A Job Description

I've been applying for jobs recently- big ones, small ones, fat ones, child ones. They range from salaried at 100k to 20k, from California to China, writing to engineering. One employer stands out indelibly in my mind: government. As a specialist in renewable energy and coal-fired power plants, the Department of Energy is the natural landing place after jumping out of school.

I'm surprised at how quickly I'm moved inside, like a couple of tidal waves pressing against my chest cavity. So many people have given, sacrificed, and died in honor of the ideal of freedom and democracy. I'd like to share two of my favorite passages. The following is located on an obelisk found in a random 'Freedom Park' off of Center Street in Provo. I found it one very late night in the summer while running. It was a sacred moment when I found it, and has been a sacred place ever since.

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,--

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

The next is a poem from Humbert Wolfe, an Italian born of a German Jewish father and Italian Jewish mother. from Requiem: The Soldier

Down some cold field in a world outspoken
the young men are walking together, slim and tall,
and though they laugh to one another, silence is not broken;
there is no sound however clear they call.

They are speaking together of what they loved in vain here,
but the air is too thin to carry the things they say.
They were young and golden, but they came on pain here,
and their youth is age now, their gold is grey.

Yet their hearts are not changed, and they cry to one another,
'What have they done with the lives we laid aside?
Are they young with our youth, gold with our gold, my brother?
Do they smile in the face of death, because we died?'

Down some cold field in a world uncharted
the young seek each other with questioning eyes.
They question each other, the young, the golden hearted,
of the world that they were robbed of in their quiet paradise.