A New Day is Dawning

I can't believe that today happened. Its all been kinda surreal.

First off, I actually got to vote. My first time voting, and its in one for the biggest elections to possibly happen in my life time. Not just in regards to the results, and what they mean, but also in voter turn out. Its an exciting time. for better or for worse, change is in motion.

I spent a good part of the day finding out as much as I could about a man I've never met, whom no one has heard of. I found a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) "Flying Log Book for Aircrew Other than Pilot" while clearing the built in bookshelves in preparation for painting the living room. the book belonged to Leading Aircraftman (L.A.C.) M. Davies. He qualified as a Bomb Aimer - Air Gunner January 1st, 1943, at the #6 Bombing and Gunnery School on Ontario, he qualified as a Navi at another Canadian school. Then, he went off to war. I can follow this, and his test scores, in his log book. I know the two units he served in (1668 HCU, 155 squadron), and it seems he survived the war, given that the last flight logged is the 4th of June, 1945, and in some of the papers shoved in between the pages, he has a membership card for the Royal Air Forces Association, for which he paid the 1946 membership fee. He appears to have settled in England, at least for a time. There is a negative of a mother and child in the papers as well. Interestingly, there is also a temporary pass from the end of October, 1942.

I think the main reasons I'm so interested, is that I wonder why he held on to that temporary pass through the war, and also I wonder if he, or the people in the picture care about this stuff. The spine is calling apart, and the pages are yellow and faded. The temp pass looks like its been folded and refolded countless times. The handwriting is very old fashioned to my modern eye, but also very beautiful, and neat. Maybe its strange, to try to dig up his life, but it somehow feels important to me. I put out the word on a site vets use to try and get word about each other, sent an e-mail to a gentleman who was looking for people who had served in the 115 Squadron with him, asking for a first name, at least.

In other news, its getting (relatively) cold around the Bay (for those of you elsewhere) its 50ish degrees right now, don't think it got above 60 today. And it was partly cloudy, after 2 days of rain. While I like rain, having it this earlier means not a lot of rain all told for the winter, which will mean a bad summer.

I'll have to wait till morning to see how prop 8 does, 47% no, but that's slowly gaining, and CNN even predicts a narrow defeat, because the big counties voting no have had low returns so far. We are now at 50% total, but last i checked, Alameda county had only reported about 10%, and at least 3 or 4 other no states were only reporting around 30%. So we shall see.