3:16 – The First Year
It’s been one year since I started this blog. I have had blogs before, however the posts were all kept private. Perhaps, if there is interest I will open up the archives and post some of the older entries. I have had this domain for over ten years, but this past year has been the first that it has been aggressively promoted and used.
Initially, the beginnings were humble – to post my thoughts, opinions, and ideas about the things that interest me and are noteable in the world at large. Keep the format simple and easy to read. I have been tentatively sketching out plans to expand the domain somewhat. I will keep them under my hat for now…but changes are coming. Looking forward, my goal is to update somewhat more frequently than I have been (not that I have been doing a shabby job), as well as finish off my biography (which is more of a mood thing). Furthermore, I would like to start adding some photos – and make the site somewhat more visually friendly.
Today is also Remembrance Day – please take some time and give thought to all those who fought for the rights and freedoms that we enjoy today. Never forget the horror of war, and hope that you yourself never have to experience it. It reminds me of a poem I once read by William Owen. Most people my age are not familiar with it. It was originally written as a letter to Jessie Pope (a pro-war poet) in 1917, describing the agony of the soldiers fighting in the First World War, and is famous primarily due to its horrifying imagery. The title of the poem is Dulce et Decorum Est – a play on words of the famous pro-war poem of Horace. I have copied it below:
Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!–An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.