Memorial.

The weather which had been doing full on summer a month early has settled into something a bit more reasonable this weekend. Figures that it would cool down just in time for the pools to open.

We are just doing the lazy thing this weekend. I'd like to go downtown to the new memorial, but it's going to be just too darn crowded I'm sure. I was there when they dedicated the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I couldn't see the president or anything, heck I didn't actually see the memorial until the next time I visited. What I did see and hear was a huge number of vets. They told their stories to each other and I soaked them up by extension. Such different views they each have. Such different experiences.

What I know of WWII is different. I have in my heart that feeling of watching 'Saving Private Ryan' those first minutes when I said to myself "how did they manage it, how did they win?" It have too, my trip to London where buildings are pock marked from shells that fell on the city and many famous sites have their history and their WWII history.

I also have the view from my father. He worked at the Navy Yard. He was a civilian defense worker and didn't have to go. What he experienced, however, was harassment and ridicule so fierce that he enlisted anyway. It was fairly late in the war. He was stationed in the Phillipines. It was after the major battles were fought and he was a part of the occupation forces. He never spoke about it. He came back and went back to his work.

That's what you did. No wonder it took so long to get the WWII vets a memorial. They didn't complain, they just came home and moved on as well as they were able.

Here's to them. A hard war fought and a hard peace won. And here's to the men and women fighting today. For all the controversy here, they are still putting their lives on the line every day. And here's to the saying, however cliched it might seem, that freedom is never free.

Thank you veterans!