Memorial Day 2010

There are always parades on Memorial Day. As well there should be. A lot of men and women gave their lives to protect the liberties that we enjoy every day.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

- Benjamin Franklin

In this time of tea party strife, it's good to remember to keep such words in our minds. Those men and women that we honor today gave the ultimate sacrifice for those liberties. We need to make sure we don't shout down our countrymen just because they say something we don't like. There are a lot of folks that I think are complete numbskulls, but I'd fight for their right to say their blather.I hope that someone would stand up for me if that's what it took.We also had a C-130 fly over today as well. We were expecting another pass down the parade route, but the local air wing is busy and most of them are in the Gulf of Mexico applying dispersant to the oil. That combined with the inclement weather likely shortened the amount of time they can spent per location.As an aside, from what I understand, the marching band all volunteered for this day, their school year has ended (or nearly so) and they aren't obliged to pitch in today.I'll get off my soap box and cut to the heros that marched in the parade today. Along with some potential heros in the boy and girl scout troops who were in the parade as well.[smugmug url="http://photos.vec.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=12386111_6KnaK&format=rss200" imagecount="100" start="1" num="100" thumbsize="Th" link="lightbox" captions="false" sort="true" window="true" smugmug="true" size="L"]