Memorial Day

I’m overdue for a blog entry, I know. What can I say? It’s the end of the school year. Last Wednesday and Thursday, I did seven-hour marathon grading sessions so that I wouldn’t have a ton of grading to do this weekend. I still have a few late assignments and such, but grades go in Thursday of this week, and then after a brief faculty meeting Friday, I’M FREE!!!

In the meantime, I’ve been doing long-weekend-with-the-family type stuff, so no writing, blog or otherwise.

I have to say that usually I don’t think much about Memorial Day and its actual significance. I tend to think of it more as the beginning of summer. Today, I find myself thinking about all of the service people who have died in Iraq and the countless more who will die or whose lives are falling apart as they are being forced to go way above and beyond the call of duty to continue a war that is getting us nowhere fast. It’s getting us less than nowhere. It’s become the number one recruitment tool of terrorists the world over. The New York Times has an editorial today that talks about how much longer our soldiers are spending overseas than they’re supposed to. They aren’t being allowed to come home often enough to keep their marriages intact or to spend any time with their children. Reservists are being given tours of duty that are so long that they are losing their civilian jobs. We should be ashamed of how we are treating the people who are risking their lives in Iraq. Someone should feel ashamed of having ever sent them there to begin with. Do I think he’s losing any sleep? Hey, those brave men and women aren’t his kids. The vast, vast majority of them aren’t even the children of the wealthy people he champions so stalwartly, so in the end, they don’t really matter to the powers that be.

Well, they matter to the people who love them, and they matter to me.

Okay, I’ve waxed bitter and political. I did say in my very first entry that I have a lot of strong opinions and that, occasionally, they would leak through. Besides, I just can’t write about writing every single week. I especially can’t write about writing on a week in which I haven’t written. Say that five times fast.

So have a good holiday. Throw some burgers on the grill. (I won’t be doing this because it’s raining here in Colorado.) I’m planning to take my daughter to see MADAGASCAR. I just hope you’ll all take an extra minute or two out of the day to send up an extra prayer or, if prayer isn’t your thing, send out an extra good thought into the cosmos for the men and women who are under fire or nervously approaching a strange car that could blow up at any minute or who are alone in a tent looking at pictures of children who will be grilling burgers without them. Think of the ones who will never come home. I’d say they’ve earned a minute or two from each of us, wouldn’t you?