I have to, like, stay on brand, don’t I, and kvetch, right?
I seriously believe that fighting the south’s secession was a mistake as their winning of the peace has proven. That said, I a knowledge that business interests needed the nation united.
As for that winning the peace: Query whether there’s been magnitudes more deaths from how the peace has played out, so top speak, than from the war.
Too, that letting victory slip away is, like, an ur example of how we libs keep treating a won battle as a won war. Complacency R us.
That whined, I’ll acknowledge that we have the freedom to enjoy a three day weekend, so go to it y’all. Have a good one.
This being America, our entire national psyche is geared toward both forgetting and remembering.
Forgetting the ACTUAL Enlightenment principles and values that helped found this country, substituting ersatz and slogans in their place. Forgetting the actual sacrifices of men and women down through the centuries of American history. Forgetting how bad things were, and how we have acted collectively to make things better.
And remembering the things that divide us, that make us hate and envy our neighbors. For far too many Americans, there is no slight too slight to be forgotten. We remember The Lost Cause, and too many embrace it as though IT was the moral right. We remember that White men once reigned supreme, and far too many are fighting to keep it that way.
Happy Memorial Day. Don't forget to hit our White Sale, and throw another Constitution on the barbecue.
David Blight, in “Race and Reunión,” traces Memorial Day back to 1865 when Blacks in Charleston, SC, buried and memorialized Union soldiers who died in a Confederate POW camp there.
May 26, 2023·edited May 26, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
I'm afraid I'm completely frivolous about Memorial Day. In the nursery business we start counting down to the days till Memorial Day sometime in late March. It's usually the first time since December that we can take 2 days off in a row. Beach,here I come.* I actually don't go to the beach. I get caught up with all the chores around here. Many, some what ironically, horticulture related. I never put a garden in until the end of May.
I guess I'm a little weak on the patriotism thing too. Except for that one Good War
( which I have some doubts about) I'm with Smedley Butler, Kurt Vonnegut and especially Edwin Starr.
Good God, Y all.
* I'm dictating this- the first time I said it, the dictation Ap
offered up " B**** here I come!" I wanted to leave it but that would have been confusing.
A few years back my wife and I started making a circuit of the cemeteries where many of my family and friends are buried, planting a small flower in the vicinity of each. It’s a nice way to spend some time and it does bring up some good memories. I know it started as a military thing, but it’s morphed into more of a family thing, albeit for the living with their grills and coolers full of Bud , ummm Coors Lights and other poisons for the kids, but I don’t see that as much more a good thing than bad.
Regarding AA, which is pretty much just a quack religion, I wouldn’t put to much stock in their advice. The real reason the founder was able to kick was because he dropped a lot of acid, which science is no confirming as a good strategy.
Anyhoo, happy holiday to you all, too. And if I may make a humble suggestion, use it as a holiday from politics and lost causes and white sales and spend some time with loved ones, if possible, and take at least a little time to contemplate the memories of loved ones who have passed.
That was very thoughtful and informed. Great stuff! BTW, if I wrote a civics textbook, it would begin with Lesson 1: never join a violent mob to storm a government building unless you want to get your dumb ass shot.
Very well said. Maya Lin's Vietnam design is a -memorial-, like the Day is supposed to be, and not a -monument-, which is why Reagan and James Watt tried to prevent the project from being realized. Unfortunately for them, it was completely funded by people, not monsters in government. Speaking of which, if God doesn't prove He exists and kill the bastard today, tomorrow the world is about to endure the celebration of the 100th birthday of someone probably responsible for more names etched on memorials around the globe than any other living monster. Considering that a savage thug like Putin exists that's saying something.
May 26, 2023·edited May 26, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
This was lovely, Roy - thanks. I also find Memorial Day an unsettling holiday tradition. Especially that I now live so close to the Jersey shore. Something about all those fat dudes sporting their US flag board shorts & beach towels that seems contradictory. "Celebrate the military sacrifices of Americans by rubbing the US flag in the crack of your ass!"
One aspect missing from our collective historical memory of war-farin' in the USA is the working-class resistance to conscription (& even being expected to volunteer). During the Civil War, there were riots in NYC over it (which as should be expected, took on a racist cast). And there was the big tent city outside DC in 1932, of veterans protesting their delayed bonuses from WW1 (which almost turned into a fascist takeover of the USA).
I mean, I know why they don't want us to know all that -- but we should take pains to remember on our own.
Happy 3-day weekend, y'all. Every good joke comes in threes, dontcha know.
