Memorial Day
This Memorial Day weekend, it seems everyone is staying at home. The sales at the stores are not great, nor does there seem to be much excitement, but a fair number of people seem to be buying alcohol. The cookouts that made this such an odd holiday are gone as well; no more groups of neighbors, watery overpriced beer in hand, standing around a smoking grille and talking as if they knew each other. We cannot claim to be surprised by this, really, since national holidays have sort of faded away over the past couple years. It started with Halloween, when the people from outside the neighborhood drove so many kids to get candy that our subdivision basically just turned on the sprinklers and turned off the lights. Then other holidays faded too. We had nothing in common, so why celebrate them? To your average "American" at this point, Memorial Day means a four-day weekend and nothing more. Soldiers who died fighting for -- well, what, really? Abstractions like freedom and de...