Tag: cemetery

Other items of interest

Hiding History

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wreath laying ceremony at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

While every cemetery holds hallowed ground, the rolling green hills of Arlington National Cemetery go beyond the grief filled quiet found in other places. The space, the land, the very air holds that which is holy knowing each white marble headstone, row upon row, represents an individual braver than I am. Whether volunteers or draftees, these men and women were willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice for our American way of life.

The Washington Post recently revealed that the sweeping efforts to exclude any reference to diversity, equity, and inclusion by the new administration’s Department of Defense has resulted in information about notable African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and women buried at the Cemetery being unpublished, altered, or hidden. My librarian’s heart and my American soul hurt knowing that DOD has blocked or removed information about these brave Americans simply because their stories have been deemed too “woke”.

I am not a military strategist. But it seems to me that with a growing list of global hot spots potentially threatening national security, DOD staff time would be better spent focusing on today’s threats rather than obscuring historical information on its various websites. The valiant efforts of the Tuskegee Airmen or the stories of brave women pilots who flew planes from manufacturing centers to the front in WWII should not be hidden simply because the individuals who performed those tasks were not white males.

Photo details – While laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier occurs frequently, I have only ever known one person who performed this ritual. I was invited to attend the ceremony when my dear friend Margaret retired from senior service at the Pentagon. I regret my decision to stay in Minnesota to manage some long-forgotten library task. I wish I had followed my heart to Washington, D.C. when she performed this honorable act on January 6, 2012.

This photo captures the moment she presented a wreath to the honor guard. Her husband Tom, a retired Air Force Colonel, stood to her left and her two sons stood at attention. (Edward in the Marine uniform and Peter in AirForce blue. He is still on active duty as a Lieutenant Colonel and Squadron Commander.)

Travel

Pilgrimage to Massachusetts:  A postcard summary

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Alcott house during a 7-month failed utopian experiment at Fruitlands

My first travel discovery was a shift in language; the journey defined not as a trip, or a vacation or even a history tour but as “pilgrimage.”  For the 15 of us, this was a time to immerse ourselves in stories; to amble the same path as Henry David Thoreau trod along the shores of Walden pond; to climb the same steep, narrow wooden stairs to the Arlington Street Church bell tower and ring the same bells that would have gathered people to hear William Ellery Channing speak; to saunter through Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and touch the gravestone of Louisa May Alcott. 

Some highlights of our days of pilgrimage:

New England stone wall on the Emerson-Thoreau Amble
  • King’s Chapel – touched the last bell cast and hung by Paul Revere
  • Arlington Street Church – tried my hand at ringing three of the 16 bells
  • Mount Auburn Cemetery – left memorial bouquets at the graves of William Ellery Channing, Hosea Ballou, John Murray, and Margaret Fuller
  • Walden Pond – walked the entire pond and left a Winona river rock at the stone cairn close to the site of Thoreau’s cabin where he lived for 2 years, 2 months and 2 days
  • Old Manse – saw the desks where Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter and Emerson wrote Nature
  • Sleepy Hollow Cemetery – discovered that as they were neighbors in life, so too they are neighbors today as we visited Authors Row and the family plots of the Alcotts, Thoreaus, Emersons, and Peabodys leaving pencil homages for Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, and Elizabeth Peabody.
First Parish in Concord after vespers on the evening of our departure

Our days were filled visiting churches, graveyards and cemeteries (learning these two are different from one another) and touring the homes of literary giants.  All the while hearing concise history lessons laced with anecdotes that put flesh and bone to revered names and made them quirkily human.  We benefited from bookstore visits, invigorating conversations, time for quiet reflection, and the recitation of poetry.

The Road
The road waits. 
... when it invites you
to dance at daybreak, say yes.
Each step is the journey; a single note the song.
-	Arlene Gay Levine

P.S.  And six of us hopped the green line to Fenway for a Red Sox win.  The green monster is really monstrously tall!