Around 1990 I went to work for an engineering firm that had started in construction testing and branched into environmental assessment. This was in NC.
Memorial Day was not a company holiday at the time, but the office manager made sure we had a nice company provided picnic lunch in observance.
And so I learned Memorial Day was a Northern holiday and there was still contention over it's observance. Within a couple of years it did become a paid day off.
Perhaps it remained so for people in the south. I think certainly by the 1960’s people in the Northeast had forgotten it started with the civil war entirely and instead associated it with more recent conflicts.
Growing up in the 70s near Philadelphia, Memorial Day had definitely come to focus on the more recent conflicts. the most honored guests at the Memorial Day Parade and Ceremony were the Gold Star Mothers who had lost sons in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.
I don’t know how it plays in the sticks but here in Atlanta everyone gets the day off. It does seem marginally less of a to do perhaps because, as others have noted, school has already ended. More like a normal long weekend.
Having grown up in the South during the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, I agree that Memorial Day is a very minor thing. In part this was because school usually ended before Memorial Day. I don’t remember cookouts or anything special about Memorial Day. When I moved north, I was surprised for many years that people looked at it like a big holiday.
School ended *before Memorial Day*???!!! When did it start? Back in the day it was day after Labor Day - mid-June. Also far fewer random days off and almost no snow days. In Michigan.
(We also walked uphill both ways of course. But stuff above is true.)
Am only now drinking coffee but per my earlier comments I was thinking primary school. My midwestern alma mater started around Labor Day but ended late April/early May.
I grew up outside D.C., child and grandchild of Southerners. It was just another holiday. School ran from the day after Labor Day to mid- June, which meant that vacationing on NC beaches in August got us reduced rates.
The company position on Memorial Day struck me because, in the rapid growth bringing in waves of northern transplants, it definitely had a mildly defensive "War of Northern Aggression" vibe.
The last Monday in May is a traditional holiday in England too (English and Scottish public holidays are very different because of the religious divide between Anglican and Presbyterian).
It was originally the day following Whit Sunday (ie Pentecost), seven weeks after Easter, but was fixed as the last Monday in May in 1972. The shared date with Memorial Day is purely coincidental.
Very few perceive it as a religious observance (Christians who observe Whitsun do so on the Easter-related date) and it's origins are mostly forgotten.
It's main significance is as the beginning of Summer (which the present heatwave here is emphasising) and also as the start of the end-of-(high)-school examinations season, with GCSEs and A levels generally starting tomorrow.
A typical GCSE student (at the end of Year 11, ie 10th Grade) may take 25-30 exams, typically around two to two and a half hours, while an A level student Y13 / 12th Grade) will take fewer, perhaps 10, but they will be three hours each. These will be long hard weeks of work sitting in uncooled sports halls, answering challenging questions on which university entry will depend. For most educated English people these are an experience burned deep into the psyche.
"It's main significance is as the beginning of Summer..."
Same in the US, at least as a practical matter. Memorial Day and Labor Day (on the first Monday of September) are the bookends for cultural summer, if not exactly meteorological summer.
Someone else mentioned here that school opening in the South is earlier. This year Miami-Dade schools open on August 13th, and in Broward County (where Fort Lauderdale is) opens August 10th. Where I grew up in Maine, schools typically opened the week before or after Labor Day. In more touristy areas it'd always be after Labor Day because the local tourism industry needed the cheap teen labor through the holiday.
Though as it happens, yesterday was also Whit Monday! And it was a Bank Holiday here in Scotland too - it may not be traditional, but we appear to have been celebrating it since the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971.
Yesterday was also Geek Pride Day, Towel Day, and Wear the Lilac Day, but those three always coincide.
Whitsun was 49 days from Easter? Interesting... observant Jews "count the Omer" for 49 days from the 2nd day of Passover--same time of year as Easter--leading to Shavuot, marking the 49 days from the Exodus to the revelation at Sinai. It's hard to believe this is a coincidence. Unrelated: I can confirm that growing up in the South in the 1960s and 70s we barely marked Memorial Day, and I was always puzzled why it was worth mention on national TV and in Newsweek. Then I went to college up north, and figured out quickly that it was a Civil War holiday for the victors.
Pentecost (the Greek name, ie πεντηκοστή) is the LXX Greek translation of Shavuot. The Apostles were gathered for the first Shavuot after the Resurrection when the Holy Spirit descended and enabled them to speak in tongues (not the glossolalia of modern churches, but a divine power to speak in any language) and to to spread the gospel.
