May 8

 Good morning again. Cloudy but no rain so far. Maybe I can get som plants into pots today. Right now the temperature is too cool to go out for long. It should get warmer later.

I was watching BBC earlier and saw some of the celebrations in the UK where the end of WWII is still a big deal and wondered what might be scheduled here. Not much evidently. The President did issue a commemorative proclamation but not much else. I was surprised by that but then remembered how much the end of the Civil War meant here for about the next 80 years. By 1920 we had fought WWII and were in the midst of 30 years of international turmoil, depression, dust bowl, WWII to put a damper on commemorations of the "Great War" of the 19th century. Five Republicans, Grant through McKinley, were elected President between 1865 and1901--all Union officers. Between the end of the Civil War and 1920 only two presidents were Democrats: Cleveland (the first to serve two non-consecutive terms) and Wilson. The Republicans were identified with the successful preservation of the Union and made the most of that in the subsequent elections. To come back to what I said about not being very surprised that VE Day isn't getting much attention here, we seem to remember the traumatic events in our history for between 80 and 100 years before they lose their hold on our collective psyche. One of the British commentators wondered what the 90th commemoration would look like especially because very few of the veterans and survivors of WWII would be left. Mom is 93 and was 13 when the War ended in Europe--and she is, I believe, the last of her generation in our family.