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Battle at Rzhev

Battle at Rzhev

Battle at Rzhev

In the early days of World War II, 1939 to 1940, the Nazi German war machine advanced across eastern Europe, until its soldiers stood on the outskirts of Moscow, deep into the Soviet Union, poised and ready to attack the Russian capital city.

However, the Battle of Moscow stalled when the Soviet’s Red Army found sufficient strength to initiate a counter offensive, at Joseph Stalin’s insistence, that pushed Germany’s 9th Army west, some distance from Moscow. The counter-offensive worked for a time, until the German army stopped.

The Russian town of Rzhev, located 140 miles west of Moscow, boasted a population of 56,000 on October 11, 1941, the day that its citizens watched in horror as the dreaded Nazi soldiers marched into their town, and seized control.

In the first months of the occupation, the Nazi’s exported some 9,000 of the town’s citizens back to Germany to work as forced laborers, and another 9,000 they shot, tortured, or starved in a concentration camp that they built in the town’s center.

There in Rzhev, the Germans dug in. They built concrete bunkers, constructed a series of short anti-tank mounds, and fortified their perimeters with trenches and bulwarks. The Russians may not have known how well positioned the Germans were, and how capable they were to withstand an attack.

The war came home in earnest for Rzhev’s citizens when the first of a series of battles erupted in the fields outside their town on January 8, 1942, that pitted Nazi Germany’s 9th Army against the Soviet Union’s Red Army.

The Soviets looked upon the Nazi Germany army ensconced in Rzhev as “a dagger pointing at Moscow.” Stalin, his generals, and his officers wanted to obliterate the 9th Army, and free Rzhev.

A question arises though, “what happens when an irresistible force encounters an immovable object?” The answer, Rzhev happens, a “little known but astonishingly bloody battle.”

The worst of this series of battles began on July 30, 1942, and ended on August 23, 1942, eighty years ago this month. It was noted then and since, that “it inflicted great loss of civilian and military lives,” and that “the Russian army’s soldiers suffered massive casualties for little gain.”

One military historian described the battle’s first days.

“The frontal attacks of the 31 July set the pattern for coming days. Soviet commanders did not have the latitude or imagination to develop flexible tactics, and often rigidly executed orders from above, even if it meant attacking head-on, across the same ground for days or even weeks at a time.”

Behind their barricades, the Germans mowed down wave after wave of Soviet soldiers, who were ordered to attack entrenched German positions. “Soviet infantry tactics remained crude with dense masses of men rushing forward, shouting ‘Hurrah!’” Hence, the term the “Rzhev Meat Grinder.”

For the Soviets, total casualties in the three week battle numbered 291,172; for the Germans, 53,000.

The Germans held Rzhev for another seven months, and then without fanfare they packed up and left. Not a win for the Soviets, nor a loss for the Germans. Rzhev was liberated on March 3, 1943.

The brutality of the Nazi Germans though almost wiped out Rzhev’s entire population. Only 150 people remained alive after the battle, plus another 200 who had fled to nearby towns and villages.

On June 30, 2020, two years ago, Vladimir Putin attended the unveiling of a statue in the town of Rzhev, a commemoration of the fierce battle that claimed the lives of almost 300,000 Russian soldiers. He laid roses before the statue that stands 25 meters tall, and rests upon a mound 10 meters high.

It is of a single Red Army soldier, whose right hand holds a gun near his right side. For a shirt he wears a uniform with double pockets, and across his back there is a cape with strings tied at his neck.

In the minds of most older Russians, there remains stuck a memory of the horrible things that the Germans did, once they stood on Russian soil, in mid-twentieth century.

They see it in their statues, read of it in their histories and accounts of the Great Patriotic War, hear of it in the memoirs of those who survived the German occupation. Security from Western Europe’s aggression is crucial to a typical Russian.

None of what happened in World War II though can be construed to excuse Putin and the Russian army’s aggressive and brutal tactics in Ukraine this year. The world should hold accountable those responsible for the destruction they have inflicted upon the Ukrainian people the past five months.

