About Memorial Day

RHYS BOWEN:  I had forgotten it was Memorial Day! I mean who hasn’t mixed up days recently when Monday seems a lot like Saturday. Any other year Memorial Day would mean the official start of summer. School is out for many students. It would mean picnics and barbecues, beaches and hot dogs without a thought for what the day is actually about.


But this year is different. This year we are all too aware of senseless death, loss and grief. Almost a hundred thousand of our brothers and sisters lost, many unnecessarily.  I read that this number is more than all those killed in every war our country has fought. Can that be true?

And so our thoughts turn to the reason for Memorial Day: founded to commemorate those lost in the Civil War--as senseless a loss of life as there ever was. All wars are horrible. Most are for the wrong reasons. But a civil war--brother against brother--is the worst kind. And it is still having repercussions today, isn’t it? How many Confederate flags are flying recently? It must be the only war in which the losing side has never admitted defeat. It still divides our nation after one and a half centuries.Was it necessary? Abraham Lincoln thought there was no alternative. Slaves were freed. Some good came of it. But at what price?


And every war since, except for WWII, which I think everyone believes was necessary and just, has been colored in shades of gray. Were we right to go into Korea? Vietnam? Iraq? For each there were justifications at the time, especially among politicians, but weighed against the cost of human life?


So this Memorial Day is a perfect time for reflection. Let us think of those rows of headstones in Arlington National Cemetery, each one representing a mother or a sweetheart who stood, weeping, and found themselves wondering what their loved one had been fighting for.


And on this particular Memorial Day, one we will never forget, let us remind ourselves that every life is precious and each one of those souls lost to this virus is a loss to our country and to humanity.


HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Amen.


DEBORAH CROMBIE: Perfectly and eloquently said, Rhys.


HALLIE EPHRON: Exactly.


JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING:  Poignant and true. Thank you, Rhys.

Memorial Day

INGRID THOFT

It's easy, amidst the picnics and the cook-outs, to lose sight of the real purpose of Memorial Day.  My own experiences with the day include marching as a Girl Scout in the annual town parade, bringing colorful baskets of flowers to place on the graves of loved ones, and topping the day off with a backyard barbeque.  I imagine this is how most Americans spend the day, a mixture of solemn remembrance and happy celebration marking the start of summer. 


I did a little research to add to my meager knowledge about the day.  As many of us know, Memorial Day is always the last Monday in May and is the day Americans honor their fellow citizens who died while serving in the U.S. military.  What many people don't know is that the day didn't start out as Memorial Day.   In 1868, after the end of the Civil War, an organization of Union Veterans called the Grand Army of the Republic declared that May 30th was officially Decoration Day.  The birth of Decoration Day coincided with the establishment of national cemeteries, a necessity to accommodate the vast numbers of casualties sustained in the war.  Citizens would decorate the graves of those they lost in the war, and over time, cities and towns joined the remembrances.

Eventually, Decoration Day evolved into Memorial Day, and the Uniform Monday Holiday Act was passed by congress in 1968 and established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May.  They also declared the day a federal holiday, which took effect in 1971.  This created a three-day weekend for federal employees, and essentially, the rest of us.

So tell me:  How do you spend Memorial Day?  Visits to remember those who served?  Parades and boating?  And for those amongst us who aren't Americans, is there a similar tradition in your country?

Parading, picnicking, remembering

HALLIE EPHRON: Memorial Day. The day we honor those who died in the military and, on a lighter note, a day off from work that gives us a good excuse to parade and picnic.

In my town there's a parade. My daughter played the flute in her high school band, and every year she was mortified at having to get dressed in her red band jacket and bow tie and march. It was either beastly hot or raining. There'd be a flag raising (including the POW/MIA from the Vietnam War flag), pauses in front of our World War I and Civil War memorials, and a parade to the cemetery where the little ceremony was always heartfelt and moving.
Our town cemetery (photo by Bill Ilott) is beautiful. It has a  pond and winding paths, and the oldest part dates back to the early 1700s. On Memorial Day the dogwoods and cherry blossoms and tulips are blooming and the pond is teeming with geese and their goslings, and turtles jockey for position, sunning themselves on the rocks.

