I finally have a day off once again!
I spent the last four days, including yesterday which would have normally been
my day off, working nearly 12 hours each day due to the cherry blossom
festival. It has been ridiculously tiring and exhausting! It has been fun
as well though. The blossoms were absolutely beautiful and I greatly
enjoyed being able to see them each day as they continued to change. Now
they are all nearly gone. It happens so quickly! A powerful image of the
fleeting and ephemeral nature of life and of the way that we should bloom to
the fullest in our own lives as we use well the time that has been given to
us.
The festival is not over, but we are
on the downhill slope. This weekend was mass insanity. On Saturday alone there
had to be close to 700,000 people in the park. That is a LOT of
people! I spent a lot of time helping to protect the trees, reminding
visitors why it was important not to climb up in the trees and pick the
blossoms. That task never ends! The one that really got me was the family that
came walking along, each holding several tulip bulbs that they had plucked from
the tulip garden along the tidal basin. And when I kindly informed them that
they could not pick the flowers and take them out of the park they proceeded to
mouth off to me about how much they hated me for ruining their fun. It really
does continually surprise me how self centered and clueless so many people
really are. They come to a place of beauty and wonder and have to taint it by
destroying the very source of that beauty so that they might enjoy a small
fragment of the true beauty and hold onto it for a brief and fleeting instant
rather than marveling in the majesty of the whole. I think there's a sermon in
there somewhere!
On Saturday I was given the task of
giving special talks on the cherry trees at the FDR memorial. As I mentioned in
an earlier email the talk I designed was not the typical cherry talk. I
included many of my own personal touches, and it was fun to actually get to do
it. On that day I gave a talk five times to crowds as large as 45-50 people at
once. There were so many people around that we had to stay in one place. I had
the same assignment yesterday and it was a different world. This time my groups
ranged from 1-10 and we were able to walk along the basin under the last
remnants of the blossoms in their final display of glory. My talk centered upon
the blossoms as a symbol of the samurai way of life, a life of honor and
service dedicated to living life to the full, having reconciled oneself to the
reality of death, and come to see the true value of life as a result. I
included references to the Last Samurai and two from Lord of the Rings, ending
with my favorite line and concept articulated in that story, "all we have
to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." It was nice to
be able to talk about something completely unique and different.
On Easter Sunday I biked to
work early and joined 5000 other people at the sunrise service at the
Lincoln Memorial. It was a lovely service, made much more significant by the
magnificent sunrise unfolding before us. I have included a few of the pictures
of that Easter Sunrise. There are many more pictures of both the sunrise and
the cherry blossoms on my facebook account.
On Monday I spent the entire day (11
hours) at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, alone for much of that time. That
meant that I had to give talks every hour, try and staff the information
kiosk, and help people find names on the wall by myself. Fairly overwhelming
when a good 10,000 people came through during that time! Even so I was blessed
with some incredibly poignant moments. On three different occasions I began to
cry as I talked to people about the significance of the wall and what it has
meant to people. I teared up every time I told the stories of some of the
things that have been lift at the wall, things like medals of honor that a
veteran brought to give to a comrade who deserved it more than he did, like
wedding rings, laid at the wall beneath the name of a husband who never came home.
Things like a harley davidson motorcycle that was custom built one piece at a
time by a group of vets who had formed a motorcycle club after the war and
then brought to the wall and left there so that if any of their brothers wanted
to join them on a ride they would have a way to do so. Things like a
ziploc bag containing the ultrasound image of an unborn child, a picture
of a young family with two children and a letter that began, "dear Dad,
you are about to be a grandfather again..." as a young woman told her
father the story of a family he never knew when he didn't come home.
And the conversations
with those that have come to the wall... I helped one man find the
name of his first sergeant, the man who trained him, looked out for him,
and got him through the hard times, who had been out in a jeep when it hit a
landmine in 1968. I helped another man find the name of a helicopter pilot
who had flown with his Dad. One night, just before a mission his Dad
wasn't feeling well and was pulled from the flight. The helicopter and his
friend never came back. Now the son was at the wall to take a rubbing of
the name back to his father who was unable to make the journey himself. And
then there was a the lady who worked at a VFW in California who had come on
behalf of the vets there. I helped her find nine different names, each with a
special connection to one of the men in California who couldn't come
themselves. Or the man who listened to my talk and then came up to me in
tears, thanking me for what I had said, for remembering, and for caring about
his generation, many of whom are still living lives forever broken by what that
wall represents. He comes to the wall every year when he is in DC on business
and forces himself to make the journey once more, into the pain and heartache
and then emerging on the other side. He told me his wife doesn't understand why
he keeps coming back, but that he can't help it, that he is drawn to the wall
and cannot leave without making that journey. And then there was the couple who
I talked to for 55 minutes, attempting to explain to people who had lost
friends and classmates and still did not understand why, how it was that 58,000
Americans never came home from the jungles of Vietnam. It taxed every bit of my
historical knowledge, every bit of tact I possess, and all my ability to teach
and explain. When that conversation concluded I was crying, she was crying, he
was crying, and the six other people who had joined us were crying also. She
hugged me and told me that I had brought the memorial alive for her and brought
new meaning and understanding to something she has carried with her for forty
years.
It is truly humbling to work at that
wall.
On Saturday I am portraying
Paddles the Beaver one last time, this time in the cherry blossom
parade which means that the festival will have begun and ended with me as
Paddles.
Another piece of good news is that
my supervisor told us this week that there is a cert that will be released
within the next few months for a minimum of ten permanent ranger positions on
the mall and that he wants to hire as many of us as possible for those
positions. There are definitely quite a few more of us than the ten positions,
and there will be applicants from the outside as well, but it sounds like I really
might have a chance at competing for one of those positions!
Resting in the glory of a day away
from the tourists!
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