Memorial Day

Memorial Day: 2007It was a memorable day and weekend. I spent 3 days with Laura’s 8th grade class in Chicago. It was sweet with a nice bus ride with a few teachers and 43 kids. In no particular order over two days we hit Chinatown, Boat Ride, Ginos, ESPN Zone, Shedd Aquarium, Vienna Hot Dog Factory, Whirly Ball, Sears Tower (aborted), Navy Pier, Blue Man Group and the Museum of Science and Industry. It was... a trip. Nice kids. Bus broke down on day two and I took 1/2 the kids on a forced march from the Merchandise Mart to Shedd Aquarium...quite walk.

On our ways around Chicago on and off the bus, we passed a war memorial down near Grant Park which had..empty boots...thousands of empty boots sitting in the park with the name tags on them...
But I put that out of my mind and then drove with my daughter up to Arcadia where we saw some old friends, made some new friends and visited what has become Holy ground for our family, Camp Arcadia. Every year they have a work weekend on Memorial Day where they open up camp, clean the grounds and do some projects. The last few years there have been greater and greater numbers coming to camo for this and this year there were almost 150 people up there to help.
I have...over the years become a specialist in...debris. The camp over the winter gets covered in a thick layer of leaves...sand...dirt...sticks...and...debris. It is everywhere and needs to be shoveled, swept and eventually hauled by pick up to...a debris pile. It is highly skilled labor and my team did about 12 pick up trucks full of debris and it is...exhausting. The talented people did electrical work...built some huge decks...laid concrete...organized the camp store...cleaned the Inn and even more important...dealing with the dreaded Garlic Mustard.

The Garlic Mustard is an invasive species. Evidently it threatens the Trillium in a way that is not pleasing to God evidently. The Garlic Mustard people were lead by an older lady who wore a large brimmed white hat and spoke of Garlic Mustard with the same passion and violence that Cheney speaks of Al Quaida. The Garlic Mustard was linked with 9-11 and the disappearance of small children in the woods. It was insidious and threatened not only the Trillium but our very freedom....
Which all seemed funny until I realized it was Memorial Day and I kept thinking about those boots. On the way home I listened to several Memorial Day shows on the radio, some on local radio and some on NPR and they all shamed me for giving no more then a passing thought to our country, those soldiers defending our interests, their families and..those empty boots. 3,495 pairs of empty boots. Men and women...all gone and all leaving families and loved ones...friends...and me sitting in my car buzzing home from Michigan without a care in the world.

And that was really the issue on this Memorial Day. A few thousand American kids dead. Between 65,000 and 650,000 Iraqui casualties but we don’t really care enough to make an accurate count. That is a lot of blood. And we will still be there next Memorial Day. At this pace another 1000 pairs of boots. That is a lot of boots and...a lot of blood on our hands for a country that is MUCH more worried about $3.00 a gallon for gas.