Taylor May'd
- Thread starter Turtle
- Start date
guido4475
Not a Member
New tire on, and van now goes down the road smooth as a baby's bottom....vibrations don't work too well with me...Shower, van washed, laundry done, gas tanks full, couldn't be any more ready for a load as I am now...problem is, it's a Sunday, followed by a holiday....so, I am a victim of my own bad business decision....lol...and, as expected, campgrounds are all booked solid...so, in the shade provided by Wal-Mart I sit...too hot to do anything on the van...Obviously bored outta my gourd.....Remember the real cause of this holiday, and take a moment to thank a Vet.
guido4475
Not a Member
Looks like I whined a little too prematurely. Tim just called me with a load. It picks up Tuesday, but it's a good one, nice way to start the short week Thanks, Tim!
Happy Memorial Day !!!!!!!!!!!!
THANK YOU VETERANS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THANK YOU VETERANS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Memorial Day - Hard to thank them if they no longer walk the Earth.
Of course, the true meaning of the holiday is the decoration with flowers of the graves of, and the remembrance of, the Civil War dead. Anything beyond that has been the result of political co-opting.
In January 1866, the Ladies' Memorial Association in Columbus, Georgia, passed a motion agreeing that they would designate a day to throw flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers buried at the cemetery. The graves of the North and South alike, as they were dismayed to see the graves of fallen Yankee soldiers remain bare.
The ladies didn't want this to be an isolated event, so Mary Ann Williams, the group's secretary, wrote a letter and sent it to newspapers all over the United States.
You'll find that letter in dozens of newspapers. It got out, and it was republished everywhere in the country.
In the letter, the ladies asked people to celebrate the war's fallen soldiers on April 26, the day the bulk of Confederate soldiers surrendered in North Carolina in 1865. Lee may have surrendered on April 9, but the war didn't end until April 26.
The date was printed incorrectly in a few newspapers, most notably in Columbus, MS, which resulted in the fine folks in Mississippi celebrating by decorating the graves a day earlier on April 25th, which many people, including Obama in his 2010 national address, misinterpret as being the origin of Memorial Day.
The fact that people in the South had decorated the graves of the Fallen North soldiers was not lost of those in the North. It even prompted poet Francis Miles Finch to write "The Blue and Gray" a poem which states "They banish our anger forever/ When they laurel the graves of our dead!"
The idea caught on huge and many Southern women repeated the practice on April 26 in 1867. By the next year in 1868, the story was just so strong, so compelling, and so well known that the authorities in the North wanted to get in on it and decided to take it national.
In 1868 the day became a federal holiday. But there were few flowers blooming in the North in April. So, the government pushed the date back a month, to May 30, so that people could decorate the graves of fallen soldiers with wildflowers.
Memorial Day remained on May 30 until 1971, when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act took effect, which mandated that federal holidays occur on Mondays, and made Memorial Day the last Monday in May.
Over the years people have attached many meanings to a Memorial Day, and the entire weekend. Some use it to remember the soldiers who have fallen in battle, others use it to remember anyone who has served and is no longer with us. Still others view it as the time to celebrate friends and family and BBQ and car racing and the freedoms we enjoy as a people. Kids mostly celebrate it as the day the pools open for summer.
I think all of those are equally valid. For me personally, ever since I was a kid the subject of the Civil War has been a very emotional one. The notion, and reality, of brother against brother, of a nation tearing itself apart, is often overwhelming. So on this Memorial Day, as with all of the others, while I do have a remembrance of all the fallen soldiers, my thoughts center mostly on those Americans who died fighting Americans. They didn't know it at the time, but their sacrifice took us from a relatively rag-tag collection of 'the united states are' to a strong and proud 'The United States is.'
That's what Memorial Day means to me.
In January 1866, the Ladies' Memorial Association in Columbus, Georgia, passed a motion agreeing that they would designate a day to throw flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers buried at the cemetery. The graves of the North and South alike, as they were dismayed to see the graves of fallen Yankee soldiers remain bare.
The ladies didn't want this to be an isolated event, so Mary Ann Williams, the group's secretary, wrote a letter and sent it to newspapers all over the United States.
You'll find that letter in dozens of newspapers. It got out, and it was republished everywhere in the country.
In the letter, the ladies asked people to celebrate the war's fallen soldiers on April 26, the day the bulk of Confederate soldiers surrendered in North Carolina in 1865. Lee may have surrendered on April 9, but the war didn't end until April 26.
The date was printed incorrectly in a few newspapers, most notably in Columbus, MS, which resulted in the fine folks in Mississippi celebrating by decorating the graves a day earlier on April 25th, which many people, including Obama in his 2010 national address, misinterpret as being the origin of Memorial Day.
The fact that people in the South had decorated the graves of the Fallen North soldiers was not lost of those in the North. It even prompted poet Francis Miles Finch to write "The Blue and Gray" a poem which states "They banish our anger forever/ When they laurel the graves of our dead!"
The idea caught on huge and many Southern women repeated the practice on April 26 in 1867. By the next year in 1868, the story was just so strong, so compelling, and so well known that the authorities in the North wanted to get in on it and decided to take it national.
In 1868 the day became a federal holiday. But there were few flowers blooming in the North in April. So, the government pushed the date back a month, to May 30, so that people could decorate the graves of fallen soldiers with wildflowers.
Memorial Day remained on May 30 until 1971, when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act took effect, which mandated that federal holidays occur on Mondays, and made Memorial Day the last Monday in May.
Over the years people have attached many meanings to a Memorial Day, and the entire weekend. Some use it to remember the soldiers who have fallen in battle, others use it to remember anyone who has served and is no longer with us. Still others view it as the time to celebrate friends and family and BBQ and car racing and the freedoms we enjoy as a people. Kids mostly celebrate it as the day the pools open for summer.
I think all of those are equally valid. For me personally, ever since I was a kid the subject of the Civil War has been a very emotional one. The notion, and reality, of brother against brother, of a nation tearing itself apart, is often overwhelming. So on this Memorial Day, as with all of the others, while I do have a remembrance of all the fallen soldiers, my thoughts center mostly on those Americans who died fighting Americans. They didn't know it at the time, but their sacrifice took us from a relatively rag-tag collection of 'the united states are' to a strong and proud 'The United States is.'
That's what Memorial Day means to me.
Windsor
Veteran Expediter
Unfortunately I didn't put much thought in to this holiday when I was younger. I do now!