Happy Birthday, Maryscott

Today is Maryscott O'Connor's birthday. In today's Open Thread, she reminds us all of something that I hadn't thought of for a while--that at the age of four... My vocabulary wasn't quite so colourful as it is today; but it was already vastly superior to that of George W. Bush -- who was, if I am not mistook, at that very time engaged in avoiding the war he vocally supported that had taken my father's life three months prior to my birth, four years earlier. Yes, while George drank and dawdled and debauched on some airbase in Alabama, I was a four year old girl, already reading beyond his capacity and fully comprehensive of what he never would be: that war is hell, to be undertaken as a last resort -- and, should it be a necessary thing, an enterprise for men of courage and honour -- and that only cowards and liars and thieves applaud, encourage and escalate wars in which they will not fight themselves, but send others to die in their stead. I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that Maryscott's father had died in Vietnam, but hadn't thought about that for a while. Clearly, many of us are anti-war, but thankfully most of us have not experienced that kind of loss as a direct result of war. Thank you, Maryscott, for your voice. Kind of late to say this, but I hope your father is "somewhere cool". Wherever that is, he's gotta be proud of you. And I know for a fact that many, many people in this plane of existence sure are.