Aye, I'd abide by that.

Heck, why relegate it to one day a year? (I know that's not what you meant.)

I don't know, I can't remember what I did on Memorial Day. Threw up barbecue for week, too.

Independence Day is a little marred by Martin Luther King of all people. Many black people still look at it the way he portrayed it in his speech. It was the day white people celebrated getting their freedom. Macom X didn't help much either. I think 9-11 is the day all races, creeds, etc united in this country, I don't think that can be said for the 4th.

Its not the only day I remember like that. I remember the announcement coming over the grammer school loudspeakers at around 12:00 Nov 22 1963 that the President had died after being shot. They sent us all home. It was in some ways worse than 9-11.

I remember that too. The teacher came in and told us the Russians had shot the President and we had to go home because there might be a war. Not a good moment for a 1st grader with a Dad in the Marines......

That teacher should've been fired......

Maybe its because I'm from a younger generation, but I vividly remember the Challenger accident. I wasn't even a twinkle in my pops' eye when Kennedy was shot.

That's pretty startling -- cheered?!

God I forgot about the race-related horrors of the deep south back then. I spent a good deal of time in southern Arkansas as a child, so I saw some of it with my own eyes. It's funny but children have a way of accepting just about everything that's thrown at them -- pieces of an incomplete puzzle I suppose. It wasn't until I became a bit older that I realized how bizarre some of that stuff really was.

...the picture's becoming clearer and clearer.

My uncle was stationed at Norfolk Shipyard in the 60s and we made a lot of trips down there from New Hampshire when I was a kid. It was like going to another world. Segregation was the ugliest thing that ever existend in this country. It is amazing they got awy with it as long as they did. I had a friend there whose parents owned two convenience stores on opposite sides of a highway. His mom called him and asked him to send her over a roll of quarters. He gave it to a black girl to run it over across the highway. His mother was furious when the black girl brought her the quarters. I still will never forget that stupid, ignorant women screaming at her kid and the ugly racist crap that spewed from her mouth over 10 bucks worth of quarters and the fact he had entrusted it to someone who was black.

Offend me please, but I reserve the right to remain self righteously aghast.

It looks like no one has any objections to posting a notice asking people to refrain from political diatribe on 9-11. Any volunteers to post the thread?

To notify everyone, I would think the best way woulkd be to post a thread with the request to refrain from politics in the title, with an explanation as to why in the initial post.