Earlier today I looked into a mirror, not a real mirror but a person who was to me, for the briefest of moments, a metaphorical mirror, and in whom I at once saw all the life that was me and all the life that was him.
American School Shootings are Getting Boring
Perhaps the whole concept of school massacres in the Wild West, as a niche art form, has become too derivative, or maybe it’s the case that it has simply been repeated ad nauseam and that we, the viewing audience, need something more – something spectacular.
In Flanders Exactly One Hundred Years Ago Today
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.
Futility and Farce at the Menin Gate
Remembrance is the lifeblood of modern Ypres. Every night of the week military and paramilitary style bands flock to the Menin Gate to pay homage to the dead. In many respects this is a noble gesture, and few can pause beneath the lists of the butchered engraved on the panels of the gate and be unmoved by the scale of the slaughter.
A Soldier of the Great War – Known unto God
We can be sure that none of them thought a damn of king and country as they lay bleeding in no-man’s-land, and neither king nor country thought a damn about them when they left them there to rot. Everywhere about us we read on poppy crosses those ironic words Lest We Forget.
But To Me, You’re As Fair As You Were, Maggie
This was a human catastrophe, and my fear is that the pomp and remembrance of their sacrifice serves only to veil the true horror of the war. Seldom do we hear our history teachers tell that this war was futile, and we are seldom, if ever, told the human stories of the pain and the suffering.
Saving Private Reid
He was twenty-nine, came from an Ayrshire family of coal miners, and died far from his family in no-mans-land. The poor lad probably, certainly as a conscript, didn’t know why he was even over there in the first place.
Mystical Unions
Over our uncovered heads, beneath the silver-grey Atlantic clouds, Apollo’s fiery chariot was dulled by the passing of the moon as our antique lunar calendars tilted into our sacred seasons. At the setting of the sun we will welcome with our Jewish sisters and brothers the beauty of the Sabbath bride and the first day … Continue reading Mystical Unions
Random Public Journal 