This is commemorated at the beginning date of the universal church.
Indeed. For example, my A levels were two long exams in each of Physics and Chemistry, plus a practical lab test in each and then two three hour exams in each of Maths, Further Maths and History. The science/maths papers were all long series of problems to solve.
The History exams were very short question papers: "Answer any four of these 12-15 questions" (3 hrs) and they would be one sentence essay titles, like "compare and contrast the choices of legislation passed by Gladstone's First and Disraeli's Second Ministries" (one I answered and scored well on). This means handwriting four 45 minute essays entirely from memory, and then doing it again on European History three days later.
I got a B in History, so I missed my first choice school (Cambridge) but went to my safety school (Imperial College, London).
It was hard work. Pocket calculator or just memory and a pen.
Finals (end of undergraduate degree) had been similar until just before me, write up anything you'd covered in the preceeding two years (you matriculated at the end of year one, which was a pass/fail to let you into the later years), but Imperial semesterised in 1991, so we examined each unit at the end of that unit and totalled up the results at graduation, more like a US-style GPA.
Thanks for this reminder about the origins of this holiday. It's a weird moment as Trump pushes to build a monument obscuring one of the key viewsheds overlooking Arlington National Cemetery. And, at the same time, the cemetery is running out of room even as it shifts rules for burials considering there are only 95,000 spaces left with 22 million living veterans. I wrote a song about this, asking "Where will they go when there's no more room in Arlington?" https://revkin.substack.com/p/where-will-they-go-when-theres-no?utm_source=publication-search
As a serving veteran with shrapnel still in my hand (currently in uniform in South Korea for an exercise) the answer seems pretty straightforward: just restrict burial privileges, effective immediately, to only line of duty deaths (i.e. including training) and perhaps the occasional general/admiral (at least those that aren't bootlickers or complicit in murder).
If you died safely in your bed, congratulations, you "won" the lottery, thank you for your service, now you get to be buried with your family or at your local National Cemetery through the VA.
100% serious
ETA: Cemeteries, especially new ones or expansions, are a criminal misuse of space in urban areas. The only way an expansion of Arlington should even be considered is if we go to war with China and the PLARF annihilates our carrier battle groups inside the Second Island Chain (of course many of the casualties there would presumably never be recovered) and/or turns Okinawa into a charnel house once again, thus resulting in the requisite thousands of KIA.
We should disinter (and rebury elsewhere) those who never served in combat before we add an inch to Arlington Cemetery. It makes my blood boil to think that an active duty O5 can retire without a day of service in combat and immediately be eligible for burial there.
The nation’s premiere military cemetery is at a critical crossroads in its history. Nearly all of the 22 million living armed forces members and veterans are eligible for less than 95,000 remaining burial spaces within these hallowed grounds.
A planned Southern Expansion project will add 37 acres of additional burial space for the nation’s veterans. Southern Expansion includes the area nearest the Air Force Memorial and a part of the former grounds of the Navy Annex. However, expansion alone will not keep Arlington National Cemetery open to new interments well into the future. Without changes to eligibility, Arlington National Cemetery will be full for first burials by the mid-2050s.
“The hard reality is we are running out of space. To keep Arlington National Cemetery open and active well into the future means we have to make some tough decisions that restrict the eligibility,” said Executive Director of Army National Military Cemeteries and Arlington National Cemetery Karen Durham-Aguilera….
“This is a lengthy process, but it’s another opportunity to have a say in what the future of Arlington National Cemetery should be for our nation,” said Durham-Aguilera.
In addition to preserving 1,000 gravesites for current and future Medal of Honor recipients, the following revised eligibility criteria updates were made on September 15, 2020, when the proposed rule was published and the changes more clearly defined.
For below-ground interment:
Killed in action, to include repatriated remains of service members
Award recipients of the Silver Star and above who also have armed conflict service
Recipients of the Purple Heart
Any service member whose death results from “preparations or operations related to combat”, as defined in Section 553.1 of the proposed rule.
Former prisoners of war
Presidents and Vice Presidents of the United States
Veterans with armed conflict service who also served out of uniform as a government official in a position of significant governmental responsibility, as defined in Section 553.1 of the proposed rule.
For above-ground inurnment:
World War II-era veterans, to include legislated active duty designees
Retirees from the armed forces who are eligible to receive retired pay but are not otherwise for interment
Veterans who have served a minimum of two years on active duty and who have served in armed conflict
Veterans without armed conflict service who have also served out of uniform as a government official in a position of significant governmental responsibility, as defined in Section 553.1 of the proposed rule.
