Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a pretty schizophrenic holiday, these days. It's a 3 day weekend, and in this area of the contiguous 48 means beaches and barbeque.

Yet, I come from stock who saw "Decoration Day" in a much more serious way, and it falls too close to the mad relief of VE day (and before the futuristic terror that preceded VJ day) for it to escape without an overtone of the poppies on Flander's fields, and the proud old soldiers of the Spanish American War marching straight in their antiquated uniforms down past the picket fences on old Main.

And that's where it becomes difficult. I see those soldiers, and honor them, as the kids wave American Flags and eat popsicles, and the whole family retires back to the house for cold potato salad and stuff off the grill, to lemonade, whose ice makes the condensation on the glass pebble and finally run from our fingerprints to an unexpected drop, to badminton in the yard, and baseball across (and partly in) the street.

The soldiers, those fine old men who fought for Liberty, they were the survivors of America's first effective war of imperialism. Not the last, sadly. Not the only.

So, in honor of those soldiers, and of their heirs and descendants today, fighting bravely for all the right and true reasons (whatever the merits or demerits of their cause) in areas around the world, those who have fought and died or fought and survived, I leave you with a link to one of the greatest thinkers America has produced.

Mark Twain, "The War Prayer."
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_War_Prayer

Support the Troops. Stop the War.

And be careful what you pray for, my friends.