Veterans' Day.

Sort of a quasi-holiday, really, with all due respect - which is to say a full measure of my respect, and more - and I've never quite understood it.

Many - most? - do not celebrate the holiday by closing their businesses, by staying home with the family, by doing, for all intents and purposes . . . nothing.

Why not?

Many - most? - take the day after Thanksgiving as a full holiday without hesitation, using it . . . to shop.

I somehow don't take it as a mark of a lack of respect or admiration for veterans, or a patriotism deficit. It just doesn't feel like that to me.

Technically, the holiday is today, I guess, which makes all of this even more baffling, at least to me.

So why . . .

Indeed?

Tell you what.

I'm going to celebrate the holiday for everyone by, of course, doing essentially . . . nothing this day, thereby making up for all the years in which I failed to celebrate the day.

Win-win.

And yes, you're welcome.

Update:

I'm going to venture a guess that Veterans' Day is more widely observed in the town where this mural appears, celebrating the military heroes in their midst.

I took this photograph in 2006, in Ashland, Wisconsin. The mural, painted by Kelly Meredith and Sue Martinsen, depicts veterans who were all local residents.

It could not be otherwise.

Permalink