A few days ago, I started my morning by running to Arlington National Cemetery. I would have visited on Memorial Day, but President Biden attended ceremonies, and the extra layers of security didn't interest me. Instead, I watched DC alone from the hilltop across the river in Virginia.

Solemn considerations occupied most of my mind, but then I laughed to nobody but the wind. The Washington Monument, I thought, is the most boring tribute to a president in a city full of them.

"Living memorials" more fully achieve the aims of honoring such short-lived endeavors as human lives. The Kennedy Center embodies performing arts and the Truman Foundation champions public service. (Shout out to the readers who are Truman Scholarship recipients for schooling me!)

A memorial that activates a social network makes a stone obelisk stunningly parochial.

The contrast reminded me of a quote I read from William Penn's Reflections and Maxims on the Conduct of Human Life. "This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal."

That immortality is possible because researchers have described the relationship created between two humans as a separate, third entity. It requires nurturing and maintenance; it's loss triggers grief; and it's presence delivers health benefits we're only beginning to understand.

I reconnected with a buddy from high school a couple weeks ago when he called me, unprompted, after 15 years. I'd come up in a story he told a coworker, and he dialed me on a whim. I'm glad for it — cheers to friends, the people we seek "with hours to kill" and "with hours to live."

BONUS! As a coda to the previous newsletter... Ada Limón shared her poem yesterday. "In Praise of Mystery" is headed to Jupiter.
 

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This newsletter was written on the traditional lands of the Piscataway and Nacotchtank.