#Soldiers' National Monument

[rabbitcruiser]

American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863.  

[esteemed-excellency]

Hi guys i'm back, only relatively sunburned and really happy about the trip ✌️

Here's some pics from my beloved mountains:

[bardengarde]

You are the patron saint of those people and places within a country torn asunder who time might have forgotten if not for your bright and brilliant mind. (I think your special interests are neat :D )

Hi I'm in SHAMBLES over this🥺🥺🥺

This is incredibly kind to say, thank you so much

[nickysfacts]

Happy Memorial Day!🇺🇸

Remember today to honor those you who sadly had to be sacrificed in the name of Freedom!🇺🇸

[emilybeemartin]

Just to tie in my two themes this month----

Additional notes, because poll options apparently limit their characters:

Frodo finds great peace in watching the tides rise and fall throughout each day. He attends all the ranger programs on birds and seashells and fills pages with sketches and poetry.

Sam meticulously selects postcards in the gift shop for each of his friends and spends a whole morning writing and addressing them. He also buys Junior Ranger hats for his kids and a variety of Appalachian jams for Rosie.

Park rangers launch a Missing Person search for Aragorn when they realize his car's been parked at Avalanche Creek for three days. The search runs for almost a week before he comes strolling out the opposite side of the park, supporting one of the SAR techs who twisted an ankle during the search.

Legolas is first drawn to Olympic for the towering, mossy temperate rainforests, but the ground goes out from under him when he steps onto Second Beach for the first time. He spends an entire day watching the light and tides shift on the sea stacks, and he leaves feeling both full and hollow, like a bell that's just been rung.

Mammoth is only Gimli's first stop on a cavern tour, followed by Jewel and Wind Caves and Carlsbad Caverns. Wind Cave is his favorite for the unusual formations. He makes an obnoxious tween boy cry in Carlsbad for breaking off a speleothem.

Boromir is on a tour of military parks. He asks so many questions to the intern working the info station at Fort Sumter the kid has to go find the park historian. His favorite site is Vicksburg because that place was buckwild, though he silently judges one of the reenactors for his clumsy handling of a black powder rifle.

Merry also makes stops in Jurassic and Dinosaur National Monuments. He watches every park video, takes selfies in front of all the fossil exhibits, and earns his Junior Ranger badge at each one. He buys a keychain for Pippin.

Pippin actually gets four citations, mostly for trying to stick his hands in mud pots. He doesn't mean anything by it---he's just so delighted and curious about the bizarre landscape. He winds up with several thermal burns and dumps a king's ransom in the donation box on his last day.

Gandalf gets dinged by rangers for not paying the $5 fee for Trunk Bay, but he acts senile until they eventually decide to drop it. He gets postcards from everyone and responds to none of them.

Faramir and Eowyn are traveling together and do many of the same hikes and rides, but they do have some different preferences off-trail. Eowyn drags Faramir to a rodeo and the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in Jackson Hole, and he goads her into Ranger Shelton Johnson's living history programs on the Buffalo Soldiers in Yosemite.

Eomer is bike-packing on his sport cruiser motorcycle. He goes to Roosevelt south unit for the wild horse herds but ends up spending half a day watching a prairie dog town. He takes 400 photos of them, mostly blurry, and texts them to Eowyn.

[scotland]

The National Monument of Scotland, situated on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, commemorates Scottish soldiers and sailors who died in the Napoleonic Wars. Designed by Charles Robert Cockerell and William Henry Playfair, it was intended to resemble the Parthenon in Athens.

Construction began in 1826 but halted in 1829 due to lack of funds, leaving it incomplete with only twelve columns. This unfinished state has earned it the nickname “Scotland’s Disgrace.”

Despite this, the monument is a significant landmark, offering panoramic views of the city and symbolising Edinburgh’s neoclassical architectural heritage.

