Happy Memorial Day!

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Red posing for me on a rock in the backyard.

“Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service of our country can never be repaid. They have earned our undying gratitude. America will never forget their sacrifices.” — Harry S. Truman, 33rd U.S. president, 1945

I spent a quiet Memorial weekend with my husband who is now on week three post surgery. I took a few photos that I was pleased with and will share some today.

I read two books this past week by fellow bloggers and enjoyed both immensely. If you haven’t read Cupcakecache’s second book, “Quest for Absence,” you should! I read it within two days and couldn’t put it down. This is Eve Marie’s second book in what will be a trilogy starting with Bayou Heist. Many of the same characters appear in her second book but it’s placed in the home of her youth, Catskills of NY. I enjoyed her setting and getting more details into the story and plot she wrote about in her first book.

The other book is “Perfect” by P.J. Gudka. Pooja’s blog is Lifesfinewhine. I usually go to bed between 8 or 9 p.m. but I read until midnight to finish her book. I fell asleep on the sofa and finished it the next day. The characters and plot kept me enthralled. I learned about “Perfect” by a Heart of the Matter podcast and also on Lauren Scott’s blog Baydreamer Writes for her review on her blog post.

Both books are on Amazon plus Pooja has a link on her website.

Two brand new baby quail. I tried to get photos with their mom, but either the babies or the mom were out of focus. These guys are super tiny!

A House Finch couple on a cactus.

A momma quail with her brood. These are older than the two babies above.

A momma quail trying to scare away a squirrel by fluffing up her feathers. Papa quail is in the background as reinforcement.

A bit of Memorial Day history from the Wounded Warrior Project:

The History of Memorial Day

Americans began to recognize Memorial Day in 1868, and the country established it as a federal holiday in 1971. Originally known as “Decoration Day,” the holiday started with communities coming together to decorate the graves of those who died during service.

Theories of the first Memorial Day

After the Civil War, Americans across the nation began holding tributes to honor the approximately 620,000 soldiers who lost their lives — about 2% of the population at the time. These early observances typically included decorating graves with flowers, reciting prayers, and paying respect to the fallen. But history records show more than one theory about which event marked the first official Memorial Day.

A discovery by a Yale University professor at a Harvard archive suggests the earliest observance of Memorial Day was held by a group of formerly enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865. Records show that the group transformed a racetrack that had once served as a prison for Union captives into a proper burial site.

On May 1, 1865, thousands gathered for a procession led by 3,000 school children carrying flowers and singing patriotic songs.

In 1966, the federal government declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day when President Johnson signed a presidential proclamation stating Waterloo celebrated the first Memorial Day. That day, in 1866, the city closed all businesses so residents could decorate the gravesites of soldiers with flowers and American flags.

Other records show that the first Memorial Day came after the Civil War, when communities came together at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30, 1868. It remains one of the country’s most notable Memorial Day ceremonies.

But the history doesn’t end there: As recently as the 1990s, historians have found records of earlier celebrations.

Happy Memorial Day!

Here’s a video of a family of quail including 10 babies!

What were some highlights of your Memorial Weekend?

56 thoughts on “Happy Memorial Day!”

  1. Thank you for your acknowledgment of Memorial Weekend and my new novel “Quest for Absence!” Publicity and knowing how to direct readers of mysteries and thrillers to my novel is something I struggle with. I greatly appreciate your acknowledgement and hope that as I continue writing, you will follow my novels! Thank you for the excellent review! We are having a quiet Memorial weekend. Mike is trying to organize his CDs of music and fixing the CD player and Razz and I just returned from a walk. I am glad your husband is getting better!

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    • Thank you! I enjoyed your book and Pooja’s book, too. I am happy to direct people to your novel. You have both inspired me to rewrite some of the novels I’ve written in past years and move forward with them. Happy Memorial Weekend.

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      • That is wonderful! I am also interested in Pooja’s book. I looked it up. It is on Kindle Unlimited which I get. I am looking forward to reading it.

      • Thank you, I really hope you enjoy it. I would love to check out Quest for Absence too, could you share the Amazon link?

      • Thank you for the link. Oh yeah, Slivers sounds amazing and Vicki is an impressive writer. I really wanted to read it but unfortunately Ebooks aren’t available at the moment and it doesn’t ship physical copies to my location.

      • I enjoyed her nonfiction “Surviving Sue” and want to see what Vicki does with fiction. You guys are encouraging me to jump back in. I wrote daily while my kids were in school and wrote several novels that have been collecting dust.

      • I started reading Surviving Sue and amazing so far although incredibly heartbreaking.
        Yes, please do- it feels amazing to get back into writing. Several novels is impressive, if you ever need any help or advice with editing, publishing etc please don’t hesitate to ask. I’m happy to help in any way.

      • Thank you! Decades ago I was submitting to traditional publishers. I received an offer for a children’s story I wrote. I turned it down because I thought it was too small. 500 books printed with an option to reprint more if they sold well. I kick myself for that now! The publisher was small and independent and said my story made him cry. It was about my mother and reminded him of his. If only I would have said yes!!!!

      • Well, that’s a shame it would have been cool to have the book traditionally published and children’s books are quite popular too. Maybe you can try submitting it again, it might connect with other publishers too.

      • I have tried. I think I missed on that opportunity because I thought I was going to get another offer and wanted to wait and see. I will keep trying though!

      • You’re most welcome and wishing you lots of luck as you get back into it. Your review is up on Amazon by the way, thank you so much. I’m so happy to see it.

      • I agree! I’m waiting for Vicki’s debut novel to read. That will be three novels in a month by three of my blogger friends. Do you have any book fairs or writer’s conferences coming up?

