Did you hear Senator Salazar say at this morning’s city council chambers meeting, that he’d like to see as part of the Fort Carson expansion, a local national military cemetery to rival the one at Arlington? Because as retired General Bentley Rayburn reported, there’s a growing need, “and Fort Logan’s filling up.” Always thinking about our boys, aren’t they?
Senator Salazar painted the picture for everyone, a cemetery visible from Interstate 25, to rival the size of the already famous national cemeteries. It will be seen by the millions who travel the Front Range corridor each day, military headstones stretching wide expanses, reaching into the foothills of the Rockies, into our purple mountains majesty I guess. Does Salazar want to seize by eminent domain the fruited plain for somber waves of gray?
It’s one thing to refashion America the Beautiful to honor the fallen, and God knows there’s nothing wrong with I-25 drivers being confronted with the human cost of our folly, but how cynical is it, to favor expansion of Fort Carson and the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site so that you can station more military personnel here and fill the cemetery that much faster?
There wasn’t time to read the questions recorded on the note cards Salazar’s people had collected to record the meeting’s only public input. How many graves do you envision Mr. Salazar, before Arlington Southwest, let’s call it, will make the impression you have in mind?
From firing range to a driving range for the fired upon, ah home sweet home on the range….
Lazurus, have you paid your war-road tariffs? What a great way to increase a budget, Kenny!
Perhaps the DOT should join the taxpayer land annex burial act for all-American automobile death cemetaries. Maybe we could even open a few plots down at the city park for swimming lesson drop-outs. Just no one tell poor Willie Loman that Arthur Miller’s Yankee Doodle autopsy meant nothing.
As an alternative, here’s an internment-recycling idea that is so grand it’s almost, well…, Presidential! Let’s exhume EVERYONE, paint the bones red white and blue, and call them collectibles. We could sell them on Ebay! National heirlooms for the new world catalog or, in case China and the likes aren’t buying the supply, let’s sell the flag bones as simple bio-art (“Femurs for freedom!”) or perhaps simply as jewelry (to wear under our noses).
Free enterprise is not dead – it’s templated. And isn’t it joyous?! All those cookie shapes to cut out once the dough is rolled flat by the pin again. Even writing has gone from flow to WordPress, but obviously, this world has great needs to resolve in the name of politics. Thus, like trying to turn an ocean into a river, the provisional method is to increase the slope.
When I walk through the valley of death I fear gravity.
From National cemetaries to creative congregation…. it’s always death and taxes down at The Town Pump.
Dearly beloved, buy a postcard from Colorado. Enjoy the faceless stones planted along the freeway amidst the passing lanes of speed extinction. Revel in the perfect Gordian knot: from gas to mass. And rest in peace. The auto-pilot is preset for amen.
I wished I had a camera to record it, but you know that funeral home (I believe right down the street from Toons, definitely within a few blocks though) downtown where they had a big yellow ribbon festooned banner (in the summer of ’04) saying “Welcome Home, Troops!”?
It was during the “surge” of returning troops, Dickless Cheney was declaring that the insurgency was in it’s final throes, and the soldiers who were returning (except for the ones who made it into the cemeteries and long term hospitalization) had already gotten their orders to go back into the meat grinder.
A lot of folks on the internet didn’t quite know whether or not to believe me when I posted that.
My first thought was “My God, that’s inappropriate!”
Then I thought about it more and realized that it was about the most appropriate piece of the hysteria-mongering propaganda about the war.
Ha! Jonah! Good to hear from you as always. It all gets to be a little choking sometimes, doesn’t it? Great story.
See you at the bury-cades. I’ll be the one wearing the pennies.
More tourist advice: 1. If you stare real close at the front of U.S. coins you can completely skip going to Rushmore. 2. The easiest way for an American to travel abroad is to wear a whig.