As a civilian who doesn't know squat about war other than what I've read on ACOUP:
I agree with everything you wrote here *except* the part about disinterring and reburying those already buried at Arlington. It may become a necessity at some point, I get it, but it just feels... kind of icky? Imagine receiving a letter that reads, "Dear sir/madam, your grandpa, who died 40 years after serving in Korea, is getting kicked out of his grave at Arlington. You have n days to claim and collect his remains before we [fill in what to do with unclaimed remains, hopefully it's respectful]. Sincerely, etc." Depending on the circumstances, it may be a huge logistical hassle for the family, and/or may cause them emotional pain. "Thanks a lot, assholes, my beloved Grandpa served a decade in uniform and now you're kicking his bones out of Arlington like they're garbage."
Reburying people is apparently routine in e.g. Switzerland - my Swiss flatmate was astonished when he first encountered a British cemetery with graves dating back to the 1700s. And I'm astonished to learn that Arlington is available for any veteran to be buried in! I'd have guessed it was only for those who died particularly heroically. We take the opposite approach - the Commonwealth War Graves Commission manages tens of thousands of locations across the globe where Commonwealth servicemembers who died in the World Wars are buried. https://www.cwgc.org/
As Awarru suggested, reserve Arlington burials to line-of-duty deaths. You could hypothetically also buy up residential land near the cemetery to expand it. If it's hard to get people to sell their houses for conversion, it should be at least that hard to get soldiers deployed to combat at the president's discretion.
One interesting bit of trivia I just looked up after reading this post, is that Philadelphia's Logan Square/Logan Circle is named for a *different* Logan.
Also, we're on vacation in rural Norway right now and a ton of shops and activities are closed for Whit Monday (which as an American Jew I'd never heard of until yesterday).
Sherman Ave and N. Sherman Ave in Madison, WI, which both end at the same intersection in a way that suggests they are the same street, are named for two separate people. The former is named for Roger Sherman, the latter for William Tecumseh Sherman.
As someone with a [nearby date] birthday that's always close to Memorial Day, I've never really had any reason to enquire as to the actual meaning behind the holiday. Seems like good old patriotic Americana. I can get behind that! Yay patriotism - skew it on the BBQ, we ain't trying to lose the spirit of this great Nation, conceived in library.
(Though the Union won all the battles that mattered, the Confederacy had all the good songs. Why, they didn't even care if Jimmy cracked corn...)
"On January 1, 1942 (coinciding with the signing of the Declaration by United Nations), Churchill and Roosevelt attended a National Day of Prayer service at Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia. During the service, the congregation sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". Seated in the historic pew once used by George Washington, Churchill was deeply moved and wept as he joined in singing the verses."
My Polish grandma listened to a beautiful rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic by the Boston Symphony Orchestra while visiting us, and she said it's her favorite piece of music ever.
If I am ever President, I'm finding a reason to hold a military parade in Atlanta at which the Harlem Boys Choir will be invited to sing the entirety of "The Battle Cry of Freedom" as I cut a ribbon rebranding Hartsfield-Jackson as "William T. Sherman International Airport."
When I was in grammar school in Illinois, during World War II, we were definitely not allowed to forget what Decoration Day (as it then was usually called) was all about. One year on the week prior (the day itself then being on a Sunday, of course) we gathered in the auditorium for a program in which an elderly teacher told us of what she had heard from her father and his friends about their experiences in the War of the Rebellion (the name several of my older relatives also knew it by). The assembly closed with everyone joining to sing, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." And at the town parade I shook the hands of two ancients who had fought in the war, more than 75 years before. When we got our first car we drove out to the cemetery where my mother's grandfathers, both veterans of the war, had been buried. A holiday as in holy-day.
That was the interpretation of Reconstuction that I was taught in HS, but that was E.Texas in the '50's. Was even the corruption under Grant not exaggerated to discredit Reconstruction?
Unfortunately the corruption was pretty real. The attempt to corner the gold market involving Grant's brother in law and the Whiskey tax evasion ring involving his personal secretary, all real.
The best defense you can muster is that Grant was *personally* much less corrupt that his associates and he was somewhere between a dupe and willfully blind to it more than he was a driver of it. Still bad!