      • Well, that is an interesting question. I have been trying to stay with fairs near our home. Some are farther and I am on the waiting list for one in Dade City. Evidently, it is pretty popular. Some of the fairs are reasonable for tables and some are expensive. I am trying to find a few for the summer and fall. I did hear from the Library in the Catskills and they asked if I would send my novel to them! I am excited about that!

      • That’s awesome about the library in the Catskills. I so enjoyed your book because of the setting and your character running into people she knew growing up. Since I came from a small town in WA, I totally could relate to what it would be like going back. I used to go to writer’s conferences for SCBWI, children’s writers. I remember even at small meetings, writers brought their books to sell along with bookmarks or flyers. Maybe there is a local writer’s group or conference near you as well as book fairs?

      • Yes, I am happy to hear that. Small towns are like that and they always remember you! Yes, I am trying to find more information now about places to bring my novels. I do have a local bookstore that was interested in carrying my novels. A small mom and pop store will carry them on consignment! I carry around my bookmarks and give them to some people. Mike is more extraverted than myself about my novels. It is a learning experience!

      • It sounds like you’re doing a good job. I think marketing your novels would be almost as much work as writing them. So many people in my small town stayed there. One of my good friends and her husband were executives with Nordstrom and opened up the first East Coast store. They’re retired and returned to our home town. I’ve stayed with her a few times and we do run into people we know when she’s taken me out for sightseeing.

    • I really enjoyed both of your books. They are different genres but not that far apart. I’m trying to decide where they both fall. When you read Pooja’s book, I’d like to hear where you place it in a genre compared to yours.

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      • This is a tricky question for me, kind of like a slippery slope because I do like to play with psychological tricks with my novels. On the other hand, I like the containment of cozy mysteries which have small town settings and characters who are idiosyncratic but yet totally normal. So, I don’t know. Good question.

  2. Well the comments are back. No place to put a comment early this morning. As you noted on my post I think we’re in for WP problems with all the tinkering they’re doing with these new achievement things. Have you seen those yet? I’m not a fan and blocked getting notifications about new ones as I find them irritating.

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    • Oh yay! I was wondering why I wasn’t getting any comments. I did get the award you mentioned — “one, one and one.” Really? I am having trouble commenting, seeing photos and getting to people’s blog sites yesterday and today. It’s annoying. The other odd thing is some blogs I have no issues with but others are impossible.

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  3. Thank you so much for giving my book a chance and so happy you enjoyed the characters and plot! I am so grateful to Wynne and Victoria for having me on the podcast and Lauren for her wonderful review. And will definitely check out Quest for Absence, it sounds like a great book too.
    Hope your husband is recovering well. Happy Memorial Weekend.

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    • I absolutely LOVED your book. It’s one of the best stories I’ve read in awhile. I literally couldn’t put it down and fell asleep at midnight reading it. Then I finished it the next morning. My husband had a rough two weeks but is doing much better now. The surgeon told me it was a challenge (knee replacement) and he had to have all cylinders pumping in his brain. Not exactly what I wanted to hear! I gave my husband your book to read today.

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      • Oh wow, thank you, that’s a huge compliment! It’s my first novel so I was extremely nervous because I sort of had no idea if I was doing everything right but hearing so many people say they enjoyed it and couldn’t put it down is truly an amazing feeling. I hope your husband loves it too. If you get the chance, I would really appreciate it if you would leave a review on Amazon. But only if you can, no pressure at all!

        Sorry to hear that, my mum got that done last year and recovery can be a struggle especially the first few weeks. That must have been hard for both of you but it does get better over time and often quite quickly after the first month or two.

      • I’m more than happy to write a review on Amazon. I did for “Quest of Absence” too. I read it a week before your book. Thanks for the encouraging words about knee replacement surgery.

      • That’s amazing, thank you- that would really mean a lot. And you’re most welcome, wishing him a speedy recovery.

  4. Thanks for mentioning my review, Elizabeth, and for the other book recommendation. I’m glad you enjoyed Pooja’s book. Wonderful photos and important history of Memorial Day. Have a good week!

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    • Thanks! I really was excited with that Red photo. It’s clear and a great pose. The baby quail are so exciting to see each Spring. We have teens down to one or two day olds in a variety of families. The only way I can tell them apart is by their numbers.

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      • Red and I have had some interesting moments this past week. This morning I saw him flying out of the yard at top speed. I walked outside with birdseed and called my usual “Hey Red” in a sing song voice. He made a U turn and flew right back to me and landed in a bush two feet away from me and the bird feeder. Over the weekend, I heard him chirping but he was in the neighbor’s tree out of sight. I called and he flew right to me and landed in the same place! As for the quail, it fun to see the families with offspring at different stages in life, just a few weeks apart.

      • I have a neighbor who has a cardinal in his backyard for several years that he named Charlie. Charlie followed him back from the community mailboxes a few weeks ago and landed in the backyard where the neighbor puts out bird seed. My husband said maybe someday Red will eat from my hand. I’m not sure that will happen but it is exciting.

      • I hope so, but don’t know if it will happen. But I call him now to come into our yard a few feet from me. That’s so other worldly in itself!

  6. Thank you for sharing about Memorial Day. So many people take this day for granted and don’t seem to acknowledge how our country came to be as wonderful as it is.
    Lovely to have two bloggers with published novels; kudos to them!
    The baby quail are adorable.

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    • I learned more about Memorial Day by writing the post. Both books were so good. I read a third blogger’s book the past two days, Vicki Atkinson’s “Slivers.” All three were different from each other, but excellent! The baby quail are so adorable. Today I saw my first young cardinal with Red. I took photos but he was so flighty the photos are all out of focus. So exciting.

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  7. Pingback: A Family’s Secret: “Slivers” | bleuwater

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