Veterans' Day

World War II vets are the subject of much attention this week as Veterans' Day approaches. They're all in their 80s now or older. It got me to thinking, and I was not sure my memory was working right, when I remembered that as a child, I saw Civil War Vets. That seemed unlikely until I did the arithmetic --- it's true, and the fact that I saw a living person born more than 150 years ago, means I'm not all that young myself.

In my small hometown in Ohio, there was always a big Memorial Day parade on May 30. (The observance was not changed to the last Monday of May until 1971). The holiday marked the end of the school year, the beginning of summer, the opening of the public swimming pool and the day my Dad set out tomato plants. The parade formed downtown, marched north past the high school where there was a brief ceremony in front of the Doughboy Statue. No, not the Pillsbury Doughboy, but a representation of a World War I soldier. When the parade reached the city hospital, the music stopped but the march went on, accompanied only by a cadence tapped out on the rim of the drum --- too much noise would disturb the patients inside. When the parade finally got to the cemetery, there was a longer ceremony which always included the recitation of the Gettysburg Address by a specially picked high school student (usually male.)

What fascinated me were the groups of vets who marched in the parade. As a young child, just after World War II, these recent vets all marched smartly and they all still fit into their uniforms. Preceding them were the World War I vets, a little gray and out of shape but still keeping up pretty well. Some of the Spanish American War vets still marched, but others rode in convertibles, waving and looking alert. But most honored were two or three very elderly, frail Civil War vets, propped up in open cars, looking about uncertainly. When you consider that they had probably been born between 1845 and 1850, they were approaching the century mark in age.

As the years passed and the last Civil War vet had died, the Spanish American War vets took their place as the oldest living veterans. Now the few remaining World War I vets are well over 100. This year I was in France on All Saints Day, and saw a small group of World War II vets with flags, marching into the cemetery, still looking surprisingly spry.

The parade goes on. Now there are Korean War vets, Vietnam War Vets, Gulf War Vets, and active soldiers in the diabolical conflict called the Iraq War. Will the time ever come when the only living veterans are as old as those Civil War vets I saw more than 60 years ago?

Pure and Simple

My husband has been obsessing for several days now about his new computer. He's changing the operating system, installing new software and trying to get it to work with a new keyboard, monitor, mouse and his old laser printer. Most of the problems have been solved but it's taken several sleepless nights and the support of several other techno-wizzards. Not the sort of thing any of us ordinary, techno-deficient types could come close to doing.

I related his struggles to some friends. One replied that he'd worked six months to rid his new computer of unwanted software and it's still not quite right. Another friend replied that it certainly is frustrating to spend so much time fooling around with unwanted complexities when there are so many other constructive things we'd rather be doing.

A few months ago, I bought a small laptop for traveling, and wanted it to be synchronized with an older, larger laptop --- same manufacturer, same brand. But it turned out that I'd unwittingly purchased a computer with a new operating system and it proved to be impossible to go backward and install an older (but proven and widely used) operating system on the new computer. So even if I cave in and buy all new software, it won't necessarily work with both operating systems, nor will all the peripherals works with both laptops. I'm resigned to going back and forth between the two with the help of a back-up iPod and files copied to DVDs.

The PC guy I hired to try to synchronize the two computers also cleaned up my old computer (it was taking ten minutes to boot!) by deleting lots of junk, particularly the security software which he claimed was grossly bloated. Instead he installed some security free-ware and a low-cost counter-spy program. The old computer works so much better now.

Why do we put up with all this larding and incompatibility? Why not offer a machine that has a basic operating system, simple Internet access and that includes the option of a certain number of software packages, chosen by the purchaser. No ads, no 30-day trials, no Lite versions of fuller packages --- unless the purchaser wants them.

Mozilla has been outstanding in offering a clean Internet browser (Firefox) and email manager (Thunderbird). Since Mozilla is open-source software, many add-ons have been written and are available free --- if the user wants them. Google, too, is doing a fairly good job of keeping things simple, though I think their g-mail interface is confusing. Some manufacturer is soon going to tumble to the fact they can cop a huge share of the market by producing a computer that's pure and simple.