Lawson

 This morning I woke up around 6:15, and the first thing that came to my mind was, "Oh no. I forgot Lawson!"

Lawson is a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who is buried in the nearby cemetery in Lawnside, New Jersey. He was long deceased when he received his award -- the commendation came around 130 years after he pulled a dozen fellow soldiers out of the bottom of a burning ship during the Civil War. See, Lawson was African American. To me it's a miracle he ever got the citation at all.

Lawnside is an African American community. During the Civil War, Black soldiers were not buried in official government cemeteries. So the community of Lawnside agreed to take any soldier of color who needed a respectful place to rest. There are well over 100 Civil War soldiers buried in the Lawnside cemetery. The exact number is unknown because every time the community clears more brush, they find more stones.

America, picture Arlington in your head, and then look at how this veteran of color is remembered.

Kind of sums up our nation in a nutshell.

That is not Lawson's grave in the photo, but this pictured stone is close to Lawson's. 

Every year, prior to Memorial Day, I take a bouquet of silk flowers -- red, white, and blue -- to Lawson's stone. I respectfully acknowledge to the other soldiers there that the bouquet is for them as well. I do this anonymously, in time for the services that the community performs in the cemetery.

This year I made it in the nick of time, about 9:00 a.m. Usually I do this the day before, or even earlier.

I forgot Lawson this year because I am heartsick. It's all well and good to live in the Independent Republic of Johnsonia, but I still see and hear what's happening in the USA. It's tragic. 

I was able to soldier on until the president started targeting Harvard. That was the final straw. I guess it's because I attended a similar elite university. Yes, there are many foreign students at our top universities. Some of them can't even speak much English. But they are the creme de la creme of their nations, intellectually. They come to study at the best universities in the USA, and then they either return home to become the leaders of the future, or they stay and become part of the nation's brain trust. If that process ends, it will be the nail that seals the coffin of America's future.

I don't find it a reach to think that this is because the president's son wasn't accepted to Harvard. Or the president himself. It's also a performance for his uneducated base, the ultimate owning of the libs. Whatever. It's a self sabotage ... the likes of which no one has ever seen before. 

This Memorial Day, my mind wasn't on Lawson. It was on the ravages of the New Gilded Age. 

In today's baseball standings, the Baltimore Orioles are 18-34, buried in the basement of their division. There is no port in the storm.