“For every creature of God is good.”

Under a federal law passed by Congress in 1942, the date for Thanksgiving in the United States varies from year to year. It’s the fourth Thursday of the month.

But the anniversary of the first official Thanksgiving set by federal decree in our country is November 26th.

In 1789, President George Washington issued a proclamation that made November 26, 1789 the first Thanksgiving Day designated as such by our national government.

As Thanksgiving Day approaches nowadays, I often think of one of our family dogs who died unexpectedly before Thanksgiving in 2009, from a genetic autoimmune problem that could not be fixed.

Her name was Boojie.

She was a beautiful, sweet-natured Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier.

My wife and I loved her dearly and her passing left a hole in our hearts that lasted a long time. (Since partially filled by another beautiful Wheaten Terrier we named Barbie Boo.)

I am not a religious person. But I do believe that we all can have feelings that might be called “spiritual” or “religious.”

The bonds I’ve had with dogs like Boojie and other animals come closest to giving me such feelings.

The word thanksgiving was popularized in English by the Bible, in which it is used many times. My favorite Bible verse using this word is in Timothy 4:4, which says (in the King James version):

       “For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.”

On this November 26th, I dedicate my post and that quotation to Boojie.

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The Top 10 Quotes about and by US Marines…

November 10th is the official birthday of the United States Marines, which were established by the Second Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War, on November 10, 1775.

So, today, I’d like to salute the US Marine Corps by listing the 10 most famous quotations about and by Marines.

1. “From the Halls of Montezuma,
       To the Shores of Tripoli;
       We fight our country's battles
       On the land as on the sea; [changed to “In the air, on land, and sea” in 1942]
       First to fight for right and freedom
       And to keep our honor clean;
       We are proud to claim the title
       Of United States Marine.”
              Lyrics from “The Marines’ Hymn”
              Penned in the mid-1800s by an anonymous writer
              Copyrighted by the United States Marine Corps on August 19, 1891
              (All three verses and the history of the song are posted here.)

2. “Semper Fidelis” (“Always Faithful”) 
              Official motto of the US Marine Corps 
              Adopted in 1883. (Often shortened to “Semper fi!”)            

3. “Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live for ever?” 
              Attributed to Marine Gunnery Sgt. Dan Daly 
              Comment to his men at the Battle of Belleau Wood, June 1918

4. “Retreat, hell! We just got here.” 
              Attributed to Marine Captain Lloyd S. Williams 
              Reply when a French colonel ordered him to have the US 5th Marine Division retreat at Belleau Wood on June 1, 1918.

5. “The Marines have landed, and the situation is well in hand.” 
              American journalist Richard Harding Davis 
              Cablegram announcing the Marines’ 1935 landing in Panama

6. “Gung ho.” 
              Motto adopted by Marine Lt. Col. Evans Fordyce Carlson and his “Raiders” 
              Popularized by articles about Carlson’s Raiders during World War II 
              In Chinese, the term means “work together”

7. “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.”
              U.S. Navy Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (1885-1966) 
              Communiqué sent on March 16, 1945  
              Announcing and saluting the victory of the US Marines at Iwo Jima
              Engraved on the base of the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery

8. “We're looking for a few good men.” 
              US Marines recruiting slogan  
              Created around 1970 by adman Warren Pfaff (1929-2004) 
              Based on the 1776 poster headline: “Looking for a few good men to serve as Marines.”

9. “The Few, the Proud, the Marines.”  
              A more recent Marine recruiting slogan, adopted around 2007  
              Voted into Madison Avenue’s Advertising Walk of Fame in 2007

10. “In space, no one can hear you scream – unless it’s the battle cry of the United States Marines!”
              Marine Sgt. Major Frank Bougus (played by R. Lee Ermey) 
              In the debut episode of the science fiction TV series Space: Above and Beyond (1995)

OK, that last one is not exactly a famous quote. But it’s a favorite of mine.

I’m a big fan of both the United States Marines and of Space: Above and Beyond, in which future Leathernecks fight to protect Earth from aliens.

If we ever do face a war with aliens, I expect US Marines will be there risking their lives for us on the front lines, as always.

Semper Fi!

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The bridge between the living and the dead . . .

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is the second novel by the great American writer Thornton Wilder (1897- 1975).

The first edition of the book was published by the Albert & Charles Boni company on November 3, 1927.

It’s set in Peru in the year 1714.

Early in the novel, on July 20, 1714, five people crossing an old bridge are killed when the bridge suddenly collapses.

A Franciscan monk named Brother Juniper happens to witness this tragedy. He wonders “Why did this happen to those five?” 

There must be some reason, he thinks:

If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life, surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.

Brother Juniper spends years compiling facts that might somehow answer his questions.

He talks to family members and friends of the victims, who came from various backgrounds and levels of society. He records what he learns and thinks in a series notebooks.

Ultimately, he spends six years “knocking at all the doors in Lima, asking thousands of questions,
filling scores of notebooks.” These are collected into one huge book.

The middle chapters of the novel tell us about the lives of the five people who were killed when the bridge collapsed.

They include:

     - Doña María, a wealthy noblewoman who is estranged from her daughter Clara;

     - Pepita a young woman who was raised in an orphanage run by the Abbess Madre María del Pilar and then essentially adopted by Doña María, partly to fill the void left when Clara left Peru and went to Spain;

     - Esteban, a young man haunted by the death of his twin brother Manuel;

     - "Uncle" Pio, the former manager of the famous actress Camila Perichole, whose career ended when she was disfigured by smallpox; and,

     - Jaime, Camila’s son, who was traveling with Pio because Camila asked him to take care of the boy.

In the final part of the novel, we learn that Brother Juniper’s book was brought to the attention of Catholic Church officials and they convicted him of heresy for seeming to question or try to justify the mysterious ways of God.

They burn the book – along with Brother Juniper.

In the final pages of the novel, we learn that Camila has come to Lima to help the Abbess take care of sick people at her convent. By coincidence, Doña María’s daughter Clara has come to visit the Abbess.

Clara looks around at the desperately poor and sick people there. Then she ponders the lives of the five who died when the Bridge of San Luis Rey collapsed. She thinks:

“Even now…almost no one remembers Esteban and Pepita, but myself. Camila alone remembers her Uncle Pio and her son; this woman, her mother. But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love.”

Finally, Clara comes to an oft-quoted conclusion; the famous quote that is the last line of the novel:

“There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

As a snotty young high school kid in the 1960s, I wasn’t really moved by The Bridge of San Luis Rey or its famous quotation.

Today, as an older and hopefully wiser married man, father and grandfather, I am.

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