Remembrance....

The ads have flooded the mailbox, sales await eager shoppers, barbecue grills are loaded and ready to go, food is purchased, potato salad is made, and people are swarming the lakes and byways of the country, ready to celebrate another federal holiday.  Although Franklin Roosevelt declared we would never forget the Day of Infamy, in fact, in just a generation or two, we have almost completely forgotten what it meant to lose young men and women by the thousands over a nightmare vision of how the world should be.

Far from the focus on those who left and returned only to be buried in their hometown cemeteries, or harsher yet, never returned at all, we have sanitized and white washed and almost completely forgotten what Memorial Day really means to those who have fought for our right to eat burgers and brats in a swimsuit by the lake with the beer flowing and tears no where in sight.  And more importantly, who upheld the values enumerated in the Constitution - life, liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to gather and protest and vote - all the rights conferred upon us simply by being American citizens.