Remember

I wonder if Monday will be different than past Memorial Days.

For many people, so many of our national holidays seem to have become bereft of meaning other than an excuse for a three-day weekend and a beer-sodden barbecue. Post September 11, I noticed that November 11 took on a new poignancy. Will Monday do so as well?

A friend of mine once suggested that we take our holidays more seriously, by using the Jewish Sedar as a model. We should actually take time out from the consumption of barley beverages, and roasting of dead animals with sugary sauces, to tell the story of why we have the day off. For instance, for the Fourth of July, he recommended an oral reading of the Declaration of Independence.

These musings are just prelude to a link. Just in time for Memorial Day, Victor Davis Hanson writes an eloquent and personal tale of another time and place, when men were giants.

Think about reading it aloud with your family on Monday (good luck getting through it without choking or tearing up). And let us hope that the present circumstances will not require similar sacrifices on so massive a scale, and that if we do, the present generation will bear them as did our parents’, and grandparents’.