Instead of Poppies

Instead of flags flying at the cemetery, how about autumn branches?
Instead of red poppies for Veterans Day, how about red leaves?
It was my friend Beata's Mom (back in Poland) who advised Beata when she came to live in the States, if you can't go visit your own ancestors on All Saints Day -- or All Souls Day or Veterans Day or Easter or Memorial Day -- then go visit someone else's. That's how we started our tradition of visiting a couple of small local cemeteries. Here's one of my favorites:

Burton Cemetery
Also called Old Bilderback or Klondike Cemetery
Corner of US Highway 52 & Klondike Road
Wabash Township ~ Tippecanoe County, Indiana

I have upon occasion, seen the
little Burton Cemetery decorated patriotically:

but when I stopped by today
there was only one flag flying:

CORNELIUS
MORRIS
PVT
BEATTYS CO
1 MD REG
REV WAR
Oct 2 1759
August 6 1834

In the past, I have felt somewhat guilty for posting anti - war sentiment on Veterans Day, as I have done in previous years.* However, reading Harry Leslie Smith's honest, admirable essay --

This Year I Will Wear the Poppy for the Last Time
-- reassures me that it is not wrong to do so. Smith, a Veteran of World War II and author of Harry's Last Stand: How the World My Generation Built is Falling Down, and What We Can Do to Save It [available soon] and 1923: A Memoir Lies and Testaments [same year my dad was born] knows whereof he speak. He objects to the fact that:

"The most fortunate in our society have turned the solemnity of remembrance for fallen soldiers in ancient wars into a justification for our most recent armed conflicts. . . . I will no longer allow my obligation as a veteran to remember those who died in the great wars to be co-opted by current or former politicians to justify our folly in Iraq, our morally dubious war on terror and our elimination of one's right to privacy.

"Come 2014 when the government marks the beginning of the first world war with quotes from Rupert Brooke, Rudyard Kipling and other great jingoists from our past empire, I will declare myself a conscientious objector.

"Next year, I won't wear the poppy but I will . . . remember . . . ."

Red Leaves for Remembrance

*Previous & Additional
Veterans Day posts:

Armistice Day

Wartime Soldier, Wartime Child

"The same war continues . . . "

94 Years Ago Today

Flanders Fields ~ What Have We Learned?

War Horse

Point of Balance

**********

Instead of Poppies

Veterans Eve

Martinmas

Pale Battalions

A Form of Madness

An Undying Hate of War

Greenwich Village, 1920s

In honor of Veterans Day & the Armistice,
Please listen to Eleanor Roosevelt:
"I have sketched briefly the short trip to Europe after World War I, and yet I think that trip had far - reaching consequences for me. I had known Europe and particularly France, with its neat and patterned countryside, fairly well. The picture of desolation fostered in me an undying hate of war which was not definitely formulated before that time. The conviction of the uselessness of war as a means of finding any final solution to international difficulties grew stronger and stronger as I listened to people talk. I said little about it at the time but the impression was so strong that instead of fading out of my memory it has become more deeply etched upon it year by year." ~ from her Autobiography

~ And ~
Please click to read my Fortnightly Blog Post
[a few days early for Veterans Day]:

"Angel of the Hills"
featuring the last couple of letters that
my Great Uncle Samuel Gordon Lindsey
wrote home from France before
losing his life in World War I ~ July 31, 1918
at the Battle of the Ourqc River at Sergy,
part of the Aisne - Marne Offensive

Previous & Additional & Related
Veterans Day posts:

Armistice Day

Wartime Soldier, Wartime Child

"The same war continues . . . "

94 Years Ago Today

Flanders Fields ~ What Have We Learned?

