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<\/a> he got up and excused himself saying, \u201cI am going to be late for my team practice.\u201d\u00a0 I assumed it was a school team, so was surprised when he informed me, \u201cI have a practice with my online Tribes team because we have a match tonight at 11.\u201d\u00a0 That was probably my breaking point.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhy can\u2019t you get involved with something that has some sort of redeeming qualities?\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEvery time I go by your room I hear gunfire and it depresses me.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0He actually came up with a rather quick witted reply, \u201cLook, I am learning life skills like how to strategize, plan ahead and be on a team.\u00a0 Besides I notice that you regularly watch Law and Order, and so it seems to me that you watch plenty of death and violence yourself.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 I thought of trying to explain the difference between senseless anonymous killing and the obvious appeal of trying to unravel the motives of a tragically dysfunctional family, but felt that I would only be digging myself a deeper hole.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Time for Plan B.\u00a0 We were taking a spring break trip to Paris, and I thought that a side trip to the Normandy beaches would be an effective real life antidote to online violence.\u00a0 We arrived at Omaha beach on a beautiful spring day.\u00a0 The beach was \u00a0The next stop was the Omaha Beach museum.\u00a0 There seemed to be plenty of small museums in the area filled with relics collected by local residents ukviagras.com<\/a>.\u00a0 This museum included various dioramas, but also pictures and letters that were found on the dead soldiers.\u00a0 It was at this moment that Ned began to appreciate the concept of a soldier as an individual and not an anonymous member of an expendable army.\u00a0 From here we went to\u00a0Pointe-du-Hoc where there was a German pillbox overlooking a bluff.\u00a0 Peeking over the bluff, you could see that only the most heroic and downright lucky American could have ever made it to the top through the bullets raining down from the German pillbox.\u00a0 The top of the bluff was spring-green and grassy, but the However, nothing could have prepared us for the emotional wallop of our visit to the American Cemetery the next day.\u00a0 The last turn in the long forested driveway opened onto seemingly endless rows of glistening tombstones.\u00a0 We walked quietly through the rows, touching the tops of some of the stones or looking down to read the names of the fallen.\u00a0 And just when I We drove into town for dinner that night and unanimously agreed to forego the German restaurant and settled for a quiet dinner at an Italian restaurant.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t talk too much about the day or its implications, and in fact, when I mention this story to Ned, he claims that he does not recall too many details of this visit at all.\u00a0 However, shortly thereafter I was gratified to realize that the gun noises stopped emanating from his room, he had dropped out of his Tribe and ever since then his focus has remained on online sports games.\u00a0 Mission accomplished.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0On D-Day the infantryman heads for Omaha Beach full of anxiety and hopes,<\/p>\n \u00a0Knowing that his legacy as a solider will depend on how he —–<\/p>\n \u00a0With bloody beaches and slaughtered bodies strewn across the sand.<\/p>\n \u00a0While the enemy has his —– trained on him and death is near at hand.<\/p>\n \u00a0He claws his way up the bluff and collapses, momentarily safe behind a —– of trees.<\/p>\n \u00a0He pauses to thank the Lord on quaking and bended knees.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n Answers;\u00a0 copes, scope, copse<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: Like many others in my peer group who first started typing on a manual typewriter, I have had an ambivalent love\/mostly hate relationship with computers from the get go \u2013 continually feeling intimidated and frustrated with impenetrable jargon that requires … Continue reading <\/a> pristine, peaceful and empty, an impossible contrast with images of the hell-on-earth D-Day beach.\u00a0 I had read the book the Longest Day on the plane ride over, which showed pictures of overwhelming carnage – abandoned vehicles spewing forth acrid smoke, barely living men staggering around in a trance-like state and of course plenty of dead men.\u00a0 The awkward bodies were partially submerged in sand, indicating that they must have been abandoned there for some time as the tide moved the sand around them.\u00a0 I did not know if the beach was now abandoned out of respect, or come a warmer day in summer, the beach would be swarming with vacationing families with the sidewalk filling with strolling sweethearts and vendors selling ice cream from pushcarts.\u00a0 It was hard to guess which scenario would be<\/a> more poignant.<\/p>\n<\/a> pock-marks from incoming artillery shells were<\/a> still easily visible.\u00a0 The whole area looked like a close up of the surface of a golf ball.\u00a0 That evening we stayed at a farmhouse bed and breakfast, which was used as some sort of make shift hospital during D-Day.\u00a0 Pictures on the walls showed the home overtaken by nurses and the wounded in the very rooms we were staying in.\u00a0 I felt that I had scored another direct hit with Ned.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a> thought I could not bear it any longer, we turned the corner and saw the cemetery continuing unabated for another several acres.\u00a0 Before we had left, our friend Ray Murphy mentioned that his uncle was buried in this cemetery and I thought it would make it a nice focus if we could find his grave.\u00a0 Ray\u2019s uncle had died before he was born and in fact there was no one left in his family who had known his uncle personally.\u00a0 This is probably the fate of many in this cemetery as the living memory of World War II slowly slips away.\u00a0 Somehow this seemed to make it more important to find a specific grave and bring it back to life as a real person and a family member.\u00a0 Although Murphy is not a particularly unusual name, I was still surprised when the database showed that there were several dozen Murphys buried here.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I did not have the details on Ray\u2019s uncle, but thought it would be sufficient to find a representative grave.\u00a0 \u00a0We did indeed find a Murphy grave, placed some flowers and took some pictures.\u00a0\u00a0 Even though it turned out that we had guessed wrong, it really didn\u2019t matter since Ray was immensely touched.\u00a0 Even so, I wanted to track down the true living relatives, or relatives of any of the other deceased, to let them know that their Murphy was well taken care of and appreciated in this lovely and heartbreaking cemetery on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. post, stop, stop) and the number of dashes indicates the number of letters.\u00a0 One missing words with rhyme with either the preceding or following line.\u00a0 Your job is to solve the missing words based on the context of the poem.\u00a0 Scroll down for the answers.<\/h6>\n
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