ItsOnlyBob

Several years ago my friend Becky Gjendem solicited entries on the subject of "What Memorial Day Means to Me" for her blog . She was kind enough to post my entry:  To some military musicians and ceremonial guardsmen, every day is Memorial Day. I'm a military musician in Washington, DC. Where I work, the main mission is rendering final honors to the dead at Arlington National Cemetery. Though performing is not my primary duty (I'm usually off in the corner where they keep the creative types), I am occasionally called on as an extra or substitute drummer for a funeral.  Even for a stand-in like me, it is all too easy to regard the job with a sense of routine. A military funeral is, after all, a ritual that has changed little over the centuries, and the troops who perform it are professionals whose principal job is to perform it as many as four times a day.  Services are virtually identical from one to the next. It is rare for members of the ceremonial unit ...

(Click here or on the picture to see it full size)

May 2013  I’m sitting in my sunroom on a warm afternoon, looking out across my newly green backyard and the ravine that cuts through our neighborhood. I’m awaiting, with a creeping sense of dread and resignation, a benign but loud invasion.  The 17-year periodical cicadas (Brood II) are due to crawl up from underground around these parts, as soon as the ground temperature hits and maintains 64 degrees.  Soon.  A few precocious cicadas emerged in the past couple of summers, much to the evil delight of our cats, who regarded them as toys to be brought inside and batted about.  I know many people look forward to the cicadas. And I know they’re essentially harmless. ( Even delicious , some say.)  I certainly don’t regard them the same way I regard, say, roaches or spiders or ants.  But that doesn’t mean I have to like them.  Cicadas are often mistakenly called  locusts   –  but really, they’re not even c...