Memorial Day

Yesterday my daughter and I went to the New York City Ballet, and before the performance, wandered around the Upper East Side in search of fun street crafts. That's when we saw them: young men and women in uniform enjoying Fleet Week.

Our country is at war and certainly looking at their faces close up, we both understood that we send children to fight our country's battles.

They were so young, no matter how white their uniforms.

Last year I grabbed my camera and went into town to photograph Oyster Bay, NY's annual Memorial Day parade. I asked permission to take the images of people, saying I was an amateur photographer. Lining the main street, which is not called "Main Street," were the residents of this small hamlet, some of whose families have lived here for generations: white, black, Hispanic, old, young. The residents of the assisted living center, with a memory unit, sat outside with their attendants. People brought their children and their dogs. Oyster Bay has two volunteer fire departments; they are around the corner and down the block from each other. I've heard different stories as to why, including that one was Protestant and the other Catholic. The parade was short, our country was at war. Only one veteran of the current war in Iraq wore anything to indicate that he had fought there. Most of the veterans were from Korea, when I toured the American Legion Post, the men complained that the Viet Nam vets rarely came to the Post. I spoke with a World War II vet who was seated in a lawn chair in the shade.

We are still at war although under the leadership of another president. I don't think I want to go to the parade this year. I think I just want to hand water my garden, weed out the far right side in preparation for planting the sun flowers I have growing in pots, and pretend for a day, just a day, that things weren't set in motion eight years ago, if not before, that brought out the utter worst in our country and in our leaders. We allowed those leaders--George Bush and Dick Cheney--to do reprehensible things in our names. President Obama, I suspect, has learned just how reprehensible our treatment of the men held in Guantanamo Bay was, making anything looking like a trial for their crimes nothing like a trial at all.

So although I thank the men and women who are sacrificing their lives and youth for our country, I still deplore that they are and despise the men who brought us to this moment in history. Dick Cheney shouldn't be on television; he should be in prison for war profiteering and failing to uphold the constitution of the United States. George Bush shouldn't be retired in Dallas, but condemned because of his failure to understand the nature of the job of president, the structures of government, and the history of this nation. We shouldn't be making waterboarding into a bet between television pundits, but remember that we tried and convicted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding during World War II. This isn't a day for fireworks and parades, it should be a day of national mourning.