A Sunlit Day

I was going to title this post "Another Kick At The Can" because it is mostly going to be about me trying seriously (at least a little more seriously) this time to write on FJ's topic for me from last post on "The World Today".

If you look in the comments for that post you will see that he felt a little bit "cheated" by my efforts. In a way I can't blame him as his efforts in his take on my subject for him, "My First Girlfriend", were more direct.

Nevertheless, I want it known that he did not guilt me into taking this second kick at the can so to speak. I had it planned pretty much after I finished writing the previous post.

One thing I will say right off though is I pre-wrote the more light-hearted one quite quickly in my head and in short notes on paper before doing it on-line. This one is going to be much harder (which is why I originally had no plans to do it "seriously") and I may or may not be so successful.

But before I start let me (excitedly I might add) tell you why the title was changed to "A Sunlit Day". When I came here tonight (I am actually writing this at the "real" time that the time stamp says - lol), I found 2 new followers. One was one I "directed here", again from FB. Speaking of which, thanks Lucia.

Lucia, is a very busy and accomplished lady who is fluent in several languages. She is a Spanish woman who moved to Montreal and now has duel citizenship. She is so busy, because she is moving (and for many other reasons I'm sure), yet again, to Korea of all places for a job. Congratulations, good luck and thanks again, Lucia.

But back to the title change. The reason for that is the second person who I found out had unexpectedly joined my blog followers. This was a total surprise. I had left a comment on another blog I happened upon in poking around the blogosphere as I do occasionally (although not enough).

It was during this journey that I came across a young girl (only 15!) named Jessica, who lives in New York and writes a blog called A Sunlit Day. I decided to title this after her blog because I am so excited to have only my second follower who I did not relentlessly self-direct here and who took it upon herself to join.

Please check out her blog at http://a sunlitday.blogspot.com/

Now back to the meat on the bone. What to write about "The World Today". My friend who can not be named suggested talking about the internet. Maybe because she thinks it is the only subject related to the world today that I actually might know something about as I regularly bore her with internet (ie. mostly blog) talk.

When she said this I decided (at the time anyway) to right about all the different social networks and other things (seemingly hundreds of them) that you can "link" (if that is the right word) content from other things to using something that I think is called Add It. It even has it's own toolbar!

However, since I know so little about it, other than it seems awfully cool, to me anyway (and more than a bit overwhelming) how many different things there are to use, I really don't know enough (anything really - lol) about it. Except that I joined (and haven't used or figured out what it's for either - lol) Stumble Upon.

Another possibility occurred just now as I was coming back from a brief bathroom break (TMI anybody - lol). As I shut my door on the way back in to my room I decided to look at the mini-calendar on the back of my door since it is so close to the end of the month. Checking out how much month is left.

Anyway, I noticed that today is actually a special day somewhere in the world. Australia and New Zealand to be precise. So with no further ado, allow me to introduce to you - ANZAC Day. And yes, it is all capitalized. Now to do a quick google search on what exactly ANZAC Day is. My guess being a day of national pride.

...

Well, I'm back. Google directed me to Wikipedia. A not so quick reading of the full article on ANZAC Day reveals that it is indeed for the most part considered a "day of national pride" as I had guessed. In fact it is the shared "Remembrance Day" of both Australia and New Zealand primarily and a few little island like places as well.

I think I have my topic. Especially since it is literally about the world today, as in today, April 25th.

Because I obviously just learned about ANZAC Day from Wikipedia I can't do it justice the way they did and don't intend to basically plagarize the entire article (which is quite long anyway). So I will just share some of the main things that I picked out of the article as signifigant (to me anyway).

I do encourage you all to look at the wikipedia article after you are done here. It is long but is fairly interesting.

What follows comes directly from Wikipedia. First of all, ANZAC stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers were known as Anzacs. ANZAC Day now "broadly commemorates" servicepeople from all conflicts that Australia and New Zealand have participated in.

Wikipedia calls it "a rare instance of two sovereign countries not only sharing the same Remembrance Day, but making reference to both countries in it's name". It is held on the same date every year as the landing in Gallipoli in Turkey during WWI.

There is criticism of Anzac Day by both Australians and New Zealanders. An early one was in 1960. It came with the publication of Alan Seymours "classic" play, The One Day A Year. It criticised as "a day of drunken debachery by soldiers" by its main character Hughie and should be "a day when questions of what it means to be loyal to a nation or Empire must be raised".

One Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, actually had the nerve (guts perhaps) to note that it should not be a day of "uncritical and self-serving embrace of the Anzac spirit".

"ANZAC Day has also been marked by protests against contemporary wars" like Vietnam and in recent years by feminists, etc. Feminists were protesting against male violence specifically against women in war and were not surprisingly but still I would say shamefully banned from marching.

Which in my mind goes to show that the sacrifices of war don't seem to teach the "hyper-patriotic" (my words) much about freedom of speech. Commemorating war-time sacrifice is highly important but shouldn't preclude the just as important assertion of freedom of speech which presumably was one of the more important things that is/was and always should be one of the few things worth fighting for.

"Other criticisms have revolved around a perceived overzealousness in Australian attachment to the event, at the expense of remembrance of the contribution of New Zealand ... In 2009 New Zealand historians noted that some Australian children were unaware that New Zealand was a part of Anzac". This seems bizarre considering that the first thing they probably should have been taught is what the acronym stands for!

ANZAC Day is observed with primarily dawn vigils/dawn services that used to be reserved for the servicepeople themselves with the general public coming to the later in the day marches but now family and young people are encouraged to come too.

The signifigance of the dawn timing of the services is that it "symbolically links" it to the dawn landing in Gallipoli and it is a "quiet, peaceful" time for the returned soldiers to "seek comradeship" with their fellow servicepeople.

The nadir of services was during the Vietnam War. The apogee is in recent times with many young people "embracing" it.

In a final piece of information on the holiday, one of the traditions of ANZAC Day is the "gunfire breakfast" (coffee with rum) "which happens shortly after many dawn ceremonies and recalls the breakfast of many soldiers before facing battle".

So, there you go, FJ, and any others perhaps looking for a different kind of post. Let me leave you with a last thought or two on what this post will hopefully cause the average reader to reflect upon.

Hopefully, we can all, whatever our nationality and beliefs remember to, well, remember as well as to temper that with the ability to remember all that was fought for and never to let unchecked patriotism stiffle reasonable dissent and protest.

If you do go to the Wikipedia article as I mentioned before there is a moving quote by a Turkish leader of the 30's that I urge you to note. I won't add it here as I have used more than enough of Wikipedia's information (you really should check out the original article) and you may be interested in some of the information I deliberately left out.

Carmen

PS. The title is I think a doubly good one, if I do say so myself, as it references both Jessica and the soldiers dawn services and what was fought for - many more sunlit days. Just a thought.

PPS. As you have probably noticed if you have been following my blog from the beginning or shortly thereafter, I have finally figured out how to use the link button, which like my dear italics button has changed since I started posting. I can now make my links clickable again. Also, a few days ago I got a new widget, the FB badge. It is the only way I knew how to get any kind of a picture on this blog. LOL. Also it includes my email address, and on the top of the main page, which I like because I encourage any and all to email as well as leave comments.

PPPS. Today will probably be my last post until May as I have a, probably silly, habit of trying to do things like "metering" my postings paragraphs, which also includes things like tediously "self-justifying" (a formating device) my sentences on things like resumes when they don't naturally do so and, as relates to not posting until May now, to "metering" my posts in terms of number of posts per month since beginning this blog. Check my archives if you want to see what I mean about this last one. Anyway, till May 1st or so, take care.

The C.A.T.