A friend of mine has a bumper sticker that says "I veterans". Yesterday an elderly man came walking over and kissed and hugged her. He had tears. He is 93 years old and a veteran of WWII and Korea. We owe the veterans a lot. As sooz says, we owe their families a lot, too.

We will have a herd of them here today. I think I'm in heaven.

Thank you veterans.

That's always a weird day for me.

We took Ollie to lunch for Veteran's Day. Ollie was a pilot during the Korean Conflict.

The restaurant took 20 percent off the bill!!!!

omfg!! jeanne is NOT grumpy!

I can understand that Jab. I do know that Turks and Germans march in our ANZAC Day parades.

In Canada, we call this day "Remembrance Day".

I wrote this in a group on Facebook:

My uneasiness with Remembrance Day...

We are told to "remember" - but - "remember" what? I was born at the end of 1955 and as I was growing up, Remembrance Day was a day to remember those who fought against an ideology that threatened to enslave most of the people on Earth. More people died in that horrendous war than there are people in our country. Fifty million people is the accepted number of deaths attributed to World War II, although some estimates do go a lot higher.

I got to thinking about what Justin Trudeau had to say about China's dictatorship and I realized that he did indeed use the right term to describe their government, because China is Communist in name only. In actual fact, it is a Corporatist State. The State is the Corporation and the Corporation is the State, exactly as Mussolini had defined Fascism.

Today's China is what Hitler wanted for Germany, what Mussolini wanted for Italy and Tojo wanted for Japan. Our direct ancestors fought those governments and gave their blood to protect OUR ability to build OUR democracy. We are now being told to remember those precious sacrifices by a government bent on bringing to Canada the same system of governance that our predecessors fought against!

Corporatism = Fascism

If you don't believe me, Google the man who defined it: Mussolini.

And this is a response I got:

"... you're right and, as a veteran with a 35 year career in the Canadian Army, let me assure you that I too remember the 'fallen' Canadians from all wars. I didn't use to think too much about the ideologies involved but knew full well that the fascists had been beaten and now my generation of servicemen were ready to fight the communists . So from right-wing nutbars to left-wing nutbars, I was "tempered" by extremists on either end of the political spectrum. I sure learned that cooperation and compromise (the middle ground) is the way to go where there's room for all (the Liberals 'Big Tent'). Sometimes this approach is labeled the Canadian way. It served the Country well through half a century!

Now to your point: it makes my blood boil to see what this slime-ball of a criminal fraud has and continues to do to my country ( and your country) and the country that all those Canadian servicemen and women died for.

So: you are right to Remember as you have been. Harper and his fascist regime will NOT last and the Canada that you and I love and that our Veterans fought and died for will be restored to its former luster. This is now OUR torch..."

nice comeback.

ha ........ love you, mac

likewise, jeanne.

I was invited to join a couple of other old vets for lunch today, TGI Friday restaurant honoring vets, so I wore my army cap to work this morning. These past weeks I've been hearing radio people saying "Thank you for your service!" every five minutes, urging listeners to repeat it to vets, and I'm uncomfortable hearing it. But I wore that hat anyway, I guess just to acknowledge the experience my lunch friends and I have in common.

Mid-morning, I had to go to Menards (like Home Depot, only better) for some plumbing parts, drove over there, parked the van. Walking in, I took the hat off, stuffed it in my coat pocket. Didn't want to hear people saying it to me.

Let me say to you, thank you for your taxes. I used up a ton of 'em. You gave me more than I gave you. Settled me down, gave me top-notch tech training, world travel, exposure to other cultures, and after a long time away from it, a better appreciation of the hold my own country has on my heart.

After I came back , it was college tuition and then an inexpensive mortgage on a new house. I didn't have to shoot anyone or be shot at, although that was just luck. Others in my specialty weren't so lucky. My job was to maintain & repair a mobile system of microwave-beamed communications, keep it ready to go, so Belgium (NATO HQ then) could talk to W.Germany and France and Nederland, in case the cold war got hot, which it didn't. I didn't have to risk my life...instead you could say I was in the business of fostering communications between people of different cultural backgrounds. Very un-warlike, as I like to think of it.

Anyway, thanks for all that, for all this . And thanks also, soldiers who are not having it so good as I did. Thanks for your service.

But, grampa, did you know for sure you would never be in danger? Did you have control over where you went and what you did? You made sacrifices. You were in the position to possibly be called on to give life or limb. Yes, there is a huge difference between those who have experienced combat and those who haven't. However, there is also a huge difference between any who have served and those who haven't. You deserve the thank you's, too, grampa. Please realize that and accept our extreme gratitude.

sigh............ barbecue and 23 Marine veterans .......... yum and yummier

I echo jeanne's comments about you, gramps ~

And I'm jealous about not spending my day with great food and 23 Marine vets ~

Sooz