Dragonfly

Here is a poem from my younger brother Robert DeStefano, a retired science teacher who will never retire as a committed naturalist. This poem is from his most recent collection of poetry about the flora and fauna of the pond behind his cabin in the Berkshires. Entitled A Nobody it is currently available on Amazon. His explanation appears below the poem.

A

dragonfly

landed on my 

shoulder

neither of us

frightened

by its 

impetuosity

for

we share an

extreme natural

curiosity

I

stood motionless

as

this magnificent creature

examined me

with two enormous compound eyes

I

 stood in

awe

for

this 300-million-year survivor

made me feel

 so insignificant

I

know this 

resilient

species will easily

outlive

me

a

Homo sapiens

merely

300,000 years old

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Yes, it’s true, dragonflies often land on me. The first time, I admit, I was a little nervous even though I knew that dragonflies do not sting or bite like wasps. The dragonfly sat on my shoulder and appeared to be examining me with its large compound eyes. I have had many encounters with dragonflies and have learned a great deal about them over the 20 years of watching them near the pond by the log cabin. Sometimes a group of over 50 seems to appear out of nowhere. I once encountered such a group resting on the dock and rowboat. When I arrived, they all focused their eyes on me, and some took turns landing on me. I have noticed that different species of adult dragonflies emerge at different times of the year, with the earliest being the Spring Darners and the latest being the Pondhawks. The pond temperature and individual food preferences are reasons that explain different timing of a species’ emergence. Dragonflies feed voraciously on flying insects such as mayflies and mosquitoes. A single adult will easily eat over 100 mosquitoes daily. I have watched dragonflies gather in a large group and fly in a circular pattern, herding flying insects into a smaller and smaller area. To me, this behavior mimics killer whales, who often hunt in groups and use teamwork to force seals closer together and make them easier to capture and kill.

Dragonflies reproduce by incomplete metamorphosis in that there is an egg, a nymph, and an adult rather than the complete metamorphosis where a butterfly begins as an egg, then a caterpillar, a pupa (chrysalis), and then an adult. A female and male dragonfly will join as the male grasps the female’s head with claspers on his abdomen. The female curls her abdomen to meet the male’s genitalia, forming with him a heart shape. The male then uses a special appendage on its penis to scoop out sperm from the female spermatheca of a previous male. The male then deposits his own sperm. The female usually mates with several males but only uses the sperm from the last male to fertilize her eggs. The fertilized eggs are deposited in water and attach to submerged vegetation. The eggs develop into ferocious nymphs known as a naiads that feed on aquatic organisms. Depending on the species of dragonfly, the nymphs will molt many times over a period of several years until the time comes for them to crawl out of water, attach to a plant stalk, and magically transform into a dragonfly. It begins its final molt as fluid pumps into its body and newly formed wings, which harden as it prepares to fly. The adult dragonflies will hunt and eventually attempt to reproduce but survive for about six months before dying.

Dragonflies evolved about 300 million years ago and were among the first flying insects, quickly becoming predators on newly evolved flying insects such as flies. Prehistoric dragonflies about 250 to 300 million years ago were huge, with a 2.5-foot wingspan. There were much higher levels of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere at that time, allowing insects and other animals, such as dinosaurs, to grow extremely large.

The dragonfly is featured in one of the stories about St. George, the dragonslayer. In Romanian mythology, St. George kills a dragon who had been terrorizing a village. The devil sees St. George kill the dragon and becomes envious of St. George’s magnificent horse. The devil transformed the horse into a dragonfly or devil’s horse. The Romanian word for devil is drac, also meaning dragon. Sometime during the crusades, George, who was a soldier, was captured and tortured because he was a Christian. He was eventually martyred by being beheaded. England eventually made St. George their patron saint. England’s flag is derived from St. George’s cross, which is a symbol of military strength and honor.

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Hall of Shame Induction

 

The Weekly Bystander has been content to let former President Joe Biden and his wife Jill slide into oblivion since the last election, but the recent publication of her memoir has brought them into the limelight again. I have not read her book and don't intend to, but reviews make it clear that it has tarnished their reputation even more.

