I Remember

We try to keep Time linear
By numbering our years,
By celebrating annually
On our rickety web of biers.

“Hurrah for us still sitting here!”
And so we all partake
We give ourselves one more slice —
Paper thin! — of birthday cake.
~ The Amazing Bob

Yesterday was Jen’s mother’s birthday. She turned 76 (!!!).  Had my most Amazing Bob lived, he would’ve hit that on this past January 10.

And today is Memorial Day. Did you know?

As the Civil War neared its end, thousands of Union soldiers, held as prisoners of war, were herded into a series of hastily assembled camps in Charleston, South Carolina. Conditions at one camp, a former racetrack near the city’s Citadel, were so bad that more than 250 prisoners died from disease or exposure, and were buried in a mass grave behind the track’s grandstand. Three weeks after the Confederate surrender, an unusual procession entered the former camp: On May 1, 1865, more than 1,000 recently freed slaves, accompanied by regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops (including the Massachusetts 54th Infantry) and a handful of white Charlestonians, gathered in the camp to consecrate a new, proper burial site for the Union dead. The group sang hymns, gave readings and distributed flowers around the cemetery, which they dedicated to the “Martyrs of the Race Course.” (source)

TAB did two tours in Nam, came home and joined Viet Nam Veteran’s Against the War. Kevin Alexander Scott was in Bush I’s Iraq folly, caught some devastating desease while there, came home and died a slow, awful death.

War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again, why’all
War – Edwin Starr

and

Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothing
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins
~snip~
And I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I will follow your casket
By the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand over your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead
Masters of War – Bob Dylan