For the past year, our armed forces have been unilaterally held hostage by “Coach” Tommy Tuberville, who blocked some 450 military appointments because he doesn’t want bus fare to be paid by the military to service members who are forced by new laws to have an abortion in another state.
Initially, I thought the “Coach” was purposely striking out at these officers and their families in order to shrink the military for Donald Trump to install his own brand of warrior who swears an oath to the “Orange Jesus” instead of the United States Constitution. Perhaps that was the case, yet save for a few top officers, he finally caved to his fellow senators of both parties because he was doing a stupid thing to the country and our military readiness.
One thing sticks out for me, however, and that’s Senator Tuberville calling our military “woke.” He’s strangely perturbed that poetry is being read over the loudspeaker on an aircraft carrier. None other that Anacreon, famous Greek lyric poet, would have trouble with that. Anacreon wrote drinking songs, and one was well known at our nation’s founding.
In 1814 an American lawyer saw the Brits lay siege to Fort McHenry in Baltimore, MD. The following morning, he awoke not to a British flag, but our own United States flag and thanked his shining stars that it was still flying there.
O say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave
Francis Scott Key was an amateur poet. His words were set to an old drinking song, To Anacreon in Heaven and, in 1931, President Herbert Hoover made The Star Spangled Banner (the first stanza of the poem “The Defense of Ft. McHenry,” our national anthem. That particular drinking song was written by a Brit!
We now proudly sing our national anthem before every professional ball game in the USA, so I guess we’re all “woke.” Sorry, Coach. Go back to football and leave the senatoring to those who actually care about our country. And for heavens sake, reader, please remember to vote! Dee
p.s. I’ve never been in the military but later in my life I got to know two military families quite well. One an erudite officer from West Point, the other a decorated Navy Captain schooled at Annapolis. Both were well-versed in literature and every year there was a build-up to the Army-Navy Game, which called for a wager, a bottle of $6 Meridien wine, presented publicly to the winner by the loser with an oration and a funereal bow gracing the bottle. Serious business, serious people, even well into their seventies. The Navy Captain married my husband and I, nearly 21 years ago. Neither man was what “Coach” would call “woke.”
Cooking with Dee 