Charleston was in ruins.

The peninsula was nearly deserted, the fine houses empty, the streets littered with the debris of fighting and the ash of fires that had burned out weeks before. The Southern gentility was long gone, their cause lost.

In the weeks after the Civil War ended, it was, some said, “a city of the dead.”

On a Monday morning that spring, nearly 10,000 former slaves marched onto the grounds of the old Washington Race Course, where wealthy Charleston planters and socialites had gathered in old times. During the final year of the war, the track had been turned into a prison camp. Hundreds of Union soldiers died there.

For two weeks in April, former slaves had worked to bury the soldiers. Now they would give them a proper funeral.

Read it all from the local paper.

In America, a special day was set aside to honor those who fell in the great fraternal conflict that was the Civil War (or, if you prefer, the War Between the States). The first observances were likely held in the South, though this is far from settled. On May 5, 1868, Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union Army veterans, declared May 30 to be ‘Decoration Day,’ and that year the first large-scale observance was held at Arlington National Cemetery. Not until after World War I were official observances expanded to honor the dead in all our country’s wars. In 1971, Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday and so that everyone might enjoy a long weekend, changed its traditional May 30th date to the last Monday in May.

Our honored dead. But what about our equally honored wounded? (And such are the advances in modern medicine and the rapidity with which the maimed and wounded are now evacuated from the battlefield to behind-the-lines treatment facilities that many more who would have died now survive.) What about those who have lost eyes and arms and legs, those who are doomed to live out their lives in unutterable sorrow and, disgraceful as it most certainly is, all too often forgotten by the country they served?

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Take the time to look at at least a few of these.

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up””for you the flag is flung””for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths””for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

–Walt Whitman (1819”“1892)

I walk down the garden-paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jeweled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden-paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.
And the splashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover.
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon–
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se’nnight.”
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.
“No,” I told him.
“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer.”
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

–Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925)

“My Fellow Americans:

“Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

“And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

“Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

“Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

“They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.
“They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest — until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

“For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.&

“Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

“And for us at home — fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them — help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

“Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

“Give us strength, too — strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

“And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

“And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment — let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

“With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace — a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

“Thy will be done, Almighty God.

“Amen.”

You can listen to the actual audio if you want here.

“”¦that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ”” that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain”¦”

–Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863

Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country.

There are a few notable exceptions. Since the late 50’s on the Thursday before Memorial Day, the 1,200 soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry place small American flags at each of the more than 260,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol 24 hours a day during the weekend to ensure that each flag remains standing. In 1951, the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of St. Louis began placing flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as an annual Good Turn, a practice that continues to this day. More recently, beginning in 1998, on the Saturday before the observed day for Memorial Day, the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts place a candle at each of approximately 15,300 grave sites of soldiers buried at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park on Marye’s Heights (the Luminaria Program). And in 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years.

Read it all.

”¢NCA currently maintains more than 2.9 million gravesites at 130 national cemeteries in 39 states and Puerto Rico, as well as in 33 soldiers’ lots and monument sites.

Ӣ Approximately 295,600 full-casket gravesites, 90,200 in-ground gravesites for cremated remains, and 75,200 columbarium niches are available in already developed acreage in our 128 national cemeteries.

”¢ There are close to 19,000 acres within established installations in NCA. Nearly half are undeveloped and””with available gravesites in developed acreage””have the potential to provide approximately 4.7 million gravesites.

Ӣ Of the 130 national cemeteries, 70 are open to all interments; 20 can accommodate cremated remains and the remains of family members for interment in the same gravesite as a previously deceased family member; and 40 will perform only interments of family members in the same gravesite as a previously deceased family member.

Read the rest also.

The Department of Defense (DOD) is responsible for providing military funeral honors. “Honoring Those Who Served” is the title of the DOD program for providing dignified military funeral honors to veterans who have defended our nation.

Upon the family’s request, Public Law 106-65 requires that every eligible veteran receive a military funeral honors ceremony, to include folding and presenting the United States burial flag and the playing of Taps….

