Happy Holiday!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!


We are blessed that the sun shines upon us year-round in southern California. It is a spectacular beautiful weekend, with lots of fun promised for all. With an extra free day, what a bonus! We can let loose and bathe in hedonism for three days. This memorial weekend happens to be the biggest day for race driving with just the Indi 500 to draw approximately 350,000 people. Not to mention the carnivals, concerts, hockey playoffs, and the superb sales retailers are offering to celebrate the fallen!

On this day when one commemorates those fallen in combat, it is ironic that more emphasis is posited on the devotion to pleasure. It would seem to anyone who views this carnival objectively, a bit sardonic. The noise of the drunken masses drowns the real pain and cruel reality of our current situation. I do frequently forget we are at war and that currently there are maimed soldiers suffering horrific loss. Yet, is it because of my accelerated tempo of life? Or that there are so few reminders that we’re at war?

There is no discreet downplaying the flash in glamorous televised events, unless you listen to public radio. Not even in consideration of the current recession which has wiped close to six millions jobs - and growing. And which threatens future social security, and alternatively, mental stability? So, let’s toast and be merry, although not everyone has the means to – nor the desire to. Least of all is the Gulf War vet, who cannot walk more than one block without aid. His body is ravaged by the effects of the chemicals he was polluted with.

Yet his mission was so secret that there is no trace of it. Therefore, he is battling still to this day, to get credit and compensation or it. Yet not all are oblivious to what this day entails; the insurmountable suffering which created this three day holiday fest. Perhaps they have witnessed the carnage which pits brother against brother, as if they were pit bulls in a fenced ring. Which morphs a good boy into a killer machine, when all he really wanted was a way out of the ghetto scene.

So, let us slather on the sun screen, drink and be merry, and along the way make a conscious toast for those brave men and women who are long gone,
and of those orphans’ products of war. When people say, "happy Memorial Day weekend!" do they realize what they're saying?




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