What Is Remembered Most

I can no longer remember who took this photo, or even the exact location of the event, and I've never seen a single reference to it other than it's original publication several years ago.
 
It epitomizes the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq, and so much else the U.S. and, yes, many other countries have done. It appears for all the world as if it has putatively been forgotten, put behind us while we move on, forward, not looking to the past.

But now, as the hour of death draws close, I think less of the effects of the crime on those who did it and in whose name it was approved or allowed. What I see more is the love that the surrounding men have for the father and his son.

Val

Erich Maria Remarque's “Im Westen Nichts Neues” ("All Quiet on the Western Front”)

This book should be read by every first-year high school student, before Shakespeare or math or science.

It's a first-hand account of an 18-year-old boy's going off to fight in World War One, and has stood the test of time. There are a lot of other books about the basics of that war, like “The Good Soldier Švejk," but this one has especial depth and perspective.

Here are three quotes from “Im Westen Nichts Neues” that were especially exciting to me during my recent reading of the book:

• p. 10: "And perhaps more of us thought as he did, but no one could very well stand out, because at that time even one's parents were ready with the word 'coward'; no one had the slightest idea of what we were in for. The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas people who were better off were beside themselves with joy, though they should have been much better able to judge what the consequence would be.”
  
  
• pp. 11-12: ...”The idea of authority which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and manlier wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to believe that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. The bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they taught it to us broke into pieces...We were all at once terribly alone, and alone we must see it through.”
  
  
• pp. 266-267: “How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their handreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is...
  
  “I am young. I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow.”

First Days of May and Selecting Bush Twice

The first days of May here in Dayton, Ohio, have been ineffably beautiful: new leaves and buds and blossoms, fresh and light green leaves, perfectly clear skies way beyond anything I could express, more so than ever. I really should be out in this priceless sunshine right now, just looking at the flowers and grasses and trees and skies.

I find it all quite shocking, so much so that I wonder why it is that, now, at this point in my life, it is all so surpassingly and excruciatingly beautiful. 

I suspect that the “excruciating” word holds the key. It is, unfortunately or fortunately, only possible to appreciate something by contrast, by knowing the opposite perspective, the opposing reality.

Appreciating, perceiving, these astonishing, priceless, perfect May days is probably due in my own particular case to my experience one year ago this month of coming close to death because of a bicycle accident, from which I have still not recovered. But there was also “The List” I was composing a few nights ago. I made a list of some of some of the almost-incredible horrors which I doubt that I shall ever fully fathom:

• The USA selected George W. Bush as their President – twice.
  
  
• The Viet-Nam war, and following it by the Iraq war, and the Afghanistan war.
  
  
• Pat Buchanan on TV recently, smiling and gloating over the fact that the USA voted in every state except Massachusetts for Richard Nixon, a known criminal who was unconscionably pardoned, over George McGovern, a known decent man who said that the Senate walls reeked with blood.
  
  
• Recently reading “The Good Soldier Švejk” and “All Is Quiet on the Western Front,” particularly the bit about the widespread joy when that war broke out.
  
  
• The Milgram and Zimbardo experiments.
  
  
• Fox News, Limbaugh, Malkin, Savage, Falwell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Bremer, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, et al.
  
  
• Bill Clinton and Joe Lieberman.
  
  
• The Christianists and the Jihadists.
  
  
• The oil and coal industries, and the bankers, and the medical industries.
  .
• The “You-can't-ask-me-to-stick-my-neck-out” Academy and the Media.

Please add a contribution of your own to my list.