It's Remembrance Day today – a beautiful spring morning with storms and rain forecast later today. Lest we forget those who sacrificed themselves – gave up their springtimes so that you and I could enjoy ours. My poppies are late this year. I was hoping for a bunch of these fragile reminders.
Today remember those who went and meditate on the gathering storm clouds which may require us to consider similar choices if we wish to remain true to our beliefs and oaths.
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And Veteran's Day here. Used to be Armistice Day. It is also Founders' Day at VMI, something that will soon have no meaning except for antiquarians. Well, we lasted 170 years after utter defeat, not bad. pl
Thank you. Double remembrance for what was lost and what we also were able to survive. The Kaddish is such a beautiful prayer of remembrance regardless of one’s own professed religion .. we remember you, we remember you.
There was an old tattered olive grove near a now dangerous intersection in my town and safety planners suggesting opening new traffic lanes into this tired area.
Yet the good folks of the local garden club protested in the nick of time telling the community that grove was planted in remembrance of those who lost their lives in WWI – names now long forgotten, olive trees long neglected, corner dusty and unused, as traffic now speeds by.
But someone remembered, stepped up to save this living memorial, a new plaque was installed, and the torched passed on for the next one hundred years of remembering.
Today is also the birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps. Happy 245th birthday, Marines!
Today would also have been the 119th birthday of my father. He tried to enlist in World War One, but was only 16 or 17 and his dad wouldn’t sign the enlistment paper. 25 years later, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, but couldn’t get sent overseas – this time for being too old!
My father, ’63, is deeply hurt that he missed his annual trip to Lexington. I hope and trust the next administration will not be as divisive as the recent posters on SST assume.
wtofd
VMI is dead, a dead institution walking. He doesn’t know that? He is obviously out of the loop. The million dollar investigation run by the state has prejudged the place and subsequent action will make it unrecognizable.
Today is the day we reflect on those who went off to foreign lands, to fight for the future of their beloved country, so that we could enjoy the freedom that their efforts provided. Whether fathers, grandfathers, prior ancestors or you who served our thoughts are with you this day. Bravo to a job well done!!!
Walrus –
We will remember them, or at least some of us. My grandfather was at the Argonne with the 26th ID. So was my grandmother’s baby brother who got a taste of the mustard gas. Another of her brothers was in France with the 20th Engineers. A third brother served on destroyers. Her older brother served stateside in a sawmill with the Spruce Division helping cutting ribs and struts for Army aircraft.
But I thought all the Commonwealth nations designated the 11th as Remembrance Day, not the 10th? Like we do in the states with Armistice Day, now Veteran’s Day. Or is it an International Dateline thing that you posted on the 10th?
Memory Lane
https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2017/11/11/remembrance-day-at-the-kremlin-wall/
Keith, it’s a time zone thing, we are a day ahead of you. Yes it is the Eleventh. I am writing this on the Twelfth.