[hboww2rewatch]

Please read the movie descriptions below

Saving Private Ryan (1998) - Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action. Dir. by Steven Spielberg

A League of Their Own (1992) - American sports comedy drama film that tells a fictionalized account of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) during WWII. Dir. by Penny Marshall

Greyhound (2020) - The film is based on the 1955 novel The Good Shepherd, and follows a US Navy commander on his first assignment commanding a multi-national escort destroyer group of four, defending an Allied convoy from U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. Dir. by Aaron Schneider

Mudbound (2017) - The film depicts two World War II veterans – one white, one black – who return to rural Mississippi each to address racism and PTSD in his own way. Dir. by Dee Rees

Twelve O'Clock High (1949) - A tough-as-nails general (Gregory Peck as General Savage) takes over a B-17 bomber unit suffering from low morale and whips them into fighting shape. Based on a novel by the same name. Dir. by Henry King

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) - three United States servicemen re-adjusting to societal changes and civilian life after coming home from World War II. The three men come from different services with different ranks that do not correspond with their civilian social class backgrounds. It is one of the earliest films to address issues encountered by returning veterans in the post World War II era. Dir. by William Wyler 

The Monuments Men (2014) - An unlikely World War II platoon is tasked to rescue art masterpieces from German thieves and return them to their owners. Based on the 2007 non-fiction book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. Dir. by George Clooney

Dunkirk (2017) - Allied soldiers from Belgium, the British Commonwealth and Empire, and France are surrounded by the German Army and evacuated from Dunkirk. It is shown from the perspectives of the land, sea, and air. Dir. by Christopher Nolan

Fury (2014) - A grizzled tank commander makes tough decisions as he and his crew fight their way across Germany in April, 1945. Dir. by David Ayer

Valkyrie (2008) - A dramatization of the July 20, 1944 assassination and political coup plot by desperate renegade German Army officers against Adolf Hitler during World War II. Dir. by Bryan Singer

[manessha545]

Monumento a Julio Argentino Roca, Buenos Aires, Argentina: The Monument to Julio Argentino Roca, in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a work made up of three bronze sculptures on a base of red polished granite. Inaugurated in 1941, it honors Lieutenant General Julio Argentino Roca (1843–1914), Argentine politician, soldier and statesman, architect of the Conquest of the Desert, twice President of the Argentine Nation (1880-1886 and 1898-1904) and representative of the so-called Generation of the Eighties that led Argentine politics for more than thirty years. Wikipedia

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

The push and pull between white supremacist rule and a multi-cultural United States is nothing new. But on Friday we saw a first in our nation’s history: A school board voted to restore the name of three Confederate generals to their public schools.  That’s right, in 2024, the right is naming schools after people who fought and killed to preserve both chattel slavery and white supremacy. This is just the latest salvo in the GOP’s campaign to move America backwards to before the Civil Rights movement.

This jaw-dropping event happened on Friday, when the Shenandoah County School Board in Virginia voted 5-1 to reinstate the names Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby Lee Elementary School to honor Confederate Generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby. This vote to celebrate the traitors who killed US soldiers in the hope of maintaining the barbarism known as chattel slavery was led by the conservative group Coalition for Better Schools. Now the school board will spend an estimated six figures in tax dollars to send a message that this area of Virginia is a place where white supremacy rules. This action is all part of the right’s response to the racial reckoning that was kicked off in the United States after the brutal murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed. In fact, the names of these Virginia schools were changed in that very period.   But this is not simply a “reinstatement” of Confederate names. Rather this is a manifestation of the white right’s desperate efforts to maintain control in the face of changing America. After all, this is exactly what white supremacists did in the past when they felt challenged.

As a reminder, the greatest number of Confederate statutes were erected in the early 1900’s spearheaded by United Daughters of the Confederacy as Jim Crow laws were being enacted across the South.  These racist laws and the Confederate memorials were part of a scheme to both celebrate and preserve white supremacy. The next spike in Confederate monuments came from 1940’s to 1960’s. Why then nearly 100 years after the Civil War? Simple, these statutes were built in reaction to the Civil Rights movement to send a message that white power still ruled that area. It’s no coincidence that in 1956, Georgia redesigned its state flag to include the Confederate battle flag and in 1962, South Carolina placed the Confederate battle flag atop its capitol building. 

