Pounding

The noise of large engines thrumming and machines smashing  concrete woke me up this morning.
The  neighbor across the alley is redoing his parking pad.

I was annoyed.

How much worse if I'd been woken by a phone call informing me,  
 "your home will be destroyed in 15 minutes".
^ links to the 1:26 min. video * from a couple days ago of a Palestinian building getting a so-called "knock-on-the-door" missile, 15 minutes after Israeli forces telephoned the Palestinian family inside to warn them of an imminent attack on their home in Gaza City.

Reuters reported, "A local news agency says the home owner managed to evacuate his family and his neighbors in time. " 

The Way We Get By 

A while ago I read a review of a British writer's letters to her sister during WWII. I'm afraid I can't remember who the woman writer was, but the reviewer criticized her for never mentioning the war in her letters.

It does seem a little odd if she was living in a war zone, but I thought, how often do I mention the wars my country is [directly or indirectly] involved in?
Almost never.  

I don't follow the daily news because I become paralyzed with despair. But I do watch documentaries about wars, like Restrepo.

The other day I watched a wonderful documentary, The Way We Get By (2009), that follows three "troop greeters"--an old woman (above^) and two old men who say hello and good-bye to US troops going through the airport at Bangor, Maine, the last stopover to and from Iraq or Afghanistan.

It's about war, but it's also just as much (or more) about living a meaningful life when you are old, sick, and alone. I highly recommend it.
 ______________________
* I  first saw the Gaza video on Andrew Sullivan's blog the Dish, "one of the first blogs to ask readers alone to support its work. It covers anything ... from politics to religion and pop culture and art and film and poetry and philosophy and web humor."

Funny puppy picture from puppytoob