Memorial Day

I think it is fitting that Memorial Day marks the start of summer. Summer is a time of freedom, a time to enjoy all of the best things about our nation. Spending time in nature, spending time with friends and family, traveling, visiting beautiful places throughout our nation. 

Remember all the things we have to be thankful for, and remember all of the men and women who came before us, giving everything to secure our freedom. 
 
Have a happy, peaceful, and safe Memorial Day.

And welcome, summer.

from here^

Perform, then, this one act of remembrance before this Day passes - Remember there is an army of defense and advance that never dies and never surrenders, but is increasingly recruited from the eternal sources of the American spirit and from the generations of American youth.  
~ W.J. Cameron
 

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They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation.  
~ Henry Ward Beecher
 

from here^

Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 

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All we have of freedom, all we use or know -
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.   
~ Rudyard Kipling

from here^

I have never been able to think of the day as one of mourning; I have never quite been able to feel that half-masted flags were appropriate on Decoration Day.  I have rather felt that the flag should be at the peak, because those whose dying we commemorate rejoiced in seeing it where their valor placed it.  We honor them in a joyous, thankful, triumphant commemoration of what they did.  
~ Benjamin Harrison

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Cover them over with beautiful flowers,
Deck them with garlands, those brothers of ours,
Lying so silent by night and by day
Sleeping the years of their manhood away.
Give them the meed they have won in the past;
Give them the honors their future forecast;
Give them the chaplets they won in the strife;
Give them the laurels they lost with their life.
~ Will Carleton
 

from here^

The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.  
~ Benjamin Disraeli

Lest We Forget... Anzac Day

Our most heartfelt thanks to those who gave everything so that others could live in peace.

For the Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

They mingle not with laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables of home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.

~ Laurence Binyon ~

Photo courtesy of MorgueFile, from here^