While tributes to Americans who had lost their lives in battle had been held in a number of towns across the nation one of the more well-known stories about the beginnings of Memorial Day is the story about General John Logan.
Science almost from its beginnings has been truly international in character. National prejudices disappear completely in the scientist's search for truth.
As a child I read science fiction but from the very beginnings of my reading for pleasure I read a lot of non-fictional history particularly historical biography.
We establish no religion in this country nor will we ever. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave society devoid of belief.
The cinema began with a passionate physical relationship between celluloid and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it manipulated it and came to know it the way a lover comes to know every inch of the body of the beloved. No matter where the cinema goes we cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings.
Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning you throw on your suspenders and you subvocalize and just think. They seem to form like calcium. I can't think of a story right off the bat that was that interesting. I write things on the back of my hand usually and sing into a tape recorder.
My mom came from such humble beginnings and especially my dad as well. He didn't go to university.
Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings if it has had causes and beginnings nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.
We have to judge politicians by their cumulative score. In one innings they make a great catch in another they drop the ball. In one they score a home run in another they strike out. But it is their cumulative batting average that we are interested in.
The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings remains locked in a seed. There it lies the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason.