people so thin that they swayed like branches in the wind, people whose ages one could not possibly guess.”

Boris Polevoy, correspondent for Pravda

So, on this eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I’m remembering you Charlie Dills.

From my WIP which at this point is resting:

The train had passed through Switzerland on a cloudy night, thus, there had been little to see out the window, only the blur of lights as they’d passed through town after town without slowing down. Charlie’d watched her curiously for a while and then his eyes closed and his head slipped against the window. For the rest of the night he lay like a broken doll in that position. At one time, he’d probably been a handsome young man, she thought, like Gregory Peck, tall and dark with prominent features and soft eyes before the alcohol and cigarettes had taken their toll. Now he looked beyond repair.

Outside their cabin, the Italians partied all night long, laughing and sometimes arguing. Loudly and without a care for first class passengers who might want some shut eye. They were going home for the winter where presumably they’d have plenty of time to sleep. Riley didn’t know what awaited her except a long drive home through Switzerland with the saddest man on the planet.

The weather has been mild here in the San Francisco Bay Area and so I’ve been spending a lot of time rolling big rocks around what had been a hillside covered with a particularly hideous ground cover. These rocks weigh between fifty and sixty pounds so … I’m kind of an idiot, aren’t I?

One of my first sculptures and not a natural stone!

When my back gives out, I work on the re-writes of my second book now titled The Sloppy American. I think it’s done. Or more to the point, if I keep working on it I will done. Spent and completely mad. Over fifty years have passed since I went on the adventure that spawned the book. Europe was such a different place back then. WWII was still so fresh in so many people’s minds which I, of course, didn’t understand. Love was going to save the world and the Nazis had been driven underground and would never rise again. Ha!

I’m going to try to digitize the story which requires figuring out how to use a new software program. Ha! I’d be better off rolling rocks around the garden.

Rejoice America – the Executioners have arrived. You can tell from their smug expressions that their fun has only just begun. You can tell from their colorful attire what to expect for the next four years – if you live through those long and painful years (after all, Daddy is home which means the switch for all you disobedient children.) And on this happy day, to show their compassion, one thousand federal workers were fired. Seniors lost the ability to negotiate lower drug prices.

And this the only the beginning! Rejoice … there’s plenty more to come!

I’m okay. Really I am. My heart breaks for those who tried to warn us.

My favorite Christmas gift this year was a Washi calendar from Japan. The graphic is actually an embedded postcard and so at the end of each month I going to try to send a postcard to someone somewhere in the world. That sounds like a task I can accomplish without too much stress!

Maybe I’ll even learn a little Japanese in so doing.

Unless I’m wrong, this is going to be a year filled with quite enough stress, thank you very much GOP. The agents of chaos have won powerful positions by inciting hatred and feelings of superiority over “the other.” The Blue Meanies walk amongst us. Therefore, the only answer is – LOVE.

I remember when this song was released, the Beatles were at the end of one of the most productive artistic runs ever. And there was John saying it didn’t matter if there wasn’t enough love in the world. Such a simple lesson and yet true.

2025 – the year the Blue Meanies meet their match. One can only dream.

Let’s see if you can guess the name of the movie I’ve decided to end the year with.

• It was based on a three act play by Noel Coward
• The title is from a poem called “To a Skylark” by Percy Bliss Shelley
• It was the screen debut of Margaret Rutherford

The plot in a nutshell: The ghost of a writer’s first wife is conjured forth by a bumbling spiritualist causing great distress to his second wife.

By far the best thing about this film is the performance of Margaret Rutherford (1892-1972) as the spiritualist. She was a “big boned” actress with so-called “spaniel jaws” who nonetheless, stole every scene she was ever in … although she never meant to. She once wrote of being called a comedian: “I never intended to play for laughs. I am always surprised that the audience thinks me funny at all.”

She’s probably most famous for playing Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s aging and unconventional detective.

Many other actresses have played Miss Marple but Rutherford was different. Perhaps because she was not a dainty, prim and proper old lady.

My hero!

Check out other #WordlessWednesday shots at Hugh’s Place and

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!