Oh, please, don’t ask me to choose. It’s like picking your favorite child. It just isn’t done. Besides, think of the psychiatrist bills to battle the neurosis of those that are not chosen.
But Choose I must. It seems there is this “thing” going around–not lethal but very infectious–and I have been intentionally exposed by my friend Mark over atTravel Wonders of the World. Well, since Mark is a good friend (I’ve guest blogged for him about Bayeux and Canyon de Chelly, and he wrote about Mark Twain for me and leaves comments frequently here), I am honored.
Let’s play word association. What do you think of when you hear “Memorial Day”? Okay, hands up, who said “Sale?”
Those of you whose hands are not up—you’re showing your age.
Memorial Day poster, showing graves at Arlington National Cemetery
In the small town in Ohio where I grew up, the cemetery was up on the hill behind the Church of Christ. It was called Schoolhouse Hill, because the school stood beside the cemetery. And every Memorial Day in my childhood, the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) put down their beer bottles, donned as much of their old uniforms as they could still get in to, and held a ceremony up on the hill, distributing flags to all the graves of old soldiers.
Red poppy “In Flanders’ Fields, the poppies blew…”
Every house flew a flag, and most people pinned on red artificial poppies that they bought from the VFW–the funds going to veterans in need.
Fallen warriors were not the only ones honored, though. It became a day to honor one’s ancestors as well. That was the day that people cleaned up the area around family plots, put flowers in pots, or planted them in the ground and stood and thought a minute or two about each ancestor. People still do that in small town America. So in the spirit of a Memorial Day that used to mean something more than “Sale”, here are some past posts about America and patriotism in travel and books to add to your travel library. So plan a trip, read a book, remember.
WW II Re-enactment
A ceremony in Fredericksburg Texas and a magnificent World War II museum. The book: Fortress Rabaul: The Battle for the Southwest Pacific, January 1942-April 1943.
Memorial at Normandy World War II American Cemetery
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For your convenience, I put several links to Amazon in this article. If you buy anything at all at Amazon, please click through one of my links or the Amazon search box. You’ll be showing your support of A Traveler’s Library, and helping me pay the rent on my Internet address. Thanks so much!
Thanks, as usual to those photographers at Flickr who took some of these photos. I took the Normandy, the Civil war grave and George Washington photos. If you are interested in using a photo, be sure to ask the photographer for permission.
A Salute to my brother and his son the Marine and to our great-great-great-great-great grandfather the fifer in the Revolutionary war; to great-grandfather Henry Butts, Civil War veteran; our two uncles and cousin, now deceased, who made it home from the Pacific in WW II; and my son who did peacetime duty on a submarine. And a special salute to my grandson now in Iraq, may he live long as a proud veteran. [2010 update. Thankfully he is now back in the states where he will stay until the end of his contract with the Air Force.] Continue reading Veteran’s Day: Books That Travel Through History→