Search
The Rare & Early Newspapers Hobby
Receive the Newsletter
Buy Historic Newspapers
Yesterday & Today… Memorial Day & Tariffs…
May 23, 2025 by Laura Heilenman · Leave a Comment
Without a doubt, when Memorial Day arrives, the feel of summer settles in and Patriotism seems to fill the air as the Red, White & Blue flaps gracefully on the warm breezes. Life seems to take a few steps back intime as we gather with family and friends over plates full of deviled eggs and Grandma’s potato salad. On May 29, 1913, Life Magazine featured a beautiful print by Norman Price showing the passing of our heritage of Decoration Day (now Memorial Day) from one generation to the next. In an odd turn of congruency, this issue also has a political cartoon which could not be more in line with today’s headlines on Tariffs and the possible pluses and minuses they may bring to our country. How fitting for both of images to be contained in one publication as America is so much defined by push and pull, delight and difficulty, light and dark. May your Memorial Day Weekend be both lighthearted in celebration and heavy in remembrance of those who gave so much for our Freedom… and may we figure out an answer to that political cartoon.
Memorial Day (aka, Decoration Day) and the melting pot of grave markers…
May 27, 2024 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
Soon after the Revolutionary War, during the formative years of The United States, the metaphor “Melting Together” was often used to describe the citizenry of this new experiment in self-government. In the early 1900’s this morphed into “Melting Pot” as a result of Israel Zangwill’s famous play of the same name. The breadth of ethnicities which make up our nation can almost be described in Biblical terms – “every ethnos” (people group) – and for much of the past two centuries, although not without hurdles to clear, it has been one of our greatest strengths. However, being in the same pot does not necessitate a “melting together”. It takes hard work. Yet, the effort has proven to be worth it. Of course, our enemies know the reality of both – the strength it brings…. and the effort it takes, and so they seek to foment division from within. Sadly, too many do not see this nefarious manipulation or the writing on the wall if they continue to allow themselves to be a pawn of the tactics used by those who seek to weaken us at the core.
So, what does this have to do with Memorial Day? A few days ago I came across a May 31, 1939 New York Times which contained multiple reports telling of the prior day’s Memorial Day celebrations held throughout the country. What struck me was the “melting together” of citizens from every walk of life as they honored those who had given their very lives to earn, preserve, and protect those from each and every ethnos who comprise the melting pot in which we live. As I pondered which article to feature in conjunction with this post, considering current events, I thought the one below to be apropos. It is interesting to note that this article was written in the midst of perhaps the greatest effort in human history to create a nation based on the antithesis of a melting pot – specifically targeting those hereafter honored:
Happy Memorial Day? Perhaps. Grateful Memorial Day? Absolutely!