It is Memorial Day weekend - time to forget, forgive, and then love and live

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I do not know about you but I really need a break from reality, at least for a weekend.  What better way to change your outlook than by focusing on the sacrifices by so many members of our armed forces, dating back to George Washington and his ragtag Continental Army.

We all know people who have served, or we are beneficiaries of the service by others who gave us freedom, hope, equality and justice.  I suppose if one were realistic, they would say we honor those who sacrificed for others, yet wonder about those who ignore the sacrifices and do things that are not in the public interest.

When I was young I lived to have the opportunity to defend freedom.  My career in both sports and education were preparation for joining the military.  Even as I was playing basketball at the University of Arizona I was immersed in an intensive Reserve Officer Training Program to prepare me for the inevitable service during the Vietnam war.

However, Divine Providence has other ideas for us on occasion so at the moment I volunteered for the draft armed only with exceptional ratings in ROTC, they discovered my body had been permanently damaged from 15 years of intensive sports achievement.

Rather than military service, I was confined to public service and spent much of the next three decades working in government and politics at all levels from local, to state, to national offices.  It was a far cry from my dream but at least a way to make sure we could enjoy the opportunities given to us by our patriotic and dedicated military.

So this weekend, as I do every year, I will honor our fallen heroes.  I will honor those who have not fallen but gave up their lives for us through injury and stress and will never be able to lead a normal life.  I will honor the families of those heroes whose lives were changed forever by wars halfway around the world.

Here is a song I wrote to honor those heroes.  It is performed by my band, Nashville Bound. I hope you take the time to listen to it.  The name of the song is "No One's Left Keeping Score."  Click on the link below to hear it. 

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=9481087

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Memorial Day 2010 - Remember our Defenders

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Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, given November 19, 1863 on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA



Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.



We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.



It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth.