Big Picture

Reminders in today’s mailbox …

“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.”– Iris Murdoch

Today is World Ocean Day. The United Nations marks World Oceans Day each year on 8 June through a annual event coordinated by the Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea

Monday was the 78th anniversary, on June 6, 1944, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. Codenamed Operation Overlord, also known as D-Day, the invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history. According to some estimates, more than 4,000 Allied troops, including 2,000 Americans, lost their lives in the D-Day invasion, with thousands more wounded or missing. marked the beginning of the end of World War II in Europe.

Speaking of oceans: today begins an annual tradition, now global and including parts of the U.S.A, of Dragon-boat festivals.

Standing on a rocky, coastal shoreline in Maine facing a Nor’easter roaring in from the North Atlantic, one is reminded: we are all grains of sand beneath these stones.