WebliminalBlog

We have a couple of customs or recurring behaviors that happen around what we call memorial Day.

One is a large pot-luck/party we like to throw/host the Friday of the memorial Day Weekend. We try to invite all our friends, and usually 50 -75 people show up. People tend to bring very good food. It’s a treat to see, eat, and hear everyone say how great the food was. Unfortunately, we sometimes miss inviting someone. If you weren’t invited, we’re sorry. Let us know so you can be invited next year. It’s fun!

Memorial Day, though, is a somber celebration. Fredericksburg is the home of one of the bloddiest series of battles of the (U.S.) Civil War. Over 15,000 Union (U.S.) soldiers were killed here, most in the battle of December 1862. The National Park Service oversees the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park. As they say,

The Bloodiest Landscape in North America

Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania – more than 85,000 men wounded; 15,000 killed. No place more vividly reflects the Civil War’s tragic cost, in all its forms. These places reveal the trials of a community and nation at war.

Each year, with the help of local Scouts, the National Cemetery in Fredericksburg is lit with thousands of luminaria, one for each two or three soldiers buried there. You go in the evening or better yet when it is dark and climb the hill to where most of the graves are found. As you’re walking up the hill you see maybe a couple of hundred of the luminaria, but you’re unprepared for the scene of thousands of these, each representing the soldiers who died at these battles. Each half hour, a trumpeter plays Taps. It is very difficult not to be caught in the emotion of the moment and to feel that emotion as a personal physical force. I think it is even more difficult not to see, as Taps is being played, the cost in human life that is the direct result of war. Why did these people do it? Why do we continue war? Why did the U.S. go into a pre-emptive war?
Some other pictures of the luminaria are here. All are available at http://webliminal.com/images/luminaria

Visit next Memorial Day.

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DoD Confirmation List Latest Coalition Fatality: Jun 05, 2007 Source: Iraqi Coalition Casualty Count