The corruption was real and discredited most things about Grant, unfortunately including Reconstruction. It's not really satisfying to say that the Credit Mobilier scandal of 1872 and the massive economic downturn of the Panic of 1873 led the Democrats to retake Congress in 1874 midterms and kill off Reconstruction, but...that's how it happened. Sadly, the Reconstruction agenda ended up the victim of the public turning on Grant over massive corruption and economic collapse.
Credit Mobilier was a wild scandal. Union Pacific Railroad paying large bribes to just about everyone in the government to be allowed to purchase massive amounts of cheap land, most notably including Grant's first Vice President Schuyler Colfax, who had to be dropped from the ticket for Grant's reelection campaign as a result.
By writing dates correctly, of course, you mean year-month-day, so the digits are strictly in order from most significant to least significant, both within a component and between them, and sorting chronologically is trivial.
Name the file what you’d like to call it, then use the metadata to sort. If that won’t work, you’re probably already parsing the string and can handle the date from there. Let the machines format dates in the way that works for them, and let people use the most legible format with least chance for tomfoolery (i.e., this one)
Why would summer start on the solstice? Shouldn’t the solstice be the midpoint of summer? It makes no sense for the two 2nd longest days of the year to be in different seasons.
It depends on whether you want to define seasons by amount of light or by temperature. Temperature lags behind light (especially when there are major bodies of water nearby, and especially especially if those bodies of water freeze in the winter).
I don’t think the solstice makes sense as the *beginning* of the season even when tracking temperature, but it’s a precise astronomical phenomenon to date from.
But in Australia (and I think some other countries) they start the seasons on the first of the month that contains the solstice or equinox, which seems pretty good to me.
The Celtic calendar does what you like, with the solstice and equinox in the middle, and the dates halfway from one to the next are the starts of the seasons (Groundhog’s day, May Day, and Halloween are the remnants of three of these four days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_days?wprov=sfti1#Ireland)
It's the only objective date that makes sense, and has been the agreed upon date for millenia. All other dates are arbitrary or too early (if you tried to make it the midpoint then summer would start in early May - no thanks).
It also ends on the autumnal equinox, not "labor" day.
And while we are at it, I think we should shift the beginning of the year to the winter solstice - but that's too ambitious even for my fake dictatorship.
Meaning no disrespect to Gen. Logan, but I believe a traditional Decoration Day (apparently originating in the southern Appalachians) long antedated the Civil War tradition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoration_Day_(tradition)
Around 1990 I went to work for an engineering firm that had started in construction testing and branched into environmental assessment. This was in NC.
Memorial Day was not a company holiday at the time, but the office manager made sure we had a nice company provided picnic lunch in observance.
And so I learned Memorial Day was a Northern holiday and there was still contention over it's observance. Within a couple of years it did become a paid day off.
In 1990 Memorial Day was a “Northern Holiday”?
Perhaps it remained so for people in the south. I think certainly by the 1960’s people in the Northeast had forgotten it started with the civil war entirely and instead associated it with more recent conflicts.
How interesting.
Growing up in the 70s near Philadelphia, Memorial Day had definitely come to focus on the more recent conflicts. the most honored guests at the Memorial Day Parade and Ceremony were the Gold Star Mothers who had lost sons in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.
I, personally, would not be opposed to commemorating a butt kicking if it got me more days off work.
I don’t know how it plays in the sticks but here in Atlanta everyone gets the day off. It does seem marginally less of a to do perhaps because, as others have noted, school has already ended. More like a normal long weekend.
Having grown up in the South during the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, I agree that Memorial Day is a very minor thing. In part this was because school usually ended before Memorial Day. I don’t remember cookouts or anything special about Memorial Day. When I moved north, I was surprised for many years that people looked at it like a big holiday.
School ended *before Memorial Day*???!!! When did it start? Back in the day it was day after Labor Day - mid-June. Also far fewer random days off and almost no snow days. In Michigan.
(We also walked uphill both ways of course. But stuff above is true.)
School started at the end of July or first week of August.
TIL that there’s a lot more variation in the school calendar than I thought!
My schools didn’t have AC so I’m glad that wasn’t our schedule. Cross country practice did start in August, which was torturous.
related: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/25/back-to-school-dates-u-s/
same in the midwest
Not in Illinois at least. I checked my alma mater - they just ended on Friday (May 22) and will start up again Aug. 19.
Am only now drinking coffee but per my earlier comments I was thinking primary school. My midwestern alma mater started around Labor Day but ended late April/early May.
It'll never not be weird to me that school goes into June in the Northeast.
