When I was walking down the street yesterday, I spied a sticker pasted to the ground that said “I voted,” and gave its former owner a slap on the red, white and blue back, but alas it was now laid out, to rest, on the sidewalk ready to be stomped on.
As I looked up, two older members of the local Rotary Clubs, I don’t know which version, decked out in yellow worker vests to protect themselves from traffic, were uprooting flags of such colors from their precarious poled positions up and down the blocks of Hudson’s downtown business district. They had been placed there prior to this three-day-weekend, such as it was, standing firmly in place to honor values that were again thrown asunder on Nov. 5.
On the other side of the coin, after my mom had placed a call to the Purple Heart people to make a clothing donation, some veterans were at her doorstep to collect it pronto, before 8 a.m. the morning after that solemn Monday.
Such were the sights on and after Veteran’s Day locally. But no sounds right now, as for the moment there would be no 21 gun salute. Only the hinted possibility in a speech of patriots and partisans and politicians, much less criminal immigrants, being ordered to face a firing squad, even if just in metaphor.
— That said, everything in the political world and beyond is unstable, and the only thing that has remained frozen in place are recent gas prices. At Kwik Trip yesterday we filled up at a mere $2.73.99 a gallon. (That 273 figure has for years reminded me of Ellsworth, see phone prefixes, adding more numerical stability.) As far as the other turmoils, I will analyze them in depth as things like the Trump cabinet cadre play out, slowly or more likely quickly. It could be described as Cemetery Gaetz. And more music musings, too. —
It was just another day at the national cemetery, chock full of remembrances, at least presidential, with it being Biden this time doing some stumping in a way, noting that he had signed into law during his four years more than 30 bipartisan bills designed to provide better care in so many different ways to our veterans, now outed?
Jeez, I hope, maybe not happening on this year’s holiday that is Veteran’s Day, but it seems likely that there will be another equally outrageous Arlington encounter before it all ends. Or because of his politically tinged actions early in the summer, is Trump banned for life from that cemetery?
Unlikely, as it’s proving even harder to contain or restrain him, and another Memorial Day will eventually, like a tank, come rolling around again, with a culprit actually back in the oval office, not just striving for it.
But I must say, is it really that unsacred to use such a cemetery as a campaign backdrop? Does it being deemed such a prized location make it an added place of honor? Is Arlington really so untouchable that it is treated like the royals just because of what it is, and represents? Federally and in its finality speaking?
Yes, these — and all other war heroes — should never be disposable, but by comparison look how badly some of our Vietnam War vets have been treated. This was drummed home by some of the stumping, and a recent documentary on this and other facets of the life of Bruce Springsteen, with a backdrop being his landmark and misunderstood song Born In The USA.
On the eve of the day of remembrance, I was watching a football game at the sports bar, and there were almost a dozen, often grainy photos displayed, apparently of soldiers who had died. I wondered, how did they choose which heroes to highlight, and where they would cut off the number as far as how many displayed?
A thousand, or million, points of light are not enough.