Respecting the Dead

I recently got an opportunity to visit some monuments in Washington DC. We started from Washington Monument, then walked over to Vietnam memorial. From there on, we went to the Lincoln memorial, the Korean Veteran War memorial. We finally finished at the Jefferson Memorial. There is something fascinating about visiting historic sites....something very sobering.

I read a book sometime back called "Faith Based Diplomacy". In this book, the author Douglas Johnston contended that faith, rather than avoiding it, should be used in conflict resolution. He stresses that all religions have quite a few common tenets and those could be used as starting point for negotiations between warring parties. One of these tenets is respect for the dead. For the reason of respect or fear for the wandering souls near burial sites or memorials, memorials can become oasis of peace in conflict ridden areas. In the Middle East, author suggests some sites including Deir Yassin, the corridor of the forced march from Ramallah in 1948 where a number of Palestinian villagers were massacred by Jewish irregulars and the site of Yeshiva where numerous Jewish students were slaughtered in 1929. My personal experience at burial sites or war memorials/monuments has been unequivocal reverence irrespective of the views I share about the events surrounding the memorial. It is no wonder that despite all the protests that happen in heated DC politics and these anti-war days, these memorials continue to remind us of the souls departed.

So I ended up soaking a lot of American history last week.DC area is flush with such sites. In fact, one of my colleague in Arlington office, Julie Holm, played the role of a wonderful host and took us around explaining the history behind every memorial. In fact, she does something very interesting. Leveraging on the immense history DC area has, she records weekly audio travelcasts with her husband Mark. You can go to their site http://washingtontravelcast.com to check out some of these. If you are planning to travel to any place of historical eminence in DC, there are good chances that you will find a travelcast on this site. Download it, put it on your iPod, plug in your earphones and learn some great stuff while walking.