While she saw stars and constellations, he saw war birds; would the daughter of a decorated officer ever come to understand him?

Pool sitting before my swim. I’m full of excitement this morning as I prepare for yet another project, perhaps one of my biggest, a movie!! I think I even have my logline, which has been somewhat of a barrier that past few weeks. It’s not perfect but it’s close; I’m sure it will change as I go along, as will I. That is the fun of large meaningful projects, you can’t get to the end without going through the fire and the fire is transforming; I need one about now.

I’m in movie heaven because, of course, in addition to the many, many, many movies I’ve been watching about WWII - both contemporary movies from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, as well as old ones from the 1950s many of which I’ve seen before - I now turn to going to the theaters and watching new movies. It wasn’t hard; I began with the Odyssey! Wow! I think my movie too should be shot for IMAX!

I know how this sounds, but it’s ok. To complete a big project like this you have to think big. And my many projects - books, magazines, artworks, dojo, maybe even 966 substack posts - have grown me into someone who can commit to big projects!

Right now my object is to get my movie into script form. I have a group of friends who have been patiently waiting for me to send them something to read and now it won’t be long. I’ve also got an unlikely friend who meets with me once or twice a month and considers my barriers with me; so nice. He is also the young man who sparked this project in me last year, but that’s another story … or is it, we shall see.

I’m envisioning the project - as the logline - suggests from a multigenerational point of view: me and my father. My research in this past year has been to understand him during his WWII years: his missions, his writings, the history of the war especially at various times in his mission timeline, remembering the many stories my mother told me about her experiences of trying to be with my father when he was stateside during the war, and remembering the few stories my father told me but only towards the end of his life, after a lifetime of silence amid my questions.

I have traveled to and been inside of comparable planes in three nearby Air museums. I’m not a warhawk, but WWII is different in my mind, and I believe that perspective is a needed one these days. Apparently many others do to as there are a lot of new WWII movies! But none are told from the daughter’s point of view. Of course, it won’t just be my point of view as the central theme is understanding my father’s point of view as a decorated navigator of a B 24 Liberator bomber flying 50 missions in 3 months, many of them to Ploesti and environs: some of the most heavily guarded oil fields and storage areas that fueled Hitler’s Luffwaffe. Missions with an impact.

I’ve been to Germany, and Poland. I’ve visited Auschwitz - Birkenau with my brother just after my father died: around 1998. Even then, without any thought of this kind of project, my imagination would soar as when our sleeper car first pulled into a Polish train station the first one across the German border. I remember it so vividly: it was very late at night, we both had been sleeping and were awakened by a hard knock on our door asking for “Passports!” Looking out the window I could see men in dark long coats with long guns, German shepards accompanying them, darkness in the small train station which had no building that I could see; just a long cement landing with a light on a pole shining in the darkness, shining enough to see the long coats, long guns, German shepards. It was right out of the movies!

After we returned to Berlin we took in the sights of the cold war: Check Point Charlie, Brandenberg gate, a new correspondent for my magazine who grew up in East Berlin introduced us to East Berlin with a tour one day. I had been fascinated about all that stuff; an avid reader as a young girl I had devoured The Diary of Anne Frank like so many pre-adolescent school girls. In short, I have been primed.

And so I’m thrilled that tomorrow begins my 21 day schedule to write this all down! And I’m off!

No worries, I will still be posting daily getting my fingers working for the day so to speak.