Memorial Day Weekend Reflections

Lots of changes in the air right now.

John retired from his 24 years of civilian personnel service at Eielson AFB yesterday.
Two faculty in my department have retired.
Dozens of my students have graduated, are packing up their belongings and their lives, and are trying to reconstruct themselves for the next phase.

The sun is shining round the clock, illuminating all the Fairbanks world, including all the wasps buzzing outside and inside my home. We have a humane method of removing them, which involves chasing them about with a hand held vac, waiting for them to land, sucking them, like Dorothy's house in the tornado, into the device, then taking it all out onto the porch and releasing the frightened agitated creature.
This method is preferable to me than killing them, since I abhor killing any living creature. Having begun my college career as an entomologist, and having spent countless hours in my youth befriending insects as not only objects of study but as pets, I have a respect for the little guys.
There are exceptions, of course. One wasp was in my bedroom, too close to the possibility of sharing my bed. The portable vac was downstairs. Afraid to lose track of the wasp, I wound up killing it with a rolled up magazine. Which begs the question: How much bad karma do you invoke by killing a wasp with a Buddhist magazine?

John has retired and everything that has been on a standardized stable plateau in our lives is now about to change: our morning and evening routines, the times of the month that money arrives, images of ourselves, what aspirations we choose to work to actualize.
My own retirement is about three years hence. So much to do: Assist John in his transition, walk my true path, overcome my fears and chronic conditions, appreciate the unspeakable miracle of everything at all times, try to live a well written life.

It is Memorial Day weekend. I must of course remember the fallen:
* My father, who died of a service connected disability, and who would don his army uniform on Memorial Day weekends to march in our local parade and to lay wreaths on the graves of the dead.
* Michael, who served his country in the Air Force, and who even in retirement remained engaged in his mind and heart with his mission. He is gone 11 years.
* Pat, who served in the army as well. He is gone nearly 15 years.
* All those WWII vets to whom I was the mascot at the Jewish War Veterans meetings that my father would cook and prep for.
* Rippy, who served against his will, who suffered and eventually died in part from the traumas of the Viet Nam war, that damned war that cut like a deep and near fatal scar across my entire generation.
* Artie, who served in Nam as an unwilling draftee as well, who survived all that and wound up dying in a car accident in California a few years after his discharge.
* Sam, who wound up in an interment camp in WWII, living through it only because he buried his dog tags so the enemy would not identify him as Jewish, who lived into his 90s. Such a bastard in so many ways, yet a war hero.
* All the unknowns, who have no one to remember them and what they sacrificed for us all.

Will we ever find another way to settle our disagreements besides armed conflicts? How much must we sacrifice for this fashion of dealing with our "enemies"?

Whether we agree with the cause or not, it behooves us to honor those who serve. Each generation makes its own sense of war and warriors.

My personal war is against unconsciousness. The only real hope for humanity is the evolution of consciousness. Everything we can do, big or small, that enhances the evolution of consciousness brings humanity closer to the tipping point where everyone wakes up, deep archetypal problems can be healed, and the true genius of the species can rise and shine, like that sun that endlessly appears in every window and skyscape in Fairbanks this summer.