November 11, 2025 – Thoughts Towards a Better World

POSTNOTE: Kathy highly recommends a two hour program at Carnegie Hall about WWI. This is excellent. I watched it on Thursday. I’m not sure that the link will work for everyone. The title of the PBS program is American Heart in WWI: A Carnegie Hall Tribute – The history of the Unknown Soldier and veterans Day.

I attended the event at St. Joan of Arc on Tuesday morning. It too was excellent. Photo of Larry Johnson below.

PRENOTE: If you read nothing else below, at least read today’s Heather Cox Richardson Letters from an American in its entirety. We – all of us – ARE the government we like to criticize. DO SOMETHING. And watch and reflect on the meaning of the Ken Burns 6-part special on the American Revolution which airs beginning later this week. Check you local Public Broadcasting Station for details. We sink or we swim together. All is NOT okay.

97 years ago, at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, an Armistice ended WWI. It’s now called Veteran’s Day in the U.S. No matter – in most of the world it is Armistice Day and continues as an aspirational goal for world peace.

I’ve made a habit of recognizing this day – see NOTE at end of the post.

I want to call attention to three items this day.

1) in Minneapolis there will be an observance, as detailed by my friend Larry Johnson:

Every year on November 11 St. Joan of Arc Church (SJA, 46th St. and 3rd Avenue in south Minneapolis) holds a special Armistice service at 11. For many years Veterans Day was called Armistice Day because the armistice formally ending World War I was signed at that 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918. For many years bells rang 11 times at that time on November 11, and it was not uncommon for even the President to say things like, “We’re gathered to honor those Veterans who have sacrificed, sometimes all. There is no greater tribute we can pay than to work diligently to end war so that fewer need to make that sacrifice in the future.”

Some of us, Veterans who believe in nonviolence, ring Armistice Bells at the SJA service. One Veteran tells his or her Armistice story. THIS YEAR THAT WILL BE ME, and I’d be honored if you were able to be there. On my own each year, I walk to the service, and some of you have walked with me. You’re all invited. This year it’s just a mile, leaving from Seward Coop on 38th and 3rd Avenue at 10:15. I’ll be in the little eating area at Seward (N.E. end of the store) at least by 10, ready to walk out at 10:15. Good idea to let me know if you’re walking so we know to look for you. Otherwise it would be great to see you at the church at 11. [pdf of program: Armistice Day 2025 at Joan of Arc]

Larry Johnson tells his Armistice Day story at St. Joan of Arc Nov 11 2025

2) Larry’s newspaper column in the October 23, 2025 SunPost publication is about Armistice Day and his long term passion in behalf of veterans. He discusses Armistice Day and also an important initiative, the Veterans Resilience Project. Check it out.

3). In addition, I’d recommend to readers a recent blog I noted in the website of the French-American Heritage Foundation. It speaks for itself, here. The column is about an American soldier, Alfred LaGrandeur of Somerset WI, who arrived in Europe about October 1, 1918, a month or so before the Armistice.

Alfred had no way of knowing when he signed up for service “over there” , that he would be in France essentially for postwar duty. That is the lot of the soldier. You serve as assigned.

The aspiration of the Armistice Day peace in 1918 has never been realized, Unfortunately, the terms of settlement between victor and vanquished in 1918 essentially acted as fuel for the fire of WWII, which began with the humiliation and financial depression of Germany in the 1920s, and burst into flame ignited by an enraged WWI veteran named Adolf Hitler.

This is a good day to remember and reflect. Every human generation has had to deal with the evil reality of war – ever more dangerous, including our present civil war among neighbors in our own country. We may not be shooting each other, but the net result is the same as 1861-65.

In peace.

NOTE; By my count, there have been 18 November 11ths since I initiated this blog in 2009. On 12 of these, I’ve blogged about Armistice Day on the 11th. On four others I’ve deviated by a couple of days. These posts were: Nov 9, 2013, Nov 8, 2018, Nov 10, 2020 and 2023, I missed Nov. 11, 2021, since we were in New York. Armistice Day is important to me. (My habit of recognizing the day long precedes 2009. The others are not recorded for posterity.)

COMMENTS (more below)

from Peter: my first public demo was 1958, Ft. Detrick, MD, where I met Albert Bigelow, skipper of “Golden Rule,” a small ketch he had just sailed into the bomb test area near the Marshall Islands. Coast Guard towed him to Hawai’i before they got very far.

This started a lot of things, including, I think, the early test ban treaty.

A few years ago the VFP found her and hauled her up off the bottom, and rebuilt “Golden Rule” to sail again. The film is her story.

At that demonstration, Margaret Rawson, who became a mentor of mine, had organized the little band of Quakers in Fredrick, and her husband, she later told me, was head of development in the fort, for biological warfare. The head of the based went to his office and said, “There’s a bunch of commies out at the gate, do you need an escort home?” To which the man replied: “Nah, my wife’s out there with ’em, they’re all coming over to dinner later. Would you care to join us?”

When I told the Golden Rule project about being ten years old and meeting Bigelow, they made me an organizer, and I ended up as an associate member of the Vets for Peace, of which my dad was a charter member. I now volunteer with the Uranium Weapons working group. And I can tell you, we are all in terrible danger, not just from the loonies who have got hold of these things, but from the radioactive materials and wastes they keep making more of, and tossing about the landscape like confetti.

Here’s a picture of Dad, doing what he loved best, with two of his friends from the Philadelphia Orchestra…

Vietnam War Protest ca 1968 Philadelphia PA, the Golden Rule

New film about the Golden Rule from the project is accessible on YouTube here. More about the project here.

from Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, a history of Armistice/Veterans Day, here.

from Fred: I haven’t forwarded an American Heritage for a while. This is an exceptionally good one. It honors the US Marine Corps on the occasion of its 250th birthday by detailing a number of great battles.

from Kathy: American Heart in WWI: A Carnegie Hall Tribute Nov 11th Channel 2. [link is at beginning of this post]. I did not know Quentin Roosevelt was killed during World War I. If you can access it is well worth watching.

from Dick, a few closing comments: As noted, I’ve done something on Armistice Day almost every year. This year the post brought diverse comments (above and below) that add significantly to the general conversation.

I am not a scholar of note on the topic, but over the years I have picked up numerous bits and pieces about the tangled web of WWI and II, and war generally. A visit some years ago to the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis’ brought some valuable insights into the origin of WWI; most recently, viewing American Heart last night (see Kathy note above) was extraordinary look at WWI from the minds eye of the United States. In between, of course, came the monstrosity of WWII and the relationship to Adolf Hitler and Germany to both wars. (I was always curious about what the First and Second Reich’s were, related to the Third Reich of the Nazis. If you don’t know, it’s easy research.)

Seems to me, lust for power fuels wars, and must be facilitated by people already in power, and lusting for more (or defending selves from losing power). The victims are the ordinary people who in all the numerous ways die or are damaged by the wars, often as seemingly willing accomplices.

We won’t end war. It seems a permanent part of the human condition, imprinted in our DNA.

But what we can do as individuals is to dampen the enthusiasm for war, one person, one act at a time.

Work for peace.