Pretty nice weekend in SW Michigan with high temps in the low 70’s.
Happy?? Are you aware what is being honored?
God bless all the hero’s past, present, and future who served. Some paid the highest price.
And we should be happy to live here and be alive to enjoy it.
Home of the free because of the brave.
Glad you had a good day, Tom. I stayed off the water because I think most of downstate was up here.
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To share What Happiness There Is
We will all lose
sight
in memorial
to memory
with dates
that lived
in infamy
to sadness
for people
to nations
to perish
with
or without
cause
to effect
from shout
to whisper
to silent stones
echoing time
Yesterday, I thought about a name I’d seen cited in “Memorial” on a dark granite stone, this past year of pandemic perusing nearby cemeteries, SSGT James Folio Norcom. The Maryland ground has but his name and stone, for the English Channel, along with two of his crew mates, has his remains, in what little rusted semblance of a B-17 lies submerged in saltwater, silt and mud. I wondered about those others whom by faded memory and unplaced stones, might not have Uncle-by-the-hearth nor internet-Googled story and remembrance. Including, I supposed, even those that might have seen their last in the flesh-tearing, concussive flash of a B-17 bomb. I tried to avoid the , “we’re good guys, they’re bad guys,” thinking. Body politics go to war with agendas, but not always the people that fight to perish within them do. Not always heroes, not all idealists nor ideologues, just people. So, yes, I sadly remember the life that is lost, sometimes in preservation of this great ideal of the U.S., sometimes in just merely trying to do the right thing, and/or to save one’s friend(s) and their own necks, unsuccessfully.
But, there I was, thinking these heavy and sad thoughts and, standing on a lovely, late-Spring, verdantly lush ait in the middle of the upstream Patapsco River, bemusedly watching my canine associate Finn alternate between his gleeful “zoomie” sprints through gravel, sand and brush with his more casual, nose-to-the-ground scent gorging weaves. “Be with and be these lilly-dippers-of-the-field-and-stream,” I thought, for happiness comes like seasonable berries, and for many the basket in which we can gather is shorter than we’d like.
So, thank you Tom. I hope your weekend in and through Monday was happy to. Don’t ask me how, but I’m certain you, like many here, know that there are many people and things for which we are indebted for our burgeoning baskets.
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Canoeswithduckheads, I have been there! It a place that many but not everyone wants to visits. It’s a sad place but a very proud place. It’s hard to image how such people survived the daily trauma and how the medical professionals suffered for the inability to fix the damage. Most can willingly and brave face danger, but fighting random and capricious unseen danger has to be . . . taxing. How do we carry the weight of their sacrifice. Good to be reminded TomL. Even if I’m late seeing it.