IN RETROSPECT: Pestilence

IN RETROSPECT: Pestilence

IN RETROSPECT: Pestilence

On June 26, 1284, officials in a German town called Hamelin hired a musician to rid the town of its rats. The “rat-catcher’s magical flute” hypnotized the rats that followed the piper out of Hamelin’s gates and into the Weser River, where they all drowned.

Although the story is based upon verifiable historical facts, it has since passed into folklore, as a fairy tale once told by the Brothers Grimm. One can only wish for as simple a solution as a magic flute to drown and destroy all forms of pestilence.

For example, the wheat stem sawfly severely reduced yields in this year’s winter wheat crop.

Long a threat to spring wheat production in the northern plains of North and South Dakota, and Montana, “it has now emerged as a significant pest of winter wheat as well,” in southeastern Wyoming, Nebraska’s Panhandle, and also, since 2010, in northeastern Colorado.

The female sawfly, “wasplike in appearance, with a shiny black body with three yellow bands around her abdomen,” lays 30 to 50 eggs” inside a wheat stem. The larvae then crawl down the stem towards soil level, where it cuts a notch in the stem. The upper stem then breaks off just before harvest.

Various forms of insect infestations have plagued the western states since the first settlers arrived.

Brigham Young arrived in the Great Salt Lake area on July 24, 1847. He and his fellow Mormons were determined to build farms there, but the crickets, actually katydids, most impressed them.

“The ground seems alive with very large black crickets crawling around the grass and bushes,” said one farmer. Brigham Young said, “Mammoth crickets abound in the borders of the Valley.”

Early the next spring they plowed the soil and planted seeds, hopeful of a good crop. A farmer said, “wheat, corn, beans, and peas are all up and looking grand, and grass is 6 inches high.”

Then, in mid-May, a swarm of the dreaded crickets attacked the tender young green plants.

One of Young’s wives said, “the crickets came by millions, sweeping everything before them. They first attacked a patch of beans, and in twenty minutes, there was not a vestige of them to be seen. They next swept over the peas. We went out with a brush to drive them out, but they were too strong for us.”

Horrified, the Mormons tried to combat this army of invaders with noise, mallets, fire, and water. One technique they tried was for two guys to pull a rope back and forth across the tops of the grain to knock the climbing crickets off the stem, before they reached the heads and devoured the grain kernels.

Nothing seemed to work though, because of the crickets’ vast numbers. Then, on June 9, they witnessed, what they later called, a miracle, when seagulls arrived and began consuming the crickets.

In a letter to Brigham Young, his fellow farmers wrote, “The sea gulls have come in large flocks from the lake and sweep the crickets as they go.” The Mormons claim that those gulls saved the Mormons’ crop that season.

Utah’s state bird is now the California gull, and a monument to that gull stands in front of the Salt Lake Assembly Hall on Temple Square, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Another insect invasion occurred, but this time on the Great Plains. Called the Locust Plague of 1874, it began on July 20, when a swarm of the Rocky Mountain locusts — migratory and destructive grasshoppers — fled east, from the mountains onto the plains, in a frantic search for food.

The swarm soon stretched from Canada and the Dakotas in the north, to as far south as Texas. Residents throughout the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, eastern Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa, Oklahoma and Missouri all witnessed the locusts’ destructive talent.

An editor of a Wichita newspaper wrote,

“They came upon us in great numbers, in untold millions, in clouds upon clouds, until their fluttering wings looked like a sweeping snowstorm in the heavens, until their dark bodies covered everything green upon the earth.

“In a few hours many fields that had hung thick with long ears of golden maize were stripped of their value and left only a forest of bare yellow stalks that in their nakedness mocked the farmer.”

A New York Times reporter, in Kansas, said, “The air is literally alive with them. They beat against the houses, swarm in at the windows, covering the passing trains. They work as if sent to destroy.”

Bad news soon turned good. The next spring, “a late snowstorm and a hard frost killed most of the immature insects, trillions of them, allowing farmers time to replant their crops.” As the years passed, the Rocky Mountain locust thinned, disappeared, and went extinct. It was last seen in 1902.

Of pestilence, the poets write, “The locust has no king, just noise and hard language.” “He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.” I say, find that magic flute, and pay the piper.

