Happy Memorial Day

Yes, I am a day late and I am always a dollar short, but here it goes any way: Memorial Day! The day we take time to remember and thank those who served our country in both the past and the present. I'll be honest with you, most of the time, for me, Memorial Day is just a day where everyone gets together and barbecues and the people I love finally get a Monday off.

But this year was different. I found myself over the weekend really thinking about how much is owed to the men and women who have, and continue to, protect us and serve our country. My Grandad was in the Navy in WWII and my Dad was a radio tech in the Air Force after WWII. (From what I understand, there wasn't any fighting going on and he spent a lot of the time finding primo spots to ski.) I've also known a few people who have served a few terms(I know thats the wrong word, but the correct one is eluding me at the moment) in Iraq. All these people were going through my mind this weeekend, when I happened to come across a movie called Taking Chance. Here is the synopsis from HBO's website:

In April 2004, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl, USMC, came across the name of 19-year-old Lance Corporal Chance Phelps, a young Marine who had been killed by hostile fire in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Strobl, a Desert Storm veteran with 17 years of military service, requested that he be assigned for military escort duty to accompany Chance's remains to his family in Dubois, Wyo.



Witnessing the spontaneous outpouring of support and respect for the fallen Marine - from the groundskeepers he passed along the road to the cargo handlers at the airport - Strobl was moved to capture the experience in his personal journal. His first-person account, which began as an official trip report, gives an insight into the military's policy of providing a uniformed escort for all casualties. The story became an Internet phenomenon when it was widely circulated throughout the military community and eventually reached the mainstream media.



'Taking Chance' chronicles one of the silent, virtually unseen journeys that takes place every day across the country, bearing witness to the fallen and all those who, literally and figuratively, carry them home. A uniquely non-political film about the war in Iraq, the film pays tribute to all of the men and women who have given their lives in military service as well as their families.


I get teary just reading the synopsis. The movie is that good. I tried to tell my Mom about this movie and got choked up just trying to describe it to her over the phone. I repeat, it's that good. To truly remember the fallen heroes of our nation, we must all act as witnesses to their bravery and their sacrifice.

The next time you see someone in the military or someone who is a veteran, please, take the time to thank them for their service. You don't have to agree with the politics that make wars happen or continue, but you must still respect those people who have laid it all on the line so that you can be able to voice your different ideas and opinions about the subject.

Happy Belated Memorial Day everybody!

Does This Coffin Make Me Look Thin?

I just finished reading an article on Reuters.com about a beauty contestant in Australia being criticized by the media and the general public for being too thin in a pageant promoting "healthy, proportioned bodies". Now, I understand that there are people out there who are naturally thin, I actually know a few of them (granted, the majority of the ones I'm acquainted with are men, but, I digress) and they truly can't do much of anything about their weight. But the young woman in question, a model, is 5'11" and 108lbs.!! Her body mass index is 15.1. 18 is considered malnutrition. The pageant director said that the contestant's corpse-like, I mean, svelte body, is due to her Macedonian heritage.

"They have long, lithe bodies and small bones. It is their body type, just like Asian girls tend to be small," [Pageant director Deborah]Miller said.

Wow. Is this person serious? Three points below what's considered malnutrition and it's her ancestry that's to blame? Come on. The thin people I know look thin, not like they're going to collapse at any given moment! Even models from Ethiopia, who are notorious for their lean bodies, still manage to look like they aren't going to break if you breathe on them. This woman looks like there is an effort being made to be that thin and I would want to see medical documentation that she is healthy before I would even consider that it's just genetics to blame.

The first thing I thought when I read this article and saw the accompanying picture, was, Holy Cow! That girl is a skeleton with the skin still on! I must have actually said something to this effect out loud, because my seven year old daughter said, "What? I wanna see!" Which then led me to my second thought, which was, Do I really want to let my impressionable child see this? It took me a minute before I decided to show her, and then proceeded to explain that the young lady in the picture was in a beauty contest, but people were concerned for her because she looked way too thin. The people in that country were trying to decide if they should make a rule that contestants had to be at least a certain BMI (yes, I had to explain that too) in order to participate in the contest from now on. My daughter looked at the picture again and said "She's too skinny. Why do people like that?" to which I answered that some people think that THAT is what's pretty. "Her face is pretty, but her body looks scary." was her retort, and then she went off to find something else to do. From the mouths of babes...

I know that the world of modeling had a very similar debate when a model ended up dead from complications of her eating disorder. Many European runways have a BMI cutoff to hopefully curb the onslaught of emaciated models. They don't want to have that kind of stigma hanging over them.

When will we decide that beauty isn't worth anything if you're dead or in a hospital. As far as I know, there isn't a competition for prettiest cadaver. The only thing I feel I can do about it is to keep voicing my opinion that this "dying to be prettiest" mindset is wrong and to keep telling my kids to find their own definitions of what beauty really is.