Remembrance Day, Veterans Day Celebrations

Peanuts always seems to be spot on when it comes to history. I learned about Bill Mauldin as a kid. My father had old editorial cartoons cut out from Stars and Stripes that he showed me. It’s hard to believe that my memories were from a mere 10 years after he was in the marines.

Here’s an example of one of Mauldin’s cartoons.

My father is in the middle of the front row before shipping off to the South Pacific.

At about the same time my father was serving in the South Pacific fighting against the Japanese my Uncle Fil was in the Canadian Black Watch. He was an unfortunate member of the forces that attempted the landing at Dieppe, France. Eighty percent of Canadian forces were either killed, wounded or taken prisoner by the Germans. My uncle, who I got to know well spent the remainder of World War II as a prisoner of war in Germany.

Now, on to some humor – I love walking sticks. In fact we raised them from 3-4 years. When I was teaching entomology some 20 years ago I had collected two, and kept them alive. It turned out that one was a male, the other a female. The rest is history.

Speaking of teaching. While teaching genetics I used a similar graphic to illustrate the similarity of bones among different species.

More tomorrow…