Monday, May 27, 2019

Gratitude Monday: On duty


Last Thursday afternoon in the District They Call Columbia, we had a tornado warning. Our COO sent round an email telling everyone to get away from outside windows, which is probably good advice, because I’d have been the one glued to a window, shooting photos. As it happens, I was WFH in the People’s Republic, where it got so dark around 1530 that my solar-powered garden butterfly lights came on. Sometime after that, the skies opened up and all the water in the world came right down on us.

(A few weeks ago a tornado actually touched down about a mile from me, although thankfully there was no loss of life.)

Well, during a staged event that afternoon for yet another farm bailout to offset the fallout from his tariff wars, as the Chaos Monkey was peddling porkies about him being calm—the calmest ever, dammit—when throwing a wobbly at Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer the day before, and was calling on his toady aides to—one by one—swear to the assembled media that his account of the encounter was true, and calm…soldiers of The Old Guard were carrying out their duty at the Tomb of the Unknowns across the river at Arlington National Cemetery. Including placing flags at the Tomb in honor of Memorial Day.

And on Friday morning, as Cadet Bonespurs (proud descendant of a long line of military service dodgers) hauled off for a state visit to Japan and golfing with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, The Old Guard tweeted photos of what real devotion to duty looks like. Viz:



Today I am grateful for the generations of men and women of our armed services who have made great sacrifices for the survival of our nation and our democracy. And I’m grateful for The Old Guard for their dedication to honoring those sacrifices. And I’m grateful for social media, which enabled America’s Regiment to disseminate these photos that silently remind us of what duty looks like.



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