War Horse

Point of Balance

**********

Instead of Poppies

Veterans Eve

Martinmas

Pale Battalions

A Form of Madness

An Undying Hate of War

Angel of the Hills

Drummer Hodge

Winging Wildly

**********

Day of the Dead ~ 2009

Uncle Samuel

Too Soon For Snow

JSL's Side of the Story

"The same war continues . . . "

As I have mentioned before, for an occasional infusion of creativity, I like to peruse the paintings of my friend Leonard Orr and challenge myself to describe each work of art in one or two words. For this one (above), I thought, "Veterans Day" because it brought to mind the Buddy Poppies that are designed and distributed by the VFW. These little red boutonnières have always been a part of my earliest Armistice / Veterans Day memories, when I would go to the cemetery and the parade with my parents and grandparents.

And for this one, I thought:
"In Flanders fields the poppies blow . . . "
Another fitting poem for the day:

Life at War

The disasters numb within us
caught in the chest, rolling
in the brain like pebbles. The feeling
resembles lumps of raw dough

weighing down a child’s stomach on baking day.
Or Rilke said it, ‘My heart. . .
Could I say of it, it overflows
with bitterness . . . but no, as though

its contents were simply balled into
formless lumps, thus
do I carry it about.’
The same war

continues.
We have breathed the grits of it in, all our lives,
our lungs are pocked with it,
the mucous membrane of our dreams
coated with it, the imagination
filmed over with the gray filth of it:

the knowledge that humankind,

delicate Man, whose flesh
responds to a caress, whose eyes
are flowers that perceive the stars,

whose music excels the music of birds,
whose laughter matches the laughter of dogs,
whose understanding manifests designs
fairer than the spider’s most intricate web

still turns without surprise, with mere regret
to the scheduled breaking open of breasts whose milk
runs out over the entrails of still-alive babies,
transformation of witnessing eyes to pulp-fragments,
implosion of skinned penises into carcass-gulleys.

We are the humans, men who can make;
whose language imagines mercy,
lovingkindness we have believed one another
mirrored forms of a God we felt as good—

who do these acts, who convince ourselves
it is necessary; these acts are done
to our own flesh; burned human flesh
is smelling in Vietnam as I write.

Yes, this is the knowledge that jostles for space
in our bodies along with all we
go on knowing of joy, of love;

our nerve filaments twitch with its presence
day and night,
nothing we say has not the husky phlegm of it in the saying,
nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness,
the deep intelligence living at peace would have.

by Denise Levertov , 1923 - 97
Politically acitve British - born American poet and educator

from To Stay Alive
New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1971

A closing thought for Veterans Day:

"I hate with a murderous hatred those men who, having lived their youth,
would send into war other youth, not lived, unfulfilled,
to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men,
making their wars that boys must die."

Mary Roberts Rinehart, 1876 - 1958
American mystery writer and war correspondent

*******************

See also my previous Veterans Day posts:

Armistice Day (2009)

Wartime Soldier, Wartime Child (2010)

*******************

and my previous Leonard Orr posts:

End of Summer Sounds

Golden Paintings by Leonard Orr

Excellent Images

Happy Birthday Dylan Thomas

Veterans Eve

I have spent the last few weeks looking through stacks of family papers that have come into my possession over the years, including all the army pension documents of my great - grandfather James Sankey Lindsey (1846 - 1921) who came home sick from the Civil War with untreated measles (contracted by his entire division: Company B, 185th Ohio Infantry) from which he never fully recovered (chronic kidney & digestive ailments).

He spent the remainder of his life petitioning the government for a decent pension in return for his service to the Union at a very young age and was met with resistance at every turn. Shameful! The funds were finally granted in 1912, nine years before his death, in the amount of $15.50 per month (would be approx $373 per month in today's economy). Imagine how much taxpayer $$ was wasted in repeatedly denying his rightful claim instead of granting it outright! And how many people were employed in the wasteful task of telling him -- and doubtless thousands of others Veterans -- "No" instead of "Yes."

That's what I'm going to be thinking about this year on Veterans Day.

Civil War Veteran James Sankey Lindsey & Family ~ c. 1911

My maternal grandfather -- Paul Jones Lindsey -- is the tall,
handsome brother in the middle of the back row.
His brother -- Samuel Gordon Lindsey -- sitting on the front,
right-hand side, beside his mother -- was killed in France in WW I.

