Memorial Day Photo Tribute

Who do they die for, the soldiers we honor today?

Is it the past; for our traditions, our foundations of freedom, our long-burning light for the world?

Is it the present; for brothers and sisters and children and folks who need protection now to secure their futures?

Or is it our future; for the opportunity to live in a world where there is more freedom and less warfare?

All that matters of course is the sacrifice, the tens of thousands of greatest sacrifices of all that we honor today. And for that, I'll turn to my past, present and future, my first born, back when I was young, who works with me today, and who I pray will be carrying some part of me forward when I'm gone. She is in Washington DC now and I am borrowing my Memorial Day post from the photos she has posted on her trip blog.

Every star on this long, long wall represents one soldier, sailor or marine who lost his or her life in WWII. One of them is for my mom's cousin Christopher Fassnacht, who's bomber was shot down over Germany. Thankfully, one is not for my father, who survived submarine warfare in the Pacific to return and live out his part of the Greatest Generation.

I would like someday to help place the 260,000 memorial flags at Arlington -- but that honorable task is assigned to the Third United States Infantry Regiment (the Old Guard), not mere civilians like me.

The Vietnam War Memorial moved my daughters greatly, as it does so many. ID #1 has many, many photos of it up on her blog; here's a selection.





The note says, "I love you -- you are my light. I'll miss you as long as the Sun turns in the sky. Ann." Michael H. Cavanaugh, you died for your country many years ago and still your light burns, as do so many lights, so many flames of freedom whose lives may have been cut short, but whose flames burn on.

I'll close with this powerful photo. The Korean War troops patrol in the shadows, their faces etched with the sharp attention they are focusing on their duty; it is as if they are eternally on a dark and dangerous patrol to protect America, who you see in the background, swathed in bright sunlight.

God bless our troops.

Google: Screw The Fighting Man!

Once again, Google has decided not to honor Conservative or religious values on its home page, adding a slight of heroes killed in combat to its earlier slights of Christian holidays.

Today, Memorial Day, Google welcomes you with a plain page. No remembrance there of those who died so Google would be here today, and be free to do business with the Commies in China. Not one electron expended to pay homage to those that made Google's home page possible by defending our country and our freedom of speech.

Ask.com did better, with this little patriotic icon and a link to its Memorial Day search page, which leads off with this nice history of the day from USMemorialDay.org, where I learned among many other interesting things that this is the 139th Memorial Day, and that the tradition may have started in the South with widows honoring their Civil War dead, but,

It is more likely that [Memorial Day] had many separate beginnings; each of those towns and every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860's tapped into the general human need to honor our dead, each contributed honorably to the growing movement that culminated in Gen [John] Logan giving his official proclamation in 1868.

There's also a petition on the site you can sign to ask Congress to move the Memorial Day holiday to its traditional day, May 30, instead of its current floating day. Seems like a good idea.

How hard would it be for Google to admit that it is an American company, serving American people who, by and large, cherish our American holidays and have "a general human need to honor our dead?"

How hard would it be for you to at least try a different search engine as your default, and turn to Google, as I do, only when you need its generally superior search capabilities?

God bless our fallen heroes, who deserve better than Google.