1776

1776

1776

The logo for the Broadway musical “1776” features an eaglet inside a broken eggshell, biting down on a flagpole. The small flag atop the pole shows its colors: red and white stripes, and a blue field in the upper left corner. Across the bottom portion of the egg appears a larger English flag.

The musical begins with John Adams alone in the Pennsylvania State House’s belfry, four floors up, leaning on a massive bell. A messenger approaches and informs him that he must return to the hall.

He races down the steps, walks into the hall where the thirteen colonies’ fifty-plus delegates are seated at tables. There he strides across the room, all the while talking. “One useless man is a disgrace,” he says, “two is called a law firm, and three is a Congress.”

To a person, the other delegates shout at him, in song, “Sit down, John. It’s ninety degrees! Have mercy, John. It’s hot in Philadelphia. Someone ought to open a window. No! No! No! Too many flies.”

The delegates are upset with John, because he wants a vote for a declaration of independence from England, both King and Parliament, now. Most of the delegates favor reconciliation, but not a stubborn lawyer from Massachusetts named John Adams, who has read Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.”

The next day the world-famous Dr. Benjamin Franklin takes Adams aside and says, “John, really. You talk as if independence was the rule. No colony has ever broken from the parent in the history of the world. John, why don’t you give it up? Nobody listens to you. You’re obnoxious and disliked.

Franklin says, “Let someone else introduce a vote for independence.”

Adams responds, “Never,” but he warms to the idea. Franklin and Adams ask Richard Henry Lee, a Virginia delegate, to introduce a motion that permits discussion on independence. The motion passes.

During the debate, John Adams surprises everybody when he calls for a postponement on all future discussion until a document is written for the delegates’ review. Franklin seconds the motion, and the motion passes.

According to the history books, on June 11, 1776, the 2nd Continental Congress appointed five to the committee to write the declaration: Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, John Adams of Massachusetts, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Robert Livingston of New York.

Adams and Franklin ask Jefferson to write the document, and he agrees, but is reluctant. He has not seen his wife Martha for six months, but out of duty he stays and writes during those hot summer days.

At one point in the musical, prior to the vote, John finds himself alone in the state house late at night, and he begins to sing, “Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see? They want me to quit. They say, John, give up the fight. Still to England I say ‘Good night.”

Then, in a second verse, he sings, “Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see? I see fireworks! I see the pageant and pomp and parade. I hear bells ringing out. I hear cannons roar. I see Americans—all Americans, free forever more.”

The musical “1776” first appeared on March 16, 1969, on a stage at the 46th Street Theatre, two and a half blocks west of Broadway, now called the Richard Rodgers Theatre. William Daniels played the part of John Adams, Ken Howard played Jefferson, and Howard Da Silva played Franklin.

The play ran for 1,217 performances and won three Tony Awards, including Best Musical.

In 1972, the film producer Jack Warner adapted the play for a film, and he hired the same actors for the movie as appeared on the stage. “I want the whole cast,” he said.

Many of you may know of William Daniels. In addition to playing John Adams, he also played John Quincy Adams in “The Adams Chronicles,” in the mid-1970s on PBS, and also Dr. Mark Craig in “St. Elsewhere,” an arrogant, irritable, but brilliant heart surgeon.

Perhaps his longest stint as a television actor though was as George Feeny, a history teacher at John Adams High School in Philadelphia, on “Boy Meets World,” a sitcom that ran for 7 seasons, from 1993 until 2000, 158 episodes. Cory, Topanga, and Shawn each received life lessons from Mr. Feeney.

Last March, William Daniels turned 95 years old, and he and his wife reside in southern California.

One other piece of trivia. On August 6, 2015, Lin-Manual Miranda staged his musical, “Hamilton,” also at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. In 2016, Lin-Manual Miranda and William Daniels talked.

In their interview, Daniels said that his dressing room, when he played John Adams, is the same as the actor who plays George Washington in “Hamilton,” stage right, with a little door facing the audience.

Miranda summed up their respective musicals, “The truth is more interesting than anything a writer could make up.”

I hope each of you enjoyed your Fourth of July holiday!

