The reality is that most of North America knows next to nothing of the 20th centurys first genocide - the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the First World War.

But history does matter. There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Bosnians and the Rwandans. There are obviously more, but, really, how much genocide can one sentence handle?

With age comes acumen. With experience comes insight.

He recalls what that first German soldier said to his major: No God-not yours or mine-approves of what you're doing.

Life is filled with small moments that seem prosaic until one has the distance to look back and see the chain of large moments they unleashed.

We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.

But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.