Vol. 50, May 30th, 2023 (Posted here a day early)
Memorial Day Tuesday
Being Worthy of the Sacrifice
Memorial Day is tricky. Retailers profane the spirit with signs of “USED CARS CHEAP.”
The backyard barbecue is a fruit of freedom, fragrant in mesquite, with a tang that reminds us of the cost as the smoke drifts by an empty chair. Politicians and anti-war activists will be forever locked in the negotiations of how much it should cost, but the point is inescapable: it did. So what do we do? I’ve been ignorant (no war!), well-meaning (could there not be war?), naïve (sure!), worldly (nope), cynical, hollow, indifferent, and grateful. But the sacrifice remains, and demands an answer. What to do? I see waste and death and valor and courage and bow my head at the offered cup of liberty, staggered. The idea was shown to me recently: Be worthy of the sacrifice.
Perhaps that’s what we can do, on the Tuesday after Memorial Day, forever hereafter. If some paid their All, let us not squander it. Mr. Lincoln’s words on the next page serve as a guiding star as we muddle forward, and remember.
A Darn Good Quote
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain
Down the Rabbit Hole
For this week’s research suggestion, check out Operation Mincemeat. It’s a fantastical tale of deception, of how an obscure civilian’s death shaped the outcome of WWII.
Happy Birthday, Benny Goodman
b. 1909, Goodman would make jazz respectable, and host the world’s first electric guitar star—Charlie Christian.
Photo of the Week
Memorial Day’s origins are unclear, but the first “Decoration Day” ceremony at Arlington Cemetery took place May, 30th, 1868.
Songs for Memorial Day Week
Samuel Barber’s haunting “Adagio for Strings” was played at JFK’s funeral —and Einstein’s. Dire Straits pays tribute to the experience of war in “Brothers in Arms.”
Letters from Josh
(A weekly update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #136)
Howdy, folks! Dr. Electro is silent today out of respect. Silliness and fun plays a vital role in our lives, but this is Memorial Day Week. It seems a good time to read a few words from Mr. Lincoln, spoken long before any backyard barbecues, used car sales, or Memorial Day itself. You’ve read them before, but we offer them again. They count.
The Gettysburg Address
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow —this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863