Saturday, February 26, 2011

Libyan flag before the "MadMan"

This will always be the flag that I associate with Libya.





If you are a friend of mine, and know my background, then you will, of course, know that I lived in Libya from 1959-62, when my father was stationed at Wheelus AFB.









The current events in Libya are heartwrenching to hear and see on the news. My thoughts are that the people will be able to overturn this evil monster - Gadhafi, oh so many spellings! - and find their way to freedom.





As a child, I met the Queen of Libya briefly, nothing fancy, she was visiting the base, and I happened to be in the base exchange when her entourage came through. Although, my mother met her a few times when the Queen was in the hospital at Wheelus - mother was a Grey Lady with the American Red Cross, and consequently had these opportunities, of course at that time, one did not have to go through the type of security one does currently.




I have so many happy memories of living at Wheelus. In the fifth grade, our class was on the second floor of the elementary school, and it faced the Mediterranean Sea. We watched the beauty of the sea on calm days, and the violence of the sea during the stormy, rainy season. I lived one block from the beach, and spent many hours on the cliffs, and on the beach. Once again, I could enjoy the beauty and violence of the sea.




At Sabratha, I experienced my very first deja vu - for many years, I never revealed this to anyone, who would believe a 10 year old - but I knew that I had lived in Libya in a former life, during the Roman times. I still have moments when I wonder about this, I was brought up a Baptist (baptized in the Mediterranean Sea on Easter Sunday 1960), now I am a Lutheran. But over my lifetime, I have had many people come up to me and tell me "You are an OLD Soul", whatever.......



One very memorable day, I was walking home from school - about a mile from my home - I had to go through a swarm of locusts, that was one noisy, crunchy walk and the sky was pure black, even though it was only about 2 or 3 in the afternoon.



Boys being boys, they would catch chameleons, and try to sneak up and put them on the girls' dresses - rumon had told it that if a chameleon landed on something red, the chameleon would burst - don't know if that is true or not, but those boys did their best to see if it was true. They could never catch any girls to get the poor critters on a dress.



Oh well, I digress and this is long enough.



My heart goes out to those who are trying to rid themselves of this madman and his parasitic family.


Good luck Libya!

1 comment:

Amy Lama said...

I read your blog (obviously!) :)

I am woefully ignorant of current events since I don't watch TV or listen to the radio or read the newspaper, so your post prompted me to look up Libya and learn something.

As to the other thing, I don't pretend to understand deja vu or claim to know everything about the human soul and whether we have more than one life or not, so you'll get no naysaying from me. I'm pretty open-minded about such things. I always think, who am I to say what is and isn't true?