When it comes to schools being named after traitors who took up arms against the United States of America to fight for the Confederacy, want to guess when the biggest wave of that occurred? Was it shortly after The Civil War? Nope, it was following the landmark US Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 which ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional.  Between that 1954 court decision and 1970, our nation saw the largest spike in schools being after those who fought to defend slavery. In fact, the schools at issue in Virginia were opened in that time frame, with Stonewall Jackson high school opening in 1960. That’s right. The naming of these Virginia schools was part of the backlash to the Civil Rights movement and Brown v. Board of Education. The white officials in that area of Virginia at the time wanted to ensure that people knew white power still reigned supreme.

Dean Obeidallah gets to the point as usual. The renaming of a pair of schools in Shenandoah County, Virginia by reinstating the name of the pre-2020 names of the schools named after three treasonous Confederates (Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Turner Ashby) is a middle finger to common sense and a win for white supremacist values.

[gaykarstaagforever]

1970

The Silver Age was coming to a close in 1970. But DC wasn't quite out of amazing ideas yet.

I'm not going to review this. There is nothing more to say than what this cover says. Superman turns into a giant stupid Superman for like 2 hours, wrecks a bunch of things, then it wears off. It is exactly as cool and entertaining as that sounds. They finally got one right, boys.

Here he is fighting a bunch of soldiers.

Here he is, doing the thing.

Here he is, using the tip of the Washington Monument that he broke off to write a giant message about how oops, he's sorry about all of this. ...Which seems like it kind of contradicts his point, since there were probably a hundred ways he could have written this message without destroying a national monument.

But we're not here to be nerds about writing, we're here to see this:

I'll tell you how he got out of this mess, because it is probably the most fantastic thing in this entire story. Maybe one of the most fantastic things Silver Age Superman ever did. And NO, it doesn't involve one of his stupid awful robot clones.

But first, you need some context. This is the very first panel of the story, after the splash page:

Now. If you're like me, you are immediately lost. Who is Titano, and why are these idiots talking about him in front of a King Kong movie poster?

Well. I don't know how to tell you this, but back in 1959, there was a Superman comic where NASA sent a monkey into Space, and it came back 50 feet tall with kryptonite laser eyes. It did a King Kong with Lois (of course), until Superman defeated it and whisked it away to a Planet of Giants he knew about.

You know that thing in comics, where they'll reference some old story only nerds will remember, and they'll put an asterisk and tell you what issue it was from so you know what the hell they're referring to? Yeah, no, they don't do that here. This panel is all you get. They just expected you to remember that 11 years ago, they did a story where Superman fought a giant monkey from Space.

Which, sure, is memorable, as far as these things go. But 1960s Superman fought all kinds of crazy things from Space! It seems a little presumptuous to assume anyone would remember this specific incident, after 11 years of growth rays and shrink rays and 5th dimensional pygmy wizards and that time Superman was fat. But here we are.

Yes this is relevant to the ending. As the bigness whatever is wearing off, Superman jogs out into the ocean to finish his shrinking. He then returns to Lois and Jimmy as Normal-Sized Clark Kent. This was during the era where Lois and Jimmy were finally both suspicious that maybe Clark was Superman, only because the two were never at the same place, at the same time.

And yes, even they knew about the damn robot clones by now, so they weren't going to fall for that sitcom nonsense.

So Clark, the perpetual liar that he is, has to make sure Lois and Jimmy don't point out how he was conveniently absent the entire time Superman was giant. Before they declare him Superman, he points out to them that while he is here with them now normal-sized, a giant in a Superman costume is still visible, running away through the ocean. See? He can't be Superman. Even if he looks exactly like him, in face and build, but with glasses.

So how does Superman callously deceive his two closest friends?