Read it all.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

–Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918), who served in the Canadian Army

Monica McNeal (R) cries as she hugs a U.S. Marine at the grave (L) of her 19-year-old son Eric Ward, at Arlington National Cemetery, May 27, 2010. Lance Corporal Eric Ward, a fourth-generation U.S. Marine, was killed in Afghanistan on February 21, 2010. The United State is commemorating Memorial Day this weekend.

Check it out from Reuters.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, in whose hands are the living and the dead: We give thee thanks for all thy servants who have laid down their lives in the service of our country. Grant to them thy mercy and the light of thy presence; and give us such a lively sense of thy righteous will, that the work which thou hast begun in them may be perfected; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord. Amen.

The economy trudges ahead yet debt dogs many Americans, stressing them out even as they firm up their own financial foundations.

There are new jobs produced but old worries persisting for people despite belt-tightening and boosted savings, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll.

About 46 percent of those surveyed say they’re suffering from debt-related stress, and half of that group described their stress as “great deal” or “quite a bit.” On the other hand, about 53 percent say they feel little or no stress at all.

That’s in line with findings from last year, even though times seem better today: The economy is growing and generating jobs, and households have made progress in repairing their financial footing, trimming debt, watching spending and saving more.

Read it all.

The White House betting is that the latest crisis, stemming from the March attack, will also abate without much escalation. But there is more than a tinge of doubt. The big risk, as always, is what happens if the North Koreans make a major miscalculation. (It wouldn’t be their first. Sixty years ago, Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Il-sung, thought the West wouldn’t fight when he invaded the South. The result was the Korean War.)

What’s more, the dynamic does feel different from recent crises. The South has a hardline government whose first instinct was to cut off aid to the North, not offer it new bribes. At the same time, the North is going through a murky, ill-understood succession crisis.

And President Obama has made it clear he intends to break the old cycle. “We’re out of the inducements game,” one senior administration official, who would not discuss internal policy discussions on the record, said last week. “For 15 years at least, the North Koreans have been in the extortion business, and the U.S. has largely played along. That’s over.”

That may change the North’s behavior, but it could backfire.

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Facebook has become one of the biggest influences on the lives of girls, according to a survey.

A study of eight to 15-year-olds for National Family Week found 40% of girls identified Facebook as one of the most important things in their lives – compared with 6% of boys.

Parents were found to underestimate the significance of technology.

The role of social networking was particularly important in families with a single mother as parent.

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Like last week, with stocks lurching wildly with the headlines — up by triple digits one day, down the next. For the month, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 7.9% and is negative for the year. The Nasdaq Composite and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index also are in the red for the year.

Some pretty smart people are cautious. Seth Klarman at Baupost Group is worried. John Hussman of the Hussman Funds says all sorts of warning lights have lit up across his screen. Even Ron Muhlenkamp of the Muhlenkamp Fund, who usually takes a sunnier view of things, says he has moved a big chunk of his mutual fund into cash in case there’s a plunge.

How far will it go? Mr. Hussman says the technical indicators have only been this bad 19 times before in the last half century — and on average the market plunged about 20% over the following 12 months. When markets were also high, like now, the picture’s even worse.

Ugh.

Read the whole thing.

How do you atone for something terrible, like the Inquisition? Joseph Ratzinger attempted to do just that for the Roman Catholic Church during a grandiose display of Vatican penance ”” the Day of Pardon on March 12, 2000, a ritual presided over by Pope John Paul II and meant to purify two millenniums of church history. In the presence of a wooden crucifix that had survived every siege of Rome since the 15th century, high-ranking Cardinals and bishops stood up to confess to sins against indigenous peoples, women, Jews, cultural minorities and other Christians and religions. Ratzinger was the appropriate choice to represent the fearsome Holy Office of the Inquisition: the German Cardinal was, at the time, head of its historical successor, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. When his turn came, Ratzinger, the church’s premier theologian, intoned a short prayer that said “that even men of the church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel in the solemn duty of defending the truth.”

