Today is Memorial Day in the United States. The holiday once known as Decoration Day commemorates the men and women who perished under the flag of this country, fighting for what sets our America apart: the freedom to live as we please.
“Holiday” is a contraction of holy and day; the word originally referred only to special religious days. Here in the U. S. of A. holiday means any special day off work or school instead of a normal day off work or school. Politics that once trusted in God is long since unholy.
The Uniform Holidays Bill which gave us Monday shopaholidays moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May.
Today is not a “free” day off work or school. Today is not the big sale day at the Dollar Store. Today is a day of Honor.
“All persons present in uniform should render the military salute. Members of the Armed Forces and veterans who are present but not in uniform may render the military salute. All other persons present should face the flag and stand at attention with their right hand over the heart, or if applicable, remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Citizens of other countries present should stand at attention. All such conduct toward the flag in a moving column should be rendered at the moment the flag passes.”
The American flag today should first be raised to the top of the flagpole for a moment, then lowered to the half-staff position where it will remain until Noon. The flag should be raised to the peak at Noon for the remainder of Memorial Day.
There are those in this country who would use today to legislate the man out of the fight. They can do that but the men and women we honor today knew you cannot legislate the fight out of the man. They have fought and they have died to protect us from those who would kill us. And perhaps to protect us from those who would sell out our birthright.
There is no end to the mutts who would kill our men and women and would kill their own. We have pledged to leave one such place by Memorial Day, 2014, but the mutts there will not have left and the mutts there will not give up killing our men and women and killing their own.
If I had but one wish granted on this day, I wish not one more soldier die. Ever. But die they did around the world again this year and die they will. For us. For me.
Because those men and women died, I get to publish these words again this year. And you get to read them. Please pause and reflect as you go to a concert, stop at an artist’s studio, or simply read a book in the sunshine the price we pay to keep our right to do those things.
Wally World does not often impress me but they did on Friday.
The Internoodle is rife with estimates of Wal-Mart’s cost to We the Overtaxed People, protests over sprawl, criticism of their labor practices in this country and the labor conditions in supplier factories around the globe, complaints about unfair treatment specifically of the women who work in the stores and Supercenters, shoddy assembly of most consumer goods driven by the way the firm has reshaped manufacturing around the world, and far more.
Opponents of a planned Wal-Mart here in North Puffin have protested for almost two decades.
PBS reported, “Wal-Mart’s [Vermont] opponents argue that the state’s economy and culture would be damaged by the retailer’s presence. In California, opponents say the company has cost taxpayers millions by shortchanging its employees on healthcare.”
Every bit of the superstore v. Main Street argument is absolutely true.
Wal-Mart built their fourth Vermont store, a 150,000 square-foot box, in Williston in 1997. I shopped there on Friday.
So did a lot of other people from North Puffin because we don’t have a department store in this county.
We didnt need any other shopperamas a decade ago because we still had Ames back then but Ames closed all its retail stores here in 2002. Since then, pretty much everyone in Northwestern Vermont has had only a couple of choices for sox and underwear: buy them at the supermarket or the Dollar store or pay the I-89 tax to drive an hour to the big box center in the next county.
So I spent the $27.50 in gas to drive the truck to Williston on Friday because we don’t have a department store any closer than that. I also had to go to the Sears Auto Center but that’s a story I’ll tell later.
I saw a sign for Wal-Mart Interpreter Services in the pharmacy department. That impressed me and I said so to the pharmacy consultant.
“Surely you don’t have all those interpreters in the store,” I said, “and the tricorder/universal translator isn’t out of Google’s prototype lab yet.”
“Nope,” she told me. “All the customer has to do is point to their language on this card. We call a translator at the home office and Bob’s your uncle.”
The store can handle 12 different languages (13 if you count English) from Arabic to Vietnamese. A mom-and-pop operation can’t afford to keep a dozen U.N. translators on staff.
[Oooo, business opportunity!]
Regular readers know that I will not willingly deal with any company that requires me to “Press 2 for English” in part because immigrants to this great melting pot should help us learn their cultures while they assimilate ours and they need to learn English. Without that, America stops being a melting pot and becomes a nation of tiny, armed, walled, exclusive Arabtowns and Chinatowns and Mexicotowns and Viettowns. That said, Wal-Mart’s system to let them do business in their native tongues means they will do business outside their shell communities and that’s a good thing.