GaryOsberg.com

Tomorrow is Veterans Day, which started as Armistice Day, commemorating the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front in Europe, at eleven o’clock am on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. In many parts of the world, people observe a two minute moment of silence at 11 am as a sign of respect for the roughly 20 million people who died in the “war to end all wars”. I plan to visit the grave site of my father and my uncle at the Gethsemane Church Cemetery in Upsala. I used to visit a couple of vets who lived in Mother of Mercy in Albany. Aymer Nelson passed away this last year at age 104. Aymer was in the landing at Normandy Beach on D Day and he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Bob Holmen Sr was on a destroyer in the Pacific. I miss them both.

My dad, Bill Osberg, served on a destroyer escort in the Pacific, the USS Vammen. He was a radar operator, spending hour after hour in a small room on a “tin can” while the fighting raged around him. In one of his journals he wrote: “The two months at Okinawa were hell.” We owe a great deal of thanks to all of those men and women who fought to protect this country. War is hell, but the warriors are not to blame. When you meet a man or women in uniform, simply offer them your hand and say, “Thank you for serving”. If you would like to help to honor veterans thru artwork, simply go to www.vetsart.org

The APHC show this week is the first of three rebroadcasts in a brief November break, this one originally from last October at the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats perform “Wasting Time” and “Out on the Weekend”; Anaïs Mitchell sings “Why We Build the Wall” and “El Helwa Di”; and John Hodgman joins Chris to talk beards, sing “Roadrunner,” and test his Star Wars trivia mettle against Chris Thile. Plus: Chris’s Song of the Week, “Dates”; Sarah Jarosz sings “Green Lights”; Brittany Haas leads the band on a medley of Swedish fiddle tunes; our very own Bertrand Falstaff Heine reviews the new lineup of snow tires; and much, much more.

“Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.” George S. Patton