May 26, 2023·edited May 26, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
Madison knows how to do it up right. Vets for Peace has the Memorial Mile, tombstones for each of the soldiers killed in our Iraq and Afghanistan adventures (takes a LOT of volunteers to set up that many tombstones). And then a nice service at Gates of Heaven Synagogue in James Madison Park, this year Matt Rothschild from Wisconsin Democracy Campaign is speaking, plus Dave Couper, our former Chief of Police turned Episcopal Priest and poet (what, you don't have one of those?).
I like that quote from Milan Kundera: "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." So however and whatever you remember, please do. Hell, if you even just want to remember more than a million people in this country just died of Covid, I salute you.
I still like to go to the cemetery observances when I can. Even all the way out here in a little town on the California coast, you can find the graves of those who are remembered for their service in the civil war. There is a place name here that I didn’t realize was the name of a beloved local character who made his way out west as a freedman after the war until I found stumbled across his grave and read the little plaque about him.
America has always been the land of the 2nd chance, a place to lit out for the territories and wipe the slate clean, to be washed in the blood of the Lamb and reborn, usually with a new name and credit history. Memory is an unwelcome guest at that banquet, so it's usually an indulgence of the successful and powerful as much as a testimony to sacrifice. Hypocrisy was a necessary founding virtue to support the dream of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as implemented from the Original Specification, so we are capable of honoring and forgetting the dead at the same time, much as we Honor the Troops and tell them to sign up for food stamps, and offer thoughts and prayers for children who die for the hallucinatory dream of the ability to overthrow the government at will.
So, memory, the unreliable narrator, is our hope that we can choose Good over the far more comfortable Evil, though the evidence is thin. But not nonexistent. So there's that. And as my Mom, a Depression baby raised on a farm used to say, "Don't throw that out! It's still good! You can use that!". That's Memorial Day.
My older relatives used to call it Decoration Day. My great-aunt and grandma used to take us kids with them on pilgrimages to the local cemeteries before the holiday to clean the graves of relatives and put out flowers.
As far as history and remembering - what the right wants to do is treat the past as nothing more than a list of names and dates, something to be memorized but not thought about too deeply. They're not concerned about learning from our mistakes in the past, because they don't acknowledge any. America has never sinned, it's an innocent place that's been trying to mind its business but Dark Forces From Outside have been fouling things up. We just need to be pure and vigilant and not ask troublesome questions that might make someone feel bad.
Also, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act was and is a disgrace. Sure, I like long weekends as much as anybody, but the meanings of the holidays have gotten swamped by furniture sales.
I have to, like, stay on brand, don’t I, and kvetch, right?
I seriously believe that fighting the south’s secession was a mistake as their winning of the peace has proven. That said, I a knowledge that business interests needed the nation united.
As for that winning the peace: Query whether there’s been magnitudes more deaths from how the peace has played out, so top speak, than from the war.
Too, that letting victory slip away is, like, an ur example of how we libs keep treating a won battle as a won war. Complacency R us.
That whined, I’ll acknowledge that we have the freedom to enjoy a three day weekend, so go to it y’all. Have a good one.
This being America, our entire national psyche is geared toward both forgetting and remembering.
Forgetting the ACTUAL Enlightenment principles and values that helped found this country, substituting ersatz and slogans in their place. Forgetting the actual sacrifices of men and women down through the centuries of American history. Forgetting how bad things were, and how we have acted collectively to make things better.
And remembering the things that divide us, that make us hate and envy our neighbors. For far too many Americans, there is no slight too slight to be forgotten. We remember The Lost Cause, and too many embrace it as though IT was the moral right. We remember that White men once reigned supreme, and far too many are fighting to keep it that way.
Happy Memorial Day. Don't forget to hit our White Sale, and throw another Constitution on the barbecue.
Friday night here in Japan, and this Canadian is (I think prudently) keeping his mouth shut. Hope you guys enjoy the day off!
David Blight, in “Race and Reunión,” traces Memorial Day back to 1865 when Blacks in Charleston, SC, buried and memorialized Union soldiers who died in a Confederate POW camp there.
I'm afraid I'm completely frivolous about Memorial Day. In the nursery business we start counting down to the days till Memorial Day sometime in late March. It's usually the first time since December that we can take 2 days off in a row. Beach,here I come.* I actually don't go to the beach. I get caught up with all the chores around here. Many, some what ironically, horticulture related. I never put a garden in until the end of May.
I guess I'm a little weak on the patriotism thing too. Except for that one Good War
( which I have some doubts about) I'm with Smedley Butler, Kurt Vonnegut and especially Edwin Starr.
Good God, Y all.
* I'm dictating this- the first time I said it, the dictation Ap
offered up " B**** here I come!" I wanted to leave it but that would have been confusing.
