Tag: Americans

  • What exactly is a 'happy' Memorial Day?

    Can a Memorial Day be happy? Isn’t the essence of the concept to reflect, to introspect, to national-spect? I find that with national-specting comes a bit of shame, a dash of pride and a whole lotta tears either way. To some, Israeli and American Memorial Days might be categorized as fraternal twins, if related at…

  • American self discovery (finally, a use for my English major)

    I finished Slaughterhouse-Five today on my way across Jerusalem. One of the most finger-pointing themes of the book – relevant to me these days – is expressed in the following lines, by character Howard W. Campbell Jr., as he describes American prisoners of war compared to others. “[Americans] were known everywhere to be the most self-pitying,…