Remember

I am waiting until the mosquitoes burn off to go out an 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.

from Northview Diary http://ift.tt/1WT5xY7