May 29, 2006

• Freedom Isnt Free ,
  HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY

  I watched the flag pass by one day.

  It fluttered in the breeze.

  A young Marine saluted it,

  And then he stood at ease.

  I looked at him in uniform

  So young, so tall, so proud,

  With hair cut square and eyes alert

  He’d stand out in any crowd.

  I thought how many men like him

  Had fallen through the years.

  How many died on foreign soil?

  How many mothers’ tears?

  How many pilots’ planes shot down?

  How many died at sea?

  How many foxholes were soldiers’ graves?

  No, freedom isn’t free.

  I heard the sound of taps one night,

  When everything was still

  I listened to the bugler play

  And felt a sudden chill.

  I wondered just how many times

  That taps had meant “Amen,”

  When a flag had draped a coffin

  Of a brother or a friend.

  I thought of all the children,

  Of the mothers and the wives,

  Of fathers, sons and husbands

  With interrupted lives.

  I thought about a graveyard

  At the bottom of the sea

  Of unmarked graves in Arlington.

  No, freedom isn’t free.

  

  Some History
  
  Most people know that the creator of the first American Flag was Betsy Ross, a native Pennsylvanian and well-known seamstress. What most people don’t know is that Betsy Ross was also a keen businesswoman who outlived 3 husbands and 2 of her 7 daughters. She was a hardworking, tough woman who only finally retired in her mid 70′s when she was too tired to work any longer. She lived well into her mid 80′s at a time when 40 was considered old. The Betsy Ross House is the house where Betsy and her daughters actually lived and worked and where the first flag was sewn. The front of the house served as Betsy’s shop where she spent her days making curtains, tablecloths, and bedcoverings for clients. She also upolstered furniture, a service that was in high demand at that time and provided steady business. Betsy also earned income to support her daughters by making musket balls for the Revolutionary Army. She is burried on the grounds of the house with her third husband, John Claypoole. Open 10 – 5, Closed Mondays Oct – March
  
  New History
  WASHINGTON -
  President Bush, marking Memorial Day with a speech paying tribute to
  fighting men and women lost in war, signed into law Monday a bill that
  keeps demonstrators from disrupting military funerals.
  In advance of his speech and a wreath-laying at
  America’s most hallowed burial ground for military heroes, Bush signed
  the “Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act.” This was largely in
  response to the activities of a Kansas church group that has staged
  protests at military funerals around the country, claiming the deaths
  symbolized God’s anger at U.S. tolerance of homosexuals.
  

  • 11:56 am
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