Tag Archives: obligation

Observed, Quarropas

Decoration Day

We Americans need to remove Memorial Day from our Monday holiday schedule. Instead, like Independence Day, observe this occasion on the date whence it falls. Unless it occurs on a Saturday or Sunday. Only then we should accede and extend the holiday onto Monday.

We should resume Memorial Day’s normal cycle in order to give more than lip service to patriotism and sacrifice. Americans have been giving both shorter shrift since the Reagan Administration. Currently, President Scalawag has all but erased their meaning.

The America in which we presently reside has become at its now feebly beating heart one the Founders would not recognize. Not from the technological or social advances none of them could’ve conceived. The tricorns, breeches and buckles set would see that little of the premise which created our once great nation still exists.

Rather, Americans have been gradually becoming disinclined in practicing the attributes that incited the Colonials to become Americans. Continue reading Decoration Day →

Quarropas

Edna Long Left Questions

Vernon waited too late. A cousin, he now wants to assemble our family tree. A branch of it at least. One comprising our mutual matriarchal entities. The moment to have done this was decades ago when enough generations still stretched among us to weave that narrative together.

My grandmother Alice, his aunt, was born in 1908. Hers would’ve been a fine memory to excavate. She could’ve provided his enterprise’s bones. After all she was old enough to have known ex-slaves.

Ex-slaves. Talk about history coming to life. It’s one thing to watch Skip Gates’ Finding Your Roots or Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary. It surely would’ve been more immediate to have such recollections lent voice from a listener who heard them directly from people who underwent those indignities.

It’s no stretch to any imagination in Alice seeing her own grandparents as having once been chattel.

What prompted Vernon’s late, nearly futile search? Edna Long. Edna Long piqued him. Continue reading Edna Long Left Questions →