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Their last full measure of devotion

Tomb of Unknown Soldier


Know, all who see these lines,
That this man, by his appetite for honor,
By his steadfastness,
By his love for his country,
By his courage,
Was one of the miracles of the God.

— Guy Gavriel Kay

“The Green Field of France”, by Eric Bogle

Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile ‘neath the warm summer sun,
I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the great fallen in 1916,
I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that faithful heart are you forever 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Enshrined then, forever, behind a glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame?

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

The sun’s shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that’s still No Man’s Land
The countless white crosses in stand mute in the sand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And I can’t help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did they really believe when they answered the call,
Did they really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain
The killing and dying, was all done in vain,
For young Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

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Tired writer is tired….


Thinking hard, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

Every so often — a couple of times, every six weeks or so — I have a really early work start at The Store. This is to do PM* work on refrigeration cases that is best done when the respective departments aren’t yet open for the day’s business. The tasks are enjoyable, and in truth, the atmosphere of The Store in the wee hours is kind of nice: not too many people are there, the place is being worked by the Night Crew (which is a group of folks I rarely get to interact with), and there’s a kind-of perverse sense of satisfaction that comes with having a pretty important job done before the rest of the world is waking up.

The problem with the 3:50 am waking time, though, is that later on the day, when I try to write, my brain is pretty much shifting into “Me no put words in pretty strings” mode. This is inconvenient, because I refuse to set aside my quota or my general mission in life of Never a day without a line. So I spend a writing session doing a lot of staring thoughtfully at the computer screen, often rubbing my forehead because that’s what we Humans do when we’re trying to think up stuff.

I got just shy of 700 words done yesterday. Not great, but at least I didn’t goose-egg it, either. Today, I’m operating on a full-night’s sleep, two cups of coffee, and I’ll do some other routine-breaking stuff that always helps get the juices flowing. Back to SPACE!!!

Zap! Pow!!

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21 Reasons You Think You Don’t Have Time To Write

Stolen from Tumblr. I’m going to bold the ones that I can definitely plead as ‘guilty’.

1. You are letting people tell you that you should be doing other things with your time.

2. You can’t live with the level of clean that your family accepts as normal.

3. You haven’t decided to treat your writing seriously and so no one around you treats it seriously, either.

4. You haven’t made yourself a writing space.

5. You haven’t realized that you need help.

6. You do what is urgent rather than what is necessary.

7. You don’t let your kids and other people solve their own problems.

8. You think that someday you will have more time for writing.

9. You are spending time doing things you actually don’t care about.

10. You are actually using distractions as an excuse not to write.

11. You are terrified of writing, of actually sitting down and putting yourself on the page.

12. You are too busy criticizing the best selling books that you are reading to write something better.

13. You don’t know what to do with a blank page.

14. You don’t know how to turn off your internal editor.

15. You talk a good game, but you don’t play it.

16. You need to do a little planning and research before you start.

17. You don’t actually like writing. You like having written. (Join the club.)

18. You need to write the first line of the next chapter before leaving for the day.

19. You need to spend time remembering what it is you love about writing.

20. You have convinced yourself that you need 2 hours to write and don’t know how to use the 20 minute chunks you actually have.

21. You don’t have notebooks scattered through the house, including in the bathroom, to jot down inspiration.

Now, I’m guilty of #21, but I don’t really jot down much. Maybe I should!

The one that took me the longest time to defeat was number 20. I don’t think in terms of time per day, just in terms of words. But it was important for me to realize that carving out two uninterrupted hours or writing a day just isn’t going to happen, until I manage to get to the point where I can write full time. Will I ever get there? I hope so. For now, I’m just going to write my arse off. And if twenty minutes is all I have, then hey — that’s 300 words or so, if I’m on my game. If not, it’s 200 or so.

Write when you can…and be liberal in your definition of “when you can”!

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Two Hundred Years of Wagner

Today is Richard Wagner’s 200th birthday.

The overture to Tannhauser, my favorite of Wagner’s overtures. There’s a sense of epic adventure and emotion here that amazes me every time I hear it.

From Lohengrin — my favorite Wagner opera — the Prelude to Act I and “Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral”. Wagner’s reputation is often one of bombast and thick, dense orchestration. This music is as delicate as anything.

The overture to Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg. Wagner’s other main reputation is one of unrelenting seriousness — but this is as sunny as anything you’ll hear by anyone else.

The Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. The emotional payoff here is one of the most staggering I know in all of music, anywhere, in any genre.

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The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer

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