Memorial Day in Lansdowne, Pa.
I agree entirely with revisionist history of the American Civil War and WWs I and II (the isolationists were right); that said I’m as moved as anybody by black Union re-enactors, WWII and Korean War vets (one praying a long collect in the Tudor style) and the town’s WWI and WWII monuments at the high school. Hats off to the mayor for balancing things out with her appropriate, respectful peace speech.

If you click the globe-topped WWI monument picture you can see the British royal arms on it. I’ve been told the town used to be solidly old-school Republican. They were more common-sense about those wars; it’s still nice to see that ‘WASP’ tie to the mother country.


Today this gorgeous Presbyterian church flies a flag which shows the élite’s political shift as well as who won Protestantism’s fundamentalist/modernist war here in the 1920s. Keeping the pure heretical doctrine of John Calvin is Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church in a converted house up the road.

Veterans I’ve known include two men on opposing sides defending their homes: my late rector, who was a fire-watcher atop St Paul’s in the Blitz and later a Royal Navy rating, and a Ukrainian, in his 90s when I knew him, who wore German grey in Vlasov’s Russian army fighting the Soviets.

Fidelium animæ per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace. Amen.

Labels: history, Pennsylvania