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42 FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | FEBRUARY 2021 Check with your club contact to confirm meeting place, date, and time. Our Jan. 12 meeting was canceled due to COVID restrictions. Our next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 9 at 9:30 am. The Book Club selection for February is rescheduled from January, and is Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger. Here is a brief description of the book from Amazon.com: "New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson's Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for 13-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms: accident, nature, suicide, murder. Frank begins the season preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family — which includes his Methodist minister father, his passionate, artistic mother, Juilliard- bound older sister, and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother — he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years. Told from Frank's perspective 40 years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God." Our meetings are normally held on the second Tuesday of each month at 9:30 am in the RCN room #3, and someone volunteers to lead the discussion about the book we have chosen for the month. We are in the process of finalizing our reading list for 2021. If you have any titles you'd like to recommend, please email me at the address below. For more information about the Four Seasons Book Club or to get on our mailing list, please contact me at michelesrosen@gmail. com. ~ Micki Rosen Book Club Veterans Walk Group It is chronicled as the Battle of Los Angeles and is also known as the Great Los Angeles Air Raid. The incident occurred less than three months after the United States entered World War II in response to the Imperial Japanese Navy's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and shortly after the Feb. 23, 1942 bombardment of Ellwood near Santa Barbara by a Japanese submarine. On Feb. 24, naval intelligence instructed units on the California coast to steel themselves for a potential Japanese attack. All remained calm for the next few hours, but shortly after 2 am on Feb. 25, military radar picked up what appeared to be an enemy contact some 120 miles west of Los Angeles. Air raid sirens sounded, and a citywide blackout was put into effect. Within minutes, troops had manned anti-aircraft guns and begun sweeping the skies with searchlights. Reports poured in from across the city describing Japanese aircraft flying in formation, bombs falling, and enemy paratroopers. There was even a claim of a Japanese plane crash landing in the streets of Hollywood. "I could barely see the planes, but they were up there all right," a coastal artilleryman named Charles Patrick later wrote in a letter. "I could see six planes, and shells were bursting all around them. By the time a final "all-clear" order was given later that morning, Los Angeles' artillery batteries had pumped over 1,400 rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition into the sky. It was only in the light of day that the American military units made a puzzling discovery: there appeared to have been no enemy attack. Ironically, the only damage during the "battle" had come from friendly fire. Anti-aircraft shrapnel rained down across the city, shattering windows and ripping through buildings. One dud careened into a Long Beach golf course and several residents had their homes partially destroyed by three-inch artillery shells.

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