Althouse: Memorial Day, 2013.

May 27, 2013

Memorial Day, 2013.

Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison, Wisconsin.

43 comments:

Anonymous said...: Beautiful photos.; 5/27/13, 1:37 PM
Kirby Olson said...: Our country is not France and our professors should remember that and stop the crummy post-modernism and return to "liberty and justice for all," for which our forefathers died.; 5/27/13, 1:48 PM
Michael said...: Very nice photographs. Thanks.; 5/27/13, 2:14 PM
edutcher said...: Nice.

Thanks to you both.; 5/27/13, 2:20 PM
Roger J. said...: Thank you professor for the elegant photos--means a lot to me personally.; 5/27/13, 2:28 PM
lemondog said...: The Wall; 5/27/13, 2:29 PM
Ralph L said...: A local group started putting little Stars and Bars on the Confederate veterans buried in the (post war) city cemetery on Confederate Memorial Day, April 26 in NC. Someone must have complained, because for the last two years they've used small NC flags with the red and blue reversed, which looks odd. I believe one of my parents said that before WWII, NC didn't even celebrate the national holiday, but it may have been my grandmother and WWI. Sometimes, it's good when events leave living memory.; 5/27/13, 2:50 PM
edutcher said...: The men who wore the gray were as brave as the men wearing the blue and, revisionism to the contrary, most were fighting an invasion.

You can respect the man and still have your doubts about the cause.

The Lefties, of course, respect nothing or no one but their agenda.; 5/27/13, 3:10 PM
Nena's 99 Luftballons Song said...: Military is puzzling. Lost veterans is bordering incomprehensible. It is so painful to lose our troops. I feel so deeply for the parents and families of the lost soldiers. I know der Obama says Military is Voluntary, is the pressure that actually leads to enlistment voluntary ? Military protection is valued. Military moral issues remain. Extremely difficult life decision to be a member of the armed forces. Yet as an American citizen, it is nonetheless a free choice. I think a certain character is required to manage the responsibility associated with Military Service. Perhaps a character-type either born with or acquired via associations. May the veterans' souls rest in peace. And pray for peace to end the wars.; 5/27/13, 3:25 PM
JAL said...: On Memorial Day I remember this.; 5/27/13, 3:29 PM
Rusty said...: And for those cynics among us. This is the American Empire. Enough land on foreign soil to bury our war dead.; 5/27/13, 3:57 PM
chickelit said...: The array of different headstones unite into a common whole pattern.
Zooming in, unseen, the marble stones are blends of crystals, each of whose atoms arrange in orderly patterns.
Zooming back out, a different mix of pure individuals blend into a greater whole.; 5/27/13, 4:08 PM
Tim said...: "...most were fighting an invasion."

Indeed. So true.

No one is ever taught the Union fired on it's own fort at Fort Sumter, or that it was the Union states that seceded from the Confederacy.

It's been over 150 years, but the conspiracy to mask this truth in American history is just now coming to light.

That, and Lincoln was a fag.; 5/27/13, 4:20 PM
Chip S. said...: Lincoln was a fag.

But a vampire-hunting fag.

Muy macho.; 5/27/13, 4:28 PM
Humperdink said...: On Memorial Day, I remember my high school classmate (1969), Robert J. Acalotta. He was last seen fleeing his downed helicopter on Feb 20, 1971 in South Vietnam. Has not been seen since, nor has his body been recovered.

http://taskforceomegainc.org/a063.htm; 5/27/13, 4:33 PM
Fred Drinkwater said...: My nephew,
Lt. Thomas Claiborne, USMC
My father,
Col. Fred J. Drinkwater III, USMC

I think one of the hardest things my dad ever did, was to try to write a memorial for Thomas. He could not; I ended up writing and giving it for him.
RIP; 5/27/13, 5:09 PM
Steve Koch said...: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was a great speech memorializing the brave men who fought for their country, here is the text:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—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."; 5/27/13, 5:11 PM
Valentine Smith said...: Some dead within the living memory of many,
Many many more dead,
And none to remember,
Save us.

