Memories and Mobility

This time last week many of us were starting a three day weekend created by Veterans Day. The reasons for the day and the commemorations across many communities were more quietly handled, like Colonel Cathcart's demand of Chaplain A. T. Tappman in Heller's Catch-22 for a prayer that doesn't mention waters or heaven or God. In theory, many of us think military service is a fine idea-for other people, no one we know.

One of the nicer things in recent years, from my perspective as a Cold War Vet, has been the warming across the country to the notion of thanking those who serve in the armed forces, especially at this most fragile of moments. Many of us cannot imagine life in uniform and have no frame of reference for it while others have spent their lives, or given them, in the service of of country.

Thanks to news on demand and 24/7 video channels, we can watch world wide conflicts on our cellphones. Ain't technology grand? And we've done a fine job of reducing our dispatches from the front to a nearly sterile exercise in accounting. We've got the Action News Team giving us a body count and we mentally skip over the costs and carnage in lives and damage that's always just below the surface. But you can peek behind the curtain.

I've had the privilege of assisting an online acquaintance in a fundraiser he created for the Veterans Village of San Diego, and have been involved with hundreds and thousands of others I'll never meet in other forms of assistance that don't really require a lot of skill (ideal for me as I don't have any). We're heading towards the Season of Giving and if I can impose upon you long enough to get in a mention of the Wounded Warrior Project and all the good they do.

It hurts to see all of these agencies struggling to help those whom we've hurled into the maw of Endless War while forging our own 'please excuse my child' notes so our own lives remain undisturbed. They are bailing out the ocean with a teaspoon and we should be angry.

But, as happened Wednesday afternoon (thanks LR), I had the opportunity to meet Captain Gregory Galeazzi, USA, who observes Veterans Day everyday. And as you're about to find out no matter what kind of a day you're having today, click here, and be uplifted.
-bill kenny