Memorial Day Weekend

The unofficial beginning of summer starts this weekend.  Many schools have finished the year, or soon will.  There will be BBQs and picnics as the weather has been warming steadily.

A great way to kick off the weekend will be to head over to the Forest Avenue Outreach Community Orchard and help out with the pollinator planting event.

This family friendly event begins at 10am on Saturday and goes until 1pm.  2600 seedlings were provided by People for Pollinators (Neil Smith Wildlife Refuge) who will also be teaching about pants and the need for prairies.  Bring your work gloves!  Drinks and refreshments provided.

But let's not forget why we have this long weekend.  It is a somber occasion, to remember the sacrifice of too many young men and women in the service of our country. Many have given their lives for the United States.

 

 

My hometown has always had a wonderful Memorial Day observance.  Dad would often present the colors with others from the VFW and the American Legion.  This will be the first year without Dad.

The Clarion American Legion and VFW Posts will hold their annual Memorial Day observance on Monday, May 25, beginning at 10 a.m. in the Clarion-Goldfield-Dows High School gymnasium.

 

Other observances around Iowa can be found here or here.

 

Twenty-five years ago, I was honored to give the Gettysburg Address at the service.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

 

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

I encourage you to attend a Memorial Day observance, to honor and remember the fallen.  Also take time to reflect on other loved ones that have passed on, remembering their influences on us and the good times with them.