In honor of Veteran’s day and to follow up on Stlo7’s stellar re-post yesterday, I am revisiting the Flags of our sons and daughters which I posted about last month. At that time the # of the fallen was 3,796. I visited North River again yesterday and the number has risen to 3,876.

Now the December issue of Adirondack Life shows the same field with the story of those who planted the flags:

Local residents Woody and Elise Widlund, driving through Vermont to visit their son, saw a farm field in Jeffersonville dotted with small flags. Thousands of them. They wondered, then they knew: this was a war memorial, one personal expression of moving simplicity. “We decided to bring that idea here,” says Woody. “We wanted to call attention to the war deaths. So few people know the actual cost in human lives.

They bought bundles of wire-stemmed high-visibility flags from a Wisconsin company and began placing them in the lawn of a small house they own (a building under renovation that will be donated to the Adirondack Community Housing Trust later this year). The couple added a sign, then a picture of a helmet, and now a real helmet hangs on a plain wooden cross. The fabric squares shimmer in the fall sun, like the leaves on aspen and birch trees across the river. November 11 is Veterans Day in the U.S., Remembrance Day in Canada and elsewhere, and its old name was Armistice Day, commemorating the end of World War I in 1918. Banks and post offices are closed, though most companies stay open. In some public schools there is a moment of silence in honor of the fallen, but the concept remains abstract, long-ago battles across an ocean involving other people. But not for everyone, and not in every town.

I think we observed the same field of flags in Vermont, too.

Too few people are aware of the cost, in human lives, that this war is accruing. We’re told to go about our lives-burn gas, go shopping, consume, consume, consume. No one asks for sacrifice, no one takes responsibility, so the few are paying the price for the many, and our military continues to fight this war based on greed and lies, with no end in sight.

September 24, 2007 Cover

If you want another look at the fallen, check out September 24, 2007 issue of The Nation, Bush’s face is made up of their photos.

We must leave Iraq.