Young men mostly,
Forever nineteen or twenty or so,
Share hallowed ground,
Lying fallow save for the petrified garden
And brief carvings above their heads.

Only names and cryptic numbers say nothing,
Nothing of the muscle and blood gone to bone,
Nothing of the souls and spirits gone home,
So who is there to remember?

Save us.; 5/27/13, 5:34 PM
Deb said...: I attended the funeral of an 86 year old gentleman who served in the Marines during WWII. He was a Marine until the end. When his physical therapist told him a couple of months ago to "stand up straight, soldier!" he replied, "I'm not a soldier. I'm a Marine!"; 5/27/13, 6:12 PM
MadisonMan said...: Were you there for the bagpipe playing and gunshots this morning?; 5/27/13, 7:08 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Were you there for the bagpipe playing and gunshots this morning?"

No. We just walked over the in the late morning.; 5/27/13, 7:25 PM
MadisonMan said...: The twenty-one gun salutes (not sure how many guns they actually use) are awesome, although our dog is not pleased when it happens.

Highly recommended, but it does mean an early start to a day, and this morning with all the sprinkles, it was that hard to get up.; 5/27/13, 7:34 PM
J said...: I've participated in entirely too many military funerals as either firing party or casket party.Funeral days are ironic.Sad that another one of us has gone home but proud that they were among us.Other days after the funerals just fill me with a sense of something much much greater than me.Military cemeteries are truly awesome places.; 5/27/13, 8:35 PM
J said...: Traditionally the salute to the Fallen can be delivered one of two ways.A cannon salute is delivered one shot at a slow rolling pace.The more common rifle salute is performed as three volleys of seven shots.; 5/27/13, 8:41 PM
J said...: At Fort Barrancas the oldest graves in the cemetery belong to family members of US Public Health Service employees.A stroll through any cemetery is a walk through history.Try it some day.Caution- bring tissues or handkerchiefs.; 5/27/13, 8:48 PM
CachorroQuente said...: Here's a video of a song written by singer-songwriter Michael Troy titled The Last Day of May. The guy singing the song is Jed Marum, about whom I know nothing.

Troy is an excellent writer and performer from Fall River, Mass. Here is a song of his, Talk Radio; 5/27/13, 9:06 PM
MadisonMan said...: This was two sets of three volleys -- with 7 shots, I guess -- about 10 minuets apart. I think they do one at the Confederate Graves, and one at the Union.; 5/27/13, 9:17 PM
jacksonjay said...: Check out the "genius" tweet by the young "genius" Lena Dunham! I dare not repeat it here! Go to Drudge! Why has America (Althouse) embraced this woman?; 5/27/13, 9:22 PM
jacksonjay said...: Remembering Army Private Aaron Hudson - Highland Village, Texas.

Killed in Iraq on April 15. 2005.

Grew up on the pew behind us at church.

http://720mpreunion.org/history/honor_roll/casualties/hudson_aaron_m/hudson_aaron_m.html; 5/27/13, 9:28 PM
Craig said...: http://pinnacled.blogspot.com/2006/06/jefferson-barracks.html

Here's a link to pictures of my great great grandfather's grave at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. He died in the Civil War and I didn't find out about it until about a year or two before these pictures were taken. He saw action at Spanish Fort near Mobile in April, 1865, and died from yellow fever after chasing rebels fifty miles through the swamp past the mouth of the Tombigbee. He was from Prussia and didn't speak English, but lived in Wisconsin for nearly ten years. He spent the last six months of his life in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and Missouri.

