Remember Memorial Day Meaning

Arlington Cemetery, from a visit in 2014. Center sculpture is titled “Price of Freedom.”
Lower left is honoring the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Right is the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

I almost forgot about Memorial Day this weekend. It’s the last Monday of May, but there are six days of May after the last Monday. So it came as a minor surprise. I had half written a post for this week, but I’m setting that aside for a few days to do this Memorial Day remembrance.

I admit, it took me a while—longer than it should have—to recognize what Memorial Day was. As a child, it was sometimes called “Decoration Day,” the day we decorated the graves of our ancestors with flowers from the garden. I didn’t attach the military meaning to it; we decorated the graves of all our relatives in a given cemetery, not just military members.

And once I attached the military meaning, then I incorrectly thought of it as a day to honor veterans. I didn’t get it right until maybe a decade and a half ago. Here’s the accurate info:

·       Armed Forces Day, for those currently serving, is celebrated the third Saturday in May (May 16 this year).

·       Veterans’ Day, for living former servicemen/women, is celebrated November 11.

·       Memorial Day, for those who died while serving, is celebrated the last Monday in May (May 25 this year).

 

Originally, Memorial Day was celebrated on May 30, whatever day of the week that fell on. That was changed when the majority of our holidays were placed on Mondays, in 1971, to give people a three-day weekend, which allowed for travel and was probably intended to thereby allow for more celebrating of those days. Unfortunately, a three-day weekend has made some such weekends generic. And Memorial Day may have thus suffered loss of meaning, or reverent remembering.

So to remedy that loss of remembering, I’m adding this post here, in grateful thanks to those who gave their all. As Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address:

…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Memorial Day is meant as a holy day, not a mere holiday. I expect most of us will enjoy the holiday aspects as well. Maybe a cookout or a family outing. But it would do our country well if we also set aside a bit of time to use the day for its intended purpose—to remember the fallen.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

That Wounded Beast Needs Defeating Again

Revelation 13:

1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.

3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.

 We’ve mentioned the Revelation 13 beasts a number of times here, often enough that it’s starting to feel like a theme. Symbolically, this sea beast is the worldwide cabal, the whore of all the earth, the great and abominable church, the secret combinations, the deep state, the anti-Christ. The symbolism of the sea means it extends beyond one nation; it crosses the seas. So it is multinational. The heads represent leaders, or aspects, or possibly particular countries or organizations. I’m sure you can use your imagination to try to name them. Horns represent powers or abilities, and so do crowns. The multiple numbers of them show great power. Seven is symbolic of completeness; ten also indicates completeness, so it probably means over the whole entire world. The dragon from which the beast gets its power, position, and authority is Satan.

Now take a look at verse 3. One of the heads is wounded. It looks like it is a mortal wound. But then that head is healed, which seems incredible to the world. I think the likely real-world corollary of this wounded head is the taking out of communism/socialism/fascism in the past century. We defeated this beast head in World War II. That should have been the end of it. The many millions who had died because of this beast head were a sure indicator of its evil nature, and the good people of the world wanted it thoroughly and completely defeated.

We thought we had done that. We thought we had conquered the ideologies that led to hundreds of millions of deaths in the last century. The people in general were absolutely against them. No communism. No socialism. No Nazism. We had won WWII. Korea and Vietnam were also against this ideological enemy. But eventually we even won the Cold War.

To read the full article, follow LINK TO SUBSTACK.

The Judicial Branch: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part V

We’re continuing our monthly series celebrating the nation’s 250^th birthday. Here are the previous parts:

·        Part I: The Declaration of Independence

·        Part II: The Preamble of the Constitution

·        Part III: Lawmaking

·        Part IV: The Executive Branch

In our Part V today, we’re getting to Article III of the Constitution, which covers the judicial branch of the federal government. That is, the Supreme Court and other federal courts.

The Supreme Court is somewhat seasonal. It is typical for the session to choose, in late summer and fall, what cases it will hear for the year—and the year is numbered by when the process starts, so we’re currently still in the 2025 session. They will hear oral arguments for those cases throughout the winter and spring. And they make their rulings by the end of June. That’s a general rule. In reality, they can take up an urgent case and rule on it quickly at any time. And they aren’t required to wait until June to rule on any case; they can rule when they have a decision ready. And sometimes they hold a ruling until July or so. It just typically piles up until June, with rulings coming out in multiples the last couple of weeks. It feels a bit like a sports tournament, with results coming down to the wire and everyone paying close attention.

Article III, Sections 1-3

Let’s do our due diligence and make sure we understand the actual wording of this relatively short article of the Constitution.

To read the full article, follow LINK TO SUBSTACK.

The Priority—a Cultural Question

me with the family in the mid-90s; me being grandma in 2012

I want to talk about things I’m thinking about, trying to understand changes in culture, while still holding on (not necessarily clinging bitterly) to traditional principles. This is about what is expected of women. And of men.

It is my assertion that feminism has worked to turn women into bad men, and maybe as a side story also turn men into weaker creatures.

This touches on economics, family, education, and a whole lot of things.

Where to begin?

There was a Jordan Peterson lecture, quite a number of years ago, in which he looks at the societal change of women in the workplace, men and women working together, and saying we haven’t worked that out yet: how to behave toward one another, how to become simply professional coworkers, in a world in which men and women find each other attractive, or not, or maybe want to have friendships with the people they work with but don’t know how to navigate that. He pointed out that half a century is not nearly enough time to navigate such a dramatic societal change.

