Escaping for a three day weekend

[gurdonark]

This Memorial Day we have modest plans, staying in town, and spending time with friends. But the idea of a weekend break got me thinking about finding peace with oneself and heroes to remember.

To begin my three day weekend, I submit for your possible participation a simple three question poll. As always, I'm grateful for responses, from which I learn more about my friends. I see that I've managed to make a typo in my poll, which should read "a bit less stress about material things". But otherwise, it's more or less ready to take.

[Poll #137720]

I hope everyone has a fine weekend.

Comments

[sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com]

The field wouldn't accept my full answer for the last question:

I would honor those people on the subway I see every day -- who are going to work, going to take care of their children, going to take care of someone else's children. I would honor the stories that they're living, and I would tell them that their lives are beautiful, and meaningful.

Thanks for this poll. It's a good one.

memorial day

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

Well of course my first heros are not specially soldiers
but seeing none in other responses let me try to remember
a few involved in our wars including some whose blood watered the Liberty Tree as T Jefferson
said, not that our culture or society is in itself worth
dying for, but Liberty is and if it is partly an ideal
like the dream of travel to the stars still that too is not
ignoble nor were,
John Paul Jones, Patrick Henry, Stonewall Jackson,Abraham
Lincoln, the men who took Omaha Beach and held
it and held at Bastogne and climbed Suribachi on Iwo and held
that, and retreated from the Chosun Reservoir, and
fought in Viet Nam, and made their names shine in their time
though mostly forgotten now...

May, even if we and those who come after us, in some way
(and God helping in a world where war has become an anachronism
from the terrible past)in some way make our names shine
too...

[arcanum-dogma.livejournal.com]

Great Ken, my oldest surviving relative and Grandfather, maintained a museum at the aid station — all of his exhibits fit into matchboxes. the only time he shot at a living thing he nailed it on the first shot. the villagers loved him for that and nicely cooked up the now dead boar that had been disturbing the village.

he caught a bit of grenade shrapnel in the gut and was sent back to the States. i've been working on his memoirs for the last few years.

: -)

[nancyjane.livejournal.com]

thanks for the poll Robert, you always remind me of things i would have thought were obvious to me, about myself, but i find myself refusing to want to admit... and then i think, why? nothing is wrong with how i think or feel, you know? so it's always an interesting excercise, to say the least.

hope you have a great weekend too. we're having a few friends over, i didnt want to set a time so i just called people and said come on over when you want to, we'll be here but we're not answering the phone. oh and then explained what the menu would be so hopefully that's a little incentive. so we'll see what happens. lol i just wanted to do away with so much of the formality, bring back some of the feeling of when i was in college, when people just dropped by you know? hard to do when our friends live so far away but we're attempting it this weekend.

have a great one.

[miscelenaclosed.livejournal.com]

Great questions, as always.

'Those who serve'... If we're setting aside soldiers for the purpose of the question, the next place I look is to the largely unrecognized people who spent their lives devoted to a scientific or technological innovation that produced something that has altered the lives of millions.

Health care researchers, for one instance. Many contribute small pieces to the collection of knowledge that allows vaccines to be invented, drugs that fight disease to be developed, etc. Certainly there are few cases of 'supreme sacrifice' (which is why we memorialize soldiers in particular, I believe?) but the effort of a life devoted to a greater good seems to me worthy of recognition, considering how many lives are saved.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

What a great answer!

Re: : -)

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

:), indeed! I just realized that I need to take my own poll!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I am for the day when we make health care workers into saints, rather than saints.

Re: memorial day

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Omaha Beach, and so many other D Day places, involved such carnage and sacrifice, it's hard to imagine it. The 1944/1945 battles, Bastogne, the Battle of the Bulge, so many deaths, so much heroism.

But I also think of the Verdun, and senseless killing and so much courage misplaced, and "Momento Mori" and there's nothing to do but remember.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

A worthy project! I'm glad you're memorializing him.

misplaced?

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

well...it is perhaps to play with words
but I suppose in a sense everything human
is on some level...misplaced... if only
those enterprises which are skilfully done
are to be remembered what will remain of
any...? I am not disagreeing with the thought
just reminding that there is no end to the
mourners bench on which we sit..."I had not
known death had undone so many"...Dante...
and yet resurrection etc well too late at night
forgive me if I have just goofed around here
to no purpose but yours +Seraphim.