The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Memorial Day in America

    By Elusive Trope on Mon, 05/28/2012 - 11:45am |

    Just figured someone ought to write something about it.  I have never served in the military, nor have I lost anyone close to me as a result of their service.  My dad was in Korean War, but he never spoke about it (he didn't see actual combat, being stationed in Japan).  The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and all the other conflicts around the globe, are inevitably abstractions to me for the most part.  As with everyone who has a heart, I hate war.  It would be nice if life was so simple as that.

    These pictures are some of the 60 photos from a blog on the website theBrigade, called Memorial Day...Home.  This website is cousin site to theChive website, which is one of the most popular sites globally out there.  Taking a trek through these sites I think reveals a facet of the American culture, both the good and the bad, the mundane and the profound.  But just pondering all of the pictures of this one blog is enough to make one ponder - what exactly is up to each of us alone.

    Comments

    Heartbreaking.  And a necessary reminder.  Thanks for doing this today, AT.

     


    by Ramona on Mon, 05/28/2012 - 12:28pm

    Me too!


    by Richard Day on Mon, 05/28/2012 - 1:53pm

    I held many views in years passed that I no longer hold.

    As a young mother, I spanked my children. As a grandmother, I find spanking to be barbaric, and a total admission that the child has gotten the better of you.

    In the Reagan years, "trickle down" seemed to make sense. Now we know it doesn't work, but I thought it was worth trying.

    When we went to war with Iraq, I believed our leaders when they said we needed to do it. I didn't like it, but I thought I understood the need. Now, as some one who has been referred to as being "pro war" (which I find as repulsive as being called "pro abortion" because you favor choice) for accepting that, I'd like to say that I really, really hate war.

    I hope that someday our country will figure out a better way to solve problems. But it isn't as simple as saying we will NEVER go to war, and anyone who believes that must have a better idea of how to deal with the world as it is than I've been able to come up with.

    I respect and admire those who chose the military. It is not an easy life, and you go in knowing you may die as a result of that choice. I'm glad we honor those who make the ultimate sacrifice, even as I look forward to a day when we don't need to add any more names to that list.


    by stillidealistic on Mon, 05/28/2012 - 2:20pm

    I've always endorsed the sentiment that all those who declare the wars, should arm themselves and theirs, with other like minded cohorts - and make an appointment with 'the other side' and fight it out on the field of their choosing.

    If they are so willing to sacrifice others, they and theirs must be first on the battlefield.

    What if there was a war and nobody came?
    No soldiers. No generals. No heros.
    No one to suffer. No one to die in pain.
    Who would be killed? How many would lose their lives?
    No violent murder for no cause.
    No people to shoot with guns, to stab with knives.
    Humans kill humans. Can you say that is sane?
    Taking precious life. Emptiness now.
    What if there was a war and nobody came.

    12 April 1993 Charles Fry

    I honor, appreciate and praise all our troops.  I support Wounded Warriors and hope all here will contribute in deed or other way to a validated Veteran's non-profit.


    by Aunt Sam on Mon, 05/28/2012 - 2:36pm

    Thanks to those who have commented and expressed their feeling, and to those who might do so afterward.  Since I take this a day for personal reflection, done collectively, I don't want to personally get into any debates, affirmations, or condemnations regarding anyone's personal feelings and thoughts on the topic.  So I am refraining from posting any response to any one response (although I hold the right to jump in should some comment cross the line in my opinion).


    by Elusive Trope on Mon, 05/28/2012 - 4:10pm

    Great post, AT. Thanks.


    by Doctor Cleveland on Mon, 05/28/2012 - 10:23pm

    I have never understood those who feel that Memorial Day (or the equivalent in other countries) is for celebrating the military (or glorifying war for that matter.) To me that's like thinking a funeral is for celebrating death and the Grim Reaper. It's a solemn remembrance, a day to contemplate war's ultimate costs, and to remember the individuals that paid that cost.  Veteran's Day is another matter.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 1:15am

    P.S. This gets my point across better:

    ....Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime.

    As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans -- in the Ypres salient.

    It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later wrote of it:

    "I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done."

    One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.

    The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l'Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem....

     


    by artappraiser on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 1:29am

    AA, when words like these resonate after more than a century, even through a half-dozen wars and what seems like mere moments of tentative peace, it should tell us that there is more power in the reflections on the causes for our sorrow that there ever will be in the never-ending rage that keeps those causes going.

    Thank you.


    by Ramona on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 2:25pm

    Thank you.  And thank you to the comments, too.

     


    by LisB on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 9:06pm