Memorial Day weekend is approaching. We will be showered with ‘news’ stories about how the summer is beginning, how the vacation season has started, and the ways movies will change our lives and become box office phenoms over the next three months.
But it all seems to fleeting.
It seems like this yearly ritual of trading seasons, cold to hot, comes and goes too fast and without much fanfare..
Whether it’s true or not, it feels like traditions are dying.
I think it is a symptom of a few things for me personally, with getting older being one of them.. almost going full steam into my mid-30s (yes I read articles when I was in my mid-20s and talked this same way) and it just feels as though riding through like is like going 80MPH on a freeway..
You don’t have much time to see what you are passing, and you’ll constantly struggling to get to an ill-fated goal.
This year, like other Memorial Days, there is more attention being given to car and mattress sales than there is the dead from war.. Instead of honoring the soldiers who died in battle in wars past, and previous, we are dishonoring them with badges of horror. The American Veterans Affairs scandal only drips into a bigger puddle of government inefficiency. Tales of scandals, cooked books, alternate lists, and finally veterans meeting their final fate at the hands of an incredibly incompetent system are all the rage these days, just in time for Memorial Day weekend.. If half of what is being said about the VA system is true, this is beyond problematic. It’s crisis time.. and perhaps also time to begin asking for resignations and terminations. When
you have the chances that terror suspects at GITMO get better treatment that veterans, that’s a problem.
Another sign of the season: A big movie release. Almost 4,000 theaters will welcome men and women of all age to the newest X-MEN film.. It remains to be seen how many people will go in holding their nose due to the allegations that Bryan Singer has had a history of raping teenage boys. While accusations have to be proven in court, the Hollywood scandal of pedophilic directors and movie tycoons seems like a script still being written, and a scene yet to be played out. More will come, I predict. But the small bits of news may not be enough to derail X-MEN from being a big hit. X-MEN today, XXX-MEN tomorrow..
There is one more thing about 2014’s summer beginning that may be beautiful: A meteor shower visible from earth in which we may be able to spot 200 meteors per hour. So put down your iPads and turn off your phones.. go into the night air and spot signs from the heavens.. And realize, regardless of your place in the world, we are all spinning into oblivion on a small rock in the middle of a vast galaxy, within a universe, and who knows what else.