It will never not be weird to me that people start school in early august
Did you grow up in California? I was surprised when I left CA how many places start school in August and end in mid-May.
Georgia
I mentioned in another comment here that there is regional variation in school calendars.
In the South school is August- May, in the north September-June. No a/c in the schools sounds awful
I grew up outside D.C., child and grandchild of Southerners. It was just another holiday. School ran from the day after Labor Day to mid- June, which meant that vacationing on NC beaches in August got us reduced rates.
The company position on Memorial Day struck me because, in the rapid growth bringing in waves of northern transplants, it definitely had a mildly defensive "War of Northern Aggression" vibe.
As someone who grew up in Tennessee (and was a teenager in 1990), that was not my experience, but the South was a very diverse place in belief.
There were and are lots of eddies and currents.
The last Monday in May is a traditional holiday in England too (English and Scottish public holidays are very different because of the religious divide between Anglican and Presbyterian).
It was originally the day following Whit Sunday (ie Pentecost), seven weeks after Easter, but was fixed as the last Monday in May in 1972. The shared date with Memorial Day is purely coincidental.
Very few perceive it as a religious observance (Christians who observe Whitsun do so on the Easter-related date) and it's origins are mostly forgotten.
It's main significance is as the beginning of Summer (which the present heatwave here is emphasising) and also as the start of the end-of-(high)-school examinations season, with GCSEs and A levels generally starting tomorrow.
A typical GCSE student (at the end of Year 11, ie 10th Grade) may take 25-30 exams, typically around two to two and a half hours, while an A level student Y13 / 12th Grade) will take fewer, perhaps 10, but they will be three hours each. These will be long hard weeks of work sitting in uncooled sports halls, answering challenging questions on which university entry will depend. For most educated English people these are an experience burned deep into the psyche.
"It's main significance is as the beginning of Summer..."
Same in the US, at least as a practical matter. Memorial Day and Labor Day (on the first Monday of September) are the bookends for cultural summer, if not exactly meteorological summer.
We just figure the end from when they schools reopen, which is the first week of September.
Someone else mentioned here that school opening in the South is earlier. This year Miami-Dade schools open on August 13th, and in Broward County (where Fort Lauderdale is) opens August 10th. Where I grew up in Maine, schools typically opened the week before or after Labor Day. In more touristy areas it'd always be after Labor Day because the local tourism industry needed the cheap teen labor through the holiday.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/25/back-to-school-dates-u-s/
Interesting to see regional variations.
Though as it happens, yesterday was also Whit Monday! And it was a Bank Holiday here in Scotland too - it may not be traditional, but we appear to have been celebrating it since the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971.
Yesterday was also Geek Pride Day, Towel Day, and Wear the Lilac Day, but those three always coincide.
Whitsun was 49 days from Easter? Interesting... observant Jews "count the Omer" for 49 days from the 2nd day of Passover--same time of year as Easter--leading to Shavuot, marking the 49 days from the Exodus to the revelation at Sinai. It's hard to believe this is a coincidence. Unrelated: I can confirm that growing up in the South in the 1960s and 70s we barely marked Memorial Day, and I was always puzzled why it was worth mention on national TV and in Newsweek. Then I went to college up north, and figured out quickly that it was a Civil War holiday for the victors.
Pentecost (the Greek name, ie πεντηκοστή) is the LXX Greek translation of Shavuot. The Apostles were gathered for the first Shavuot after the Resurrection when the Holy Spirit descended and enabled them to speak in tongues (not the glossolalia of modern churches, but a divine power to speak in any language) and to to spread the gospel.
This is commemorated at the beginning date of the universal church.
So, yes, it's absolutely connected.
TIL!
Seconding Richard Gadsden - the text we read for Pentecost literally says "when the day of Pentecost/Shavuot was fully come..."
Now that’s a high stake exam!
Indeed. For example, my A levels were two long exams in each of Physics and Chemistry, plus a practical lab test in each and then two three hour exams in each of Maths, Further Maths and History. The science/maths papers were all long series of problems to solve.
The History exams were very short question papers: "Answer any four of these 12-15 questions" (3 hrs) and they would be one sentence essay titles, like "compare and contrast the choices of legislation passed by Gladstone's First and Disraeli's Second Ministries" (one I answered and scored well on). This means handwriting four 45 minute essays entirely from memory, and then doing it again on European History three days later.
I got a B in History, so I missed my first choice school (Cambridge) but went to my safety school (Imperial College, London).