He flew real fast to the Giant Planet, abducted a confused and terrified Titano (remember him?), created a giant Superman costume and dressed the giant monkey in it, flew him back to Earth, and dropped him into the ocean in just the perfect way where Lois and Jimmy could see him in the Superman outfit, but not see he was in fact a giant monkey. The giant monkey they would both specifically recognize, because of the thing they went through with him before.

Don't worry about Titano though, if you were. Once this lunacy is over, Superman rips his clothes off and dumps him back on the Giant Planet.

...I appreciate that you're probably still trying to process all this. And best of luck with that. But before we end, we need to talk about this:

They buy Cracker Jacks at the movies. Jimmy's box has red kryptonite in it, and that is what makes Superman grow big and stupid, because, and I very nearly quote, red kryptonite makes weird stuff happen, and Clark was watching King Kong, so he was thinking about giant monkeys.

That is the ONLY explanation we get for any of this. No, they don't explain why red kryptonite was in a box of Cracker Jacks. Or why two panels of this comic are an obvious ad for Cracker Jacks, except the boxes don't look like real Cracker Jack boxes, and they always did that for ads, so this can't be one. Plus this isn't a separate page in the comic, this is just...how the story starts.

Was this a tie-in that fell through, last-minute? It has to be, right? LOOK at this. Why did they do this?

Also, King Kong is technically public domain, in the sense that you can print the name and show a giant monkey. But the movie rights are exclusive to Universal. And I don't know if that was true in 1970. So was this ALSO some kind of Universal King Kong tie-in? Again, it isn't a proper ad, it's just part of the story.

Though they very specifically only feature Titano in person in the comic, so maybe this WAS just a reference, and they were careful not to put actual Universal's King Kong in the story.

They just used their own ripoff of him from 11 years earlier. Where he was brown and looked more like a giant chimp. And now, here, he is a black gorilla, sort of. Like King Kong.

...There is a whole entire other feature in this issue, and I haven't even read it yet, because I have been thinking about this story for like a week.

I hope you understand why.

[rabbitcruiser]

American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863.  

[ginandoldlace]

Today in 1982 Twenty sailors were killed when the destroyer HMS Sheffield was hit by an Argentinian Exocet missile during the Falklands War. The Falklands National Monument in Cardiff bears the names of the 255 sailors, soldiers and airmen who died on the UK side. The memorial centres on a five-tonne rock from the Falkland Islands, a gift from the islanders

[gemsofgreece]

The Monument of the Nation’s Immortals (Μνημείο των Αθανάτων του Έθνους - Mnimío ton Athanáton tu Éthnus), a monument dedicated to the Greek soldiers who fell in battle, was recently inaugurated. It commemorates the names of all the soldiers who reportedly fell in a battle defending Greece from 1830 until 1974. The monument is in the military camp “Alexandros Papagos” and will be visitable on the weekends.

Source: ΓΕΕΘΑ (Hellenic National Defence General Staff)

[planet-gay-comic]

Monument of Unwavering Love Historical Figures and the Persecution of Their Love

From antiquity to the 20th century, significant individuals who were in homoromantic relationships often faced challenges and criticism. Their stories are testimonials to the courage and resilience in the face of societal hostility.

Hadrian and Antinous: Love Against the Empire The relationship between Roman Emperor Hadrian and his beloved Antinous was a mix of deep affection and public scandal. After the mysterious death of Antinous, Hadrian deified him, which caused discontent among the Roman elite. This worship was not only an act of mourning but also a defiance of the norms of Roman society.

Oscar Wilde: The Price of Truth In Victorian England, the famed writer Oscar Wilde paid a high price for his homosexual relationships. His conviction for "indecent acts" led to a harsh prison sentence that ruined his health and destroyed his career. Wilde's case was a clear signal of the intolerance toward homosexuality during this era.

