thedrifter
12-31-06, 09:59 AM
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Looking back at '06: feats, follies and funerals
GORDON DILLOW
Register columnist
GLDillow@aol.com
The last day of the year is a good time to look back and ponder one's feats and follies. And when it comes to this column, this year, as every year, I fear there have been too few of the former, and too many of the latter.
Still, for me, 2006 has been an interesting year – sometimes fun, sometimes sad, sometimes exciting.
I wrote about everything from car-pool lanes (I hate 'em) to the high quality of processed Orange County sewage (some of the cleanest and sweetest-smelling in the world) to the mountains of urban trash that washed up on the beach after an early January rainstorm – including a 15-pound Norbest turkey still wrapped in plastic, perhaps grim evidence of someone's Christmas dinner plans gone seriously awry.
In another lighthearted column I compared the high price of gasoline (then about $3.30 a gallon) to the even higher price of bottled beer (the equivalent of $9 a gallon) and Starbucks coffee ($31.20 per gallon), and then cheerfully suggested that maybe the price of gas wasn't so high after all – this to the annoyance of many angry gas consumers. One of them described that gas vs. beer comparison as "absolutely the stupidest thing I ever read in a newspaper" – which, when you consider the current state of American journalism, is saying something.
Of course, they weren't all lighthearted. I wrote about a young UC Irvine student named Ryan Langan and his dream of helping to create a fully functional artificial hand to aid the wounded of Iraq and Afghanistan, and about a young Marine lieutenant named John Caldwell, whose dream of becoming a Marine pilot was cut short by a speeding car that injured his leg – and how he had the strength to find another dream.
I wrote about funerals and memorial services – too many of them. There was the funeral of Melvin Guevara, the Orange County Sheriff's special officer who was struck and killed when he stopped on a freeway to help two strangers trapped in an overturned vehicle, and the funeral of Lance Cpl. Hugo Lopez, 20, of La Habra, who died of terrible wounds suffered in Iraq before his life had really begun.
I wrote about a ceremony at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, where the family of Army Reserve Sgt. James Witkowski accepted the posthumous Silver Star he received for shielding his fellow soldiers from a hand grenade, and about a memorial service at Camp Pendleton for the 11 Marines of the 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, the city of Newport Beach's "adopted battalion," who died in Iraq.
I wrote a column about former Mission Viejo resident Bill Carns, who is still disabled after being shot in the head in his sleep by Satanist serial killer Richard "The Night Stalker" Ramirez – and who can hardly believe that even now, 21 years later, like so many other aging murderers, Ramirez is still happily breathing air on Death Row.
I wrote about illegal immigration and the Minutemen and Mexican flags, about high school exit exams and Vietnam era POW/MIA bracelets. I wrote several times about the police shooting of 18-year-old Ashley MacDonald as she reportedly lunged at two officers with a small knife in a Huntington Beach park – and although most readers disagreed, I tried to explain from personal experience how hard it is in a fast-changing situation to decide whether to use deadly force, and how that split-second decision can change lives on both ends of the gun.
And during the summer, I got to go back to Iraq as an embedded journalist with the Marines, and to write a series of columns about what they're experiencing over there – not just the heat and the dust and the danger, but also the comradeship and the dedication and the astonishing courage. As troubling as the course of the war has become, being with them renewed my faith in the future of this nation.
And through all the columns, you the readers were right there with me. Over the past year, I heard from thousands of you through phone calls or letters or e-mails – and pro or con, they were welcomed.
For example, earlier this month I wrote a column about the death of my beloved mother, Louise, at age 87, in which I tried to explain how the hurt of her dying couldn't diminish the joy of her living. In addition to the many, many condolences I received from Register readers, for which I was profoundly grateful and deeply touched, I heard from several readers who said the column had actually given them some measure of comfort for their own loss of a loved one.
And if so, if anything I've written has provided some small comfort, or prompted a laugh, or provoked a discussion, then that alone made the entire year worthwhile.
A happy and prosperous New Year to you and yours. And I'll see you in 2007.
