VOLUME 1, CHRONICLE 16: APRIL 19TH AT NATIONAL. The  memory page on the social media ramble reminds me that three years ago, I said goodbye to Mel, a Navy veteran I called friend at my town’s National Cemetery, that I said hello to two Army veterans, Bill & Tom, that my boys called granddad & that I left pennies at their markers, as I have on visits before & since April 19, 2021, to note my thanks, my remembrance, my love. I exited, as I usually do, awed by the simplicity of a place where small white markers tell grand stories of unknown sacrifices made for freedom. Sacrifices made, unless one is standing in front of a marker with a familiar name, by unknown people for unknown beneficiaries. Those efforts for freedom take on an extra significance due to an April 19th on a village green in Lexington, Massachusetts 249 years in the rear view mirror. A day 77 unknown men stared down 700 soldiers from the finest army in the world. The day after Misters Revere, Dawes, & Prescott rode the Boston night to warn, “The Regulars are coming.” Not the British, because everyone was still British. Eight men made the first sacrifices that required a payment of lives for freedom. Sacrifices made for ideals & a country still 14 months from Thomas Jefferson’s breakup letter to George III. Sacrifices without the benefit of a white burial marker. Sacrifices whittled down to a paragraph or less in an 8th grade textbook. Sacrifices that allow us to debate politics, religion, or any other subject, & to not agree, even as we seem to have lost the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable. Some so disagreeably wrapped in the red, white, & blue, they only agree if others are astride the same red elephant or blue donkey. Those pennies I left seemed then, seem now, too small a payment on a 249 year note of sacrifice. Sacrifices made by those that returned & those that didn’t from 77 in a New England meadow to the Blue & the Gray to world wars becoming so civilized we gave them numbers to Chosin to Tet to present day. Thank you veterans, especially those under white markers named William, Tom, and Melvin for my opportunities to disagree & sacrifice only pennies…