I'm trying this new background, and I don't know if I like it all that well. Kind of weird, I think.

The latest book in my Anita Blake series came out today, and I've been waiting for it for so long I actually forgot to go get it from the bookstore. Dingbat. I am soooooo curious about what happens next, you know? I'll have to go get it tomorrow instead. Which might actually be better, anyway, since then Thursday is my day off, so I'll be able to just read. And read and read and read. Because honestly, when I start one of LKH's books, I cannot put it down.

Maybe to eat.

But mostly I just read.

Greedy. That's me. Books and potato chips. I have an addiction. I don't buy potato chips, but books I won't/can't give up. The withdrawal symptoms would be horrific, I assure you.

I went shopping for new clothes yesterday, since everything was on sale for Memorial Day. Got a whole bunch of new pretty shirts, but I'm not sure any of them are suitable for my brother's wedding. Must think of the pictures. I'd rather like to blend into the background, so the focus is on the bride and groom, while my natural tendency is to wear the brightest colors I can get my hands on. Sigh. Comfortable is also key, since it will be the 4th of July on a boat.

Side note: For some reason I spelled went like wen't (up there at the top of the previous paragraph), and spent several minutes trying to figure out why the contraction didn't look right. It is a testament to my distracted nature that I actually believed for those several minutes that wen't is a real word, and I was simply forgetting a letter, though I couldn't remember what it should be. Weird, huh?

As I was driving around, lamenting the price of gas all the way, and yet driving around anyway, NPR was playing several special Memorial Day radio programs. What is it about patriotism that inevitably brings tears to the eyes? Stories sad and glad, poignant and funny, tragic and heartbreaking, all seem to have the power to make me cry, just a little. 

There was a special about War & Place on Liner Notes (broadcast live by the BBC from the Queen Mary II). Stories about how wars affect the places and people who are part of them at the time, about the people and families left behind when soldiers go off to war. It is true that, here in America at least, we as the public don't really know we're at war right now, at all. It's so far away, and we're so tired of hearing about it. So much easier to pretend it isn't happening than wonder just how we're going to get ourselves out of it. Or admit that we may never be free of it.

Memorial Day. When it was first begun nearly a hundred years ago, it was alternately called Armistice Day, which means Peace Day. The end of holding arms against each other, but holding out hands in a symbol of peace and friendship and cooperation. The War to End All Wars had taken a grievous toll on psyches and bodies, reshaped entire countries (many not for the better, as we see even now in our most recent conflict), and set in motion a new era of industrialization and personal freedoms. They didn't call them the Roaring 20s for nothing. 

A few weeks ago, it was Veteran's Day. Set aside to honor all the men and women in uniform and out of it, remembered and forgotten, honored and reviled, depending on the prevailing mood of the country. The reaction to the vets from the Vietnam War is unforgivable in my country's past (and present, I might add). I was only a child when that war ended, so I have no true recollection of the events surrounding it, but I have to believe that I would never have condemned a man for serving his country, despite my personal beliefs about the war itself. I cannot do so now, and the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq & Afghanistan are spooky. Plus, there was the Draft (which I am very glad isn't in use for this war). How can you spit on, hate, or abuse a man who had no choice but to go to war, or become a draft dodger and flee to Mexico? I don't understand that mentality. 

I can only hope the American public has learned its lesson about believing everything they're told, and following blindly out of fear. A few more months, and maybe we'd have had better Intelligence to base our decisions on. But I doubt it would have mattered. Bush was reputedly planning an attack on Iraq even before 9/11, regardless. It was just his dumb luck that gave him the perfect excuse to blindside us with a war that we would never have sanctioned without a direct attack. 

So here we are, watching our idiot of a president doing all his presidential things "for the last time," as if we're supposed to feel all nostalgic and sad that his time is coming to an end. Bah! Good riddance, I say. I think president Obama will do a fine job, come next January. Talk about change! He'd better be prepared to be as audacious as his book says he is. I certainly wouldn't want the job. 

Jinx