DECORATION DAY - MEMORIAL DAY

Memorial Day was initially founded in remembrance of Confederate and Union soldiers who died in the Civil War.  Also referred to as Decoration Day, this holiday has come to represent all Americans lost in all wars.

For younger generations, Memorial Day kicks off summer, with parades, travel, camping and so on.  It's the first 3-day weekend of the calendar year.  Their older relatives spend the weekend visiting cemeteries, decorating their loved ones' gravestones with flowers and flags. The first official Decoration Day was May 30, 1868.  In 1971, Congress established that Memorial Day was to be commemorated on the last Monday of May.

The boyfriend and I are no longer among those out and about celebrating by travel, camping or other summer recreation, so today I choose quotations to help us all remember what is important in life and what is not.......We are born, not only to receive, but mostly to give of ourselves.  In order to receive, we must earn.  The younger generations must understand this, or the result will be moral decay.  Any of us know only what we learn, and everyone is responsible for passing down the knowledge of past experience and individual duty.  We don't have to wear a uniform to do good for our country.  Each one of us can find tiny ways of sprinkling grains of goodness on our fellow human beings and creatures of nature.  We forget that none of us asked to be born.  We are placed here, dropped off like orphans left in the hands of those who made us.  That's where the responsibility begins, where the teaching begins, where the love begins.  Why can't we spread love like Covid spread sickness across the globe?  

My prayer is that our country somehow stay a country of freedom.  Once we lose it, it's gone and that's when we no longer will be able to buy our plane tickets and go where we want, when we want.  We won't be able to buy the camper we want and go camping wherever we want.  There will be an iron hand over every one of us.  We must teach the younger generation that they are entitled to nothing, except the chance to better the world they've been born in.  Enuf.

"All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word:  freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." ~Winston Churchill

"True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic.  It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost."  ~Arthur Ashe

"A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom"  ~Bob Dylan

"This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."  ~Elmer Davis

"For every thorn, there's a rosebud........For each twilight, a dawn.......For each trial, the strength to carry on........For each storm cloud, a rainbow.......For each shadow, the sun.......For each parting, sweet memories when sorrow is done."  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks."  ~James Allen

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."  ~Thomas Campbell

"The legacy of brave men and women who have fought and died for their country is the freedom we enjoy as Americans."  ~Lucian Adams

"Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness."  ~Napoleon Hill

"The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten."  ~Calvin Coolidge

God, please bless the land upon which we stand.

God, please protect those who fought to keep us free.