Jackson's Actions

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire. --Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC) <

I wouldn't have known it was Veteran's Day if I didn't listen to NPR. This holiday used to be called Armistice Day, and it was to celebrate the end of World War I.

Imagine.



We have whole generations that don't remember World War II.

The French TODAY are still trying to find and defuse the shells laying around their countryside from that war. It's a big problem, hard to imagine. They have to bury and detonate them when they find them. Between 50 and 75 TONS of shells are brought in each year to be detonated. The aftermath of war....it staggers my mind.

It also resonates deeply within me. I lost my father in World War II. His memorial detonates in my chest on a regular basis. Here's one stanza of a very recent poem entitled "Every Burning Thing"

1943

My father rode tail gun in a B17. His ship was
the last of fifteen in formation when the Luftwaffe
attacked. The bombs on The Big Bitch exploded,
the plane spun and fell in pieces—-fireworks
in a sky cluttered with steel birds, heavens grayed
by smoke. The Secretary of War expressed
his deep regret. Sixty years later, the fires still
smolder, a million little matches ready to ignite.

And every time I turn on the radio, open a newspaper, or watch the news on TV, the
smoke and fire of Iraq and Afghanistan burn my eyeballs, sear the skin of my emotional memory banks. I am ready to explode from this loathing of war.

Rest in peace, old soldiers. And young, and those still scarred and alive. Know that you are not alone in your grief, in the horror of your mental pictures...know that
there are those of us who love you and wish you peace. There are those of us wandering this nation, seeking the shells of hate, ignorance and greed so that they can be buried and detonated.

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