WAKE ISLAND & THE HISTORY CHANNEL
Last night I watched the History Channel and the story of Wake Island. I enjoy reading history and also watching it on TV's History Channel. I don't like the usual phony Hollywood versions. Writers too often insert fictional incidents that distort history in favor of entertainment, but in doing so, our children accept this garbage as truth and remember this false history rather than learn the truth. The truth they ignore is often far more interesting and entertaining that that which they concoct, even more imaginative.

When I was a kid I read everything I could get my hands on. I'd check out at least five or six books a week from either the church library, the school library or the local library, but by the time I was around fifteen I was mostly western pulps and sci-fi pulps. My uncle had thwo foot stacks of them around the whole outside porch at the cabin on the lake and summer days I read from sun-up to sun-down and then by flashlight in bed.

All that suddenly changed when I was about 19 (1943), and our Liberty ship was being loaded for a trip across the North Atlantic and through the Artic to Murmansk, USSR. I bought some tomes, real classics, and some history books. I also bought Mein Kampf and Das Kapital. (There are close to half a million references to it when you enter it in Google). I concentrated on more serious reading after that. Then, whenever I could find them in port during the war, the newspapers. To this day I read from one to three newspapers a day.

My three children are great readers too, but the one son, Jeff, is by far the greatest reader I have ever known. He's also a fine writer about art. He is also completely self-taught. I guess we all are, because none of us went beyond high-school, but as a family we are fairly knowledgeable about American History and keep up with current events.

Most of the day I live in silence. No radio and no TV. I like to let my mind keep me entertained. When I drive, I seldom use music to keep me company; my own company is good enough. I also believe my attention should be on the road, the traffic, and my driving anyway. Lordy, when I was covering up to 60,000 miles a year I saw people reading books, newspapers, maps, combing their hair, bouncing up and down to music, and you name it...I probably saw that too. Driving is really a life or death situation too often, and therefore requires our full attention.

But this Blog started off about the History Channel and Wake Island, right. Well, it is history that tells us what our country is all about, what we fought for, how we fought, and the sacrifices made by our fellow countrymen. However, it is not always taught in this manner. For example, in the Santa Monica High School they were distorting much of our history, teaching the students that we were evil people who took over this country, and that now we have a Facist government. They also refused to follow the state mandate that the Pledge of Allegiance be recited each day in class.

One student stood up to the school's administrators and eventually forced changes to bring them more in line with the directives from the Department of Education in Sacramento. That's all it takes at times, one person to stand up and object when he or she finds something wrong, and to persist until it is corrected.

---