Has the time come when we no longer remember?

People of my age who can actually remember WWII are separated by an insurmountable gap from those not yet alive to remember that war.

I was lying on the living room floor reading the Sunday comics when a neighbor burst open the front door and shouted to my father, “Spence, turn on your radio … the Japs are bombing Pearl Harbor.”

I lived and remember that war well, mercifully from a distance through daily newspapers and my father’s weekly Life magazine, and through the newsreels between double features at the movies on Saturdays. But also pulling my wagon around the neighborhood collecting flattened tin cans and twisted coat hangers for the scrap drive at the local church. Practice blackouts and food rationing stamps. And my older brother enlisting and going off to help kill the dictators of Germany and Japan and Italy. I remember the red-rimmed white banner with a blue star in its center which we and our neighbors hung in the front room windows. And I remember and knew what it meant when sometimes, those blue stars turned to gold.

I particularly remember the newsreels in the spring of 1945 when our troops over-ran the concentration camps … and images of human skeletons in striped pajamas with their hands clasped in prayer shuffling out of doorways and falling to the ground to kiss the boots of their liberators. I remember General Eisenhower calling all the media to join him at one of those camps. I remember him saying that he called them to bear witness because a time would come when some people would say that this never happened.

And now that time has come. No longer dictators, only “strong men” who will save us from our troubles! If 6 million was a holocaust, what do we call 20 million?

— Don Bryan, Boulder

Join angels of angels and click ‘give’ before ‘like’

Dear Giving Friends, a.k.a. “Angels of Our Better Nature,”

Did you know when we click “Like” supporting a cause, or to share an outrage with an injustice, we are actually less likely to make a donation to the movement we strongly feel we support?

Likewise, those of us most virtually vocal about “causes” are less likely to be donating our money or time!

Weird, eh?

Maybe the bridge in our personal reality and our virtual reality is so linked that we feel offering a well intended “Like” into the cybersphere actually is doing something. We clicked, right?

Or maybe the tangible material sacrifice it takes to actually give feels unnatural amidst the pattern of the world (which coaches hard that looking out for Number One is number one, and the number one way to do that is to keep a hand on your own stash).

Easy solution: Have the urge to click “Like”? Test your commitment by clicking “Give” first.

But that can feel a little unnatural, a little risky. It is. That’s your own cash!

But actual giving is also better than natural. It’s the “Like” of an angel.

Next time the urge to click “Like” hits this giving season click “Give” first. Join the club of the Angels of Our Better Nature.

And, join the angels of angels, and give the riskiest of giving: to the chronic and recently poor. (Whew! We’ve had a lot of recently poor around the world this year!)

— W.K.Sheldrake, South Fork