A few years back my wife and I started making a circuit of the cemeteries where many of my family and friends are buried, planting a small flower in the vicinity of each. It’s a nice way to spend some time and it does bring up some good memories. I know it started as a military thing, but it’s morphed into more of a family thing, albeit for the living with their grills and coolers full of Bud , ummm Coors Lights and other poisons for the kids, but I don’t see that as much more a good thing than bad.
Regarding AA, which is pretty much just a quack religion, I wouldn’t put to much stock in their advice. The real reason the founder was able to kick was because he dropped a lot of acid, which science is no confirming as a good strategy.
Anyhoo, happy holiday to you all, too. And if I may make a humble suggestion, use it as a holiday from politics and lost causes and white sales and spend some time with loved ones, if possible, and take at least a little time to contemplate the memories of loved ones who have passed.
That was very thoughtful and informed. Great stuff! BTW, if I wrote a civics textbook, it would begin with Lesson 1: never join a violent mob to storm a government building unless you want to get your dumb ass shot.
Very well said. Maya Lin's Vietnam design is a -memorial-, like the Day is supposed to be, and not a -monument-, which is why Reagan and James Watt tried to prevent the project from being realized. Unfortunately for them, it was completely funded by people, not monsters in government. Speaking of which, if God doesn't prove He exists and kill the bastard today, tomorrow the world is about to endure the celebration of the 100th birthday of someone probably responsible for more names etched on memorials around the globe than any other living monster. Considering that a savage thug like Putin exists that's saying something.
This was lovely, Roy - thanks. I also find Memorial Day an unsettling holiday tradition. Especially that I now live so close to the Jersey shore. Something about all those fat dudes sporting their US flag board shorts & beach towels that seems contradictory. "Celebrate the military sacrifices of Americans by rubbing the US flag in the crack of your ass!"
One aspect missing from our collective historical memory of war-farin' in the USA is the working-class resistance to conscription (& even being expected to volunteer). During the Civil War, there were riots in NYC over it (which as should be expected, took on a racist cast). And there was the big tent city outside DC in 1932, of veterans protesting their delayed bonuses from WW1 (which almost turned into a fascist takeover of the USA).
I mean, I know why they don't want us to know all that -- but we should take pains to remember on our own.
Happy 3-day weekend, y'all. Every good joke comes in threes, dontcha know.
Madison knows how to do it up right. Vets for Peace has the Memorial Mile, tombstones for each of the soldiers killed in our Iraq and Afghanistan adventures (takes a LOT of volunteers to set up that many tombstones). And then a nice service at Gates of Heaven Synagogue in James Madison Park, this year Matt Rothschild from Wisconsin Democracy Campaign is speaking, plus Dave Couper, our former Chief of Police turned Episcopal Priest and poet (what, you don't have one of those?).
I like that quote from Milan Kundera: "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." So however and whatever you remember, please do. Hell, if you even just want to remember more than a million people in this country just died of Covid, I salute you.
I still like to go to the cemetery observances when I can. Even all the way out here in a little town on the California coast, you can find the graves of those who are remembered for their service in the civil war. There is a place name here that I didn’t realize was the name of a beloved local character who made his way out west as a freedman after the war until I found stumbled across his grave and read the little plaque about him.
America has always been the land of the 2nd chance, a place to lit out for the territories and wipe the slate clean, to be washed in the blood of the Lamb and reborn, usually with a new name and credit history. Memory is an unwelcome guest at that banquet, so it's usually an indulgence of the successful and powerful as much as a testimony to sacrifice. Hypocrisy was a necessary founding virtue to support the dream of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as implemented from the Original Specification, so we are capable of honoring and forgetting the dead at the same time, much as we Honor the Troops and tell them to sign up for food stamps, and offer thoughts and prayers for children who die for the hallucinatory dream of the ability to overthrow the government at will.
So, memory, the unreliable narrator, is our hope that we can choose Good over the far more comfortable Evil, though the evidence is thin. But not nonexistent. So there's that. And as my Mom, a Depression baby raised on a farm used to say, "Don't throw that out! It's still good! You can use that!". That's Memorial Day.
My older relatives used to call it Decoration Day. My great-aunt and grandma used to take us kids with them on pilgrimages to the local cemeteries before the holiday to clean the graves of relatives and put out flowers.
As far as history and remembering - what the right wants to do is treat the past as nothing more than a list of names and dates, something to be memorized but not thought about too deeply. They're not concerned about learning from our mistakes in the past, because they don't acknowledge any. America has never sinned, it's an innocent place that's been trying to mind its business but Dark Forces From Outside have been fouling things up. We just need to be pure and vigilant and not ask troublesome questions that might make someone feel bad.
Couldn't agree more.
Also, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act was and is a disgrace. Sure, I like long weekends as much as anybody, but the meanings of the holidays have gotten swamped by furniture sales.