George Armstrong Custer

George Armstrong Custer

George Armstrong Custer

The Native American tribes had pet names for George Armstrong Custer. The Crow called him Child of the Morning Star, the Cheyenne labeled him Yellow Hair, but the Lakota Sioux referred to him as Long Hair, even though a barber had cut off his curly blond locks, days before his Last Stand.

A major general when the Civil War ended, but a Lieutenant Colonel during the Indian Wars in the Dakota’s and Montana, Custer harbored more lofty ambitions than only serving in the U. S. Army.

At least that is what Stephen E. Ambrose, a late twentieth-century U. S. historian, hinted at in his dual biography, Crazy Horse and Custer.

A strong Democrat, Custer was tired of seeing Republican administrations control the White House. Abraham Lincoln was first elected in 1860, then again in 1864, but then his Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, completed his second term after John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln.

Former Army General U. S. Grant, a Republican, won election in 1868 and again in 1872, but his administration was marred by appalling scandals that soured the American public.

In the spring of 1876, the Democrats decided to hold their Presidential convention out west, in St. Louis, and scheduled it to begin on June 27. This time they wanted to pick a winner, and a few of the delegates began to think that a winning boy general, like Custer, only thirty-six, stood a fair chance.

Americans love their generals, men like George Washington, William Henry Harrison, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, and U.S. Grant, who all became a U.S. President.

Although anchorman in his graduating class of 1861, at West Point, 34th out of 34 graduates, Custer proved himself during the Civil War. He was at the first battle at Bull Run, at Antietam, at Gettysburg, in the ferocious Wilderness battle, and at Appomattox, the final battle.

He achieved fame by his daring style, by taking immense chances in battle and winning, and by riding his horse out in front of his famous 7th Cavalry.

Custer understood that he needed a decisive battle over the Sioux now, “if he wanted to stampede the Democratic Convention,” in St. Louis late in the month. Hence, he drove his men and his horses hard, mile after mile, day after day in those hot June days, into Montana.

“He told his favorite scout, Bloody Knife, and the Arikara scouts that he was planning to become the Great White Father,” in other words President of the United States.

When near the Sioux, Bloody Knife rode ahead and saw the enemy congregated on the Little Bighorn. He came away aghast, and told Custer to exercise caution, that “there were more Sioux ahead than the soldiers had bullets, enough Indians to keep the 7th Cavalry busy fighting for two days.”

Custer waved caution aside, and said that “the largest Indian camp on the North American continent is ahead, and I am going to attack it. I could whip all the Indians on the Continent with the 7th Cavalry.” The day was June 25.

That same day, Crazy Horse declared to his men, “It is a good day to fight! It is a good day to die!”

Instead of keeping his 611 men together, Custer divided them into four parts, a decision that proved a mistake, because the Sioux had as many as 3,000 warriors, and they were waiting for him.

Plus, Custer’s men were exhausted. Sitting Bull saw them and later said, “they were too tired. When they rode up, their horses were tired, and they were tired. When they got off from their horses they could not stand firmly on their feet. They swayed to and fro.”

Custer fought his final battle on a bluff above the Little Bighorn, renamed Custer’s Hill. The next year, a reporter from the New York Herald quizzed Sitting Bull who said, “Long Hair stood like a sheaf of corn with all the ears fallen around him. He killed a man when he fell. He laughed.”

The reporter asked, “You mean he cried out?” “No,” the chief said, “he laughed. He had fired his last shot.”

Stephen E. Ambrose wrote, “Custer had gambled all his life. It was a winner-take-all game, and Custer would have played it again if given the chance. He laughed. Then he died.”

Would a daredevil like Custer have made a good President? Ambrose wrote, “Custer probably would not have been much worse than the men who did hold the job for the remainder of the nineteenth century. The country would have survived.”

A quote that I read years ago, but could not find today, suggests that “the intelligence levels of the Presidents who followed Lincoln disproves evolution, the idea that a species progresses into a better, more capable living being.” It was not so with Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, and Harrison.

The Democratic candidate for President in 1876, Samuel Tilden, won the popular vote, but the election was thrown out because of charges of fraud. A commission gave the presidency instead to Rutherford B. Hayes, another Republican.

