The Civil War

WOOSTER--Though it is, at times, difficult to lead a peripatetic lifestyle, and I miss a certain Swede, it is also good to move and change and to be back in the United States. I have missed my family and friends and in more intangible ways I have missed America. It isn't the small things, those rarely have mattered to me. I have lived too many places and worked in too many regions and countries to get overly upset about small luxuries. And as for habits and daily routines I have been so long in different places that the only ones possible (for long) are those of work and rest I impose upon myself.

So, Sweden's lack of pepperoni, Saltine crackers, Taco Bell and a few other culinary delights aside, it wasn't those things I missed about the United States but rather the broader concepts of the land itself and the effect those have had upon its citizens. Succinctly put, I have missed my fellow Americans. I have missed their directness and amiability, their willingness to express an opinion and to hear one and to extend a hand and invite men and women of goodwill, wherever they hail from, over for a cookout or out for a beer.

Obviously, America has its share of problems, misfits and misanthropes, but they are not who I am speaking of right now. Sweden has its goodly share as well as does every land. Right now, while missing someone very special to my life, I am also reveling in being back in, well, yes, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I am certain I will have more to say on the subject of Europe and the US, Europeans and Americans, but right now I will add one simple benefit of being back: my photographic eye has been reset to my own homeland. Above is a series of photos I shot the day before Memorial Day when the Civil War monument in Wooster Cemetery was rededicated. God Bless America.