I wonder if Monday will be different than past Memorial Days.

For many people, so many of our national holidays seem to have become bereft of meaning other than an excuse for a three-day weekend and a beer-sodden barbecue. Post September 11, I noticed that November 11 took on a new poignancy. Will Monday do so as well?

A friend of mine once suggested that we take our holidays more seriously, by using the Jewish Sedar as a model. We should actually take time out from the consumption of barley beverages, and roasting of dead animals with sugary sauces, to tell the story of why we have the day off. For instance, for the Fourth of July, he recommended an oral reading of the Declaration of Independence.

These musings are just prelude to a link. Just in time for Memorial Day, Victor Davis Hanson writes an eloquent and personal tale of another time and place, when men were giants.

Think about reading it aloud with your family on Monday (good luck getting through it without choking or tearing up). And let us hope that the present circumstances will not require similar sacrifices on so massive a scale, and that if we do, the present generation will bear them as did our parents', and grandparents'.

An interesting essay, very moving, but I wish he had not written this:

"But I also know that America has never quite produced a generation like those Marines who went up Sugar Loaf Hill — educated, idealistic, and as dangerous in war as they were benevolent in peace."

That's an insult to the men who fought in the Civil War, who may not have been educated, but they were equally idealistic and fought like hell, and succeeded -- despite a war that tore the nation apart -- in rebinding the country's wounds.

And I will suggest that it is an equal insult to the current generation dying in Afghanistan and elsewhere, as well as the men and women who willingly sacrificed themselves on Flight 97, and those who put themselves in danger at the WTC.

Yes, I kind of raised my eyebrows at that one also.