It is once again the time of year in which the United States pauses to reflect upon and celebrate those who have held what is supposed to be its highest office. It is therefore once again the time of year in which I find myself wrestling with that reflection and celebration, trying not to fall into the traps of hero-worship and hero-denial, that of unthinking veneration or that of reflexively cynical denial of what good has been done in office by many of those who have held it.

I am well aware, living where I do for as long as I have, that there are many who are not pleased to see particular people in the office, now or at any of several points in the past. I am also well aware that nobody who has held the office has been a pure soul; even the greatest to have sworn the prescribed oath of office has erred, has failed, has faltered. The one in this page’s image, often held to be, indeed, the greatest of them…there are reasons that his first inaugural address is little reported, while his second is perennially republished–and there are other issues that do not take much looking to find. With even the best of them thus…nuanced…those who are less must me all the more so–which, again, does not take much looking to find.

I know I end up being a contrarian much of the time, rising to take an oppositional view regardless of the notion voiced. It is not one of my more charming character traits, and I wonder as I look back now how I developed it; the practice has certainly not done me much, if any, good during my life, and it has occasioned no small amount of harm to me, physically and socially. I have been working on it, albeit not with as much success as I would like to have had–but then, I never do do as well as I hope to do. I wonder if, in keeping with that work, I ought to set aside my ruminations, raise a flag, and let it wave in the winds that are blowing through my part of the Texas Hill Country even now, standing to face it with my hand over my heart–for I have never had the right to salute it, as no few have reminded me, and with varying degrees of distaste for me in their voices as they have done so–and simply join along in the celebrations I know are ongoing. How much of a coward and a liar would it make me to do so? How much wiser a man would I be if I did?

Holidays and observances, for me, are more often invitations to reflection and consideration than for celebration. I am not a happy man, as those who know me know, and as those who read me have had ample opportunity to find out. Joy does not come easily to me, and revelry is not much more commonly my guest. I think that much is clear from my writing, as well. Even on so relatively restricted and minor a holiday as this–and it is restricted and minor, even in the mythos of the place it is celebrated–I find myself responding to the invitation once again, turning inward rather than looking outward for what I can praise. I wonder if it would be better for me to do so or if it would be better for me to have more company as a guest.

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This isn’t the first time I’ve had a post to this webspace go live on this calendar date, to be sure. (I looked to be sure.) Nor yet was that the first time I’ve written about the day’s holiday; I’ve been a reasonably avid blogger for a while, now, even as it’s more than a little passé that I would be one, and holidays do tend to invite reflection and introspection such as prompt writing. So much I’ve shown, and so much’ve others shown, across not only the years in which blogging has been a thing, but across much of written record. To such a thing I turn again.

I have a somewhat fraught relationship with holidays. Cheer, such as is often demanded, does not come easily to me, nor does it linger long. To my recollection, it never has done either, although I will admit that my memory has limits, seemingly more with each day. (That’s a concern, but one I’ll address another time…if I can remember to do it.) I do and have done better with quiet and thought, with looking on from the edges of things, rather than being in the middle of them and loudly reveling. It makes me a terribly fun person, I know, but I don’t think I’ve often been sought out for fun.

Each year, though, I work to be a little…happier with events, to be a little more present with the people I love. Each year, I think it works a little better. Each year, I try to shut my mouth just a little bit longer, to stifle my misgivings. Each year, I do a little more that might be thought “normal” for a holiday, participate in one more thing that I mightn’t’ve done in a previous year. Each year, I get out a little bit more, spend one more night out and among events being hosted. Each year, I do one more thing to try to create a situation where the people I care about can be happy more easily.

Each year, I don’t do enough. This year’s not different from any other in that regard. But I do what I can, and not only on or about the holiday.

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This is not the first time I’ve made a post to this webspace on Veterans Day, having done so here and here previously. As in previous years, I am somewhat…tense…concerning what I would write here, being myself not a veteran and not apt to become one at this point in my life. (If I am needed to fight, being currently aged 42 and with sciatica, never in my life having been able to do a pull-up, the war is long lost already.) I know that the standard line is “Say ‘thank you for your service’ and then shut the fuck up,” and perhaps that is the most fitting thing for me to do–but those who know me know that “shut the fuck up” isn’t really something I have it in me to do often or long. (It’s not a good thing, usually. I suppose we all have our vices.)

(Yes, I know I’m using naughty words. If you have pearls of your own, clutch away, but do kindly keep your hands off of mine.)