Ellie
Looking back at '06: feats, follies and funerals
GORDON DILLOW
Register columnist
GLDillow@aol.com
The last day of the year is a good time to look back and ponder one's feats and follies. And when it comes to this column, this year, as every year, I fear there have been too few of the former, and too many of the latter.
Still, for me, 2006 has been an interesting year – sometimes fun, sometimes sad, sometimes exciting.
I wrote about everything from car-pool lanes (I hate 'em) to the high quality of processed Orange County sewage (some of the cleanest and sweetest-smelling in the world) to the mountains of urban trash that washed up on the beach after an early January rainstorm – including a 15-pound Norbest turkey still wrapped in plastic, perhaps grim evidence of someone's Christmas dinner plans gone seriously awry.
In another lighthearted column I compared the high price of gasoline (then about $3.30 a gallon) to the even higher price of bottled beer (the equivalent of $9 a gallon) and Starbucks coffee ($31.20 per gallon), and then cheerfully suggested that maybe the price of gas wasn't so high after all – this to the annoyance of many angry gas consumers. One of them described that gas vs. beer comparison as "absolutely the stupidest thing I ever read in a newspaper" – which, when you consider the current state of American journalism, is saying something.
Of course, they weren't all lighthearted. I wrote about a young UC Irvine student named Ryan Langan and his dream of helping to create a fully functional artificial hand to aid the wounded of Iraq and Afghanistan, and about a young Marine lieutenant named John Caldwell, whose dream of becoming a Marine pilot was cut short by a speeding car that injured his leg – and how he had the strength to find another dream.
I wrote about funerals and memorial services – too many of them. There was the funeral of Melvin Guevara, the Orange County Sheriff's special officer who was struck and killed when he stopped on a freeway to help two strangers trapped in an overturned vehicle, and the funeral of Lance Cpl. Hugo Lopez, 20, of La Habra, who died of terrible wounds suffered in Iraq before his life had really begun.
I wrote about a ceremony at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, where the family of Army Reserve Sgt. James Witkowski accepted the posthumous Silver Star he received for shielding his fellow soldiers from a hand grenade, and about a memorial service at Camp Pendleton for the 11 Marines of the 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, the city of Newport Beach's "adopted battalion," who died in Iraq.
I wrote a column about former Mission Viejo resident Bill Carns, who is still disabled after being shot in the head in his sleep by Satanist serial killer Richard "The Night Stalker" Ramirez – and who can hardly believe that even now, 21 years later, like so many other aging murderers, Ramirez is still happily breathing air on Death Row.
I wrote about illegal immigration and the Minutemen and Mexican flags, about high school exit exams and Vietnam era POW/MIA bracelets. I wrote several times about the police shooting of 18-year-old Ashley MacDonald as she reportedly lunged at two officers with a small knife in a Huntington Beach park – and although most readers disagreed, I tried to explain from personal experience how hard it is in a fast-changing situation to decide whether to use deadly force, and how that split-second decision can change lives on both ends of the gun.
And during the summer, I got to go back to Iraq as an embedded journalist with the Marines, and to write a series of columns about what they're experiencing over there – not just the heat and the dust and the danger, but also the comradeship and the dedication and the astonishing courage. As troubling as the course of the war has become, being with them renewed my faith in the future of this nation.
And through all the columns, you the readers were right there with me. Over the past year, I heard from thousands of you through phone calls or letters or e-mails – and pro or con, they were welcomed.
For example, earlier this month I wrote a column about the death of my beloved mother, Louise, at age 87, in which I tried to explain how the hurt of her dying couldn't diminish the joy of her living. In addition to the many, many condolences I received from Register readers, for which I was profoundly grateful and deeply touched, I heard from several readers who said the column had actually given them some measure of comfort for their own loss of a loved one.
And if so, if anything I've written has provided some small comfort, or prompted a laugh, or provoked a discussion, then that alone made the entire year worthwhile.
A happy and prosperous New Year to you and yours. And I'll see you in 2007.
Ellie