Gainesville, Florida
At four in the morning on Saturday, over 50 people gathered at the corner of 34th Street and 8th Avenue in Gainesville, Florida to work on a monument to those Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.From The Gainesville Sun:
Neat rows of miniature gravestones stretch for one mile east of 34th Street on the south side of 8th Avenue. Each of the 4,516 "gravestones," lovingly and carefully made by groups of people getting together for months preceding this Memorial Day weekend, bears the name, rank, date of death and hometown of these brave members of our armed services. Additional markers were ready for 2009.The Gainesville chapter of Veterans for Peace organized the event, which was also held last year.
I used to live three houses from the intersection where Memorial Mile originates and I used to walk this mile of road daily for months. The statues that normally span this stretch are of the nine planets (we include Pluto) situated roughly to scale. Seeing the head stones literally stretch from the Sun to Pluto is a shattering cosmic metaphor.
Here's a look at the Memorial Mile and the 4,577 monuments.
TAGS: Memorial Day, Memorial Mile, Gainesville, Gainesville Veterans For Peace
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