It is now time for Jill Biden to join her husband in The Weekly Bystander Hall of Shame. Five years ago, after a disastrous first year in office, President Biden was inducted. Here is a link to a post that gave the reasons even before we knew what the rest of his term would bring.

Now, after the startling admissions in her memoir, it is Jill's turn. It's not just that she claims that during the infamous debate of June 2024, she thought Joe was having a stroke, but that she also claims that before or since, she has never seen any sign of mental decline in her elderly husband. 

Even more deceitful was her performance after the debate when on national television she effusively praised her husband's performance despite what she had seen with her own two eyes. She now says that she was using a technique employed by educators to encourage schoolchildren who had failed at some task.   Maybe so, but treating the President of the United States as if he was a schoolboy was disgraceful as well as deceitful. What kind of a woman is she? What kind of a wife is she to think he could have served four more years in such a demanding office? Check out this link to a brief video of her post debate reporting.

Below is an excerpt from my account of the June 2024 debate that treated Joe Biden with more compassion than Jill did.  

"My wife and I watched the Presidential debate last Thursday night, and it was obvious that President Biden lost. I rate his performance as a “D” because he at least completed the grueling ordeal. My impression was confirmed by watching the spinmeisters discuss the debate afterwards. Even the most die-hard Democrats admitted as much. It didn’t take words. Their faces told the story.

It was not that you could point to a blunder or two. President Biden looked and sounded weak and infirm. One Democratic commentator noted that there is only three years difference in their ages, but Trump looked and acted thirty years younger.

 

Joe Louis, one of boxings greatest champions, once said of an opponent that “he can run, but he can’t hide.” Well, President Biden may be running but he couldn’t hide during the debate. We finally saw the real Joe, or what was left of him at age 81. Finally, he stood alone without even Jill at his side, and we saw him without teleprompter or prepared remarks although he had spent a week preparing. It was sad, even sadder when you consider that he is the President of the United States.  

 

President Biden’s deportment during the debate would make you think that we have not really had a President for the past three and a half years. I would go even further and say that he appears like a figurehead or puppet, and that during his term I suspect that the country has been run by a secret cabinet of non-elected Democratic bureaucrats and advisors working behind the scenes. 

 

For three years Jill and the others in his inner circle must have observed that he was suffering from old age, and that he was no longer fit for the job. Along with a cooperative media, they have perpetrated a colossal fraud on us. They have hidden the real Joe from us but in the debate we could see and hear the truth with our own eyes and ears."

 

By coincidence, when I wrote the June 2024 debate post I found a letter by an eighteenth century critic of the British government on the eve of the American Revolution. In one passage the letter discussed the Duke of Bedford, an aging aristocrat and minister whose policies contributed to the American war and the eventual loss of the American colonies.

“ Let us consider you then, as arrived at the summit of worldly greatness; let us suppose that all your plans of avarice and ambition are accomplished, and your most sanguine wishes gratified… can age itself forget that you are now in the last act of life? Can gray hairs make folly venerable? And is there no period to be reserved for meditation and retirement? For shame, … let it not be recorded of you, that the latest moments of your life were dedicated to the same unworthy pursuits, the same busy agitations, in which your youth and manhood were exhausted. Consider that, although you cannot disgrace your former life, you are violating the character of age, and exposing the impotent imbecility, after you have lost the vigor, of the passions.”

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Battle of Midway: June 4, 1942:

 Today marks the 84th anniversary of the Battle of Midway, one of the most significant naval engagements in history. Below I repeat a blog post that I have posted almost annually featuring Samuel Eliot Morison's account of that battle that changed the course of WWII. The older I get, the harder it is for me to think or read about war, and the young lives lost on both sides. Nevertheless, at the end I add a link to an extremely well done documentary video about some of the resourceful and brave naval aviators involved in the Pacific war on both sides.

The anniversary of the Battle of Midway coming as it does on June 4, is usually overshadowed by remembrances of the Allied landings on the coast of Normandy on D-Day, the sixth of June, 1944. Nevertheless, if not for the American naval victory in the Battle of Midway on June 4, 1942, D-Day might never have happened.

