Should There Be a Parade?

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My gentle snowflakes, Perry and Romney and Gingrich and Palin, etc. are running around this mid-week all a-flutter because there has been no parade ordered up to "honor the troops." 


President Obama is somehow being un-patriotic. (Irony here folks.)

Well, it seems to me that a parade is a pretty poor "honor" for what we have put our troops through. 

Now, I will admit that I might be out of touch--never having been a member of the military myself and not understanding the military mindset. But, I can not even begin to imagine that a whole lot of soldiers really want (after years of their lives spent scrabbling around Iraq) to march up and down some city streets just so a few people can feel good about the whole "cakewalk" war thing.

Then there are all those troops who came home already--probably to be rotated back into Afghanistan and combat again next year. And all those sent directly from Iraq to Afghanistan. 

Seems not to be the time for a celebration of a mess that we have not managed to yet clean-up.

How about this? If we want to thank our soldiers, protect and expand their benefits--healthcare and education. Pay them better. Give them body armor--without them having to write home and ask their family and friends to take up a collection to get it. Make sure, if and when they do get home, that they go to the top of any list for any and all jobs available. Stop the big-banks from foreclosing on their homes. 

Hey, I could go on and on and on....  From the sublime to the ridiculous.

Send--that is you, personally--send one or more of them a welcome home card. Put five hundred dollars in it. 

And finally, DON'T EVER, EVER, EVER SEND THEM OFF ON ANYMORE WILD GOOSE CHASES like the last 10 years. No more bizarre, ideological machinations to prove the bona fides of a bunch of slimy, smirking chicken hawks.

Just saying.

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For the Boomers....

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Ahh, my gentle snowflakes, I rise for a point of personal privilege. (If you do not understand, I highly recommend you join a group/organization which adheres to some form of Robert's Rules of Order.)

As I age, I have been making my father's noises. For quite some time now, I have been making, especially, his morning noises and, lately, I have added his middle of the night noises. More or less, I have gotten used to it. Sometimes a particular noise will startle me. Mostly though, I have grown to accept them--as just gentle reminders of my father. It could be worse, I could have received the gene that gave him that ski slope of a nose! Bad enough that from the genetic lottery I drew the jug-handle ears.

This morning, though, when I put on my socks--I saw my mother's feet.

Not long and elegant. Oh, no, not long and elegant. No, I saw feet with tendons ropy, toes boney, veins pronounced.

I do not like it. Do not like it one bit.
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