The Daily Picture Theme for 27 May 2024 is #Pink. Featured photo was taken of the Pink Ribbon Guardians in New Ipswich, NH on August 13, 2011.

Memorial Day

The Last Letter

My uncle Francis Poltrack sent this letter from a ship bound for Pelieu Island in WW2. He was killed in that battle four days later. Operation "Stalemate".

Daily Journal – 27 May 2024 (Monday)

Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

[Chorus]
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you always 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can't help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

[Outro]

Eric Bogle - No Man's Land

It is a rainy Memorial Day. It looks like a good day to do some choring around inside for a change. One advantage of being inside is avoiding picking up ticks. Yesterday I had the misfortune of pulling something off my leg and seeing a red painful welt. Dping a full body scan each night is an evening ritual, so it couldn’t have been on for more than 24 hours. Supposedly it takes time to transfer all the pathogens these spawns of hell inflict.

I hate ticks but not all creepy crawlers. Lorri Rodier gave me a cup of live mealworms and I’m seeing if I can raise my own bluebird food. If nothing else it willl make for interesting journal entry. They look like maggots but smell like snack food.

Clutter

I spent the better part of the afternoon moving my clutter around. However there was a purpose. I was placing like with like. I have plenty of tools but they are spread out in multiple locations. Today I filled up a jar with torx heads of all sizes. I labeled the jar. I placed it in a convenient and visible location instead of various drawers and workbenches. This is an overwhelming task but I’ve made a start. My other triumph was packing up all the saucers for the houseplants. The plants are all outside and their saucers are in a bin till the fall.

NIHS (New Ipswich Historical Society)

As some of my readers know, this website is not my only rodeo. I also publish a daily Substack newsletter for the New Ipswich Historical Society. Posting the 1913 journal entries of James Roger inspired me to follow his example and write about my daily routine as mundane as it might be. A little bit about James from a book of Modern Scottish Poets which I discovered today (Thank you Mr. Google).

James Roger STATION MASTER, Roslin Castle , has been &
prizetaker in connection with poetical competitions in the columns of the People's Journal, &c. , and many of his pieces give evidence of a pure and
thoughtful mind, deeply in love with the beauties of Nature, of which he sings with simple and unassuming tenderness. He was born at Kirkmichael, Ayrshire, in 1841 , and graduated in the school of honest poverty, having been working for himself since he was eleven years of age. He left Ayrshire in 1858, entered the service of the North British
Railway Company in 1866, and has been in his present position since 1870- greatly esteemed for his civil and obliging manners, as well as for his moral worth. Besides writing occasional verses, Mr Roger is known as a diligent and intelligent student of
geology and botany.

- Modern Scottish Poets (Third Series) - D.H. Edwards 1881

On This Date – May 27th

What was happening on May 27th in previous years? I went through the archives and found this collection. The year is specified in the captions. Welcome to the time machine. The Vermont photos in 2006 were taken with an Olympus E500 camera which I still have but will be glad to give to a good home.

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