Scott Miller "Dear Sarah"

I spent a lot of the weekend rolling thoughts around in my head about what I might write for Memorial Day.

Back on Veteran's Day last year, I was scrolling through Facebook, and lots of friends had posted a status about their thoughts on Veteran's Day. Some, as you might expect, expressed straightforward thanks. Others used their line to make a pro-America statement. And some wrote of their discomfort with the glorification of war and of their distaste for jingoism.

None of the statements fully reflected how I felt. But you can't expect a lot of complexity from the limited number of characters in a Facebook status line.

For me, my thoughts and feelings about Memorial Day, War and Veterans are complex at best, incommunicable at worst.

How to you wrap up the idea that War is bad, but maybe necessary; that I am against killing, but that defense (and sometime offense) is not indefensible; that sacrifice is noble, but blind sacrifice may not be.

Is there a song that I could post that could tackle these big issues?

No. There isn't.

So I went in the other direction. Small.

When thinking about songs and Veterans and how to memorialize them, I kept coming back to a couple of songs by Scott Miller. They seemed appropriate because they were songs set during The Civil War---and Memorial Day was originally a day to specifically remember Civil War losses (it wasn't until after World War I that the holiday was in honor of all war losses).

"Dear Sarah" was a song that Scott wrote after reading some of the letters that an ancestor of his, had written to his wife, while on the front lines of the Civil War.

And on the album "And Thus Always To Tyrants," "Dear Sarah" is followed immediately by "Highland County Boy," sung from the perspective of a youngest son who is left to tend the farm while his brothers go off to fight and die in that War.

Today there will be big speeches and ceremonies and parades and salutes and thanks (and many, many people who pay no attention of any of this while they barbeque). But Memorial Day is strangely devoid of bitterness.

I posted these song today, because, in a very non-political, under-the-surface way, these two songs (especially the latter), talk about the human cost of War---the loss of loved ones, the separation of families, the hard, hard physical toll---and the bitterness it leaves behind.

So today others will ask you to think Big, maybe about Patriotism, or Pacifism, or Service. I'm asking you to listen to these songs, and to think about Memorial Day in terms of just a single person, and see where that leads you.

The songs in the videos are recorded live, but you can go to Scott's site to stream the full album versions. Check out the lyrics here and here.


See the video on Youtube.


See the video on Youtube.