Veteran's Day, 2012

2011: your correspondent pays
his respects at the National Cemetery
of the Pacific, Punchbowl

As the World War II generation leaves the scene, let's take every opportunity to honor their service. Give them a call, pay a visit, or buy them a coffee. Encourage them to talk about the old days, though maybe you'd rather be doing something else.

Because we don't know when we will die,
we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well.
Yet everything happens only
a certain number of times,
and a very small number really.
How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood,
some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive
of your life without it.
Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that.
How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?
Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
--Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky