Memorial Day: War Dead, Cocktails, and Dr. Johnson

Memorial Day is more than cookouts and the beginning of summer. The day honors those who died defending our freedom and encourages us to reflect upon what, exactly, freedom means.

Poem for the War Dead

In the Spring Term of my senior year at Washington and Lee University, I took a poetry course from a professor visiting from Virginia Tech, Wyatt Prunty, who went on to found the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. A fine man, a good friend, and an extraordinary poet, Wyatt mines the deepest veins of radical meaning from ordinary events, people, and objects. He read his poem about fallen soldiers in Afghanistan, “The Returning Dead,” for Memorial Day on NPR’s NewsHour in 2006. It remains as powerful as the day I first heard it:

Cocktails

For a spirit-forward drink with a whiff of history on this day, try a “North Garden,” created by Death & Co. bartender Jason Littrell in 2009:

1.5 oz Laird's Bonded Apple Brandy
.75 oz Buffalo Trace bourbon
.25 oz Laphroaig 10 you scotch
1 tsp demerara syrup
1 dash Angostura bitters

Stir over ice. Strain into a double rocks glass over 1 large ice cube. No garnish.

Life Notes

Memorial Day always brings with it—at least to me—the connotation of time in general but, in particular, intergenerational time. We can perceive others of a different generation to be a pain, or alien, but that is not my general experience, especially with those younger than I. Younger friends are treasures, although accomplished contemporary poet Peter Vertacnik, in “Vanity,” may think not:

proximity to the young just brings you nearer
to what you've lost for good . . .
. . .
Listen, we fall apart. With kids or not,
Sooner or later, nothing is what will be,
after a life of shouting me! me! me!

I am more in agreement with Dr. Johnson, as quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. (1791):

“Sir, I love the acquaintance of young people; because, in the first place, I don’t like to think of myself growing old. In the next place, young acquaintances must last longest, if they do last; and then, Sir, young men have more virtue than old men: they have more generous sentiments in every respect. I love the young dogs of this age: they have more wit and humor and knowledge of life than we had….

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. (1791)

Music

For an engaged (if sweaty) Memorial Day celebration, tee up Rare Earth’s rendition of “Get Ready” (with Dick Clark, “American Bandstand,” and some Japanese subscriptions):