It\u2019s January 9.\u00a0 That\u2019s a date I\u2019m unlikely to forget.<\/p>\n
My mother was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts on January 9, 1909.\u00a0 She would have been 108 years old today.\u00a0 She died at 66, two years younger than I am now, of heart failure. \u00a0She was a wonderful woman and a great mom, and we lost her far too soon.<\/p>\n
My first grandchild was born on January 9, ten years ago today.\u00a0 Happy birthday, kid! Your great-grandmother would have been hugely proud of you!<\/p>\n
A bit later in 2017 I\u2019ll experience the 40th<\/sup> anniversary of writing the Cop Talk column in American Handgunner <\/em>magazine.\u00a0 The late, great Col. Rex Applegate had kicked off Cop Talk in the July\/August 1977 issue http:\/\/americanhandgunner.com\/1977issues\/AHJA77.pdf<\/a> .\u00a0 I was assigned the column a couple of issues later, the November\/December \u201977 issue which was the same one that introduced Col. Jeff Cooper as a contributing editor to the magazine http:\/\/americanhandgunner.com\/1977issues\/AHND77.pdf<\/a> , and my first Cop Talk oddly enough was Part 2 of a Part 1 that had begun the issue before in a column then called The Combat Course\u00a0 http:\/\/americanhandgunner.com\/1977issues\/AHSO77.pdf<\/a> .<\/p>\n Ah, memories\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026but\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026at the same time we remember Shakespeare\u2019s admonition \u201cWhat\u2019s past is prologue,\u201d and Santayana\u2019s reminder that \u201cThose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,\u201d we also have to keep in mind that we can\u2019t change the past (as much as those who practice disingenuous alternate history try), but what we CAN influence is the future.<\/p>\n Gonna keep on trying.\u00a0 For the next generation, like my granddaughter on her birthday today, and so many more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s January 9.\u00a0 That\u2019s a date I\u2019m unlikely to forget. My mother was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts on January 9, 1909.\u00a0 She would have been 108 years old today.\u00a0 She died at 66, two years younger than I am now, of heart failure. \u00a0She was a wonderful woman and a great mom, and we lost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}