That’s just a piece of it. What I’d like to start with is the current expectation that women are in the workplace—not at home raising children.

Chances are, you had some kind of reaction to that last sentence, and it was based on a whole lot of unfairness that has been pointed out to you in media of all sorts, and in education, and probably some personal experience—just everywhere.

Somewhere underneath the surface is a change from family economic units to individual economic units. It has been a seismic societal shift in a relatively quick few decades.

To read the full article, follow LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Comprehending the Chess Board

 

I’ve mentioned, more than once, that strategy is not my strong suit. But I do play chess, a bit, because the guys in the family enjoy it. Actually, at this point, I’m not often playing chess games; I’m playing chess puzzles, on the chess.com app. They’re set up so, if you make the right one or two moves, you can get a checkmate. And I’m pretty good at it.

Our grandson is a chess puzzles champion, in his interscholastic league. One day he showed me how to play a chess puzzles match (which I haven’t tried since). You needed to make the right moves almost instantly, which he does. I take an average of 5-7 seconds. So I guess I’m very slow.

one of the family chess matches
several years ago

Occasionally I take a free lesson, which shows you how to make good opening moves, and a bit of strategy from there—which makes sense when it’s explained to me, but otherwise I’m at a loss.

Because the chess puzzles seem so easy to me, and the situations follow patterns that come up a lot, I’ve asked my sons how a player would allow those situations to arise. But they assure me, those situations do happen in the natural course of play.

All of this is to say, common sense requires some experience, some careful observation, some understanding of the whole board, and some pattern recognition.

In our somewhat chaotic world today, is there a skilled player who understands the board, or a wild-and-wooly take-any-piece-you-can player?

Glenn Beck thinks we may have a chess champion handling the board. He says,

“If this war ends without spreading, and this theory that I'm going to lay out for you, these six things, if this is what it is, it will all have been done without the kind of global war that has defined the 20th Century. This is America reclaiming its golden age. Just smarter, stronger, and sovereign.”

Thursday’s overview (it was on radio, so you have to just imagine the chalkboard) is similar to one I wrote about a few weeks ago—also because of what Glenn Beck was saying. I don’t think we can say definitively that he’s right, but I think the evidence is building that our President Trump has a good grasp on the worldwide game board—and a plan.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

The Executive Branch: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part IV

We’re continuing our monthly series celebrating the nation’s 250^th birthday.

·       Part I: The Declaration of Independence 

·       Part II: The Preamble of the Constitution 

·       Part III: Lawmaking 

·        In our Part IV today, as we’re walking through the Constitution, Article II covers the executive branch, the powers vested in the President of the United States of America.

Before we get started, I just want to mention a version of the Constitution I got in the mail, from Turning Point USA. It’s all there, like a pocket version, although it’s slightly bigger than pocket sized. It includes illustrations, and on every page a definition of terms down at the bottom. (Some pages the definitions take up half the page.) The whole thing is there—all the original wording. But with the helps, it just seems easier to understand. If you’ve got a young person in your life—or if you just want an easier way to read and understand the Constitution—this might be a handy version. They sent me mine for free, in an envelope requesting a donation. But you can get these from their website, here. 

Article II, Section 1: Electing the President

OK, Article II of the Constitution first goes over the election of the President, which is using the Electoral college.

To read the full article, follow LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Life Is Full—Because the Tomb Is Empty

"He Is Not Here," by Walter Rane

As I do most years, I celebrate more than just Easter day; I celebrate the Easter season, and particularly Holy Week, from Palm Sunday through Resurrection Sunday.

Celebration can take a lot of forms, as it does for other holidays (holy days) as well. For me, that involves home decorations, food, family traditions, music, study, and anything that helps me focus on the reason for the celebration. Easter is particularly rich in meaning, so it’s full of opportunities.

At Christmas I’ve been filling my decorations with nativity scenes my entire adult life, so I have a pretty sizable collection of small ornaments and table decorations. For Easter there are beginning to be decoration items related to the actual meaning of Easter, little scenes, maybe with moving parts, to tell the story. But I haven’t acquired any yet. I have a couple of small art pieces, and I painted one last year, of the moment of resurrection. This year I have plans to do one of the empty tomb. It’s still in planning stages, but I’m hoping to get time this weekend to make it a reality.

Music celebration is something I fully embrace. This year on actual Easter Sunday, the twice-a-year Worldwide General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be taking place (it’s always the first Saturday and Sunday of April and October). So we’ll be listening to the Tabernacle Choir and hearing messages from general church leaders, including our prophet and apostles, as well as a few others. So music locally was done this year on Palm Sunday. Our ward (congregation) did a very nice program, mostly music, for our sacrament meeting (worship service) this past Sunday. I was assigned the organ that day, and I play for the choir and the Primary (children 3-11). And I sang a solo, accompanied on organ.

I did that solo again in the evening for our stake concert (a stake is a geographically combined group of congregations, like a diocese; ours has eight wards). I also sang in the choir.

The piece I sang was “He Was Despised,” an alto aria from Handel’s Messiah, not one of the more well known ones, but one I really like to sing. Handel knows how to write for the different voice parts, and all of the alto solos are a good fit for my voice; they feel good to sing. This one is mournful. It uses the words from Isaiah 53: “He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” written some 700 years before they happened.

To read the full article (which includes a video I made), FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.