Summer and Simple Freedoms in New England
With Labor Day here, I’m quietly reflective as I am every year. Thank you Grover Cleveland for this extra day to honor another summer’s farewell while getting together with friends and family. I’m reminded of a really fantastic Summer of 2007. The coolest thing about it is we enjoyed it right here in New England with so much to do that we were left feeling we needed a vacation from our vacation.
The above pic is a shot I got while taking a ferry from Boston Harbor over to Spectacle Island, one of the many Harbor Islands located just beyond the Harbor. It was really cool to be surrounded by beautiful sailboats while having planes fly directly overhead. We got to witness a Native American gathering with the Nipmuc people and I was reminded, once again, of just how blessed I am to live in such a sacred part of this FREE and beautiful country.
I think for many of us New Englanders, we take for granted just how fortunate we are each day as we tread upon this land, taking part in the daily grind, rushing blindly to our destinations. As many of us commute down 93 across the bridge into Boston, we are so focused on getting to work on time, that we don’t often have time to remember that we are able to FREELY work and thrive and exist because of that small group of people who stood up for what they believed in back a few hundred years ago, on this very same land. Since that time, there have also been many others who have fought that similar fight and we NEED to remember them and honor them each day as we go about our business. How very blessed are we to be living a life where many of us complain that the grocery line is too long, our internet connections are just not running fast enough, and our summers are much too short? Is this REALLY ALL we have to complain about?
This very moment many of our friends, families, and loved ones are busy dedicating and sacrificing their lives to honor this freedom that we take so much for granted. They have given up these lazy days of summer and are living in foreign countries, eating food for nourishment instead of gluttonous pleasure, sweating in the hot sun in heavy uniforms and tightly laced boots. They are fighting for all of our lives every single day, as well as their own. Have we taken the time EVERY SINGLE DAY to honor and remember them, to let them know what they’re doing is worthwhile, to just take one minute, ONE MINUTE of our so called busy day and say a small prayer for them?
Where did you put your flag? Did that yellow ribbon on your car make too much of a political statement for you, so you threw it away? What happened to “We Remember” or “We’ll Never Forget”? If we were to tally up all of the losses and say that it all happened on one day, would that help us to remember? Where is our collective memory? We’ll remember to pick up our dry cleaning this week, but will we remember that many were lost this week so that we could keep that simple freedom?