Nowhere is the story of Midway told better than in Admiral Samuel Morison’s epic history of United States naval operations during the Second World War. Admiral Morison was a rare combination of sailor and historian. Before the war he had written a magisterial biography of Columbus that still ranks with anything ever written about that great sailor. As part of his research Morison even used a sailing ship to cover the route Columbus had taken.

When the war broke out, the U.S. Navy asked Morison to be its official historian. The Navy took pains to put him on actual ships that were very likely to see action. He was not at Midway but his account reads like an eyewitness. Below are excerpts from his depiction of the pivotal two minutes of that epic battle.

First, a little introduction. After their stunning success at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, the Japanese had rolled up one victory after another. By the spring of 1942 Japanese strategists thought that an attack on the tiny island of Midway in the central Pacific would entice the American navy into a decisive engagement that would completely solidify Japan's hegemony over most of Asia, and force the USA out of the war.

They sent a huge naval task force including four of their best aircraft carriers and most of their best pilots to take the tiny island in the middle of nowhere. Even though the American navy had been battered at Pearl Harbor, it was able to send a carrier force to intercept the Japanese after code-breakers deciphered enough of the Japanese naval code to reveal that Midway was the target. 

The Japanese had already bombed the small garrison at Midway when the American carriers came into range. Admiral Raymond Spruance was in command of the American fleet and he followed the advice of Captain Miles Browning who shrewdly predicted the location of the Japanese force. Spruance launched an immediate attack and the American planes quickly found the Japanese. Unfortunately, the initial torpedo bomber attack was thwarted by Japanese fighters (Jekes). Not one torpedo reached its target and practically all the torpedo bombers were shot down. It seemed like all was lost for the Americans. Morison relates what happened next.

Lt. Commander McClusky

   

“The third torpedo attack was over by 1024, and for about one hundred seconds the Japanese were certain they had won the Battle of Midway, and the war. This was their high tide of victory. Then, a few seconds before 1026, with dramatic suddenness, there came a complete reversal of fortune, wrought by the Dauntless dive-bombers, the SBDs, the most successful and beloved by aviators of all our carrier types during the war. Lieutenant Commander Clarence W. McClusky, air group commander of Enterprise, had two squadrons of SDBs under him: 37 units. He ordered one to follow him in attacking carrier Kaga, while the other, under Lieutenant W. E. Gallaher, pounced on Akagi, Nagumo’s flagship. Their coming in so soon after the last torpedo-bombing attack meant that the Zekes were still close to the water after shooting down TBDs, and had no time to climb. At 14000 feet the American dive-bombers tipped over and swooped screaming down for the kill. Akagi took a bomb which exploded in the hangar, detonating torpedo storage, then another which exploded amid planes changing their armament on the flight deck—just as Browning had calculated. Fires swept the flagship, Admiral Nagumo and staff transferred to cruiser Nagara, and the carrier was abandoned and sunk by a destroyer’s torpedo. Four bomb hits on Kaga killed everyone on the bridge and set her burning from stem to stern. Abandoned by all but a small damage-control crew, she was racked by an internal explosion that evening, and sank hissing into a 2600 fathom deep.

Lt. Commander Leslie

The third carrier was the victim of Yorktown’s dive-bombers, under Lieutenant Commander Maxwell F. Leslie, who by cutting corners managed to make up for a late start. His 17 SBDs jumped Soryu just as she was turning into the wind to launch planes, and planted three half-ton bombs in the midst of the spot. Within  twenty minutes she had to be abandoned. U.S. submarine Nautilus, prowling about looking for targets, pumped three torpedoes into her, the gasoline storage exploded, whipsawing the carrier, and down she went in two sections.

…Never has there been a sharper turn in the fortunes of war than on that June day when McClusky’s and Leslie’s dive-bombers snatched the palm of victory from Nagumo’s masthead, where he had nailed it on 7 December.

Midway was a victory not only of courage, determination and excellent bombing technique, but of intelligence, bravely and wisely applied….it might have ended differently but for the chance which gave Spruance command over two of the three flattops. Fletcher did well, but Spruance’s performance was superb. Calm, collected, decisive, yet receptive to advice, keeping in his mind the picture of widely disparate forces, yet boldly seizing every opening, Raymond A. Spruance emerged from this battle one of the greatest admirals in American naval history.

