6/25/2026

 Thursday, June 25, 2026

1867 1st barbed wire patented by Lucien B. Smith of Ohio

1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn

1950 North Korea invaded South Korea, starting the Korean War

2025 A preliminary assessment by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency found that Iran's nuclear program may have only been set back by a few months after the U.S. airstrikes, contradicting previous claims made by Donald Trump that the facilities were "obliterated".

In bed at 9:15, up at 4:45; 0500 204.2 145/82/51 139; 57/72/57 rainy, cloudy.

Morning meds at 8 a.m., and Eliquis at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

Anniversaries.  First, Barbed wire: I think of the two little boys in Danang, holding on to the barbed wire that separated "us" from "them" in more ways than one,  and wonder whether they survived the war, where their loyalty lay when I took their photo, and where it lay as the war progressed and ended. whether they were affected by years of living next to the air base with all of its Agent Orange and other pollutants.  The memory of those two little boys, with the shorter one's arm around the taller one's shoulders, has stayed with me for 60 years.  I have two drawings of them hanging on the wall of my bedroom, on my Vietnam art wall.

"Before I built a wall I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out, / And to whom I was like to give offense. / Something there is that doesn't love a wall, / That wants it down.’  Robert Frost, Mending Wall.

Second, Custer's 7th Cavalry was wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.  I've visited the battlefield twice, each time struck by its layout, its history, and mostly by the individual markers where soldiers' usually naked and mutilated bodies lay when the relief forces arrived.

Third, the start of the Korean War.   I was born before the entry of the U.S. into the Second World War, service in which so badly affected my father, my mother, my sister, and me.  The Korean War was the first of our many wars of which I was aware, starting before my 9th birthday and ending, in a way, on July 27, 1953, when an armistice agreement was signed.  South Korea's president refused to sign the agreement and no peace treaty has ever been signed.  How many other wars has our country fought since Korea?

Lonesome Dove.  I'm about 1/3rd of the way through the saga, still enjoying it and hoping I have the mental stamina and persistence to get through another 600 or so pages.  

Geri reminded me to pick up Andy's mail this afternoon.  I had forgotten on Tuesday and Wednesday, unlike me, but maybe not anymore.😨

I managed to bake a loaf of banana bread this afternoon, using only 2 very overripe bananas.