Memorial Day
It's About Remembering
Memorial Day is a good time to take a break from despising the other side in the culture wars and to remember that we’re all Americans, with shared memories.
My grandfather, Louis Joseph Tomaselli, was a soldier in the First World War. Long after he passed away, I discovered an unsuspected treasure–his journal. Starting on New Year’s Day, 1918, he kept a journal for almost every day of the following eventful year. The journal is small, so it would fit in a pocket, and he scribbled entries every evening, while sitting in the muddy trenches, hay-filled barns, or freezing tin-roofed barracks.
Here are some of his observations on a couple of days spent walking through a war, more than a hundred years ago
Mar. 21, 1918
Weather misty
Well, the first day of marching brought us to a little town 16 kilometers from Lureville. We passed a field just outside of Gerbeville where the French had resisted the Boche [Germans] in 1914. That field was strewn with graves more than I could count. Just where the victims had fallen a plain cross and a faded little flag with an inscription marked the graves. Gerbeville proper is a mass of ruins that would put Pompeii to shame.
On our way back my buddies and I stopped in a wineshop and to our amazement –for we had only 20 francs—we found a friend who was flush and a session followed. We returned at 9:30 and tried to get a farmer to cook something but nothing doing.
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Mar 22
Got up at 5 o’clock which is really 4 because all the clocks have been put forward to save light. Today we made 15 kilometers past woods and fields dotted everywhere with graves—this part of France is full of graves.
We are putting up in haylofts again, it is not so bad now for we are having warm weather although nights are cool. In the evening we happened by the village church and realized that it would do us good, 6 of us went in and attended the stations of the cross. Then we went to bed.
Every time I open this book my first thought is of Alexa. How are they all at home?
It is such trials as we are going through that make home what it is. We will know how to appreciate our homes and loved ones if we ever see our golden shores again.
Still no mail!
Dear Friends,
Are you more than a little worried about the election of 2024 and wondering what to do about it? I hope you’ll continue to check out The Optimistic Activist.
Every Tuesday I post some ideas for doing something. How to get out the vote, spread the word, and support progressive candidates. Ideas for simple but effective activism. As easy, as practical, as do-able as I can make them.
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“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future.”
--Noam Chomsky