Blogging ceases for a week (returning December 20) due to a previous, and, God willing, permanent commitment-- that of my eldest son to his fiancée. December 17th is the day, snowy rural New England is the place, and I intend to devote myself heart and soul to being a giant damp kleenex swathed in brown silk.
Some things are more important than politics and media and war-- but the important things are the reason we have to pay attention to these more transient concerns. Before the year is out, the new bride and groom will be separated, for months, as the groom pilots the mother of all helo's in some distant and dusty place. Life gets all too real when your bambino takes a wife-- that's universal. I would sleep more soundly if I thought that the people with power and public platforms at their disposal, were universally cognizant of how deeply real it gets when the bambino ships out.
Semper Fi will play its part in the wedding vows this weekend, as a pledge of fidelity to moral and familial duty before God and the community. As a military motto, however, it will never be far from our minds.
Anyone care to help me tie the tin cans and the "just married" sign to the back of this thing?