"Maths, Further Maths"
Is there another one called "Ha Ha, Even More Maths"?
That all sounds punishing. Sounds kind of like the AP exams of many years ago (I don't know what the AP exams are like these days).
Yes, you could do all 18 modules and get a third A level in Maths.
It was hard work. Pocket calculator or just memory and a pen.
Finals (end of undergraduate degree) had been similar until just before me, write up anything you'd covered in the preceeding two years (you matriculated at the end of year one, which was a pass/fail to let you into the later years), but Imperial semesterised in 1991, so we examined each unit at the end of that unit and totalled up the results at graduation, more like a US-style GPA.
In the "symbols change meaning over time" category, the goddess of Peace on the Logan monument is holding a fasces.
Thanks for this reminder about the origins of this holiday. It's a weird moment as Trump pushes to build a monument obscuring one of the key viewsheds overlooking Arlington National Cemetery. And, at the same time, the cemetery is running out of room even as it shifts rules for burials considering there are only 95,000 spaces left with 22 million living veterans. I wrote a song about this, asking "Where will they go when there's no more room in Arlington?" https://revkin.substack.com/p/where-will-they-go-when-theres-no?utm_source=publication-search
As a serving veteran with shrapnel still in my hand (currently in uniform in South Korea for an exercise) the answer seems pretty straightforward: just restrict burial privileges, effective immediately, to only line of duty deaths (i.e. including training) and perhaps the occasional general/admiral (at least those that aren't bootlickers or complicit in murder).
If you died safely in your bed, congratulations, you "won" the lottery, thank you for your service, now you get to be buried with your family or at your local National Cemetery through the VA.
100% serious
ETA: Cemeteries, especially new ones or expansions, are a criminal misuse of space in urban areas. The only way an expansion of Arlington should even be considered is if we go to war with China and the PLARF annihilates our carrier battle groups inside the Second Island Chain (of course many of the casualties there would presumably never be recovered) and/or turns Okinawa into a charnel house once again, thus resulting in the requisite thousands of KIA.
We should disinter (and rebury elsewhere) those who never served in combat before we add an inch to Arlington Cemetery. It makes my blood boil to think that an active duty O5 can retire without a day of service in combat and immediately be eligible for burial there.
Also after 100 years your bones get moved to a respectful ossuary. Europe knows how to do it!
Just to be clear, that’s not a joke. America needs to move away from forever cemeteries.
thank you for your service.
That's what was proposed in 2019 (with other details) but the final rule has still not been published. Writing something about this actually. Here's what's pending (and why): https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/About/Proposed-Revised-Eligibility-Criteria
The nation’s premiere military cemetery is at a critical crossroads in its history. Nearly all of the 22 million living armed forces members and veterans are eligible for less than 95,000 remaining burial spaces within these hallowed grounds.
A planned Southern Expansion project will add 37 acres of additional burial space for the nation’s veterans. Southern Expansion includes the area nearest the Air Force Memorial and a part of the former grounds of the Navy Annex. However, expansion alone will not keep Arlington National Cemetery open to new interments well into the future. Without changes to eligibility, Arlington National Cemetery will be full for first burials by the mid-2050s.
“The hard reality is we are running out of space. To keep Arlington National Cemetery open and active well into the future means we have to make some tough decisions that restrict the eligibility,” said Executive Director of Army National Military Cemeteries and Arlington National Cemetery Karen Durham-Aguilera….
“This is a lengthy process, but it’s another opportunity to have a say in what the future of Arlington National Cemetery should be for our nation,” said Durham-Aguilera.
In addition to preserving 1,000 gravesites for current and future Medal of Honor recipients, the following revised eligibility criteria updates were made on September 15, 2020, when the proposed rule was published and the changes more clearly defined.
For below-ground interment:
Killed in action, to include repatriated remains of service members
Award recipients of the Silver Star and above who also have armed conflict service
Recipients of the Purple Heart
Any service member whose death results from “preparations or operations related to combat”, as defined in Section 553.1 of the proposed rule.
Former prisoners of war
Presidents and Vice Presidents of the United States
Veterans with armed conflict service who also served out of uniform as a government official in a position of significant governmental responsibility, as defined in Section 553.1 of the proposed rule.
For above-ground inurnment:
World War II-era veterans, to include legislated active duty designees
Retirees from the armed forces who are eligible to receive retired pay but are not otherwise for interment
Veterans who have served a minimum of two years on active duty and who have served in armed conflict
Veterans without armed conflict service who have also served out of uniform as a government official in a position of significant governmental responsibility, as defined in Section 553.1 of the proposed rule.
