Every November 11 I like to remember Kurt Vonnegut and his favorite holiday, Armistice Day.

I think this year I’d like to post one of my favorite parts of A Man Without a Country, which I try to live by (as corny as that sounds).

But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

So Happy Armistice Day everyone, and Happy Birthday Kurt Vonnegut.

(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)

“I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

“It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

“Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ day is not.

“So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.

“What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

“And all music is.”

-From Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Happy Birthday to Veteran Kurt Vonnegut.

(Happy Birthday to his alter ego, Kilgore Trout.)

Happy Armistice Day to another Veteran, Norman Mailer. I’m feel honored and lucky to have met Norman earlier this year before he died. What a somber year for literature this has been.
Happy Armistice Day to my cousin Matthew, who has now safely completed his time in the Navy and is expecting a baby with his wife Rachel!

Happy Armistice Day to my Grandma Earlene, who recently joined her Veteran (my Grandpa Wayne) in heaven after 23 years living on earth without him.

(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)