Sam, with his mother, my great - grandmother
Sarah Elisabeth Hartman Lindsey ~ c. 1916


My grandfather
Paul Jones Lindsey ~ 1922

Pale Battalions

The leaves are always doing something noteworthy
on Veterans Day ~ this year it was a snow show!*

In honor of the Armistice, I have looked up the following bleakly honest poem, new to me this year. A few lines are recited very briefly during a party scene in the 2017 movie (based on the novel by Penelope Fitzgerald), The Bookshop, in which a WWII widow finds a way to go on with her life:

A Sonnet [XXXIV]

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you’ll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, “They are dead.” Then add thereto,
“Yet many a better one has died before.”
Then, scanning all the o’ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook, None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895 - 1915)

And this one, suggested by my friend Bill McInerney

Two Sides Of War (All Wars)

All wars are planned by older men
In council rooms apart,
Who call for greater armament
And map the battle chart.

But out along the shattered field
Where golden dreams turn gray,
How very young the faces were
Where all the dead men lay.

Portly and solemn in their pride,
The elders cast their vote
For this or that, or something else,
That sounds the martial note.

But where their sightless eyes stare out
Beyond life's vanished toys,
I've noticed nearly all the dead
Were hardly more than boys.

Henry Grantland Rice (1880 – 1954)

********************

I always take a moment on Veterans Day to contemplate
Two Things I Will Never Understand:
War [Waste] and Littering.

Take these two patriots, for example;
which one sounds sane and which one sounds insane?

“Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor
shrink to insignificance. God help me, I do love it so.”
George S. Patton Jr. (1885 – 1945)
General of the United States Army in WW II

"Though I have been trained as a soldier,
and participated in many battles,
there never was a time when, in my opinion,
some way could not be found
to prevent the drawing of the sword.
I look forward to an epoch when a court,
recognized by all nations,
will settle international differences."
Ulysses S. Grant (1822 - 1885)
Commanding General of the United States Army, 1864 to 1865
18th President of the United States, 1869 - 1877

********************
I'm always highly suspicious of the war movie genre as well (and war video games). Is their goal really to teach about history or just a morbid interest in war re-encactment? I think the latter, as if somehow war is the pinnacle of human existence / achievement. I guess for some men, such as Patton, it is. God help him, indeed. So pathologically wrong.

" . . . something
I never had, that black tangle
of branches in a shifting light . . ."
Margaret Atwood

Armistice Day

Rough draft of Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est,"
one of the best known poems of the First World War,
composed between October 1917 - March 1918.
The earliest surviving manuscript is dated 8 October 1917
and addressed to his mother, Susan Owen, with the message
"Here is a gas poem done yesterday, (which is not private, but not final)."

Not only do I remember when Memorial Day was called Decoration Day, I can also recall when all of my elders referred to Veterans Day as Armistice Day. Did you know that the Federal government decided that we need no apostrophe in Veterans Day? I like that, don't you? Something to make life easier! I wish they would do the same for Mothers Day, Fathers Day, and Valentines Day!

Here is a bit of irony to mark the occasion: in the UK, beginning in 1939, the two-minute silence traditionally observed in honor of the Armistice, at 11 a.m. on 11 November, was moved to the Sunday nearest 11 November in order not to interfere with wartime production should 11 November fall on a weekday . . . so as not to let Commemoration of the War To End All Wars stand in the way of Preparation for Yet Another War.

And the irony continues with a couple of items that you may have come across . . .

. . . already if you're a fan of The Onion:

"The meeting stretched from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. and included a short lunch break during which several writers were asked to brainstorm individually on a broad idea — the enduring war in Afghanistan — that was proving to be a challenge. In the end “U.S. Continues Quagmire-Building Effort in Afghanistan” won out over “Quick and Painless Overthrow of Taliban Enters Eighth Year” and “Afghanistan Rapidly Replacing Iraq as Replacement for Vietnam as Replacement for Quagmire.”

and

. . . earlier this month if you follow A.Word.A.Day:

"The truth is that every morning war is declared afresh. And the men who wish to continue it are as guilty as the men who began it, more guilty perhaps, for the latter perhaps did not foresee all its horrors." --Marcel Proust, French novelist (1871-1922)

What occurs to me with some sense of dispiriting coincidence is that the two observations -- the first delivered mockingly, the second in contemplation -- are, in fact, really one & the same message. Why persist in throwing good after bad -- money, time, lives? Instead, why not wake up one morning and decline to declare war?

