Memorial Day

Memorial Day isn't just a day for picnics with hotdogs and potato salad. Memorial Day is a day to honor the war dead, also. It's a day of remembrance, of meditation of all who sacrificed their lives for the freedom we enjoy today.

May 30, 1868 was the official date given by the commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, General John Logan. On this day the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers were honered at the Arlington National Cemetery.
On May, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson, made Waterloo, N.Y. the official birthplace for Memorial Day.

It is not the critic who counts;
not the man who points out how
the strong man stumbled, or where
the doer of deeds could have done
better. The credit belong to the
man who is actually in the arena;
whose face is marred by dust and
sweat and blood; who strives
valiantly; who errs and comes
short again and again; who
knows the great enthusiasms,
the great devotions, and
spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best knows in the
end the triumph of high
achievement; and who at the
worst, if he fails, at least
fails while daring greatly;
so that his place shall never
be with those cold and timid
souls who know neither victory
nor defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt

Recommended books or films:
The Thin Red Line, Patton, Tora! Tora! Tora!,
The Longest Day, Born on the Fourth of July,
Black Hawk Down, The Deer Hunter,
Uncommon Valor, A Farewell to Arms,
The Patriot, The Dawn Patrol, Red Dawn,
A Bright Shining Lie, Sands of Iwo Jima,
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,
Bridge on the River Kwai, Behind Enemy Lines,
Saving Private Ryan, Escape from Afghanistan,
The Killing Fields, The Story of G.I. Joe,
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Platoon,
Good Morning Vietnam, Twelve O'Clock High,
Apocalypse Now,