Admiral Spruance

Admirals Nimitz, Fletcher, and Spruance are, as I write, very much alive; Captain Mitscher of Hornet, Captain Murray of Enterprise and Captain Miles Browning of the slide-rule mind have joined the three-score young aviators who met flaming death that day in reversing the verdict of battle. Think of them, reader, every Fourth of June. They and their comrades who survived changed the whole course of the Pacific War.”

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Note: Here is a link to a very informative and, at the end, moving video. 

Memorial Day: The Best Years of Our Lives

The Best Years of Our Lives swept most of the Academy Awards for 1946, and remains a film classic today. It is an emotional heart-rending story of three veterans returning to their families and their civilian lives that will never be the same.

 

William Wyler directed the film, his first after himself returning home from three years of military service. He had won the Best Director award in 1942 for Mrs. Miniver but then volunteered at the age of 40 to make films for the Air Force. In the process, he flew on a number of bombing missions and actually lost most of his hearing. Despite his disability, he won the best director award for The Best Years of Our Lives, a film that relied so much on the use of sound. 

 

The film featured a great cast that included stars like Frederic March, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, and Virginia Mayo, backed up by a superb supporting cast who shine in some of the best scenes. The film also featured Harold Russell, a real sailor whose two hands had actually been amputated during the war. It is at once heartbreaking and inspirational to see him manipulate the hooks that serve as replacements. Russell won Best Supporting Actor as well an unprecedented special award for his performance as the wounded sailor.

Harold Russell, Dana Andrews, Frederic March

 

Frederic March won the Best Actor award playing an army sergeant, returning to his respectable family and banking career. Actually, that year the Academy Award should have gone to Jimmy Stewart for his performance as a small-town banker in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life.  It was a real sign of the times that both films featured bankers as heroes. In my opinion Dana Andrews could also have won for his portrayal of troubled Air Force bombardier Fred Derry.

Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright

However, the women in the film more than hold their own. Feminist historians would do well to note the powerful women portrayed in this 1946 film. Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, and youthful Kathy O'Donnell are all towers of strength. Glamorous Virginia Mayo played an unfaithful floozy, but gave the best performance of her career. Ironically, she gets to utter the title line in the film when she complains to her returning husband that while he was flying bombing missions over Germany, she had given him the best years of her life.

 

The supporting cast is equally fine, and again it is the women who shine. One of the most emotional scenes in the film occurs at the beginning.  I will never forget the look on the face of the mother, played by Mina Gombell, when she first sees the hooks of her young son. Toward the end of the film after the dejected and out of work airman decides to leave town, he discards his wartime citations. When he leaves the house, his father then reads them to his step-mother, played by Gladys George, who sits quietly registering on her face the emotions felt by every viewer. 

 

Speaking of scenes, Dana Andrews, playing an Air Force Captain and bombardier who is haunted by horrific dreams and memories of lost comrades, appears alone in the pivotal scene near the end of the film. He has lost his job, and his wife, and a new romance has hit the rocks. He is about to leave his home town and waits at the airport for a flight to anywhere. He sees some de-commissioned and stripped down bombers waiting for the scrap heap. He climbs into one and sits in the dusty cabin and the war memories come back. There is no dialogue but gradually we hear the engines starting one by one, and the awful memories come back. It is one of the most iconic scenes in film history, filmed beautifully by famed cinematographer Gregg Toland. 

 

The final scene is the rendition of the marriage ceremony of the wounded sailor and his high-school sweetheart. Even today it is hard to watch him sliding the ring on her finger with his hooks. But the most moving part of the scene is the simplicity of the wedding ceremony itself. It takes place in the modest home of the bride. She descends the stairs as a couple of children sing, Here, Comes the Bride. Waiting in the living room are the parents and a small gathering of friends and family. A minister calmly directs the couple in the exchange of the traditional vows, and that is it except for congratulations. 

 

Someone once said that the length of the marriage is inversely proportional to the size of the wedding. This memorable wedding scene, and the film itself are powerful reminders of what we have lost in the ensuing years. 

 

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