Everyone's War - Sepia Saturday

While rummaging around looking for suitable photos for Sepia Saturday, I came across my father-in-law's WWII ration book . . .

 and this mini-edition of The New Yorker which was printed for distribution to members of the armed forces. . .

 in which the talk of the town is the atomic bomb and the cartoons show butchers with no meat to sell . . .

 and housewives who have learned to make do with rationed food and constant shortages . . .

and I thought of the All-In-This-Together Spirit that pervades English books from that era and is shown so well in the Foyle's War television series.

And then I thought about the differences in wars. In WWII, women went to work in factories and on farms to free men to fight; there was a draft; there were shortages which affected everyone; in fact, pretty much everyone made sacrifices. 

The wars the USA is fighting today are different. Certainly the service people are making tremendous sacrifices. But as for the general public -- unless we have a friend or relation in harm's way, our lives go on undisturbed. 

What if there were a universal draft - men and women - with none of those exemptions that so many of our current war supporters in Congress took advantage of because they had 'other priorities?'

A universal draft would put more people in the military so that the same poor National Guard units didn't keep being rotated back to Iraq and Afghanistan, so that we weren't paying Halliburton and Blackwater to peel the potatoes or run the motor pool or serve as bodyguards  -- jobs that in an earlier time were done by the troops.

What if Congresspersons were seeing their children drafted? Would they be rethinking these wars?

 For more Sepia Saturday posts, go HERE.

Two Completely Unrelated Things

This lovely bloom is, to my way of thinking, as pretty as many an orchid or fancy tulip. Pale chartreuse petals, flamed with orange -- and a mop of cream colored -- what are those? Anthers? Stamens? Whatever -- it's a gorgeous flower. And just now, the forest floor is littered with them -- the blossoms of the tall tulip poplar trees that grow in such profusion here.

That was one thing.

Here's another: A few posts back, Merisi asked who was responsible for incorporating all the changes from the edited manuscript into an electronic copy. I didn't know and emailed my editor -- who also didn't know for sure. ( She knew that she didn't want to do it and I knew that I for sure didn't.) But Herself promised to find out and get back to me.

Monday morning, true to her word, here came the email -- a forward from one of the folks in the Production department who said: "The compositor does it. I think they contract the work out. It used to be housewives in Pennsylvania, but now I think they send it overseas."

I find this fascinating. What are those Pennsylvania housewives doing now -- are they greeters at Wal-Mart? massage therapists? mystery writers?

And where 'overseas' are these outsourced compositors? I guess an in-depth knowledge of English wouldn't actually be necessary -- all the compositor really has to do is understand the proofreading marks (something I'm still working on.)

Further proof that it takes a village to turn out a book.