What happens on Memorial Day in your neck of the woods?
LUCY BURDETTE: We have a beautiful old cemetery in our town too, with stones as old as the 1700's. There's a small parade from downtown Madison to the cemetery and a lovely service.

This year John's and my wedding anniversary falls on Monday and we'll celebrating that, at least by eating something good:). Later on in June, we'll go to New York for the real celebration. We're already tussling about whether I can hit the same two places I like to go every time (the Strand Bookstore and Eataly), or whether I have to try something new:).

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I always cry at the parades. So emotional. We have no idea.  Boston Common is filled with American flags, one for each person from Massachusetts who's died in a war. It is a SEA of flags.

We'll be home, and I think one must have grilled-out hamburgers. I'll also be working, gotta do my words.  On that lighter note, we can now wear white pants, and have gins and tonics.

Happy Anniversary, Roberta and John!  What number?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Yes, happy anniversary, Roberta and John! Love your description of the "sea of flags", Hank. It made me think of the time I went to the American Cemetery outside Cambridge (UK, not Boston!) It is a sea of white crosses on a curving sweep of green lawn. So beautiful, so moving.

The big Memorial Day thing in our town is a charity fund-raiser bike race on Friday. It's called Bike the Bricks and goes through our historic town square. There are food vendors and music and lots of fun activities, but unfortunately it was canceled this year due to our horrible weather. 

Today, I'm hoping for weather nice enough to cook hotdogs, and I'm thinking a big watermelon and some of Lucy's potato salad would make it perfect. And other than that, I, like everyone else, apparently, will be working...

RHYS BOWEN: I'll be missing Memorial Day this year. I'm in Tuscany, leading a writers' workshop. Back home my church choir is always asked to sing at a special service at a local cemetery, but I always find it superficial, somehow. What does move me is to walk through military cemeteries and see those names and the ages, 18, 19... Not much older than my grandson.

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Happy anniversary, Roberta and John! I'll be working on my novel, THE PARIS SPY — but I'll be thinking especially of the men and women of the SOE, of the French Resistance. In particular, I'll be remembering Lieutenant Henri Karcher—his memorial was right outside my hotel in Paris and was the first thing I saw when I started my research. I took it as a good omen.

HALLIE: Let us know what Memorial Day is like in your neck of the woods, while we remember the soldiers who didn't come back and are grateful for the ones who did.

Winter People: Jennifer McMahon, inspired by what scares kids

Kathy Reel! Congratulations! You are the winner of our story challenge! A copy of Lucy Burdette's MURDER WITH GANACHE will be winging its way to you just as soon as you email me at Hallie "at" HallieEphron dot com with your mailing address.
 
HALLIE EPHRON: Lucy Burdette and I went on tour some months back in North Carolina (yay, mystery maven Molly Weston!) with Jennifer McMahon, so we heard bits about Jennifer's new novel, The Winter People and I've been looking forward to it every since.

I fell in love with Jennifer's work when I read "Island of Lost Girls." It's about a little girl who's kidnapped from from her mother's car by a life-sized Easter bunny.

Jennifer told us the idea came to her when she was stopped at a gas station in Vermont.  A woman pulled in, left her car running, and ran into the store leaving a little girl strapped in the backseat. Jennifer's mind started to what-if terrible scenarios: what if someone came along, jumped in the car, and drove off with the girl?

What if it was stranger than that; what if it was someone in a costume: Santa, a clown, the Easter Bunny? What would she do, and who would believe her?

No one (including yours truly) does CREEPY better than Jennifer. Her new book, The Winter People, is about a town of strange disappearances, a missing sister, and an ancient diary. I asked Jennifer to tell us how she came up with its story. I was not surprised to hear that it was inspired by a child's scary fantasy.

JENNIFER MCMAHON: A few years ago, my daughter asked me to play a game -- she loved to create these tightly scripted make-believe games.  She gave me the set-up: “We’re sisters.  You’re nineteen.  I’m seven.  You wake up one morning and I’m in bed with you.  I tell you our parents are missing.”

