From the Archive: Arlington

By Michael Shaw

This originally appeared here on Memorial Day, 2006. It’s one of my favorite posts.

Private William Christman
was the first one
we laid down

Now there are a
quarter million
in that hallowed ground

Bugles blow
and caissons roll
two dozen times a day

At that rate
in fifteen years,
there’ll be no place to lay,

in Arlington

***

As you can imagine, there are many funerals and cemeteries in the visual press today.

I was drawn to a video feature on the nyt.com home page titled “Finite Arlington.” The piece is narrated by Andrew C. Revkin, a Times science reporter with a love of music. It shows scenes of the great war cemetery accompanied by a song called “Arlington.” Written and composed by Mr. Revkin, it highlights the headstone of the first soldier buried there — Private William Christman in 1864. It also touches on rituals of the place, and soldiers from other eras. Mostly though, it ponders one affecting question: what will happen when Arlington is finally full? (This “eventuality” is projected sometime around 2020.)

I am sorry for every man and woman who has died in war, and profoundly sorry for those who gave their lives in the current one. What frames this Memorial Day so well is the video’s final impression. It shows one gravestone so old its space is in contention with a tree. Poetically and fittingly, the soldier’s name was Pride.

Especially now, these are fateful metaphors: Running out of room for losses — and swallowing pride.

————–
Music video at YouTube.

(NY Times video. Written/Composed by Andrew C. Revkin. Producer: Craig Duff. Performed by Uncle Wade.)

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Tags: Andy Revkin, Arlington, Memorial Day

http://thenewsguysletters.blogspot.com/ Russ Nichols

It is interesting that Arlington was once part of Robert E. Lee’s plantation. His mansion overlooks the cemetery. After the Civil War, Congress confiscated it as punishment for Lee’s service to the Confederacy. And they made it into the National Cemetery.
yg

nice tribute. if we plant a tree as a stand in for every tombstone, we’d put a dent in climate change.
http://blogs.salon.com/0003935/theRanticore Julia Grey

Since cremation is becoming more and more acceptable, even preferred, the solution to the coming lack of full-size gravesites will be the creation of plots for urns, perhaps between the existing stones, with markers flat in the ground. Or we’ll institute special ceremonies for the scattering of ashes.
http://blogs.salon.com/0003935/theRanticore Julia Grey

That’s what they’re doing in our completely filled historic churchyard, anyway. I understand that in the early 1800s, it was perfectly acceptable for bodies to be buried on top of each other (the records they kept reflect that). Given that the church was started in 1752, there are a lot of people in that relatively small piece of ground.
yg

recently in an interview, ken burns recited this lincoln quote. it’s startling how it carries new resonance:
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.
As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.
We must disenthrall ourselves,
and then we shall save our country.”
Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.
Marianne Morgan

I have an uncle who was a Captain in the USN. He is buried at Arlington, as is his wife. She is buried on top of him. However, there are other military cemeteries, off the top of my head, the one at Indiantown Gap in Annville,PA. And yes, eventually they will all fill up. The video “Arlington” ‘touched’ me.