This is Veteran's Day

I don't know if this is normal for other elementary schools, but my kiddie alma mater made Veteran's Day a very large deal. Each class had to learn a different patriotic song. Some of them were about America, different states, what the states were known for and classic Americana songs. One year my grade learned the U.S. Air Force song.

Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high into the sun;
Here they come zooming to meet our thunder,
At 'em boys, Give 'er the gun! (Give 'er the gun now!)
Down we dive, spouting our flame from under,
Off with one helluva roar!
We live in fame or go down in flame. Hey!
Nothing'll stop the U.S. Air Force!

Off we go into the wild sky yonder,
Keep the wings level and true;
If you'd live to be a grey-haired wonder
Keep the nose out of the blue! (Out of the blue, boy!)
Flying men, guarding the nation's border,
We'll be there, followed by more!
In echelon we carry on. Hey!
Nothing'll stop the U.S. Air Force!

There are more lyrics, but we only learned two verses. At the time, honestly, I don't even know if I knew what the Air Force did really. I guess I probably would have said, "Fly planes." 

I also remember singing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and playing the chords to go with it on the guitar. You know how in elementary school sometimes kids learn to play the recorder (which isn't a real instrument FYI?) Well, my year they decided to not play recorders and to teach us to play chords on the guitar. I remember none of these, but this is the song anyway.

In other news, who wants to dress up like the Andrews Sisters for Halloween with me someday?

Back to Veteran's Day. I respect the military so entirely I can't put it into words correctly. My ex-boyfriend used to get upset before he saw action, because people would thank him for his service when he was in uniform. I used to try to explain, he was a symbol of those other service men and women that can't be thanked. I'm proud of all of my friends and relatives that are serving or have served. I'm proud of anyone that has served honorably, for their sacrifice and their family's, for everything they've given up so that we can be safe. 

I know this has nothing to do with my elementary school. But when I think back, I'm just so glad we had that big assembly.  I remember we could invite our parents and anyone we knew of that had served. I'm pretty sure that assembly is the reason I know the song "Fifty Nifty United States" which is subsequently why I can say all the states in alphabetical order. We may not have picked up on why our patriotic display was important, but we were acknowledging this country. They were teaching us about our nation, whether we knew it or not. 

In middle school, my choir teacher was a complete nut job but, we sang God Bless the USA before every musical and play we performed. It was like our warm-up tradition. The whole cast would stand in a big circle and put their arms around each other, some of us even knew how to harmonize to parts of it. And you know what, it felt really good to be that close to others singing about the United States. And we were so young we didn't even know about party lines, 9/11 had just happened and we were all just holding onto each other. Granted, we lived in Kansas, we were incredibly removed from most of it, but we learned what had happened, we knew it was scary and that we had been attacked. 

Today, I posted about our veterans on Facebook and Twitter (as most of us did) I donated some money this weekend to the disabled veterans group in the area and gave blood (DISCLAIMER: I am not trying to humble brag) I'm trying to say there's so much more we could be doing. I supposed we could start by becoming a more unified nation. There are states that have petitions to secede from the U.S. right now. People want to boycott American businesses (see my last post) and we're defriending people because of their vehement political views. Just, put it away. There are more important things. The division is only making things worse... I'll get off the soap box now. 

This clip is my favorite America medley ever. It's from the movie With a Song in My Heart, and it's wonderful. 

PS. It's all of this election fallout that's making me so rant-y. I promise I'll stop.