Not cool, Apple. Not cool.
June 28, 2014 marks the centenary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo. It’s a wild story, but the date is most important to me right now as a chance to reflect on the war that it, put simply, started. There are so many interesting anniversary celebrations going on around the world. The New York Times offered a guide to commemorative events and it breaks my heart. For example, I would love to fly to Sarajevo for the Vienna Philharmonic’s memorial concert on Saturday. I’m dying to go to Paris to see the photography exhibit installed at the Paris Luxembourg Gardens of 79 photographs of WWI battlefields which still show the scars of the war.
Unfortunately, I do not have the vacation time or the money to spend the rest of the year in Europe. This leaves me with far fewer options for commemoration. I contacted the Philharmonic only to learn that it will not broadcast the Sarajevo concert here in the US. I’m hoping it winds up on YouTube. Although it doesn’t have the same visceral impact as being there in person, there are quite a few exhibits available to view online. For example, I am looking forward to reading what people write in the “Letters to an Unknown Soldier” project. British citizens and luminaries (actor Stephen Fry is listed) were invited to write a letter to the statue of an unknown WWI-era soldier in Paddington Station in London. They will start publishing the letters on June 28th. That exhibit of photographs in the Luxembourg Gardens is online as well.
The online access is great and something that wasn’t there for, say, the 50th anniversary of the war. But it still leaves me wanting some personal connection. The “Great War” wasn’t always so far from our collective American memory. Sports fans don’t need to look far for reminders. Memorial Stadium in Champaign on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a memorial to University students and alumni who died in World War I. The names of those lost in WWI are carved in the 200 columns that support the east and west sides of the stadium. Soldier Field, home of the Bears, was originally conceived as a WWI memorial. It is now a memorial to soldiers of all wars.
But compared to this weekend’s events in Europe, we come up lacking here in the US. The New York Times listing gives a couple of events in NYC this year, one in Boston, and an exhibit of war posters in California. I don’t see a specific event for June 28th. Even our technology is conspiring to keep us from commemorating the war. When my dad sent me an email from his iPad, it kept autocorrecting “WWI” to “WWII.” Shame on you, autocorrect!
What’s my suggestion? This Saturday, take a moment to remember the Great War. If you’re inclined to poetry, read Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est. If you’ve got a passion for technology, type “WWI” into your phone or tablet over and over and reject the change to “WWII” until it sticks. If you’re a sports fan, find out if your team’s stadium is a WWI memorial. My hope is that we will see more commemoration here in the US in 2017 as we mark the 100th anniversary of the year that the US entered WWI. We should all find a way to mark this anniversary because it’s worth remembering.
