Officially, it has passed

If I busied myself with only one feature of today, and if that feature was that it is 62F outside, then I would most likely tell all of you that today is just like a spring day.

But there are more qualities that make “today” than simply the temperature. The air is very dry and the wind is accompanied by a gentle rustle, supplied by the browning leaves still clinging to the trees. The long shadows cover not the last bits of snow, as they do in spring, but the remnants of the summer – the tomato cages I have yet to bury deep in the shed. And today, I pulled the rest of the pepper plants from the ground. The 2010 garden is, my friends, no more.

As we all grow older, we know that we too pass. What is it that we will leave behind that will, in some ways, keep our ideas and our qualities alive? For a garden, that’s an easy question. I have pasta sauce, pizza sauce, salsa, a murderous jar of straight jalapeno juice and a few gallons of tomato juice canned and stored away in the cupboard.

I need to do something so the rest of my life can leave such a delicious legacy…

They are the future.

I first volunteered for Philly Cares a number of years ago. There is a day once a year where a large number of volunteers from all around Philadelphia goes into the public schools and helps paint, organize, and do various cleaning jobs that need doing. One thing this gives me is a yearly benchmark on some facet of public education. It’s a feeling more than any quantitative measure, for sure. Whatever this benchmark is, I can say that I do not see progress and I’m very scared for our Nation. When I’m scared for our Nation, I am invariably worried about the free and democratic “Western” world, as the United States is a cornerstone of this way of life. Enough of the dramatics…

The group I was with, which was organized through my place of work, spent the day in a North Philly school named after Philadelphia administrator from the 19th century.

It’s mid-October. Almost 30 school days have passed in this school year. Why is it that only now the Reading Room is organized? The supply closet, which is where kids get their pencils, was fully impassable prior to the volunteer day. A new library was just built for this school, which is wonderful, but the teacher does not have a computer. And, as I said before, a month of school days have passed for the kids and that time will never be regained.

What else? A warning is painted in the restrooms warning children “Do Not Drink from Sinks.” This, in a school that has kindergarteners.

This is the crux of my concern with volunteering and charity: one should always help his or her neighbor. Being kind is the key to a peaceful, prosperous and democratic society. However, too much of our social infrastructure has moved back into the realm of charity. If budgets are tight, which they (always) are, we cannot cut from our long-term security. More than the military, well-educated citizens is what makes our Nation secure.

Reunion - penned a few weeks back

Today, in the waning days of September 2010, I received a postcard from myself. Sending yourself a postcard is a fun thing to do when you travel. I send one back to my home in North Wales, PA, on the day I leave the town I’m visiting and race it home. Come Wednesday, I get a nice reminder that I just had a break. This break was in Kansas City, Missouri.

I grew up in Paw Paw, just a few miles down I-94 from the exit for Decatur, where my father grew up. He has lived almost all of his live within that stretch of Eisenhower’s interstate, save just a couple of years. Those were spent training for and fighting in the Vietnam War.

Let me state something very clearly: all public-schooled American children are taught, rightfully, that the Constitution of the United States give the power to declare war to the Legislative Branch of our Government. Though that never happened during the Vietnam Conflict, it was most certainly a War. We can call it Just or Unjust as we see fit, but I was in Kansas City last weekend with a lot of folks that fought it, just the same.

I remember the Fourth of July parades is Decatur, on the corner of Phelps Street, when (I was very young, mind you) veterans of the Great War rode down the parade route in convertibles - waving. They weren’t able to march anymore. Now, almost 30 years later, the World War II vets are becoming as rare as those of the Great War were in my childhood. Someday, the same will be true for the Veterans of Vietnam. But that time is not here yet! Over the weekend, those spunky Vietnam Vets marched all over KC having one hell of a time.

Reunions are not new. As I’m not versed in the terminology of the military, I wouldn’t have thought that this reunion (actually, a series of reunions) was anything special. But this reunion was special. The U.S. Army is divided and subdivided into groups where men and women from all over the country end up shoulder to shoulder with each other all over the world. In the late 1960’s, that place was Vietnam. The reunion I just attended was for the United States Army, Americal Division, 198^th Light Infantry Brigade, 1^st of the 52^nd Battalion (written as 1/52), Delta Company. If the U.S. army was this newspaper page, a Company would be just a couple of letters. At the most - on the day when the most Americans were fighting in Vietnam - there was a half a million Americans there. Maybe one hundred were in the Delta Company on that day.

I’m not attempting to say that Delta Company was in any way special. What I am going to say is this: more than forty years later, this Company has closed ranks and meet year after year as if, from my experience, no time has passed at all.

There’s a man from Missouri that raises around 100 head of beef cattle a year as a living. Another is a Louisiana native that is one heck of a good time, but is almost impossible for this Northerner to understand come midnight. Then there is my father, from Decatur. A man that lost both of his legs in Vietnam walks on prosthetic legs and is the last one to complain about walking someplace new. One man lives today in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn in which he grew up (he owns a restaurant there now). Some folks from Pittsburgh, Savannah, all over the Midwest also attended. And me. I was able to witness this happen now for the second time.

Mornings of these reunions start with breakfast, of course, and then some sightseeing. All this time past, but when the commanding officer starts walking for the next destination, everyone falls in line and follows. I’d be at the front of the pack, whenever possible, as these COs command a respect that is infectious; one wants to follow a real leader. Same with the Lieutenants and the Sergeants within the ranks. Though I’m sure they earned the right of their ranks, the reality is that they simply were those ranks. Somehow in that war and in that time, water found it’s level.

Whether the rest of the day is visiting local museums, memorials, or the cityscapes themselves, the old soldiers fill the entire day talking. Today, these families have forty more years of a story to tell. Kids are in their 30s. The majority of their lives (for the most part) were spent raising those families, working jobs outside of the military and through it all, the friendships forged on the other side of the world over many long months are as strong as ever. And they’re getting stronger. Every year, more Delta Company veterans are found and more come to the reunion. I, for one, cannot wait until next year.