On November 11, 1999 Terry Kelly was in a Shoppers Drug Mart store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. At 10:55 AM an announcement came over the store’s PA asking customers who would still be on the premises at 11:00 AM to give two minutes of silence in respect to the veterans who have sacrificed so much for us.
Terry was impressed with the store’s leadership role in adopting the Legion’s “two minutes of silence” initiative. He felt that the store’s contribution of educating the public to the importance of remembering was commendable.
When eleven o’clock arrived on that day, an announcement was again made asking for the “two minutes of silence” to commence. All customers, with the exception of a man who was accompanied by his young child, showed their respect.
Terry’s anger towards the father for trying to engage the store’s clerk in conversation and for setting a bad example for his child was channeled into a beautiful piece of work called, “A Pittance of Time”. Terry later recorded “A Pittance of Time” and included it on his full-length music CD, “The Power of the Dream”.
Terry Kelly - A Pittance of Time
Sorry MJ, but this Kelly bloke is some sort of bully, with autocratic tendencies, and he should be the one who deserves a thumping. Did the soldiers who died fight for our right to freedom or our being forced to be quiet for 2 minutes? Neither is my guess.
ReplyDeleteThroughout my life the November 11th rituals have largely been the celebration of jingoism and glorifying of military campaigns with a good dollop of racial superiority thrown in. Over here with have the fucking royal family looking as if they give a fuck.
Let everyone who wants to remember the war dead do it in their own way, and no one should interfere with that. Most of us have someone in our family who died in a war, if not in this generation then in the one or two before it. Honour their memory by all means, but also remember that most of them were killed in useless military actions organised by political psychopaths, and to a large extent their deaths were meaningless. This is the tragedy and the sadness.
I will return with the usual silliness next time.
This being silent on November 11th only really kicked off here in 2001 after September 11th. All of a sudden we were being quiet at work and trying to think what it would be like to die violently in a land you don't want to be in. I always try to think of my old grandad being gassed but I can only conjour up an image of him smoking a pipe, watching the wrestling on the telly. I think that's because I'm in an office on my own - maybe I need to go to Tesco to really connect.
ReplyDeleteI realised just after I'd watched this video that the time was two minutes past eleven.
Thanks for posting this. It seems like a lot of us are. Yay!
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