On This Day in History

<sigh>

Historically, we seem to celebrate peace by huge ticker-tape parades for the victors, with tanks on flatbeds rolling fown 5th Ave. and Main Street.

<sigh>

I'd celebrate peace quietly at home, preferably with a loved one, and I'd play soft music - all those trumpets, tubas and stuff sound too much like a prelude to war to me. In a crowd or concert celebration, I wouldn't be able to stop wondering if the smiling folks around me weren't the same ones who not too long ago were beating the drums. And now when I hear the word "peace" I think of a movie quote - a quote from The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean - a quote that gave me chills:

"I want peace -- and I don't care who I have to kill to get it." <sigh>

Ah, Andrew and Raggedy, It's just as my friend once told me. When things get to running too smoothly, someone just has to screw it up.
But should I be able to celebrate peace, it wouldn't be with a flower stuck in a rifle, it would be with you guys. We think alike, I think.

If peace does come, the ceremony that follows should be a combination of mourning and celebration. Mourning is supposed to be attributed to those who lost their lives of both sides in the war. For many, they are not in the least able to determine for themselves a life that is going to make peace in this world. Most people are just like cogs in the big machine and behave as told. I don't believe that ordinary people, a lot of which are enlisted to the army, will choose to have a war instead of a peaceful life. Many are just victims of ridiculous propaganda and incited by distorted messeges to become extreme and patriotic diehards who feel orgy only when killing enemies and even if they themselves are wasted. These people should not be so incriminated as those abettors. For them, a ceremony of mourning is necessary. Of course, celebration is indispensable as well. The victory, not of the victor country but of the peace and justice, promises the suffered people a belated peaceful life for which they have waited for too long. The celebration will definitely give rise to empathy among people of differenet cultures, ethnicities and races.

Well said, acepoly, and your observations would be the ideal way to come together in celebration. Unfortunately, there will always be saber rattlers.

I agree, Letty, that things usually don't turn out to be what we expect of them to be, and to be an idealist will only drive you nuts. But don't let being perfect get in the way of perfection. While one deeply involved in being perfect will certainly make an objectoinable cynic, concertration on perfection betters the prospects of our life. If you are bound to fail to find out something that is perfect, you won't be frustrated if you focus on making for the better.

Several lines in a french movie A la folie, pas du tout, are most illuminating.

"Though my love is insane, my reason calms the pain in my heart. It tells me to be patient and keep hoping" -- An erotomaniac confined for over 50 years.

For many, maniacs of being prefect, of faulting everything and of overlooking the merits, what the erotomaniac said is a good advice to take.

Cheer up, Letty

Oxymorons of life--paradoxes of time--I'm cheered up, already

The observation of the erotomaniac's rationale was just another olio of odd reasoning that bears a tiny grain of fruit..

In the summer of 1953, Elvis Presley went to the Sun studio to record two songs for his mother's birthday. Phillips noticed him and decided Presley deserved a recording contract.


http://www.geocities.com/elvismdb/news.htm

John Oak, Your link was temporarily unavailable. but then, so is poor old Elvis, unless you count all the sightings.