WHAT TO DO ON MEMORIAL DAY

I've posted on the meaning of Memorial Day on several occasions, and today will again walk up to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP) inside Punchbowl (looks like Diamond Head, and is close to my apartment):

Perhaps a mile away, but by the time I get there and back, sometimes, creatively, I'll probably walk five miles.  Before starting my journey, my views towards downtown Honolulu and below that towards the airport:

This is the general direction (southwest) where at sunset over the next few days there will be various conjunctions of Venus, Jupiter, Mercury and Mars.

Twenty five minutes into my exhausting walk, as it was mostly uphill, I see Diamond Head and downtown Honolulu:

A few minutes later I made it to the entrance of the Cemetery:

At the opposite end way in the background is Lady Columbia or Lady Liberty (there is controversy here, but let me not get into it):

The statement is from President Abraham Lincoln to Lydia Bixby, who was the mother of five sons thought to have died in the Civil War:

     I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln
It later turned out that "only" two sons died and Mrs Bixby was a Confederate sympathizer.

Here is a view looking back to the entrance from Lady Columbia or Liberty:

There were beautiful flowers:

That is my apartment (tallest one) in the background:

The columbariam area was memorable, for the enclosed sections and concentration of flowers carried an overpoweringly intoxicating fusion of fragrances:

I might also note that I saw a most unusual hibiscus, perfectly hued for this site:

Everyone should visit these memorials every so often to appreciate what freedom means.  Thirteen thousand are interred here and 1.25 million gave their lives creating and protecting our nation, half, actually, just in the Civil War.  A little more than 400,000 died during the Second World War and about 1% of that total more recently in Iraq.  While you can argue that these recent wars were minor, a budget up to $3 trillion was mostly wasted, when much of this sum could have gone to our infrastructure, education, sustainable energy and the environment.  I have become a Peace Monger, and I urge you to click on my Huffington Post articles advocating a 10% Simple Solution for Global Peace.

The day is not over.  In a couple of hours I pick up my almost centenarian friend, Ed Jurkens, for an early dinner at the new Chef Chai located across the street from the Neil Blaisdell Center, then we walk over to a Glenn Miller Orchestra concert with 26 performers.  It is just about sold out.  This will take us back 70 years.  Who is Ed Jurkens?  Well, on December 7, 1941, he had a date with a girl in Ohio.  As a member of the Army Air Corps, he had to report to base because the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.  No problem, he found  her a couple of years ago, and they had their date.  That's Ed Jurkens.

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