Happy Memorial Day

I will probably be unable to post or check email until next Tuesday since my wife and I will be visiting with my mother, her parents, and some of their friends at her parents' condo in the Florida panhandle. We'll have a computer, but she's writing her dissertation, which means: "No blogging for you, Gus!"

A Short Break from Blogging

This will be my first hiatus from my normal posting schedule since last Christmas. So what'll I be doing? Enjoying the sun and sand, the company of my family, more beer than usual, and perhaps doing a bit of barbecue under adverse conditions (i.e., using a gas grill. Heh!).

And reading! I've not gotten to do much reading lately. I get to do some catching up this weekend. So yesterday, I moseyed over to the bookstore with some ancient gift cards and loaded the hopper with some really good stuff to go with my recently-arrived copy of the combined set of TIA from back in the Peter Schwartz days. I left Barnes & Noble with Thomas Sowell's Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics, and Steven Raichlen's How to Grill: The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques. I've started Sowell already and it looks like it will be superb. I'll take Freakonomics with me in case I finish Sowell, which is entirely possible. Raichlen, a comprehensive reference, I determined to be a must-have after good friend (and former gas-griller) Raymund astounded my wife and me one weekend with a damned good brisket.

And if I get my hands on a computer? We all need a break from time to time, but the writer in me may scream loud enough to get me to blog. Who knows? I'm leaving the option open, but am not obligating myself.

The Meaning of the Holiday

In the meantime, I recommend that we all enjoy ourselves on this holiday, the more the better. Our ability to do this at all comes from the fact that we live in a free country, and that countless patriots have fought to keep it that way. They preferred to die rather than live as slaves, and many, unfortunately, did die.

It may at first sound trite to say that we owe it to these brave men and women to enjoy ourselves this weekend, but I am saying it and I mean it. If we pause from the daily grind and stop to smell the flowers, we can recall the infinite beauty and promise that a life lived free has to offer. We can appreciate on more than just an abstract level what the patriots of the past and the present have fought for. We can see why they fought for the cause of liberty.

Let's enjoy ourselves, but with a purpose: To honor those who appreciated freedom enough to risk their lives for it. By enjoying our own lives, we are commemorating theirs. To remember our veterans, I recommend the following links.

First, I recommend reading/re-reading my favorite editorial on Memorial Day, written by Robert Tracinski for the first Memorial Day after the atrocities of September 11, 2001.

In the sloppy terminology so typical of today, it is common to attribute the courage of our soldiers to "self-sacrifice." But this misses the enormous difference between our soldiers and the malevolent fanatics on the other side, who declare that they want to die because they "love death." American soldiers do not go into battle because they love death. They go into battle because they love freedom. They love the liberties we enjoy and the prosperous and benevolent society that these liberties make possible. And they realize that someone has to fight to defend all of this.

And then, on a more concrete level, I recommend stopping by Willy Shake's digs at Unconsidered Trifles for two nice photo essays on Fleet Week New York. As the Virtual Bard says, "To all present or former members of our nation's military: THANK YOU!"

Have a happy Memorial Day. Our fallen would have done so, and they would wish the same for you.

-- CAV