Memorial Day Memories

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Memorial Rock, taken 2010

Memorial Day was a big event in my little town. A parade weaved through several streets and the route took the police officers, bag pipers, baton twirlers, and boy and girl scouts straight past my house. 


My dad’s Super 8 movie and SLR cameras were ready to capture the event. The parade concluded at the nine plus foot high Memorial Rock that sports plaques honoring those who served during various wars. A ceremony was held there commemorating the day.

Yes, I'm in the photo.

I was especially proud to be in the parade as a Brownie. And while I don’t remember the details of our activities at home, I’m sure that we had a fringed red and white striped vinyl table cloth covering our redwood table for catching crumbs as my family chowed down on hot dogs, hamburgers, and corn on the cob.


The memories started my mind churning…when did we start recognizing this day?


Initially, this was time set aside to specifically honor those that had died in the Civil War (1861 to 1865). At that time it was known as Decoration Day. In later years as the number of Americans observing on this day increased it became known as Memorial Day and while this term has been used since the 1880’s it actually wasn’t the official name until 1967. The observance itself grew to encompass all of those in military service who lost their lives during war time.  I have to say as a youngster I thought we were honoring all those who served; wonder if our teachers ever explained the day to us?


While there wasn’t an official date during the earlier years of observance, May was commonly the chosen month. 


The dates for Memorial Day, Washington’s Birthday (now known as President’s Day) and Veteran’s Day were officially changed by federal law in 1971 (passed in 1968). The main thrust of rationale was to create three day weekends. Prior to this, Memorial Day was observed on the 30th of May and nowadays we know it as the last Monday in May, close enough to the real start of summer to declare it the “unofficial” start.


And the true meaning of the day has drifted away from the original intention a bit. Yes, it’s a great opportunity to catch up with friends and family since most have the day off, however, remember that people’s lives were lost in honor of this country. These brave souls gave in order to make our lives better and the thought of that gives me chills. It’s a gift.


I’m proud to say that my father served, both my brothers served and my nephew is now in the Navy. 


Curious me; would love to know if small towns like my home town have parades and ceremonies today. A quick search tells me that the local American Legion post will lead a ceremony in a local cemetery but I see nothing about a parade. That’s sad. When I participated in the Memorial Day parade, it gave me a sense of pride at a tender young age. 

Another view of the parade.

Wishing you all the best for Memorial Day.

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You may have heard the news about Facebook buying a “little” app called Instagram. Funny, I just got the app on my phone last week after learning about its availability for us android users. So, I’ve barely checked it out at yet. But I have heard good things about it.






Launched in the Fourth Quarter of 2010, the icon for Instagram resembles an old Polaroid camera complete with nostalgic rainbow stripes.  Kinda makes sense since it provides an easy way to upload photos to various social networks. Speaking of vintage cameras, the Instagram photo shape has a cubed look to it.



Currently, the app has 30 million accounts and the recent launch on android brought over a million downloads in half a day’s time.  And now, a mere year and a half later after intro, the company is sold for 1 billion. Someone’s making money; interestingly enough, sources cite Jack Dorsey (Twitter founder) as an early investor.

What’s up, Facebook?

Could it be that Facebook wants to see more users access the social network when they’re mobile? And Instagram may provide the convenience for people to upload just about anything they feel like snapping, thus encouraging more engagement overall, on mobile, computers, and tablet? And more usage means more eyeballs on advertising on Facebook, thus enabling Facebook to charge more for those ads? Note the key word here is usage, not users since
Facebook is reaching saturation point in many markets.

Or perhaps there were rumblings from other social networks about making a big purchase, namely, of Instagram? A billion dollars’ worth of app just to keep the competition from getting it? Nah.

How ‘bout keeping your social network visible? Staying in the news and looking good for that IPO, perhaps? Could be a contributing reason for purchasing.

Was Instagram pondering adding sharing features to additional social networks besides Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr? Wonder if sharing to Google+ will ever be available. Ah, wait! Google, who acquired a nifty photo editing tool called Picnik a while back is now closing the website. Picnik’s landing page says “Picnik is moving its most popular editing tools and effects to Google+”. Will there be an app forthcoming down the road too?

A message released by Mark Zuckerberg is vague and a snippet of it states, “Now, we'll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.”

Increased Facebook usage though mobility makes the most sense.

What do you think?

Enjoy this classic Polaroid Swinger commercial. Click here.

This is the “I” entry for the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Here’s G and H.