Deck Musings

    For the second day since the great white heat of summer 2018, I've enjoyed a morning and afternoon breeze with time on the deck. Ahh, retirement.
   While the to-do list waits, I'll contemplate my recent interest in WWI. We barely studied it in Coach Taylor's class at CHS, but I love history and learning new things. Several new perspectives have been shared through newspaper articles. Some deal with various architectural style of trenches dug across Europe, others with several counties in Arkansas protesting the service obligation to the point of combat.
    I'll share thoughts on the upcoming Centennial of the Armistice - at 11:00 on 11/11/1918, a cease-fire was declared - the end of The Great War, the War to end all War.
    A noble goal after years of horrific bloodshed in Europe which the US joined after years of quasi-neutrality.
   Multiple events are planned and I look forward to participating in those which are centered at Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center and the City Market. I've come to appreciate Hemingway's writing style and his sojourn into the Great War as an ambulance driver which brought him the adventure he sought and swept him into humanity's struggle with loss.
   Ten years after the Armistice, Ernest accompanied his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, to her parents' home and from the barn which they fashioned into a studio, he penned a good portion to his famous war novel, A Farewell to Arms.