Thank you for your service.
As a civilian who doesn't know squat about war other than what I've read on ACOUP:
I agree with everything you wrote here *except* the part about disinterring and reburying those already buried at Arlington. It may become a necessity at some point, I get it, but it just feels... kind of icky? Imagine receiving a letter that reads, "Dear sir/madam, your grandpa, who died 40 years after serving in Korea, is getting kicked out of his grave at Arlington. You have n days to claim and collect his remains before we [fill in what to do with unclaimed remains, hopefully it's respectful]. Sincerely, etc." Depending on the circumstances, it may be a huge logistical hassle for the family, and/or may cause them emotional pain. "Thanks a lot, assholes, my beloved Grandpa served a decade in uniform and now you're kicking his bones out of Arlington like they're garbage."
Reburying people is apparently routine in e.g. Switzerland - my Swiss flatmate was astonished when he first encountered a British cemetery with graves dating back to the 1700s. And I'm astonished to learn that Arlington is available for any veteran to be buried in! I'd have guessed it was only for those who died particularly heroically. We take the opposite approach - the Commonwealth War Graves Commission manages tens of thousands of locations across the globe where Commonwealth servicemembers who died in the World Wars are buried. https://www.cwgc.org/
As Awarru suggested, reserve Arlington burials to line-of-duty deaths. You could hypothetically also buy up residential land near the cemetery to expand it. If it's hard to get people to sell their houses for conversion, it should be at least that hard to get soldiers deployed to combat at the president's discretion.
One interesting bit of trivia I just looked up after reading this post, is that Philadelphia's Logan Square/Logan Circle is named for a *different* Logan.
Also, we're on vacation in rural Norway right now and a ton of shops and activities are closed for Whit Monday (which as an American Jew I'd never heard of until yesterday).
Sherman Ave and N. Sherman Ave in Madison, WI, which both end at the same intersection in a way that suggests they are the same street, are named for two separate people. The former is named for Roger Sherman, the latter for William Tecumseh Sherman.
As someone with a [nearby date] birthday that's always close to Memorial Day, I've never really had any reason to enquire as to the actual meaning behind the holiday. Seems like good old patriotic Americana. I can get behind that! Yay patriotism - skew it on the BBQ, we ain't trying to lose the spirit of this great Nation, conceived in library.
(Though the Union won all the battles that mattered, the Confederacy had all the good songs. Why, they didn't even care if Jimmy cracked corn...)
Battle Hymn of the Republic is a banger, though. I'm taking that over Dixie any day of the week
A banger indeed, and a favorite of Churchill's:
"On January 1, 1942 (coinciding with the signing of the Declaration by United Nations), Churchill and Roosevelt attended a National Day of Prayer service at Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia. During the service, the congregation sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". Seated in the historic pew once used by George Washington, Churchill was deeply moved and wept as he joined in singing the verses."
https://www.perfectlytruestory.com/newsletter/winston-churchill-and-the-american-civil-war
Even the NAME is a banger.
It's one of those names where you really have to bring it to live up to its promise, and boy howdy does it ever.
"Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel."
My immediate thought. I saw that statement and was like "this claim is just false."
My Polish grandma listened to a beautiful rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic by the Boston Symphony Orchestra while visiting us, and she said it's her favorite piece of music ever.
Dixie sucks. I'm aware that Lincoln liked it from a purely musical standpoint, but he was wrong.
I call it (following the late lamented Mark Klieman) the Jihadi hymn.
Battle Cry of Freedom is a fantastic Union song.
"Down with the traitors, and up with the Stars, And we'll fill the vacant ranks with a million freemen more, Shouting the battle cry of freedom."
That's the FU to the Confederacy we should have maintained.
If I am ever President, I'm finding a reason to hold a military parade in Atlanta at which the Harlem Boys Choir will be invited to sing the entirety of "The Battle Cry of Freedom" as I cut a ribbon rebranding Hartsfield-Jackson as "William T. Sherman International Airport."
OK, you’ve got my vote again
Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!
I liked this even though I'm starting to think balkanization is gonna be a regrettable necessity.
A visit to Logan Circle anyone?
