#794 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Monday November 13)
Good morning,
Today is the day on which we observe Veterans Day. I’m not sure whether “Happy Veterans Day” is the appropriate salutation. Perhaps it is better to say, “Have a meaningful Veterans Day.” As life gets faster and faster paced, and there are more holidays to keep track of, holidays that once took on greater importance are lost amidst the many distractions of modern society. Sometimes it seems we should slow things down just a little bit and reflect upon the moment and its purpose.
I think a tiny bit is lost when Congress decided to celebrate a number of holidays on Mondays, to facilitate three-day weekends. It used to be that February 12th always was Lincoln’s birthday, and February 22nd was Washington’s birthday. Now they both are celebrated on the anodyne “Presidents Day.” I long for fixed dates and more specific commemorations of the lives of two of our greatest presidents, but I think the idea of three-day weekends has trumped my position.
Today actually isn’t really Veterans Day. Its actual date (versus the date of its observance) is November 11th. For those of us of a certain age who studied history, we know that Veterans Day originally was known as Armistice Day, to commemorate the armistice that brought World War I to an end. The end of the war occurred “at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918. Eventually the armistice gave way to the Versailles Treaty. Many people see the overreach of the Versailles Treaty as planting the seeds for the eventual rise of Hitler and World War II, but that’s another story.
In these fraught times, it often is hard not to think that things can’t get much worse. And there certainly are reasons to believe that, with climate change, war in the Middle East, and challenges to American democracy (and, for that matter, around the world), things are in free-fall. But at least we aren’t facing worldwide war and hundreds of thousands of young Americans being sent to the slaughterhouse that was World War I. Things could be worse.
On this day, in-between fun activities on this day off, we should count our blessings and acknowledge and appreciate what others did in generations before us—on the fields of Europe and elsewhere.
Have a great day,
Glenn