Today is Memorial Day in the US, the official holiday for remembering the men and women killed in our various wars. It’s also the traditional start of the summer season, which means that it’s always an odd collision of the solemn and the raucous. Growing up, there was always a parade in town, which started downtown and made its way to the cemetery for an official ceremony and wreath-laying by the chaplain of the American Legion. He could never quite keep the words straight (“These flowers may wither, but the spirit of which they are a symbol will endure forever”), but he came close enough, then the Legion would fire three rounds of blanks, and a couple of buglers would play “Taps.”
And then there would be a mad swarm of ten-year-old boys trying to grab the shell casings from the blanks, and then barbeque.
Another part of the annual ceremony was the reading of the Gettysburg Address by a high school student:
Fourscore 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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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.
It’s a fantastic speech, whatever the people of the time may have thought, and powerful even read haltingly by somebody who’s not thinking about the words. And it remains the second-best statement by a President ever carved in marble in DC.
(It’s somewhat less wonderful as a PowerPoint presentation, but I’m obliged to either post that link, or get it six times in the comments…)
Sadly, Union is on a trimester calendar, so this is just another Monday as far as the college is concerned. The only real acknowledgment of the holiday is an Admissions event for high-school juniors looking to get a head start on next year’s college search. So, I’ll be at work today, teaching first-years about inductance, and trying to convince the next generation of students to come here.
But it’s still worth taking a moment to read over Lincoln’s words, and offer some small tribute to those who have served and died. We owe them a lot.
So what’s the best statement by a president ever carved in marble in DC?
I just read Lincoln’s words out loud; the lump in my throat makes it hard to swallow my morning coffee. Thanks for the post/reminder. I hope someday we humans will have no need to make such speeches…
Union does not honor this holiday? Incredible.
I don’t see a trimester (by which you must mean a quarter system) calendar as an excuse.
[The original trimester shortened the regular semester by a week or so, to make the summer term the same length as the regular ones.]
Ian Durham: So what’s the best statement by a president ever carved in marble in DC?
“I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hatred against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” It’s around the inside of the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial.
Union does not honor this holiday? Incredible.
I don’t see a trimester (by which you must mean a quarter system) calendar as an excuse.
We call it a trimester, because the students take class for three terms each year. The summer is roughly the same length, which I suppose would make it sort of like quarters, but we don’t offer (many) classes in the summer.
It’s not an excuse, but the calendar is the only reason we’re still in session to not get the day off. Williams, Maryland, and Yale honored the holiday only in that they were already done with classes by the time Memorial Day rolled around. Had class been in session, I doubt we would’ve gotten a day off, any more than we got time off for Columbus Day, Veterans Day, MLK Day, or Presidents Day.
Academia sucks that way.
The whole juxtaposition between Memorial day and drinking beer while grilling meat is really weird. I think Americans just cannot do solemn. Maybe it is because we have been so lucky. We have never lost a whole generation to a single stupid war.
Despite being in academia, I get Memorial Day off. The quarter ends in another few weeks but this is up there with Xmas or MLK’s birthday in terms one of the few days off.
Of course, I am in the office anyway.
We get Memorial Day off, so the kids get a 3-day weekend near the middle of the 6-week summer session I am teaching.
We long ago gave up any hope of having 15 weeks of instruction plus a week of finals in our system, and holidays can really cause havoc for some schedules. A Mon-Wed evening class has fewer days than a Tue-Thurs class, for example.
I was an undergrad in a quarter system, and we had two full weeks more of classroom time than we have in our semester system, mostly as a result of trying to make the three semesters close to the same length while allowing for spring break and Christmas and a week break before fall starts to handle last-minute orientation and registration.
It also made it easier to fit in some oddball elective.
Brad – Memorial Day was quite solemn when it started (as Decoration Day), for the reason you state. The US did lose a whole generation to a single stupid war, but that is only remembered in the South. The name and date were shifted when it became a national (rather than Union) holiday.
Ian Durham: So what’s the best statement by a president ever carved in marble in DC?
“I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hatred against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
I’ll forego comparisons with Jefferson, but I think the Gettysburg Address may only be Lincoln’s second best speech. I figured you meant Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, which has a similar and if anything stronger effect on me, at least, than the justly celebrated Gettysburg Address. (The two speeches are carved into facing walls at the Lincoln Memorial.)
If I had to pick a quote it would be the four words “And the war came.”, but (as is well enough known without my help) the whole speech is monumental, sad, prophetic, and kind, all rolled into one. I think it’s one of the handful of finest things ever written, whether by a President or not.
= = =
However, I didn’t “do” Memorial Day other than by spading my garden in the afternoon, and having crabs and beer with neighbors in the evening. I sometimes think something like that is what 90% of the war dead we’re supposed to honor would have liked to do. But that’s probably a little too convenient for me.