Veterans’ Day Reflections
November 11, 2013
Flags honoring veterans, Evergreen-Washelli cemetery
Veterans’ Day remembrances
There Will Come Soft Rains
by Sara Teasdale
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
“We owe it to ourselves to remember what war is, so that we do not go lightly into its great darkness.”
— Gary Kamiya, “Bitter Fruit: Behind the Scenes, America Buries Its Iraq War Dead”
Tree-Watching Project: How to Die Gently, Like Leaves
November 11, 2012
Fallen maple leaves with raindrops
Fallen leaves at Lake Chelan State Park
“Adding a leaf’s breadth to the depth of the soil.”
“How pleasant to walk over beds of these fresh, crisp, rustling fallen leaves — young hyson, green tea, clean, crisp, and wholesome! How beautiful they go to their graves! how gently lay themselves down and turn to mould! — painted of a thousand hues and fit to make the beds of us living. So they troop to their graves, light and frisky. They put on no weeds. Merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting their graves, whispering all through the woods about it. They that waved so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay at the foot of the tree and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! How they are mixed up, all species, — oak and maple and chestnut and birch! they are about to add a leaf’s breadth to the depth of the soil. We are all the richer for their decay. Nature is not cluttered with them. She is a perfect husbandman; she stores them all.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Journals, October 20, 1853
Fallen maple leaf on pavement, already starting to decay
Autumn is that elegiac time of year, and fallen leaves are its emblem. I recently read (in a blog I follow called “The Improvised Life“) about an intriguing art installation by Jane Hammond consisting of handmade leaves, each inscribed with the name of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. This memorial sculpture is called Fallen, and it seemed fitting to share it with you today, Veteran’s Day, when we honor all service men and women, living and dead. You can follow the links to read more about this piece of art and see it installed in its last exhibition.
A Veterans’ Day Remembrance
November 11, 2011
Veterans' Memorial Cemetery at Evergreen-Washelli in Seattle
Chime Tower and Veterans' Memorial Cemetery
“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”
— Winston Churchill
