"The [Middle] Eastern World, It Is Exploding"

I started thinking this week about my grandfather. He was a married father when he was drafted in 1943. I'm a married father, too.

Differences: he was still under 30. I'm 35 (read: 44). And he was able-bodied, but I have a plate and some pins in my ankle. (Although I've since run a marathon.)

I'm reading Across Five Aprils to my kids right now. I thought of my grandfather again when I read this passage today:

"Do you hev to do it then?"

"I guess I do. There's been a long chain of events leading up to this time; the dreams of men in my generation are as insignificant as that--" he snapped his fingers sharply. "We were foolish enough to reach manhood just when the long fizzling turned into an explosion."

p. 65

There are things I believe in enough to risk dying for them. Distracting the nation from the president's incompetence is not one of them.

Post title a variation of a lyric from "Eve of Destruction."

via oneofthebest

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