I hate waste. Remember Rhett Butler's assessment of the Civil War, in Gone With The Wind : "I'm angry. Waste always makes me angry, and that's what all this is, sheer waste."

" . . . the old Lie: Dulce et Decorum Est*Pro patria mori."
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English / Welsh poet and soldier, regarded by many as one of the leading poets of the First World War. He was killed in action at the Battle of the Sambre just a week before the war ended. Sadly, news of his death was delivered to his parents, even as the town's church bells were ringing out in peace.

*Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is a line from the Roman lyrical poet Horace (Ode III.2.13); the line translates into English: "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country."

Rest In Peace Drummer Hodge

An English Drummer Boy (1902)
by George W. Joy (1844 - 1925)

Thanks to Gerry
for calling my attention
to this sad historical poem,
so appropriate for Veterans Day.

Drummer Hodge

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined — just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
Young Hodge the drummer never knew —
Fresh from his Wessex home —
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow up some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928)

For more on
Thomas Hardy's "Drummer Hodge"
Caroline Sheridan Norton's "Bingen on the Rhine"
Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat"
& Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables

see my recent post

A Soldier of the Legion

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

On Veterans Day and every day,
"Let us remember . . . all those who have served
upon another shore and in a greater light,
that multitude which no one can number . . . ”

Still Clinging

SONG OF FALLING LEAVES

The rustling of the silk is discontinued,
Dust drifts over the courtyard,
There is no sound of footfall, and the leaves
Scurry into heaps and lie still,
And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them:

A wet leaf that clings to the threshold.

Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)
Adapted from Liu Ch'e (156 - 87 BC)

Thanks to poet and editor Lee Perron
for observing traditional Memorial Day* with this poem,
as a "Memorial for the Dear Ones We Have Lost"

When Lee's poem for the day appeared in my mailbox,
I had to share with him the above photo
that I had taken only hours earlier.

His response:
"A wet leaf that clings to the threshold.
Two of them in your life on the same day.
Thank you much for sending."

*P.S.
Re: Memorial Day Weekend

Nowadays it can have all kinds of militaristic political correctness attached to it for some -- and for others a timely occasion for a BBQ -- but I remember it as a day to visit the cemetery with my grandparents and decorate all the family graves.

In fact, we didn’t even call it “Memorial Day” when I was little. We called it "Decoration Day.” Some say this is a North / South distinction; but, no, we were Yankees, and we still said "Decoration Day." Sure, the Veterans’ graves got flags and there was a ceremony, but ALL the graves got flowers, or plantings to last the summer -- more like Mexican Day of the Dead

~ Leaf Imprint Series ~

A Form of Madness

Take these two patriots, for example;
which one sounds sane and which one sounds insane?

“Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor
shrink to insignificance. God help me, I do love it so.”
George S. Patton Jr. (1885 – 1945)
General of the United States Army in WW II

"Though I have been trained as a soldier,
and participated in many battles,
there never was a time when, in my opinion,
some way could not be found
to prevent the drawing of the sword.
I look forward to an epoch when a court,
recognized by all nations,
will settle international differences."
Ulysses S. Grant (1822 - 1885)
Commanding General of the United States Army, 1864 to 1865
18th President of the United States, 1869 - 1877

********************

Family Favorites:
Robert Service ~ "A Hero"

~~ Previous Veterans Day Posts ~~
& Google Doodle

Dogwoods on Arbor Day

“After all, I don't see why I am always asking
for private, individual, selfish miracles
when every year there are miracles
like white [or pink] dogwood.”

