1 result for (book:deavf2 AND session:911 AND stemmed:earli)
(Last Friday, April 25, was day 174 of the taking of the American hostages in Iran. Until that day the 53 prisoners had been held at two locations in Tehran, the capital city of that very turbulent land. As we ate breakfast early Friday, Jane and I were astounded by television news reports that in the predawn hours of the 25th, Iranian time, American commandos had failed in a very complicated attempt to rescue the hostages. Actually, our forces hadn’t come close to reaching the prisoners: Responsible were mechanical failures and two dust storms that the American helicopters had to struggle through before joining a group of transport planes at a remote airfield, code-named Desert One, in central Iran. By then three of the eight “choppers” were out of action. Since six of them were considered vital for a successful rescue, the mission was canceled at that point—but eight crewmen were killed when one of the remaining helicopters collided with a transport plane during a refueling attempt. The resulting fires and explosions could be seen and heard for miles through the desert night.
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Just before dusk, a fine rain began to fall. Jane sat in the doorway that opens from her writing room onto the screened-in back porch of the hill house, and watched the birds searching out the wet remnants of the feed I’d scattered in the driveway this morning. Because of her walking difficulties she’d stayed in her office chair, which is on wheels, and pushed the sliding glass door wide open from that position. The rain didn’t bother the birds at all: a pair of cardinals, several red-winged blackbirds, some phoebes, various warblers, and a group of mourning doves. Jane grew very relaxed as she sat there at that quiet hour—yet she wanted to hold the session anyhow; she called me early; she felt Seth around….)
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