My youngest brother and his wife had a son three years ago, so my Civil War ancestor's line will carry on with his surname for another generation.; 5/27/13, 9:28 PM
caplight45 said...: "I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom." - Abraham Lincoln in a letter to Mrs. Bixby upon the loss of her five sons in the Civil War. (21 November 1864); 5/27/13, 9:45 PM
Tim said...: Thinking of my second cousin, who was a fighter-bomber pilot aboard the USS Ranger (served with John McCain, FWTW); shot down over the Tonkin Gulf. Body never recovered, listed as MIA although we all know he was KIA. He was my great Uncle's only child.; 5/27/13, 9:47 PM
Drago said...: Jeff Teal: "At Fort Barrancas the oldest graves in the cemetery belong to family members of US Public Health Service employees."

Barrancas National Cemetery holds a very special place in the hearts of my family members.

We'll be visiting there again in August.; 5/27/13, 10:43 PM
J said...: Drago. Special place for us too.My mothers final resting place.In the fullness of time my father will join her there.; 5/27/13, 10:58 PM
Dopey said...: Memorializing the Confederacy, or. more accurately, honoring its soldiers, is difficult in this day of political correctness. In Nashville we have a privately maintained battlefield park in which a Federal force composed of a lot of Minnesota troops overran a supposedly impregnable Confederate position -- Shy's Hill. The memorial consisted of a Confederate battle flag, and American flag, and a Minnesota state flag. The Confederate flag was a target for the local progs until we changed it to the flag for the Confederate corps that defended the hill, a silver ball on a blue field (imagine a Japanese flag with a rising moon rather than a rising sun). Progs being as historically illiterate as they are easily offended we now have problems with the Minnesota flag, which apparently shows white people not being nice to Indians.; 5/27/13, 11:24 PM
Dopey said...: By the way, an unknown Civil War soldier in a Wisconsin cemetery?; 5/27/13, 11:26 PM
chickelit said...: Progs being as historically illiterate as they are easily offended we now have problems with the Minnesota flag, which apparently shows white people not being nice to Indians.

Proglodytes: heading for extinction. Good riddance.; 5/27/13, 11:31 PM
Browndog said...: Honorable, to honor.

Thank-you; 5/28/13, 12:16 AM
cold pizza said...: Dopey, Civil War soldiers does not necessarily mean "Confederate."

For 10 years, I volunteered as bugler for the Honor Guard details. On several occasions, I would be the only military member in attendance--sometimes the family would pass on the full Honor Guard and would request only a lone bugler. It was my privilege to render final honors at each of the several hundred funerals I witnessed. I've stood in Utah snow, Alabama and Georgia thunderstorms, the calm peacefulness of the Punch Bowl in Hawaii. I've been to immaculate Federal cemeteries and overgrown, nearly forgotten family plots.

I've played at the funerals of mostly strangers, but also a few friends and comrades, people who died younger than they should have, tears running down my cheeks as I struggled to keep the notes sounding clear and clean.

That is a beautiful cemetery, quiet and peaceful. I think though, that when I go, I'd like to be laid to rest on Kaua'i. There's a cemetery at Hanapepe that isn't much to look at, but it's next to the ocean and would give my family an excuse to visit Hawai'i regularly :) -CP; 5/28/13, 1:04 AM
Rusty said...: Dopey said...
By the way, an unknown Civil War soldier in a Wisconsin cemetery?

In a lot of Civil war battlefields the dead weren't picked up for days and sometimes weeks after the battle. There might not be much left of them. This was obviously a corpse found with the Wisconsin regiment dead.; 5/28/13, 7:36 AM
Tank said...: On Memorial Day, our local parade queues up on my block. It's the only day of the year all the neighbors come out and talk to each other. Then we watch the parade together. Down to about 5 Am Legion guys, mostly bands, boy scouts, fire engines now.; 5/28/13, 8:00 AM
Steve Koch said...: I was an MP at West Point during the Viet Nam war and participated as a shooter on the funeral honor guards. Like most of the MPs, I did not enjoy it cuz it was sad.; 5/28/13, 10:07 AM
Alex said...: I totally believe Abraham Lincoln fought vampires, because Hollywood told me so. I'm edumacated.; 5/28/13, 4:35 PM