I wonder if I taught Phoebe how to recognize how the paparazzi-stalkers trick you into revealing what they already know because they have your house bugged?
I noted this earlier and I was thinking that I was back from Iraq by this day, but maybe not. Maybe I was still missing after being shot down on the second strike I made on Osirak on 6/8/1981. I'm not sure if I could really even walk very well at that time, having been injured on 4/14/1981. I have been thinking I ejected into a river and floated down it for a while until, I guess, I was rescued by helicopters. Don't know.
There was also that newspaper article I noted recently about President Reagan searching for a nurse that was present when he was in the hospital after being shot. The article indicated he was searching for his "Florence Nightingale" and the date on the article was one or two days after the Osirak strike. Why would I have articicial and symbolic memories of when my step-grandfather Ronnie Romine was in the hospital and he was dying from a lung ailment?
I can still "remember" when my sister and I found out Ronnie Romine had died. We were staying with some people Thedia knew and they had a new swimming pool. One of the kids was teaching me how to flip as I jumped off the diving board. He told me to keep my hands in my pockets as I jumped and I would automatically flip over. I "remember" their pool wasn't very pleasant to swim in because it was very murky. It was also cold because they said the guy who constructed it was afraid of installing the heater-lamp because I think someone had been electrocuted when he installed one before. I can still visualize sitting in their house and watching Saturday Night Live.
This is what Ronnie Romine, my step-grandfather, was in the hospital for and I "remember" sleeping on the sofa in his hospital room:
emphysema
A chronic lung disease characterized by progressive, irreversible expansion of the alveoli with eventual destruction of alveolar tissue, causing obstruction to airflow. Patients with emphysema often have labored breathing, wheezing, chronic fatigue, and increased susceptibility to infection, and may require oxygen therapy. Long-term smoking is a common cause of emphysema.
From 4/14/1981 to 6/12/1981 is: 59 days
According to information I found on the internet, Jeremiah Denton, the former POW President Reagan refers to, was 33 weeks, 34 years old, when I was born on 3/3/1959.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=43941&st=&st1=
Remarks on Signing a Resolution and a Proclamation Declaring National P.O.W.-M.I.A. Recognition Day, 1981
June 12th, 1981
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to what I think is a very important and worthwhile little signing ceremony here in the Rose Garden. I am pleased that I'm going to sign a joint resolution and a proclamation designating July 17th, 1981 National P.O.W.-M.I.A. Recognition Day.
The brave men and women who fought for our country should all know that America does remember and is grateful and will always be proud of their courage and honor on the battlefield. And it's fitting that we pay this special tribute to those who so heroically endured the hardships and torture of enemy captivity—unusual in any war in our history, because it was the longest period that American fighting men have ever been held in captivity. Just the thought of the terrible pain that they suffered and endured should be seared in our memories forever. And let us remember, too, that 6 years after American involvement in Vietnam, in the war, we still don't have a full accounting of our missing servicemen from that conflict, an accounting that was guaranteed in the Paris peace accords that brought the fighting there to an end, an agreement which has been violated.
Recently there have been reports that Americans are still being held captive in Indochina. None of these reports, I'm sorry to say, has been verified, but the world should know that this administration continues to attach the highest priority to the problem of those missing in action. We intend to seek the fullest possible account from the governments involved.
I'm grateful that we have with us here today one of America's outstanding heroes from the Vietnam war, one of the former prisoners of war, and now the Senator from Alabama, Jeremiah Denton, accompanied by his lovely wife Jane. July 17th, it is just 16 years—or that will be—to the day that he was shot down over Southeast Asia. Now, lest someone think that there's a little confusion there, he was shot down on July 18th, 1965, but when it was the 18th there, on this side of the dateline it was the 17th. Jeremiah Denton. Who will ever forget on that first night in that first plane that arrived at Clark Field in the Philippines, and he was the first man we saw come down the ramp from the plane, salute our flag, ask God's blessing on America, and then thank us for bringing them home.
