Memorial Day - With this,

Memorial Day - With this, I risk diving deep into bathos.

Tough. It's my blog. If you're not in the mood, pop on over to nsync.com til it blows over.

It's 4AM on Memorial Day. Memorial Day has always been a poignant holiday for me - I've never been one of those Americans who was unaware of what this holiday was about. I grew up in a town steeped in the lore of WWII. The local National Guard company - Company H of the 164th Infantry Regiment - served on Guadalcanal and in the Philippines. Their dead were a part of the atmosphere I grew up in. We remembered, all right.

Well, we have a lot to remember today. In addition to the 900,000 American servicepeople who've died in our nation's service in the past 227 years, we have 3,000 civilians.to mourn as well. One of them was from a little town not far from my own hometown. Ann Nelson worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, and I think I knew her brother, although I'm not sure - many North Dakotans are only a degree or two of separation apart, but there are as many Nelsons there as in Minnesota. And I read her portrait in the Times - her story is a little close to my heart, personally. She was another small-town kid who moved to the big city to chase a big dream or two. She died in the World Trade Center, of course.

What do you say? My baser side says "Exact revenge a thousandfold" - and tonight, on the first wartime Memorial Day of my adult life, it feels verygood to say.

But in the end, again, all I can say is remember what this day is for, and pray that this day next year, or the year after, or the year after that, brings us a world free of everything that led us to this point.