It seems to be a season for following up on previous pieces, of which I have this, this, and this for today. And because I am once again reflecting on things that I’ve treated over time, finding it fitting to do so when observances coincide with when I write and feeling compelled to do what I feel fits, I find myself thinking yet again on what the observance is for and what it means for me, other than a day off from my day-job (because I close for federal holidays as a matter of course) and the chance to get some goods at additional discounts (which I acknolwedge is tawdry, but my finances are, alas, not what I would have them be, and so I take what I can get when I can get it).

Looking back over my earlier ruminations on the topic, I do not know there is much to add to them; I do not know that there is anything new for me to add ninety-eight years on or even six years on. I do know that the effect I had meant to achieve in 2024 doesn’t come across terribly well; rereading the rumination from that year, I took a bit to remember what it was I was trying to do (which was shutting up, by the way, at which I’ve continued to do so very well in this webspace), and if it took me a while, I can only guess that others took longer or still had not arrived at it without my comment herein, and I know that explaining a joke ruins it for any context not an academic paper (and even then, the joke is not improved by explicaiton, even if it might become more accessible to others for having it). And I know that many will not think that what started as a solemn observance is suited to undergird jokes, although I suspect that many for whom the observance is and was made would not be much offended by my doing so, if at all–or at least by someone doing so, if my position would disallow it.

All I can do, given what I know, is keep making the observation, keep marking the occasion when it occurs again, keep noting that, as a century since approaches and presumably will pass, even though they were wrong who fought what they believed would be the last war, the war to end them all, that the notion of having a world where war is no longer needed is not a bad one, but is instead one worth making happen, and that it will not happen from the top down but from the bottom up, and that I and all of us need to work more than we yet have to make it so.

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