This year marks the 245th anniversary of the battles that ushered in the Revolutionary War and the long and arduous road to America's independence as a free nation.
This Patriots' Day, like the palnned events celebrationg Maine's bicentennial, have been put on the back burner in the light of recent events; events that will long be remembered and whose impact has world-wide implications now, and for the future.
This Patriots' Day willl not be celebrated with parades,speeches, re-enactments or the Boston Marathon or Portland, Maine's annual 5 mile race. Instead, we will remember folks out walking along Back Cove or the Eastern Prom keeping their respectable 6 feet distance from one another and, many are wearing face masks.
We will remember the doctors, nurses, health care professionals and staff working long hours to care for the sick and the dying. We will remember lines to get into grocery stores and shortages of a number of staples we have come to expect.
We will remember how much we missed our Friday night get togethers at local restuarants, or movie date nights, or Sunday morning religious services. There will be many remembrances of how we adjusted to changes in our everyday routines,and what " thanks" meant to grocery clerks, mail carriers, delivery persons and our first responders.
We will remember this Patriots' Day for another kind of war; a war for the health and well-being of people in our state, our nation and people all over the world.
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Somehow, the lyrics of this favorite Patriotic Hymn seems appropriate for this Patriots' Day:
O beautiful for pigrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thiine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self control,
Thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Til all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.
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Lest we forget, Joel and I placed flags at the Grand Trunk Cemetery to honor our Revolutionary War veterans in rememberance of their patriotic service and sacrifice, this Patriots' Day, April 20, 2020.
Wish all who follow this post good health, stay safe and remember.
