Magazine Posts

Days speed by,
so readily,
my life is,
mostly adversity.

I tire of the madness,
of all the insanity,
surrounding my love,
a place I do not want to be.

Memorial Day honors all service members who lost their lives while in service to the United States, during peace and war. It is a time to reflect on those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country.

    "Soldiers Memorial Day"
   Hymn by Mary B. C. Slade

When flow’ry Summer is at hand,
And Spring has gemm’d the earth with bloom,
We hither bring, with loving hand,
Bright flow’rs to deck our soldier’s tomb.

                  (Chorus)
Gentle birds above are sweetly singing
O’er the graves of heroes brave and true;
While the sweetest flow’rs we are bringing,
Wreath’d in garlands of red, white and blue.

They died our country to redeem,
And from the loving earth we bring
The wealth of hill, and vale, and stream,
Our grateful land’s best offering

                 (Chorus)
With snowy hawthorn, clusters white,
Fair violets of heav’nly blue,
And early roses, fresh and bright,
We wreathe the red, and white, and blue.

But purer than the fairest flowers,
We strew above the honored dead,
The tender changeless love of ours,
That decks the soldier’s lowly bed.

                   (Chorus)
We bend and kiss the precious sod,
Swift fall our tears the graves above
Oh! Brothers! from the hills of God,
Look down and see our changeless love.

Written by Mary B. C. Slade in 1870, two years after Gen. John A. Logan first declared May 30th a Memorial Day for decorating the graves of fallen soldiers. Music to her words was written by Perkins, W. O. (William Oscar). In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May. The change went into effect in 1971. Read about the Origins of Memorial Day

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This asteroid has a moon. The robot spacecraft Galileo on route to Jupiter in 1993 encountered and photographed two asteroids during its long interplanetary voyage. The second minor planet it photographed, 243 Ida, was unexpectedly discovered to have a moon. The tiny moon, Dactyl, is only about 1.6 kilometers across and seen as a small dot on the right of the sharpened featured image. In contrast, the potato-shaped Ida is much larger, measuring about 60 kilometers long and 25 km wide. Dactyl is the first moon of an asteroid ever discovered -- now many asteroids are known to have moons. The names Ida and Dactyl are from Greek mythology.

A young boy,
riding his bike,
going like a
bat out of hell.

A right turn,
oops! There was a car.
A sharp jig to the right
put him into a hedge.

A small puncture in
the bicep of his left arm.
Remembering, it was bluish,
apparently, no harm.

Flash ahead, thirty years plus.\,
when the bluish tick,
began to ooze and
out came a little stick.

When I write for you,
I'll write in pen,
as pencil will fade away,
never knowing when.

What day, hath thy free?
A glorious, sunny day
exists for special people,
like you. Hoping you
have the chance to enjoy.

Longer the day,
moving from Spring
to Summer.
Not enough rain.

Floated the Butterfly,
amongst the blooms.
Flitting to and fro,
searching for nectar.

A pleasant scene,
to roam so free
with a sweet reward,
made just for thee.

My mind has gone,
short to ground,
as brain cells fry,
there is no sound.

No more memories,
they've gone away,
to never return,
even if we pray.

Yet here I am
in fallen glory,
filled with grief,
another story.