“Missing?” I said.  “That’s terrible.  What happened to them?”

“They were taken,” she said.  “Into the woods.”  She shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly and added, “Sometimes it just happens.” 
I knew right away that it belonged in a book, and wrote it down -- "The Missing Parents Book," I called it.   I didn't have a feeling for what had happened, though, who these girls were, or where their story would go.  So, like with so many half-formed story ideas, I set it aside. 

Then a couple of years ago, I started playing around with a story set partly in the Civil War, about a woman who becomes a spiritualist in Vermont at the turn of the century.  She'd lost a child, but came to believe she could communicate with her and with others who had passed on.

One day, I was writing from the point of view of this character, Sara.  And I wrote down this line: "The first time I saw a sleeper, I was nine years old." 

Whoa! I thought, getting chills. What’s a sleeper? 
I had to keep writing to find out. Soon I understood that I was writing about a woman who believed she could bring the dead back to life. I remembered my two sisters with the parents who were taken into the woods (“Sometimes it just happens”) and knew they belonged in there, too. 

HALLIE: A sleeper? Whoa, creepy. Can you give us just a tiny hint of where you went with it from there?

JENNIFER:  Well, it continues to get creepier!   Sara believes she can use a ritual she learned about as a child to bring her beloved daughter back to life.  Her husband Martin is baffled and horrified by his wife's apparent descent into madness. 

In the present day, our two sisters, Ruthie and Fawn, are living in Sara's old farmhouse in West Hall, Vermont with their quirky and reclusive mother.  They wake up one morning to discover their mother is missing, and in trying to figure out where she could have gone, they discover a published copy of Sara's diary along with some other disturbing items. 

I ended up including a third storyline, about Katherine, an artist in Boston whose husband has died recently -- she learns that he visited West Hall the day he died, and is determined to find out why.  Naturally, her story intersects with Ruthie's and Sara's before long. 

HALLIE: Have you started your next book, and did your daughter inspire you? 

JENNIFER:  I just finished an early draft of my next book, actually.    It takes place largely at a strange roadside motel, and is set in the 1960s, 1980s and present day.  

Last summer, two of my daughter's cousins -- twin girls, one year older than Zella -- came and stayed with us for a week.  The twins were fascinated by the fact that I write scary books, and the four of us had many long, animated talks about what the scariest things in the world are. 

Without giving away too much, there is a certain critical and creepy aspect of this next book that was inspired by these chats.

HALLIE: Inviting our readers to share what scared you as a kid... I'm sure I'm not the only one who was afraid of clowns.

Happy Thanksgiving - it's all in the writing!

JAN BROGAN:  As some of you may know I'm working on a historical novel and so, I'm a little obsessed with history these days. Still.. I thought on this national day of Thanksgiving, you might be interested to know that if it weren't for another writer -- the holiday might not exist.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know,  it was all the Pilgrim's idea, what with the three day feast with Wampanoag tribe who kindly, if perhaps not wisely, befriended them and showed the colonists how to grow corn and tap maple trees.  But that was 1623.  It didn't really become any kind of real holiday until New York became the first of several states to adopt it in 1817.  But even then, the random states that did celebrate it, celebrated on a different day and the southern states were pretty much in the dark about it.

 It wasn't until a noted magazine editor and "prolific writer' Sarah Josepha Hale, who apparently wrote the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (which I had always assumed was British in origin) launched a campaign in 1827 to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.  What I find amazing is that she stuck with this mission for THIRTY SIX YEARS.  She wrote countless editorials and sent tons of letters to governors, senators, and presidents.  It wasn't until 1863 - in the height of the Civil War - that Abraham Lincoln decided she had a good idea.  In part to help "heal the wounds of the nation." Thanksgiving became a national holiday, set for the final Thursday in November.  Franklin D. Roosevelt would mess with the exact timing a century later.

So when you are giving thanks today,  send some to Sarah Josepha Hale's way and when you clink wine glasses today may one of your toasts be to the power and purpose of good writing! 

For more detailed info: check out

http://www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

And if you have any good ideas for what to do with leftovers, please add them in the comments page!