Stewart Brand: “The Whole Earth Catalog”

Stewart Brand: “The Whole Earth Catalog”

Stewart Brand: “The Whole Earth Catalog”

Steve Jobs gave the commencement address at Stanford University on June 14, 2005. In it, he told three stories. The first was how he dropped out of Reed College, in Portland, Oregon. The second was how a manager fired him from the company that he and Steve Wozniak had started in a garage.

The third story was about his pending death, due to a pancreatic cancer diagnosis a year before.

Then, after he finished the three stories, he said, “When I was young, there was an amazing publication called “The Whole Earth Catalog,” which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand, not far from here in Menlo Park, California.

“This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like [a search engine] in paperback form, 35 years before [a search engine] came along. It was overflowing with neat tools and great notions.”

Now I wonder why Steve Jobs decided to attach those two paragraphs about a catalog from 1968, to his address to graduates at Stanford. Yet, I find Jobs’s quote most interesting.

I remember, when in high school in the late 1960’s, I glanced once or twice at “The Whole Earth Catalog,” but I never ordered anything from it. I do remember the distinctive picture of planet Earth on the catalog’s front cover, taken by an ATS-3 satellite, but I fail to remember any of the listings inside.

On the internet, in recent days, I found a copy of the first edition from 1968. Subtitled “Access to Tools,” it is 62 pages long, and is a cut and paste catalog. Each listing gives a picture of an item, its price, an address where a buyer can mail a check, plus a review of the listing.

For example, on page 5 is the book, Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps. Priced at $3.75, the review says, “It is the bestseller of the Whole Earth Catalog.”

There are books on how to build a tipi, or a Japanese-styled house, or design Aladdin Kerosene lamps, set up bee-keeping, find mushrooms, perform yoga, play a game called Dr. Nim, or build computers. On page 55, a listing offers “700 Science Experiments for Everyone,” at a price of $4.00.

A buyer could buy catalogs that offer Brookstone Tools or Jensen Tools, plus a Miners Catalog, and a Blasters’ Handbook, and Glenn’s Auto Repair Manual, published by Chilton. There are listings on self-hypnotism, psycho-cybernetics, a Yaqui Way of Knowledge, etc. Something for everyone.

A free L.L. Bean Catalog is offered on pages 47-48. The reviewer says, “The Bean catalog is the model for the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.” Tandy Leather & Crafts Catalog is found on page 31.

The final listing is on page 61, and is “The I Ching, or the Book of Changes.”

Looking at it today, the “Whole Earth Catalog” resembles an on-paper form of the internet. At the time though it was “a counterculture magazine that stressed self-sufficiency, a do-it-yourself mindset, and alternative forms of education.” Hippies and flower children loved it.

Stewart Brand lives on. He is 83 years old, an old hippy who resides on California’s coast in a houseboat, and today he is found working on a “Clock of the Long Now,” a timepiece that will reside inside a cave within a mountain in southwest Texas. Its intent: track time for 10,000 years.

Brand shies away from the title of futurist. Instead, he moves and explores in terms of “long-term thinking.” He is “unwavering in his optimism about the future,” certain that “humanity’s future lies in our ability to develop technology.” “Progress,” he says, “consists of adding more options.”

Twenty years ago, Brand changed his mind about nuclear energy, after he discovered that some experts believed new nuclear technologies would be found to use what is now considered nuclear waste. That changed the way he thought about the future in general.”

Some time ago, Brand tweeted: “Interesting: how much bad news is anecdotal, and good news is statistical, and how invisible the statistical is.” I struggle with what he means, but I guess Brand intends to say that bad news is an anecdote, a recent news item that catches our attention and then fades away.

The good news though, he says, is buried unseen in the statistics, in the accumulation of multiple numbers of anecdotes that point upwards, indicating a positive human-benefiting trend. Hence, his healthy optimism about the future.

Steve Jobs dropped out of college, but he learned calligraphy there. He lost his job, but he met the love of his life, his wife, and he formed his own company that his previous company then bought. He was back. It was most misfortunate though that cancer ended his life on October 5, 2011.

At the end of his speech to Stanford’s graduates, Jobs said he remembers that on the back cover of the final issue of the “Whole Earth Catalog” there appeared the words, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Jobs says, “I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.”

