It was a fitting day to visit the fathers or fathers who could have been this morning. Out searching for something totally different to photograph I saw this Viet Nam memorial across the capital grounds as the rain began to lightly fall. A granite slap containing the etched names of Washington State soldiers who perished during the American War as they call it in Viet Nam.

So many wasted dreams. So many fathers gone.

The sad power of this story is represented in the reflections of flags, dying flowers scattered on the wet ground, and the looming authority of our military industrial complex mirrored in the capital dome. Standing there I had to set my eyes out of focus to initially see the reflections in the stone. Once I did I couldn’t see anything else. I left there with only a hand full of pictures today. More than enough to remind me of the tragedy of war and the wasted dream’s of fathers it creates in its path.