BIRTHDAY MONTH MUSINGS

     I am on the brink of my Birthday Month of July....the 74th year I have shuffled, danced, skipped, limped, sauntered, crept, marched through my life.  Could I possibly make a Birthday Promise to myself to present a Month of Musings?  
     I will dare myself: no one else would DARE  to dare me!

     Sooooo....where to begin? 
“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop." (If it was good enough advice for Alice as she wandered Wonderland, who am I to question it?)

     My first memory must have been August 14, 1945, "VJ Day" when World War II was finally over.  I remember being in front of my home at 4943 W. Iowa Street in Chicago IL....there was noise (firecrackers? guns?) but a strong feeling of such joy that I can still feel it, see the summer sky over the homes on my block.  It wasn't exactly this scene...

  .... yet that extreme pulse of joy reverberates with me today.
                My four-year-old self still remembers.