~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh ~

Planting a Dogwood

Tree, we take leave of you; you’re on your own.
Put down your taproot with its probing hairs
that sluice the darkness and create unseen
the tree that mirrors you below the ground.
For when we plant a tree, two trees take root:
the one that lifts its leaves into the air,
and the inverted one that cleaves the soil
to find the runnel’s sweet, dull silver trace
and spreads not up but down, each drop a leaf
in the eternal blackness of that sky.
The leaves you show uncurl like tiny fists
and bear small button blossoms, greenish white,
that quicken you. Now put your roots down deep;
draw light from shadow, break in on earth’s sleep.

Roy Scheele

Vintage Plant Drawings
Explore the Unseen Beauty
of Complex Tree Root Systems

Previous Arbor Day Posts
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023 & Veterans Day
Arbor Vitae

"On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree . . . "
~ W. S. Merwin ~

Winging Wildly on Armistice Day

Ghosts of the Ancestors,
watching over the household,
on Veterans Day and everyday

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless;
the singing will never be done. (1919)
[ellipses in original]

By Siegfried Sassoon (1886 — 1967)

Our Current House Ghost, Thomasina

Our Previous Lace Ghost, Constance:
Owl ~ Samhain ~ Atwood ~ Childhood

P.S.

The Girl Who Feeds The Birds, 2024
By Elen Bezhen
See Ravenous Butterflies
On Facebook

Day of the Dead

Sunnyside Cemetery on Thanksgiving Day 2007
Caney, Kansas
In Barbara Kingsolver's sad but magical novel Animal Dreams, the narrator, Codi Noline, joins the people of Grace, Arizona, for "the town's biggest holiday, the Day of All Souls." They walk together to the cemetery to weed and tend the family graves, decorate with marigolds, and enjoy the traditional skull-shaped candies with the children:

"It was the bittersweet Mexican holiday, the Day of the Dead, democratic follow-up to the Catholic celebration of All Hallows. Some people had business with the saints on November 1, and so went to mass, but on November 2, everybody had business at the graveyard." (158 - 59)

Whenever November 2nd and May 30th roll around, I always wish I lived nearer to the cemeteries where most of my loved ones and ancestors are buried so that I too could pay a visit and decorate the graves in the time - honored fashion. When I was growing up, months and months might pass between visits to our grandparents, but we never missed Thanksgiving or Memorial Day weekend.

No matter what the weather, on Memorial Day we spent a good part of the day at the cemetery, attending various ceremonies and speeches in honor of the Veterans and the War Dead; placing wreathes and potted plants; sometimes even planting flowers that would bloom throughout the summer. Nobody really says "Decoration Day" anymore, but that's what I remember calling it when I was small -- because we decorated! If I was lucky enough to spend a week or two of summer vacation with my grandparents, we spent the evenings one of two ways -- sitting on the porch or taking a walk to Sunnyside Cemetery. Those were happy times for me, tagging along, picking stray flowers, and listening to the old stories about those at rest there.

At Thanksgiving, when the cemetery was bare and empty -- no parades, podiums or bands; very few visitors, very few flowers -- even then we didn't miss the opportunity to wander from grave to grave, paying our respects. I guess that was our Midwestern way of observing All Souls -- just three or four weeks late.

These days, I live only a few blocks from the nearest local cemetery and can spend a reflective hour there anytime, thinking of the old days, reading the names of strangers, but it's not quite the same. As Codi says:

"More than anything else I wished I belonged to one of these living, celebrated families, lush as plants, with bones in the ground for roots. I wanted pollen on my cheeks and one of those calcium ancestors to decorate as my own." (165)

*******************
And this from Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree: "It's both happy and sad. It's all firecrackers and skeleton toys down here in the plaza and up in that graveyard now are all the Mexican dead folks with the families visiting and flowers and candles and singing and candy. I mean it's almost like Thanksgiving, huh? And everyone set down to dinner, but only half the people able to eat, but that's no mind, they're THERE. It's like holding hands at a séance with your friends, but some of the friends gone."
(118 - 19)

Too Soon For Snow

November 9th ~ 48 Hours Later ~ November 11th

Hail Purdue!
First, we have freezing temperatures and light snow on Halloween; then we have a follow - up of dangerous weather and 3 inches of ice and snow on Veterans Day. Too soon!

