ever watch Gone with the Wind, at the the war is lost, while Scarlett is stuck married to Fank Kennedy, those snotty old ladies come by and demand that she help them to " beautify the graves of our glorious dead" on the last weekend of May, the first really steamy one of the season that year...and oh, how she hates all this mourning of the Lost Cause and crying over boys lost in battle, and the waste of war...Read the book...it a great antiwar book!
I watched the movie but its been a while so that is a bit foggy. I just wrote this post to inform people who may not know much about the US holiday and in my way remember the fallen.
My awful day job is at Dollar General, a discount department/grocery store. At Easter, we got a gazillion artificial flower wreathes and actually had a hard time finding room in the store to keep them all. Now, they're practically sold out, especially all the red white and blue ones. With every sale, I hear Ms. Jane Darwell playing Mrs Merriweather and her distinctively snooty voice voice saying to "honor the graves of our glorious dead"...Anyway That graveyard decorating on that particular weekend really was started by the Lady's Auxiliary in Atlanta in 1868, in recognition of that particularly brutal battle, the fall of Atlanta and Sherman's march to the sea. I like it when fictiongrabs history by the hand and lights of the page with truth.
Yes its strange how they can blur lines. I remember reading a history book years ago that went into all the unsung citizen heroes that are never mentioned such as Paul Revere. To make his historic ride he needed a dozen people from the boys that were awoken to get his horse ready at every stop to the blacksmith who kept the horses ready to run at a moments notice.
indeed...the novel I'm writing revolves around a antebellum stage coach stop here in central Appalachia. I used to live in the big house of this forgotten business. The frame of the story is a multi-generational ghost story. Enjoy your memorial weekend. It's about more than public pools opening up for the season!!!! I'll be writing and painting with force on my day off!!!!