Memorial Monday Musings

 

It's Memorial Day Weekend.  Today is the day that we celebrate the time honored tradition of  barbecuing pork flesh.  Or is it the day that we honor basketball by watching an NBA playoff game?  It could be Fireworks at the Ball Park Day.  In honor of filling corporate retail coffers it might be the day you get to take twenty five percent off anything in the store and take an extra 15 percent if you use your store credit card (exclusions apply; does not include Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Nautica or Izod).  Maybe it's the day we revel in the great American motor car by getting 0.9% financing on any new car in the lot (FICO score of 720 or better).  Actually those are some of the things that we DO on Memorial Day.  They are certainly not the spirit and meaning of Memorial Day; regardless of the fact that many of our fellow Americans believe so.  

My dad always called it by its original name, Decoration Day.  In 1868, Union veterans of the Civil War set aside May 5th to decorate the graves of Civil War dead with flowers.  Major General John Logan later established May 30th as the day to honor America's war dead; a date chosen because flowers would be in plentiful bloom nationwide. 

The Union veterans’ observance wasn’t the first. In 1866 a group of women in Columbus, Mississippi decorated the graves of Confederate dead who had died at Shiloh.  The story goes that while the Southern women had gone to honor the Confederate dead when they saw the neglected graves of the Union soldiers they decorated those graves as well.  There was no shortage of graves at Shiloh.  In two April days in 1862 nearly 3500 men, North and South, lost their lives. 

Other local observances took place in Macon and Columbus Georgia; Richmond Virginia; Boalsburg, Pennsylvania; Carbondale, Illinois and Waterloo, New York, later designated as the birthplace of Decoration Day. 

After World War I, which added nearly 117,000 new graves, Decoration Day was expanded to honor the dead of all American wars. In 1971, the annual observance was declared a national holiday, placed on the last Monday in May and officially called Memorial Day.  America was winding down the Vietnam War calling for flowers for another 58,000 graves.   

At this writing America is in Afghanistan, graveyard of empires, adding yet more graves to our national burial grounds.  Does anybody from lowly me to the soldier on the line to a theater commander to the Joint Chiefs to the Commander in Chief know what it is we’re trying to accomplish there?  Over the years Afghanistan has ground up Great Britain (more than once), Germany, and The Soviet Union; and now it’s become our turn.  Every player has gotten mired in its own hubristic notion that it has a better understanding of Afghanistan than those before it only to find that it's understanding was in the end, sadly and tragically mistaken.  Afghanistan is a place that doesn't suffer proud, ignorant fools.  After taking an Afghan licking, the Soviet Union, then not a country known for playing nice summed up it's own failure in a 1988 (then) top secret Soviet Communist Party Central Committee analysis; “Above all (was) the fact that the appearance of armed foreigners in Afghanistan was always met with arms in the hands (of the population).  This is how it was in the past, and this is how it happened when our troops entered…Moreover the intensity of the internal Afghan conflict continued to grow and our military presence was associated with the forceful imposition of customs alien to the national characteristics and feelings of the Afghan people, which did not take into account the multiple forms of economic life and other characteristics, such as tribal and religious ones…all of this did not help our cause.”   This echoed the failures of past incursions into Afghanistan and predicted our own (even if we do come out and somehow declare victory).  Those who don’t learn from history…

Speaking of not learning history, it is a sad fact that most Americans are depressingly ignorant of their own history.  Various studies have uncovered disheartening statistics such as; half of Americans didn’t know the three branches of government (No you can’t use the glass half full analogy here); 56 percent of Americans could name Paula Abdul as a (then) judge on American Idol but only 21% knew that the phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people" comes from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; only 30 percent knew that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land; 43 percent did not know that the first 10 amendments constitute the Bill of Rights; and two-thirds could not identify America’s economic system as capitalistic or market-based.  The gloomiest aspect of this is that those who don't know, don't care that they don't know and I know that because I've spoken with some of these folks; "I don't care about that shit," they say.

Americans don't need to know the casualty count at the Battle of Shiloh.  But they should know the basic underpinnings of the American economic and political systems; they should know some of the major events and characters in their nation's history; should realize the good things and the bad things that our nation has done.  This is knowledge that marks the difference between an informed vote and one that's off the cuff; allows an American to truly know if his rights are being violated; and in the end helps to make America the best world citizen it can be. 

I got some taste of American ignorance of history when I did a stint of a few years as a Civil War reenactor.  Among the questions that I fielded; “What was the cause of the Civil War?”  “Was the Blue the Confederate side?”  "Who were the Rebs?"

