As I brushed my hair yesterday, I mused as I sometimes do that having the hair style of my youth (long) is like men I saw as a young person who preserved old fashioned hair styles (parting them down the middle).
It’s like I’m stuck in the past with old fashioned notions. I often feel like I am living in the future.
So today is Veteran’s day. Coincidentally yesterday I began reading in Andrew Bacevich’s Breach of Trust; How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.
It is a history and indictment of changing attitudes toward war and military in the USA. The prologue is a bitter description of a Red Sox game in Boston on July 4, 2011. It sees the pregame manufactured media event of acknowledging our armed forces with a clear eye to setting the stage for Bacevich’s basic point. He maintains that US citizens want other people to do their fighting for them.
He quotes George W. Bush who said in 2003, “Freedom is worth fighting for, dying for, and standing for….” Bacevich asks “Who fights? Who dies? Who stands?” then answers his own question “The American people have devised (or accepted) a single crisp answer to all three questions: not us.”
I have had life long questions about the ethics of war and military. But I do see that we are in a mess in the USA. For me the military has always been about war and killing. That has to be their job. When loved ones (including my son the Marine) join the military, I want them not to have to do that job any more than they do. I am relieved when they no longer serve and are no longer in harm’s way that’s for sure.
I have been asked to play a Veteran’s day service/party at my Mom’s nursing home this afternoon. I think this is the third year in a row I have done so.
1. How I Helped Teachers Cheat – NYTimes.com
This is about how some future teachers cheated in college.
2. Doug Rauch Wants to Sell Outdated Food at Junk-Food Prices – NYTimes.com
Getting practical about outdated food. Is it all really bad?
3. BBC News – How did ancient Greek music sound?
I have always wondered what the music I studied sounded like. There’s a little mp3 of the results of this man’s research and conjectures.
A poet looks at her own grief. Her mother’s death changes her relationship to her poetry. Some amazing observations.
5. On Reading Proust by Stephen Breyer | The New York Review of Books
As a young man, Justice Breyer read Proust. In French. Twice. I love this comment he makes: “Proust is the Shakespeare of the innner life.” O and this interview originally was conducted in French.
6. HealthSherpa
A web site where you can put in your zip and find out about the Affordable Care Act in your state for most states. Works for Michigan.