HURRAH FOR AT&T

Yesterday surprise visitors--one of my sons and his wife--brought me a lovely gift, a sensible telephone--made in the USA. It rings six times with a good interval between rings to give one time to get there. What a vast improvement over losing calls on a foreign-made device because it did not allow time for an answer. The set includes two white phones, one of which I keep with me as I move about my apartment. 

My visitors were on their way to Nampa, Idaho, to hear a speaker from England. This is a man whom they have heard before and know personally. In fact, he called Mike to tell him he'd be speaking in Nampa. I believe I heard once that the man speaks in some city every night of the year. His subject matter--I think--is Biblical prophecy. The audience is always a very large crowd. 

I lack only about 40 pages finishing the reading of Killing Patton. It gives a good picture of Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower as well as Patton. [One thing all of these men had in common was they all had mistresses.] What may shock some readers is that Eisenhower was primarily a politician while he had Supreme Command of the war in Europe. I know a story about that, one I read more than 50 years ago. Curtis Bean Dall wrote a book about FDR, his ex-father-in-law, in which he said that FDR's daughter, Anna, sat next to Eisenhower at a dinner, and then told her father that Eisenhower (a lieutenant, I think he was then) was just the man her father was looking for. After that, Ike went up in rank very quickly, angering other officers of higher rank and with war experience. At the cease of hostilities in Europe, Patton witnessed the politician in Eisenhower when Ike insisted Russia have a big role in their dividing up Germany among the victors. Patton clearly saw the future with the enemy, now Communism.