If you detect ambivalence in those words, you are on the road to understanding the difficulty Ratzinger ”” now Pope Benedict XVI ”” faces in leading the Catholic Church to properly atone for another stain on its history: the decades of cases of child abuse by priests and cover-ups by their bishops. And while a well-placed Cardinal has publicly speculated that Benedict will deliver a mea culpa in early June, the words of that apology ”” if that is what it proves to be ”” will be severely limited by theology, history and the very person and office of the Pope. It is unlikely to satisfy the many members of Benedict’s flock who want a very modern kind of accountability, not just mealymouthed declarations buttressed by arcane religious philosophy. “Someone once told me that if the church survived the Inquisition, it can survive this,” says Olan Horne, 50, an American victim of priestly abuse. “But these are different times. And right now, the modern world is wrapping its head around the Catholic Church in a major way.” (See pictures of the path of Pope Benedict XVI.)

The crisis facing the church is deeply complicated by the fact that in 1980, as Archbishop of Munich, the future Benedict XVI appears to have mismanaged the assignment of an accused pedophile priest under his charge. That revelation ”” and questions about Ratzinger’s subsequent oversight of cases as a top Vatican official ”” has been the trigger in turning a rolling series of national scandals into an epic and existential test for the universal church, its leader and its faithful alike. It has blunted Benedict’s ambitious enterprise of re-evangelizing Europe, the old Christendom. Over the past two months, the Pope has led the Holy See’s shift from silence and denial to calls to face the enemies from within the church. What is still missing, however, is any mention of the Holy Father’s alleged role in the scandal. Can the Pope, the living embodiment of the ancient Gospel and absolute spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, publicly atone for his sins and yet preserve the theological impregnability of the papacy?

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It is time to worry rather more, by focusing instead on China and its policy towards North Korea. For what China’s reaction should tell us is that China’s interests in the Korean Peninsula are different from those of the West, of South Korea or of Japan. And in that divergence of interest lies danger: it makes North Korea the likeliest flashpoint for a potential conflict between China and America.

On other issues, the Chinese leadership is widely lauded for its fast and effective decision making ”” on bulldozing old city centres, for example, or building motorways and power stations, or giving aid to African governments in return for mining rights. Far better than those fusty old democracies, mutter the admirers. So why, we should all be asking, are they so slow to make up their minds about North Korea and its acts and threats of war?

The official line is that China is concerned about stability in North Korea and fears a huge influx of refugees across its long border with that country if Mr Kim’s regime should collapse. A further line, peddled more quietly by Chinese officials, is that China doesn’t really have much influence over those strange, unpredictable Koreans. So all it can do is take part in the six-party talks over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, an on-off exercise that gathers together America, China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas, urge everyone to show restraint, and hope for the best.

This line, always pretty thin, is looking ever thinner….

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The home secretary, Theresa May, is facing a stiff test of the Conservative party’s claims to oppose radical Islam after her officials chose to allow a misogynist Muslim preacher into Britain.

Zakir Naik, an Indian televangelist described as a “hate-monger” by moderate Muslims and one Tory MP, says western women make themselves “more susceptible to rape” by wearing revealing clothing.

Naik, who proselytises on Peace TV, a satellite television channel, is reported to have called for the execution of Muslims who change their faith, described Americans as “pigs” and said that “every Muslim should be a terrorist”.

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Washington’s unprecedented backing for a UN resolution for a nuclear-free Middle East that singles out Israel has both angered and deeply worried the Jewish state although officials are cagey about openly criticising their biggest ally.

The resolution adopted by the United Nations on Friday calls on Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and urges it to open its facilities to inspection.

It also calls for a regional conference in 2012 to advance the goal of a nuclear-free Middle East.

Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, with around 200 warheads, but has maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its capabilities since the mid-1960s.

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A top Obama administration official warned Sunday that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill might not be stopped until late summer after BP’s latest attempt to plug the leak failed.

The “American people need to know” that it’s “possible we will have oil leaking from this well until August, when the relief wells will be finished,” said Carol Browner, the White House energy advisor.

Browner said on CBS that Energy Secretary Steven Chu and a team of scientists on Saturday essentially put a halt to BP’s attempt to cap the spewing well through a process known as “top kill.” The administration team worried that the increasing pressure from heavy drilling mud being forced into the well to seal it actually would make the leak worse.

The worst oil leak in U.S. history is now in its 41st day. It is sending 504,000 to 798,000 gallons a day into the Gulf of Mexico, according to estimates by a government panel.

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