Alan Turing: A War Hero Betrayed by His Own Country Alan Turing, whose work was crucial to the Allied victory in World War II, was persecuted for his homosexuality. At a time when homosexual acts were illegal in Britain, Turing underwent a medical treatment mandated by the court, which was seen as an alternative to imprisonment, and contributed to his premature death.

Frida Kahlo: An Art Icon in the Gender Norms Crossfire Although Frida Kahlo's bisexual relationships were not the cause of public animosity, she lived in a society where such relationships were considered taboo. Kahlo's self-portraits and works reflect her personal struggles and her courage to challenge the conventional gender roles of her time.

Bayard Rustin: In the Shadow of the Civil Rights Movement As an openly gay man and a key advisor to Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin often had to put his sexuality behind his work for the civil rights movement in the 1960s USA. Despite his significant contributions, he was attacked by opponents both inside and outside the movement because of his homosexuality.

Leonard Matlovich: A Soldier Against Silence Vietnam War veteran Leonard Matlovich, who appeared on the cover of "Time" magazine, was one of the first to challenge the ban on homosexuality in the U.S. military. His fight against discrimination sparked a national discussion about the role of LGBTQ+ individuals in service.

Base image generated with DALL-E, overworked with SD-1.5/SDXL inpainting, manual editing and composing.

[marta-bee]

It's so easy to criticize Donald Trump, it almost feels self-indulgent. If I wrote about every scandal or upsetting and offensive comment, I'd do nothing else all day. But the news out of Arlington crossed a line I didn't know still existed.

For non-Americans, Arlington Cemetery is a large cemetery of notable American public servants, not only military but that's what it's known for. It's one of the largest such cemeteries, certainly the most iconic, and because of that it has a certain sacred quality in the American imagination. Certainly this American's. I've had the honor to stand there, thankfully connected to someone I only knew tangentially.

It's also supposed to be non-political, which is of course where Mr. Trump enters in.

To put it in the most generous light I can manage, Trump was asked to attend a memorial by some of his supporters, for their family members who died in Afghanistan. His staff was warned not to take photos there or do anything politically motivated. This is a sacred space and a monument to national service and loss, and more to the point it's a massive grave of nearly a thousand servicemen and -women. Even if Trump was invited by some families, it's not just their space.

There was a camera. An Arlington Cemetery employee told them to stop, and his staff assaulted her. The campaign later posted video of him grinning and giving a thumbs up on their social media accounts. Said employee filed a report but opted not to press charges because she (of course it was a she). That's not even the bit that's got me most upset, though. One of the soldiers' mothers, Kelly Barnett, is asked about Trump politicizing that space. She describes her son's death as a murder by the Biden/Harris campaign. She talks about how we can't understand what it's like to be in her shoes. (Video is here, just over 2:00 in.)

There's just so much pain and anger in those words. She's turned to rage over what was done to her son rather than seeing the honor and dignity of his choice. Or perhaps in addition to? Most of my male cousins served; none died, but we had enough of other kinds of loss connected to military service, so I have a glimpse of that kind of pain. Obviously not to the extreme of having a child die, but enough. I can imagine how under different circumstances I might have gone down that dark path of blame and rage.

Which is probably why it utterly guts me to see her feel the need to defend Trump. I don't blame the media; this story is newsworthy and she chose to speak to them. But she's clearly in so much pain even now, and if she was the one to invite Trump, how truly, irredeemably wrong of him to exploit that pain to get a bit of publicity. He could have said no. Or he could have stood with them, been quietly supportive, not turned it into an ad where he had to know people like her would be left to defend him. Her words seem almost a cultish mentality, and I'm so far beyond pissed to think of him taking advantage of her pain and the place it drove her to.

What an utter fucking bastard of a man-child.

I honestly didn't know I had it in me to still be so offended by this kind of thing. But honestly, this is so far beyond the realm of "wrong." Truly.

[niibaataa]

Some Indigenous Poets to Read

Disclaimer: Some of these poems deal with pregnancy, colonialism, substance abuse, murder, death, and historical wrongs. Exercise caution.

