Memorial Day: Remembering One's Duty

As the smoke of thousands of cooking fires waft across the parks where families gather, thousands of boats plow the lakes and rivers, balls are tossed, children are running amid squeals of laughter, and another school year ends across America. A day off from work as the door to summer opens. And thousands of Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen lie in every corner of this country and dozens of cemeteries in foreign countries, unremembered but by families, friends, service organizations, and some government offices. New graves are dug daily and our national flags are seemingly forever at half-mast.

The spiritual passing of the legacy baton of the service to one’s country by the dead to the living can only be shared by those who have participated in the noble service and sacrifices that go with that duty of the common citizen. As the living look forward to their future, some willingly and some reluctantly, reach back and grasp the proffered symbolic baton of one’s continued duty to country and neighbor.

The innate formulation of responsibility to justice and fairness is not lost in service to one’s country, but rather, it is solidified by that service. The moral code is not surrendered! The strength of the grip on the baton provides insight into the continued worth of the individual.

Those citizens who were never afforded the opportunity, especially those who declined the opportunity, to reach for the baton, cannot understand the duty-bound camaraderie of service.

One particularly troubling area is that of public officials, especially federal judges with lifetime appointments like that of Judges Robert Brack of Las Cruces, New Mexico, Lucero, Ebel, and Hodges of 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, who take the same, supposedly selfless oath of devotion to the duties prescribed by tradition and our laws: “protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Then in their own courtrooms, they openly mock and discredit their oath and duty to the country with “judges’ discretion” for their own selfish domestic ex parte personal beliefs and in support of domestic ideological groups.

Meanwhile, the children and grandchildren of those fathers and mothers who did their duty are filling the graves we honor today and on future Memorial Days.

Six Volt Jump-start in a Twelve Volt World

This Sun-News photo from 5/24/10 shows beginnings of an expenditure by the City of Las Cruces dba Las Cruces Downtown Partnership of over $350,000 of public funds to construct an entrada, entrance, in this alleyway (callejón) to the St. Genevieve's Catholic Church monument. This church was torn down during the 1960s urban renewal frenzy under circumstances not clear in the minds of parishioners even now. The property was sold to a local banker, some money reportedly went to a new church by the same name, and the Bishop retired to El Paso environs. Pavement soon covered those molding bones left by the so honored dead. (This expenditure is about 1/30 of funds spent so far in the development to recover one block of Main Street to the Anglos' dreamy glory of the 1950s. Most of the public funds have gone to advisors, planners, and local architects.)

Mesilla has its landmark church, Basilica of St. Albino, on the town square and Las Cruces has been using that church's picture to advertise Las Cruces. Now Las Cruces is going to have its own church monument entrada called the quaint name of La Placita ("Colonial NM Spanish, placita, dim. of plaza: small populated area in the New Mexican countryside." From Cobos.). It's best not to ask what the words mean in Las Cruces.

The whole purpose to this construction, while appearing to be an innocent development, is to use public funds to create a Christian-religious, park-like affair with the focus being the St. Genevieve's Catholic Church monument. This is part of the on-going project to create the purposeful illusion that the old downtown Las Cruces is the anchor of a 'truly Christian city.'

Greg Smith, president of the board of directors of the Partnership is quoted as to the other underlying purpose of this entrada: "This will be a gateway for downtown," Smith said. "People from the nearby historic neighborhoods will be able to come here to socialize and enjoy THEIR (my caps) city." Funny. Never mind the rest of us. Just how many of the planners/supporters live in the old area and weren't even here in the 1950s? Right, Heather?

From the City's religious venues on Spruce Avenue north of this new site, those being the Fire Department, the Police Department, the only Public Library, the Culture Center, and the new City Hall, to the three large Latin crosses flower beds on the south end of Downtown, the religious illusion is becoming set in the minds of many citizens and visitors.

In the meanwhile, the New Las Cruces has been rapidly developing several miles away along the I-25 and Highway 70 East corridor as planned.