July 28, 1914

Seems like this month has been chocked full of "anniversaries" of significant world events. Forty-five years since the man on the moon giant leap and already the press is gearing up for the fiftieth in five years down the pike. There's always the Fourth of July to recognize and following that, the fourteenth of July, Bastille Day. 

This morning I saw one more to add to the list in these waning days of July, 2014.

The beginning of World War I, the Great War, the war to end all wars. Sigh. H. G. Wells wrote essays about it. Woodrow Wilson borrowed the term, used it once in his argument to save Democracy by leading the US into the fighting. 

Book Title page from Wikipedia

President Woodrow Wilson Photo from Wikipedia

One hundred years ago, following the assassination of Austria's Archduke Ferdinand, tensions boiled over into battle. July 28, 1914. A hundred years later and now we know. The war to end all wars didn't. Sigh.

What is it about July? The heat? The weather? The climate? Maybe that's where the catchphrase "political climate" comes from.

1914 in the South Mountains of North Carolina, the political climate was being reestablished after The Civil War fifty years before. The War Between the States. The War of Separation. The War of Northern Aggression. The Brothers' War. Mr. Lincoln's War. And my favorite, the Unpleasantness. Sigh.

The parents of the students who eventually attended Pilot Mountain School were just beginning their lives around 1914, a hundred years ago, babies unaware of the troubles across the pond, babies depending on adults to make the world right. The school was not even considered until 1925, not built until 1942 in the midst of yet another great war. Amazing how life can be sectioned by the wars of each generation. 

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing, long time ago? 

Those song lyrics come from my generation's war and much of the Pilot Mountain School era as well. VietNam. Sigh.

When will they ever learn?

Catch of the day,

Gretchen