Now only was our street incredibly slick last night, but our power was out from 6:30pm - midnight. Due to some unexplained electrical mystery, our neighbors right across the street weren't affected, so they kindly invited us over for warmth, light, cocktails, and Monday Night Football. Later on, we came home to light up all the pumpkin spice candles leftover from Halloween, to read for awhile by candlelight, and to think about life without the miracle of electric everything, in the simple / complicated days of yore!

It was pretty amazing to watch out the window when the trucks finally came -- almost like staying up late enough on Christmas Eve to see Santa actually arrive!

See the heroic line-person way up in the cherry picker?
Thank you for your service!

******************

It is obviously way too soon for The Last Nice Day of 2019!
Half the leaves on the trees are still green --
yet covered with snow! That's not right!

Last Nice Days of 2017 & 2018

Martinmas

Painting from Fall Celebrations @ Joyful Toddlers
For the past six years I've written a Veterans Day Post on November 11th, but this year, I'm going to branch out and write about St. Martin's Day instead -- a long - lost but lovely opportunity to light up a scary night.

As the Armistice at the end of World War I was signed at eleven o'clock in the morning, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, so too does the celebration of Martinmas begin at the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Not widely observed in the United States, St. Martin's Day commemorates good St. Martin, a Hungarian Bishop of the 4th Century who cut his coat in half to share with a freezing beggar. It is the day that amongst other things, we can sort through our closets and donate half of our coats and sweaters to clothing drives for those more needy. That way, there will be plenty of room available when we receive new sweaters and jackets for Christmas a few weeks down the line. In fact, Martinmas (November 11) is the middle point between Michaelmas (September 29) and Christmas (December 25).

Coming less than two weeks after Hallowmas , Martinmas incorporates many of the same traditions: lantern carvings, neighborhood processions, the distribution of sweets, honoring the dead, bonfires, harvest celebrations, loss of daylight hours, and anticipation of the coming winter.

Martinmas Lantern Walk

Indiana poet Norbert Krapf draws another connection, from the tragedy of Kristallnacht, occurring November 9 - 10, 1938, to the hope of Chanukah, as the Martinmas lanterns "merge into the menorah":

St. Martin's Day

In damp dark, we parents and children
line up in groups behind teachers
in the Pausenhof of the Grundschule

to walk in procession to the park
behind the baroque palace. As we
move forward in unison, we sing songs

to celebrate the legend of a knight on horseback
who cut his cloak in half with his sword
to comfort a beggar on foot. The children

carry tiny flames through the dark
in lanterns they have made in school
and hooked to the end of sticks.

"Laterne, Laterne, Sonne, Mond und Sterne,"
they sing. In Elizabeth's blue box burns
a candle illuminating a paper angel, an apple,

a moon, and a star cut out in construction
paper she glued together. Before the arched
Orangerie in the park, the children stand

in semicircles to sing. Some play recorders,
some play violins, some tap rhythm
on tambourines. Behind them, facing

us parents, is a big illuminated sheet,
before which silhouetted children
actors mime the action of Martin

and his beggar as classmates narrate their
lines. At the end, all sing the round
"Hebet die Laterne / Lift the lanterns,"

repeat the refrain "Licht zu bringen
in dieser Welt / To bring light into this
world," and follow a rider on horseback

into the dark. As they wind along geometric
walkways in the Schlosspark, stringing
beads of light through the dark with their

handmade lanterns, I remember the first question
Elizabeth asked after we arrived in Erlangen:
"Daddy, do they celebrate Chanukah here?"

