In America we live fast and spend our time on line writing down every minute of our usually unremarkable days.  Our friends glance, hide or stop following us and move on with little or no remembrance of what we wrote -we’re lucky we remember our own history, let alone anyone else’s.   So it’s Memorial Day so what—except its a day most of us have off.  We fail to understand that without the men and women who served and gave their lives before we would not have the privilege “living” on social media now.  We cannot allow ourselves to forget our past or we will loose our future.

“Scholarship… indicated that in 1865 recently freed slaves in Charleston, SC reinterred dead Union prisoners of war from a mass grave to individual graves as a sign of respect. (and)… returned three years later to decorate the graves in remembrance.”  http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/socialeffectsofwar/p/memorialday.htm

“Waterloo, New York,  (sometime called)… official birthplace of Memorial Day…. first celebrated the day on May 5, 1866—…because it hosted an annual, community-wide event, during which businesses closed and residents decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags.”  http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/memorial-day-history

“Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union veterans — the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) — established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared ….should be observed on May 30. ..believed that date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country.”   http://www.va.gov/opa/speceven/memday/history.asp?utm_source=3birds&utm_medium=Web&utm_campaign=AUBURNVW_Fun+Facts+About+Memorial+Day

“It is now celebrated in almost every state on the last Monday in May with Congressional passage of the National Holiday Act of 1971…. This helped ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays, though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19th in Texas; April 26th in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10th in South Carolina; and June 3rd (Jefferson Davis’ birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee.”  http://www.usmemorialday.org/?page_id=2

“Memorial Day is celebrated at Arlington National Cemetery each year with…a small American flag… placed on each grave. Traditionally, the President or Vice President lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  About 5,000 people attend the ceremony….”  http://www.pbs.org/national-memorial-day-concert/memorial-day/history/

“There are only two ways to live your life.  One is though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is a miracle.”                   Albert Einstein