Tribute

Memorial Day used to mean, for me, a day I didn't have to go to work -- a day to go to the beach, have a barbecue, celebrate the beginning of summer. Since moving to this small New England town, Memorial Day has come to mean much more to me.

This is a town that still observes Memorial Day in the traditional sense, commemorating its war veterans. Each year townspeople gather in the school auditorium for a somewhat formal ceremony including a speech given by a local veteran. Afterward, everyone -- the town selectmen, officers from the fire and police departments, girl scouts, boy scouts, the town minutemen, and citizens ranging in age from 1 to 90 -- forms a parade that goes to the local cemetery to honor the local war veteran who died most recently. The parade then visits each of the three the war memorials in town, where the minutemen fire a volley, a boy plays taps, and a girl scout lays a wreath of flowers. There is something rather moving about it all, and I think it came to mean more to me when one year the honored vet who had recently died was someone I worked with at the paper.

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In other news, the wildfires burning in Québec have made for a very smokey and hazy day for us down here in Massachusetts. This morning the air smelled like a campfire (complete with burnt marshmallows), and several of the local fire departments responded to reports of an "unknown source of smoke" before learning that it was smoke from Canada.