Mythology

Mythology

Mythology

Tony Hillerman grew up in Oklahoma, and attended St. Mary’s Academy, a boarding school intended for Native American girls. One of the few boys permitted to attend, he developed a sensitivity for the various Native American cultures, mythologies, and religions.

He joined the U.S. Army in 1943, was wounded in battle in 1945, during World War II, and suffered for several months with broken legs, foot, ankle; plus facial burns, and temporary blindness.

A decade later, Tony was visiting Crownpoint, New Mexico, when he met a group of Navajos, who were riding horses, dressed in feathers, and wearing face paint. He was most curious and learned that:

“They had been holding a Navajo Enemy Way, a ceremony for a soldier, a curing ritual that exorcises all traces of the enemy from those returning from battle. Mr. Hillerman had himself just returned from the war after a long convalescence.

“ He was so moved by the ceremony and stirred by the rugged landscape that he resolved to live there,” in New Mexico.

The Enemy Way is the Navajo people’s method of addressing PSTD, attempting to heal and cleanse a soldier’s mind of memories of desperate and brutal battles in a foreign war.

All together, Navajo “singers,” perform almost 60 different ceremonies, such as: BlessingWay, Fire Dance, Night Chantway, Holy Ways, Evil Ways, and War Ceremonials. Included in each are songs, prayers, magical rituals, prayer sticks, masked dancers, and dry paintings with colored sands.

Each ceremony may last a couple of days, or as many as nine days. The singers display prodigious memory skills, reciting hundreds of words contained within the dozens of songs, prayers, and chants.

Tony Hillerman entitled his first fiction book The Blessing Way. In it, he included Lt. Joe Leaphorn.

Legends, folklores, and myths. No matter how civilized and sophisticated, a given culture retains stories of their people’s origin and progress from the distant past into the current moment. It is memory personified, and brought forward into the present.

The English refer back to Robin Hood of Sherwood forest, who outfoxed the Sheriff of Nottingham, and to St. George taking on a dragon. Certain Celtic gods—Dagda, Oestre, and Macha—find their way into the folklore of the Scottish, Irish, and Welsh people.

For those brave in battle, Norsemen warriors were promised a throne in Valhalla, a hall in Asgard, the Vikings’ heavenly home. Americans can point with pride to the giant Paul Bunyan, his huge blue ox named Babe, and also to Pecos Bill, who ropes and rides a tornado.

Brer Rabbit’s stories were printed in America, but they drew deep from African folklore.

And then there were the ancient Greeks. Their gods and goddesses were fun-loving, observant of human ways, anxious to redirect human beings’ passions, but human-like. “What is invisible is made visible.” Again, it is memory personified.

There was Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Hermes, Dionysius, plus Hades, god of the underworld. To get into Hades, a dead person paid a fee to a ferryman named Charon, who carried that person’s soul across the River Styx.

Myths feature battles between deities, between good and evil forces, or tell of an ordinary person expected to perform superhuman acts, and thus transform himself into a hero. An example is Hercules.

Myths attempt to explain natural events. Zeus throws a bolt from Mount Olympus, and the ancient Greeks heard thunder and witnessed lightning. Myths contain early science, early literature, and early religion, and yet they provide wonderful entertainment and delightful story-telling.

Something is lost when the myths die, as they all do.

The current month is May. Over two thousand years ago, Roman soldiers in Britain celebrated the arrival of spring by dancing around a tree, festooned with ribbons, and thanking their goddess Flora. Hence, a Maypole.

The first of May marked the Romans’ festival of flowers. Hence, a May basket, filled with flowers.

In addition, May features Mothers’ Day, but for the Navajo, a Blessing Way, an initiation ceremony, when maidens become mothers for the first time. Also, May features Memorial Day, a day set aside to honor human memory, of those loved ones who have passed on during a war or during a lull in wars.

At any given moment, we retain memories of past scenes, of people we have met, of their faces, of their emotions that we have felt. We also sense the future, a series of blank pages, each with endless opportunities. If we want, we turn our memories into lessons, and our opportunities into challenges.

This weekend, try to remember and reflect upon each of your loved ones, those who have passed on, and those who still live. We can celebrate Memorial Day.