We are in a strange place, in between Memorial Days — the federal holiday, observed on Monday, and the traditional date on Saturday, May 30, when Stowe will hold its observance honoring the nation’s war dead.
When Congress created a three-day weekend involving Memorial Day, traditionalists feared it would trivialize a solemn event. In many ways, they were right, to the point where social media guides feel it necessary to point out that “Happy Memorial Day” is not an appropriate thing to say.
Memorial Day should be far more than the weekend that kicks off summer. It should be a time when we all pause to remember the men and women who died for our country. Those who wish to join the Stowe observance should assemble Saturday at 10 a.m. at Stowe Elementary School for a short walk — no parade — to the Akeley Soldiers Memorial Building on Main Street, and a suitable ceremony.
Memorial Day hadn’t been established in November 1863 when President Lincoln gave a short speech in Gettysburg, Pa., where the Soldiers National Cemetery was being dedicated at one of the bloodiest battlefields of the Civil War.
It’s one of the most famous speeches in U.S. history, staking out the principles that are the foundation of this nation. It’s worth reading out loud:
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
In the construction zone
Nobody’s happier to see the new Mountain Road Bridge open than Stephen Fishman. He and his wife, Susan, own Stowe Craft Gallery and Stowe Craft Design Center at 55 Mountain Road, both buildings on a turnoff just on the village side of the bridge.
While technically customers could still walk and drive to the Fishmans’ two businesses while the new bridge was being built, big machines and piles of materials sure made it look as if the stores were closed.
“Painful” is how Fishman describes the weeks of construction, with business 40 to 50 percent below the norms for April and May, which are slow months in the Stowe economy. For a view of his business under siege, check out the photo at the top of the page.
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