I was a reenactor for five or six years.  A proud member of Company A, 2^nd Massachusetts Cavalry (also known as the California 100).  Some folks hold that reenactments only serve to glorify war.  I guess that’s the glass half empty view.  The glass, or canteen, half full view is that they serve to introduce Americans to a period, an important one at that, of their history.  Touring the Union and Confederate camps and the civilian village, people got a chance to see, smell, touch and hear history.  These are weekend long teaching moments.  I found that people who on most occasions would call history a crashing bore suddenly couldn’t seem to soak in the experience fast enough.  They were fascinated to rap a hardtack biscuit on a table and exclaim, “Soldiers ate these?”  They felt the thick wool of the uniforms or tried on a heavy greatcoat; “How could they fight in these?”  They were riveted watching a Civil War version of baseball; “They had baseball back then?”  The big draw was always the battles but I think that visitors took more from a stroll through the camps.  It was gratifying to hear one very common question, “What are some good books on the Civil War?”  In this case the glass, or should I say the tin cup, was half full.

I went to my first reenactment on Memorial Day Weekend near the little town of Felton, California.  I decided on that weekend that it was something I wanted to do.  At the time I wasn’t making nearly enough money to take up what is a very, very expensive hobby.  Some ten years later there was enough in the checkbook to sign up and it was here that I got my first, firsthand living history lesson.  And that is that a man can get taken in by the allure of a uniform and sign on the line before thinking it through.  I could’ve gotten by on the relative cheap and joined the Confederate infantry.  But noooo; I was dazzled by the flash and dash of Union Cavalry.  And so, a blue suit, brass buttoned greatcoat, a carbine, a revolver, a sabre, all of the leather accoutrements and a pair of knee high cavalry boots later and I was well more than a thousand dollars in.

Photos of my first reenactment

This was the Union.

This was the Confederate

Gray was rebel

Blue was Federal

It was a fun and satisfying experience while it lasted.  The kids enjoyed it at first but got Civil Warred out in short order.  The family pretty much tired of the movie Gettysburg after about the 15th showing.  These days I threaten my children by telling them I plan to introduce their children to reenacting at which point they snatch up the kids and hold them protectively.  I retired from the cavalry when I started coaching high school cross country.  The wife wasn’t willing to play third fiddle to two time consuming pastimes. I’m brought back to those times by the acrid smoke of an oak campfire or the smell of worn leather and I sometimes consider taking it up again.  I suppose my second go round might be with the Confederate infantry.  There weren’t many, if any, 60 year old Union cavalrymen but I dare say that there were more than a few gray clad gray beards.

Another Memorial Day tradition is the Indianapolis 500.  I watched a few laps yesterday and as the race wound down I turned to Cora, “I’d like to go see Indy one day.”  “Why not?” she said.  She paused and watched the cars circling the Brickyard at over 200 miles per hour.  “I’d like to see it but I just don’t want to see accidents.” 

A Memorial Day tradition

I’m not a big motor sports fan but the 500 is on my sports bucket list.  Some co-workers and I once talked about a sports bucket list; what events would we want to see in person before “kicking the bucket.”  My sports bucket list includes;

                The aforementioned 500.

                The World Series.  I’ve seen two so I can check that off.

                The baseball All-Star Game.

                Wrigley Field

                Fenway Park

                Dodger Stadium.  Been there.

                The Tour de France.

                The Olympic 4x100 and 4x 400 relays.

                World Cup Soccer.

                College football in the mid-West, maybe Notre Dame or Michigan. 

You notice that the Super Bowl isn’t in there.  I’m often lukewarm to the game when it’s on TV let alone dealing with the cost and crowds at the event itself.  No heavyweight championship or Kentucky Derby.  I find boxing and horse racing to be cruel and exploitative.  No golf or tennis; yawn.  We all have our own tastes and preferences.  What’s on your sports bucket list? 

It’s Memorial Day; Decoration Day.  The streets of downtown Pinole will be lined with flags.  I put my flag up.  It’s a little tattered and very faded.  I fly it on holidays like today.  Not because I love my country as that poorly thought saying goes, “right or wrong” but because I believe in my country.  No that “right or wrong” notion of the flag doesn’t fly.  We hold our system up to the world as the gold standard and at its purest core it is.  We like to think of ourselves as the good guys wearing the white hat.  That’s all well and good but the white hat guy has to be a standup guy; a take responsibility, own up to mistakes and try to do better next time guy; that doesn't lend itself to "right or wrong."  I prefer the notion of my country right and exemplary.  

Why we observe Memorial Day

I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day.  When you’re wiping barbecue sauce off your shirt, or taking advantage of that sale or watching the post game fireworks have more than just a passing thought about the day.  Maybe make a personal promise to learn something about the history of this nation on this day that we honor the men and women who sacrificed for the rights we so take for granted.