Fifty years after the Kristallnacht, I see
burning beads of light along looping walkways
merge into the menorah held in uplifted hands.

by Norbert Krapf

Uncle Samuel

Vintage Uncle Samuel Santa
from Victorian Trading

a keepsake ornament for my son Sam

in honor of his namesake and great - great uncle
Samuel Gordon Lindsey
born this day 123 years ago
January 5, 1893

and his great - great - great - great - grandfather
Samuel Lindsey
1789 - 1883

See also Time to Write a Letter & Veterans Eve

Point of Balance

"I'm sure that someday children in schools will study the history of the men who made war as you study an absurdity.
They'll be shocked, just as today
we're shocked with cannibalism."

Golda Meir, 1898 - 1978
Prime Minister of Israel, 1969 - 1974
[see also on this blog: "American Tune"]

Naming of Parts
Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all the neighboring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For today we have the naming of parts.
[emphasis added]

Henry Reed, 1914 - 1986
British poet, translator, radio dramatist and journalist


See also my previous Veterans Day posts:

Armistice Day (2009)

Wartime Soldier, Wartime Child (2010)

"The same war continues . . . " (2011)

94 Years Ago Today (2012)

Flanders Fields ~ What Have We Learned (2012)

War Horse (January 2012)

Wartime Soldier, Wartime Child

In observation of Veterans Day . . . # 1.
A hopeful thought from the past, hasten the day:

"Though I have been trained as a soldier,
and participated in many battles,
there never was a time when, in my opinion,
some way could not be found
to prevent the drawing of the sword.
I look forward to an epoch when a court,
recognized by all nations,
will settle international differences."
Ulysses S. Grant, 1822 - 1885
Commanding General of the United States Army, 1864 to 1865
18th President of the United States, 1869 - 1877
# 2.
I first came across the following poem just a few days after the 9 / 11 disaster, and it seemed almost uncannily appropriate in a backward - looking kind of way. It is the third section of a longer sequence entitled "Wartime Child" by Liverpool poet Adrian Henri, one of the more-quoted authors on this blog.

Blackout
It doesn't seem the same place after dark.
In the Park they've taken away the railings*
to make guns. As soon as the sun's gone down
the whole town seems changed: it's strange,
you can't tell where the pavement is.
Auntie Margaret fell over someone's bike
the other night. Only a pale blue light
from cars. Of course, you can see the stars.
We saw one once Dad said was Mars.
When there's a moon the barrage balloons
shine like silver. So that the Germans
won't know where they are, there's no names
on the stations. We can't tell, either.
It smells of steam and soldiers sleep
on kitbags. Sometimes the Yanks give us
chewing-gum. Mum says all the shops
used to be lit up, just like you see them
in America on the cinema.
It must be nice with all the lights.

*My mother-in-law Rosanne Bristow McCartney, raised in a small village outside of Liverpool, once explained to me that after all the gates and railings in the Liverpool neighborhoods had been confiscated by the army, it was discovered that they were the wrong metal to use for ammunition, so piles of beautiful old iron work were just scrapped. The homeowners never got their pieces back and just had to build up wooden replacements instead. More fruitless loss. More waste.

I hate waste!

# 3.
Last year on Armistice Day, I quoted Rhett Butler's assessment of the Civil War as it appears in Gone With The Wind. Allow me to repeat once again:

"I'm angry. Waste always makes me angry,
and that's what all this is, sheer waste."

Arbor Vitae

Happy Arbor Day!

Arbor Vitae = Tree of Life

Arbor Vitae in the Human Cerebellum

Previous Arbor Day Posts
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023 & Veterans Day
2024
2025

Trees &/or Humans

Maybe I should have saved this for Arbor Day,
but I found it perfect for Veterans Day:

However true these words are of trees,
they are equally true of humans.
That's why war is so wrong:

"When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

"Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

"A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail."

~ Herman Hesse ~

“Sentimental, you say? Anti-social?
Oughtn't to prefer trees to men?
I say it depends what trees and what men.”

~ George Orwell ~

Thanks to Chris Jarmick for sharing
these wise words from Hesse & Orwell.

Not about trees,
but this goes here:

"Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out . . . and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. . . . And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for 'the universal brotherhood of man'-- with his mouth."

~ Mark Twain ~

Thanks Doug Lee!