Some of the veterans I have known–and I know and have known more than a few, some quite well–have made much of being thanked for their service. Some have made as much about not thanking them for it, saying such things as “it was just a job” or “you don’t know what I did, so you might not want to thank me.” And it’s true; I don’t know. I know there are things that should not be said (under threat of punitive action or because they are even more impolite to discuss than the naughty words I use above). I know, too, that there are things that cannot be said, things to which words do not suffice. Which of them apply, and to what extent, is unclear to me.

Most often, the standard line is delivered in tones of snarling contempt. I’ve heard it enough, both in person and in recordings included in reporting, to know that much well. (It might be imagined easily that I’ve been told it a lot.) Like most, I bristle at it–understandably, if not perhaps always rightly. But if there are good reasons to shut up, a lack of knowledge is certainly one, and the recognition of words’ inadequacy is another. And though I am a person of words–sometimes, far too many or far too coarse–

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I‘ve opined once or twice on the observance made publicly today, which a bit of recent reading I’ve done tells me was only fully institutionalized in the late 1960s, despite less-formal observances in and by the United States prior to it. I’m minded that such is younger than my parents (and, if memory serves, even some of my cousins), and it’s not a hell of a lot older than my wife. She’s not (at the time I write this; who knows when you’re reading it?) an old woman, to be sure, so something less than a decade her senior is not, to my mind, especially ancient or to be revered on account of its age alone. (Indeed, there’re many things younger more deserving of laud and honor.) And my feelings on the matter have not changed overly much from a year ago or from four years ago (again, as I write this); I don’t think I’ve been obscure about them, truly.

The thing is, I’m not opposed to taking time off, as such. (I might not want to take a specific day off, and it may well be the case that I don’t do as well as I might with other days off, but that’s me and not necessarily a guide for others.) I’m not opposed to a formalization of time off, even if it is the case that those most likely to be in need of an extra paid day off are among the least likely to receive such a thing (something else about which I’ve opined at times in this webspace). I’m not opposed to the commemoration of historical events, although I am opposed to the lionzation of things that ought not to be lionized even as they ought well to be remembered across years. This year, given the timing and the work that I do as my day-job, I’m a bit more vexed by the specific observance than might be the case in other years, but I readily admit that so much is a personal concern, and while I value my personal circumstances, I know that few others will do so or should be expected to do so.

Again, I know I give more thought to this kind of thing than many people do. I give more thought to it than many people would think is good. They may be right who have told me, time and again over years, that I need to loosen up and lighten up about things. (Of course, it’s only the things about which they are loose and light that they think it’s okay for me to be so; the things I don’t care much about seem to occasion annoyance or more that I do not ascribe them the same importance…and there’re several observances that fall into that category, certainly.) But I cannot be the person I am and not do as I do, and there are enough people who show me they’re fond of who I am that I’m not entirely eager to change much of it. Some, sure, but not a whole lot, and certainly not at this point.

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A day has come again that I’ve marked before (here and here in this webspace), and I confess that it’s somewhat snuck up on me. Twenty-three years on–and, for me, three degrees, a marriage, fatherhood, and a number of jobs and relocations–I recognize, when I think about it, the lasting harm that has been done and that continues to be done because what happened while I was sitting for a percussion techniques class in support of a dream long since set aside and in the minutes afterward happened. But I do not think on it often, which is almost certainly less than it deserves, and I had not been thinking about it until I looked at my calendar and saw a gray notation with a simple description.

Still not going to put up a picture for this.

I’m not sure whether or not I should offer an apology for it.

I acknowledge that I am in a position of privilege regarding the events of 11 September 2001 and the continuing effects therefrom. I didn’t lose anyone I know in the attacks or in the illnesses that have befallen those who first responded to them. I didn’t lose anyone I know in the decades of armed conflict that followed (and that continue, if with perhaps less intensity and certainly less media attention, even as I write this). I’ve known people who have been affected, certainly, and by more than simply living in the pervasive surveillance environment that emerged with perceived justification in the wake of the attacks and the jingoism inhaled with seemingly every breath, even if less and less of it is exhaled anymore, but the direct effects on me and on most of mine have been…minimal, I think. So much is not true for all, as I well understand, and I am not making mock of the losses that have been suffered; I am, however, explicitly disclaiming suffering such losses, myself, and noting my gratitude that I have thus far been exempted from them.

