Christmas Truces and Other Ironies of War by John Cali

B-17F

Messerschmitt_Bf_109B-2_in_flight_c1938

 

US B17 Bomber  (left) and German BF109 Fighter (right)

As a former commercial pilot, I had lots of exciting adventures (and a few brushes with death)—some of which I’ve talked about in these posts over the years.

But I never had an experience like that of Lieutenants Charlie Brown and Fritz Stigler, both World War 2 pilots. They met on December 20, 1943, 5 days before Christmas, in skies over Germany.

Charlie was a US bomber pilot returning to England after an attack on Germany.Read more

Why Not Be Happy For No Reason? By John Cali

Whenever my spirit guides or I tell folks our natural state is to be happy, we usually get some strange responses—and even some angry arguments.

Some of the usual arguments go like this:

How can I be happy in a world that’s falling apart?

How can I be happy when my loved ones are not happy?

How can I be happy when I have no money?

How can happiness be our natural state? That doesn’t make sense.

And so on and on.Read more

Why There Is No Peace on Earth and What You Can Do About It: Snoopy and The Red Baron by John Cali and Spirit

Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force….if we assume that life is worth living, if we assume that mankind has the right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Back in the days when I was a young pilot, Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strips were at the peak of their popularity.Read more