I am waiting until the mosquitoes burn off to go out and water the plants. Right now, as the sun moves over the horizon, way, way to the north, they are pretty aggressive. When it gets going for real they will be beaten into submission and I can work in the yard without being on the menu.
Meanwhile, I am thinking about America and Memorial Day and all that it means.
Thanks to having worked some of the time as a writer for the past decade and three quarters, I have covered about every topic you can think of, including Pearl Harbor. (You have to dig pretty deep to get a thousand words a week, every single week. I don't remember how I tied it to agriculture, but I do remember being pleased with the column. I got to interview real people who had real knowledge of the topic.)
Anyhow, my mother and her cousins truly remember Pearl Harbor...remember playing upstairs at Grandma's and hearing the shock and horror from the adults downstairs when the news came....over the radio I imagine. They remember family members being called away....
Their generation gets it. Understands the sacrifices the people of our nation and other nations who were our allies suffered to save the world from monsters.
My own generation has the handed down memories.....we can and have talked to those who lived the nightmare and saw triumph over it.......and we had our own wars, some of them futile, to reflect upon. We are, after all, the Baby Boomers, born in celebration of the end of that horrendous war.
So we get the crosses and the flags and the solemnity of the day. Our hearts lift when we see the flag flying or hear a high school band playing in the little parade that winds through town.
We remember.
And then there are those who would drag a big eraser across all that was given and sacrificed and suffered, and forget the deeds that were done under the dark light of despair to save the world from true tyranny. They would rewrite history to favor the folks who brought the battle to us.....they don't get it I guess, maybe because they have an agenda to put forward....or maybe they don't have the stories from their elders to put it all in perspective.
At any rate, what a shame that such a serious and solemn holiday should be marred by bitter controversy....as it has been this year.
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6 comments:
Wonderful post. Uncle Bernie Wilder and Uncle Mike DiMarco were both in the National Guard and had to go right away. My Uncle Joe Lachmayer was in WWI. My cousin Buddy Eagen was a pilot and one of the first to be killed in WW2. Most of the men in our High School class were called up in the Korean war, and a lot of them never made it home. Paper drives depleted the world of comic books which is why they are so scarce now. We all gave from the bottom of our hearts. We took the bottoms off of metal cans and squashed them and gave them to scrap drives for bullets. Every day the radio belched with horrendous news on the battle front. Fear and determination ruled. Blackouts and sirens in the evening To those who say the Holocaust never happened, I would use Uncle Tom's favorite word, BULLSHIT! It happened. We can't let it happen again.
Love
Mom
And is seems as if the rift only grows wider, unfortunately.
Oh Marianne. I have gooseflesh having read your passionate essay. Your truth rings like a great bell - and beautifully.
It's so very, very big.
"Their generation gets it. Understands the sacrifices the people of our nation and other nations who were our allies suffered to save the world from monsters."
Wonderful post! Just wonderful. sadly there does seem to be a chasm developing.
Linda
What a passionate wonderful post! I ws one of the boomers born at the beginning of that war. I ws told so many times how my dad dropped ecverything that day and went to enlist . I do remember how hard it was when dad came home. He had never met or seen me, and really was not ready for a family after what he had been through. No one helped him debrief, he just was thrown into life...so it was hard on him and hard on us, buthe came out of it beocmming a fine dental technician, and the world was a happy place for while after that war. I am grateful youwere a writer for so long, putting thins like this out into the world and making people think and bringing Truth into situations like this. Thank you from my heart--Love Merri
Thanks, Mom, that is just the kind of thing I was talking about. Most people today simply have no contact with that part of history and don't identify with it any more than they do the Roman Empire. There will be a price for that.....Love you!
Jan, alas....
Cathy, I try not to get too political but sometimes....
Linda, even in the short years since our three kids got out of school!
Merri, thanks, that must have been so very hard for your whole family! I remember people talking about such things when I was younger...thanks for your kind words.
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