I have, at times, thought that my responsibility is therefore to mark the event, to take time on its anniversary to pause and reflect and remember what was lost. Something was taken from me on that day, even though I lost neither goods nor people; something was taken from us all, and it is difficult even for those who can, unfortunately, enumerate their losses to actually put into words what that something is. Futures have been foreclosed that might have been faced to better effect than the future of then in which we live now, but that’s true of all events. And while it is tempting to think that things were better before, it is a challenge to find a useful measure by which to make such an assessment (although it may well be that my reaching for such a thing is, itself, a result of the event; it is certainly a result of things enfolding that event and which yet linger in other places than my mind, but that discussion is definitely for another day). Might-have-beens are fictions, and while I believe in the value of fiction, I know I am not as adept in its creation as such things deserve to have their makers be.

I remain…uncertain how to regard this day. Even amid it, even if I take the time to pause and hear again the intonations of the thousands of names whose owners were lost that day, there is work I have to do–because for me, for many others, though not for all, life continues as it has continued. I can only hope that what I do helps to make it better.

I’m not putting up the ad today, either, though it might well be the most US thing I could do. It just doesn’t feel right at the moment.

It would appear to be a time of year once again that I mark, year after year after year after year. In general, my sympathies and inclinations regarding the topic of work have not changed, even if my professional situation has varied across that time and to this. After all, I am once again management, even as I do maintain a small income stream from freelancing (and you could help with that; I write for hire, with no AI plagiarism or hallucinations involved), having changed jobs since last time I waxed verbose on the subject of labor and the US holiday that acknowledges it (in that most distinctly US of ways: sales and reliance on low-paid work that is decidedly not low-skilled when done well). I do not have a large crew working under me, and I do what I can for that crew, although I am somewhat limited by circumstance and structure in what that “can” extends to, but that does not mean I am unaware of the surrounding situations and circumstances, nor yet that I am unsympathetic to them.

I continue to acknowledge the need for work and the nobility of the same, and I continue to believe that it ought to be compensated in such a way as to ensure that those who are diligent about it need not worry that they will lack the resources needed to continue to do that work. I know that not all are in the situations I occupy, that they do not have the same levels of investment or interest in the endeavors I do, and I do not expect them to act as if they have them when they do not. I have refused to, certainly, and I think correctly; I can hardly hold others in scorn for doing what I believe is right for me to do.

I do not buy into the narrative that “nobody wants to work anymore,” at least not in those terms. I do not think it is the case that a higher percentage of people do not want to work now than did previously; having the training that I do, it seems to me that people remain the people they have been in a great many parts of their lived, and it defies reason that they would be different in regards to regard for work when they clearly are not in so many other ways. I do think that it is the case that many believe there is little point to working when they do not see the benefits to themselves of doing the work, and I do think that many are applying to themselves and the saleable commodity of their labor the same logic I’ve seen applied to many things, that it’s better to receive no income from a given asset or resource than to sell it for less than they want to get for it.

If working won’t pay the bills, why go to the trouble of it any more than renting a storefront for less than the tax due on it? And how many of those who complain of “excessive salary demands” are content to let spaces sit empty on main streets in towns like the one where I live or the one where I grew up? Why is the reasoning any worse for the one than for the other?

If it is the case that the response to “You don’t like the job?” is either “Start your own business” or “Train up for a better one,” why would there be so much griping about taking the time to do either or both of those things–which will necessarily mean there’s less available labor to answer any given help wanted ad?

(This leaves aside the issue of the number of help wanted ads that are lies in one form or another. They’re out there, and in greater numbers than should be–which isn’t hard, since the number as “should be” is zero. But that’s going to require more discussion than I’m willing to engage in at the moment and in this little bit of webspace.)

It’s a fine thing and a good thing to set aside a day to honor what deserves to be honored, and honest labor, individually or in association, deserves to be honored. It is a finer thing and a better one, though, to act throughout the rest of the year as if the thing deserving honor is actually honored. In many things, such an ideal is not achieved, but that it is not in many things does not mean it is right for any of them.

As ever, many need to do better than they do. I do not exempt myself from this, certainly; there is likely more I could do, even within the constraints under which I operate. I do not necessarily recognize them, and I would likely balk at some of them; like many people, I am somewhat greedy, somewhat grasping, and somewhat inclined to see to my own comforts over the needs of others. I am human, after all, despite the protestations of some folks I have known. (If nothing else, some bloodwork I had done has proven it.) But I am able, at least, to recognize that I am and have been in the wrong, and I am able to take at least some steps to work towards being in the right–not for the acclaim of doing so, but because that work needs to be done.

This is the day to note the value of work, isn’t it?

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