JFK at 100: A Personal Reflection

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

President John F. Kennedy laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day 1963. The photo at top is from that day, May 30, 1963. By the end of that year, President Kennedy joined the company of dead service members buried there.

President Kennedy would be 100 today, which coincidentally is this year’s Memorial Day.
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For Those Left Behind: Memorial Day

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“Their life consisted wholly and solely of war, for they were and always had been front-line infantrymen. They survived because the fates were kind to them, certainly—but also because they had become hard and immensely wise in animal-like ways of self-preservation.”—Ernie Pyle, World War II journalist, writing about what he saw at the front. Killed in action April 18, 1945.

I do not come from a family that talks much about its military service. My father was drafted in 1958, served his two-year-long tour, and then came back home to a job that had been held for him. This was during the Cold War, so he did not see action but he did see more of the world than he had up till then, or since. He served in the U.S. Army in Germany during the Cold War as a calculator tasked with determining missile flight paths. (I believe he worked with the Atlas missile, an early ICBM model.)
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Another Ten Days

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A journalist’s job is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

* * * *
For the second time this month, the usual adjournment in the ongoing trial of Mahmoud Abu Zeid, the Egyptian photojournalist who goes by the name “Shawkan,” will be ten days rather then one month, which had been the usual postponement length. Shawkan’s next court appearance will be Tuesday, May 30.

Perhaps it means nothing at all.

The photo of Shawkan at top was taken in court today. It is reported that Shawkan’s medical documents were reviewed and that he is “in good condition.” “Good condition” can be a sliding scale: it has long been known that Shawkan has Hepatitis C and his lawyers have reported in the past that essential medications for that illness have been sporadically administered by the prison authorities.

 
Ten more days. For a human rights trial noteworthy for its glacial pace, perhaps the fact of a briefer delay until the morning that Shawkan can have his case heard means something, but this trial rebuffs all attempts to interpret its tiny shifts and huge delays.

Today is Shawkan’s 1375th day in prison.
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