When I was in grammar school in Illinois, during World War II, we were definitely not allowed to forget what Decoration Day (as it then was usually called) was all about. One year on the week prior (the day itself then being on a Sunday, of course) we gathered in the auditorium for a program in which an elderly teacher told us of what she had heard from her father and his friends about their experiences in the War of the Rebellion (the name several of my older relatives also knew it by). The assembly closed with everyone joining to sing, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." And at the town parade I shook the hands of two ancients who had fought in the war, more than 75 years before. When we got our first car we drove out to the cemetery where my mother's grandfathers, both veterans of the war, had been buried. A holiday as in holy-day.
Note for Philly people: Our Logan Square is named after someone completely different (an 18th-century Mayor of Philadelphia).
I hope everyone will enjoy wearing their white trousers, shoes, and handbags today and for the three months to follow.
That was the interpretation of Reconstuction that I was taught in HS, but that was E.Texas in the '50's. Was even the corruption under Grant not exaggerated to discredit Reconstruction?
Unfortunately the corruption was pretty real. The attempt to corner the gold market involving Grant's brother in law and the Whiskey tax evasion ring involving his personal secretary, all real.
The best defense you can muster is that Grant was *personally* much less corrupt that his associates and he was somewhere between a dupe and willfully blind to it more than he was a driver of it. Still bad!
The corruption was real and discredited most things about Grant, unfortunately including Reconstruction. It's not really satisfying to say that the Credit Mobilier scandal of 1872 and the massive economic downturn of the Panic of 1873 led the Democrats to retake Congress in 1874 midterms and kill off Reconstruction, but...that's how it happened. Sadly, the Reconstruction agenda ended up the victim of the public turning on Grant over massive corruption and economic collapse.
Credit Mobilier was a wild scandal. Union Pacific Railroad paying large bribes to just about everyone in the government to be allowed to purchase massive amounts of cheap land, most notably including Grant's first Vice President Schuyler Colfax, who had to be dropped from the ticket for Grant's reelection campaign as a result.
Amazing to think of a time where the American public thought corruption was a scandal instead of, “Hell yes, steal from us more!”
Unrelated, but does it bother anyone else that 55+ communities are legal?
If I ever become dictator I will adopt the metric system, writing dates correctly and declare that summer starts on the summer solstice, not in May!
By writing dates correctly, of course, you mean year-month-day, so the digits are strictly in order from most significant to least significant, both within a component and between them, and sorting chronologically is trivial.
This would be an acceptable compromise
Clearly he meant day (#) - month (spelled out or abbreviated) - year (#) e.g., 25May2026. I will die on this hill.
Not good for sorting file names!
Can’t we just get the AI to do all that?
Name the file what you’d like to call it, then use the metadata to sort. If that won’t work, you’re probably already parsing the string and can handle the date from there. Let the machines format dates in the way that works for them, and let people use the most legible format with least chance for tomfoolery (i.e., this one)
Why would summer start on the solstice? Shouldn’t the solstice be the midpoint of summer? It makes no sense for the two 2nd longest days of the year to be in different seasons.
It depends on whether you want to define seasons by amount of light or by temperature. Temperature lags behind light (especially when there are major bodies of water nearby, and especially especially if those bodies of water freeze in the winter).
I don’t think the solstice makes sense as the *beginning* of the season even when tracking temperature, but it’s a precise astronomical phenomenon to date from.
But in Australia (and I think some other countries) they start the seasons on the first of the month that contains the solstice or equinox, which seems pretty good to me.
The Celtic calendar does what you like, with the solstice and equinox in the middle, and the dates halfway from one to the next are the starts of the seasons (Groundhog’s day, May Day, and Halloween are the remnants of three of these four days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_days?wprov=sfti1#Ireland)
I use the Australia method mentally - I'm a December birthday and idea that I'm born in fall has always been crazy to me
It's the only objective date that makes sense, and has been the agreed upon date for millenia. All other dates are arbitrary or too early (if you tried to make it the midpoint then summer would start in early May - no thanks).
It also ends on the autumnal equinox, not "labor" day.
And while we are at it, I think we should shift the beginning of the year to the winter solstice - but that's too ambitious even for my fake dictatorship.
I will oppose you vigorously
Meteorological Summer is surely more relevant to my life than astronomical summer, and Memorial Day is less than a week from its start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Season#Meteorological
hear hear. well said, and well written.
more vignette posts like this, perhaps as part of days like these.
god bless america.
Meaning no disrespect to Gen. Logan, but I believe a traditional Decoration Day (apparently originating in the southern Appalachians) long antedated the Civil War tradition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoration_Day_(tradition)