Tacey M. Atsitty [Diné] : Anasazi, Lady Birds' Evening Meetings, Things to Do With a Monster.

Billy-Ray Belcourt [Cree] : NDN Homopoetics, If Our Bodies Could Rust, We Would Be Falling Apart, Love is a Moontime Teaching.

CooXooEii Black [Arapaho] : On Mindfulness, Some Notes on Vision, With Scraps We Made Sacred Food.

Trevino L. Brings Plenty [Lakota] : Unpack Poetic, Will, Massacre Song Foundation.

Julian Talamantez Brolaski [Apache] : Nobaude, murder on the gowanus, What To Say Upon Being Asked To Be Friends.

Gladys Cardiff [Cherokee] : Combing, Prayer to Fix The Affections, To Frighten a Storm.

Freddy Chicangana [Yanacuna] : Of Rivers, Footprints, We Still Have Life on This Earth.

Laura Da' [Shawnee] : Bead Workers, The Meadow Views: Sword and Symbolic History, A Mighty Pulverizing Machine.

Natalie Diaz [Mojave] : It Was The Animals, My Brother My Wound, The Facts of Art.

Heid E. Erdrich [Anishinaabe] : De'an, Elemental Conception, Ghost Prisoner.

Jennifer Elise Foerster [Mvskoke] : From "Coosa", Leaving Tulsa, The Other Side.

Eric Gansworth [Onondaga] : Bee, Eel, A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function.

Joy Harjo [Muscogee] : An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, A Map to The Next World.

Gordon Henry Jr. [Anishinaabe] : How Soon, On the Verve of Verbs, It Was Snowing on The Monuments.

Sy Hoahwah [Comanche/Arapaho] : Colors of The Comanche Nation Flag, Definitive Bright Morning, Typhoni.

LeAnne Howe [Choctaw] : A Duck's Tune, 1918, Iva Describes Her Deathbed.

Hugo Jamioy [Kamentsá] : PUNCTUAL, If You Don't Eat Anything, The Story of My People.

Layli Long Soldier [Lakota] : 38, WHEREAS, Obligations 2.

Janet McAdams [Muscogee] : Flood, The Hands of The Taino, Hunters, Gatherers.

Brandy Nālani McDougall [Kānaka Maoli] : He Mele Aloha no ka Niu, On Finding my Father's First Essay, The Island on Which I Love You.

dg nanouk okpik [Inupiaq-Inuit] : Cell Block on Chena River, Found, If Oil Is Drilled In Bristol Bay.

Simon J. Ortiz [Acoma Pueblo] : Becoming Human, Blind Curse, Busted Boy.

Sara Marie Ortiz [Acoma Pueblo] : Iyáani (Spirit, Breath, Life), Language (part of a compilation), Rush.

Alan Pelaez Lopez [Zapotec] : the afterlife of illegality, A Daily Prayer, Zapotec Crossers.

Tommy Pico [Kumeyaay] : From "Feed", from Junk, You Can't be an NDN Person in Today's World.

Craig Santos Perez [Chamorro] : (First Trimester), from Lisiensan Ga'lago, from "understory".

Cedar Sigo [Suquamish] : Cold Valley, Expensive Magic, Secrets of The Inner Mind.

M. L. Smoker [Assiniboine/Sioux] : Crosscurrent, Heart Butte, Montana, Another Attempt at Rescue.

Laura Tohe [Diné] : For Kathryn, Female Rain, Returning.

Gwen Nell Westerman [Cherokee/Dakota] : Dakota Homecoming, Covalent Bonds, Undivided Interest.

Karenne Wood [Monacan] : Apologies, Abracadabra, an Abecedarian, Chief Totopotamoi, 1654.

Lightning Round! Writers with poetry available on their sites:

Shonda Buchanan [Coharie, Cherokee, Choctaw].

Leonel Lienlaf [Mapuche].

Asani Charles [Choctaw/Chickasaw].