Posts Tagged ‘memory’

Happy Independence Day!  You do know that is what we are to be celebrating, right?  The day our Founders could say, “Ok, we made a decision…this is IT.”  “It” being had enough, taken all that was to be taken….the day they decided what to do instead; come wrack, come ruin!

How America has changed since then.  Mind you, our Founders were not wild eyed anarchists; good order and law abiding citizens were a good idea to them.  Unfairness, taxation without representation, military rule—those things were NOT alright with them.  They really wanted King George to just wake the hell up and knock off treating them like convicts instead of citizens.  And contrary to what school history books teach, it was not a united opinion.  The hated “Tories”…loyalists to the king, existed in large numbers.  And they had to fly for their lives, they were horribly abused and tortured by their rebellious neighbors once the emotions ran high.

War is never a good thing, and technically, our revolution was a civil war….we were fighting our own colonial and English brethren.  History books are fond of pictures of Hessian mercenaries so the “those damned Germans” emotions can be called forth to shield us from the unpleasant notion that we fought and killed our own.  It was a necessary war for America to exist, and the determination was launched upon the day we celebrate.

Even Thomas Jefferson fell into bombastic statements so often isolatedly misquoted—bits about the tree of liberty being watered by the blood of heroes.  Keep in mind, those heroes were sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, and yes…women, too.  It was a desperate and dire time.  Hard choices had to be made and results endured.  And it really was a sort of miracle that infant America prevailed.

So, my wish for America today?  That we don’t forget those terrible sacrifices and sufferings.  That we remain willing to rock the correct boats—rich boats, corporate boats, comfortable self-satisfied boats—for the good of the nation. and the world.   And we need to be willing to make hard choices for OURSELVES, too.  We need to recognize our place in the world—the ONE world that we must share even if some would like to live in isolationist dreams.  We need to knuckle down as a nation and stop acting like spoilt children with a list for Santa.  We need to reach out to help friends and neighbors and not expect lock-step agreement on every issue.  We need to learn the difference between negotiation and compromise and merely being sheeple because it is easier to be told how to live.  Remember our history this weekend.  Rock the boat, including the boat of your own comforts.

Men and women are “watering the tree of liberty” with their blood even now, and possibly for reasons that have nothing to do with liberty.  I keep their names, I count their broken bodies with shining beads of glass and gemstone.  I walk through the seasons on their memorial and hold their memory to my heart.  It might be good for American souls to do the same on this weekend; it is not only about BBQs and noise and lights.  It is also about the seasons of wars and returning bodies that goes on and on and on.

To see the slide show of the Seasons of my memorial labyrinth, all time scrambled, you may follow this link and heed the instructions pertaining to your chosen browser:

Seasons Slide Show

It is not yet a movie, that technical conundrum is not solved yet.  It is a slide show with music—hit the image that appears after you choose ‘flash’ or ‘html’ and remember.  Freedom isn’t free, and neither is the life style you relish.