Happy Memorial Day everyone!

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Memorial Day, postaday2016

Happy Memorial Day everyone! Today is a rainy morning in Blandford, our Memorial Day parade is scheduled for 11:30, it seems that the rain is letting up so I think the parade will be able to go on as planned. For a small town, Blandford does a wonderful job, the fearless leader who is in charge of the organizational duties to put on the parade, the speakers and the dedications is our next door neighbor Doug, I can’t remember him not doing it. I wonder if this year is our turn to have the high school band in our parade, nowadays the hill towns alternate the use of the high school band, years ago, both of our children took part in band and we used to follow them from town to town on Memorial Day, that was when the high school band took part in all of the hill town parades, it was crazy zipping from hill town to hill town.

Today is a day of reflection and respect for those who sacrificed their lives for our nation, my husband’s family had served in World War Two but they luckily made it back home. My family had served during the World Wars, but that was in France. That doesn’t stop me from recognizing and honoring the sacrifices that so many gave in order for us to continue to enjoy our way of life.

So everyone have a safe and happy Memorial Day!

Our small town Memorial Day parade

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Historical Society, Memorial Day, parades, postaday2013, small town

This morning at 10:30 I opened the Historical Society for the town; viewing all of its war-time memorabilia before the parade is an important part of our Blandford tradition. We had a nice turn out, at least 35 people looking at the pictures of all of our servicemen, all of the articles written about our townspeople throughout the various armed conflicts, the canteens, the powder cases, the pieces of uniforms from the revolutionary war and the civil war, we have quite a little collection going and everyone is proud of it.

Our parade is very small and nothing ever changes, but I think that it is precisely that fact that makes it so special. We get the fly over’s from fighter planes from Westover Air force base and we get the gun salute from our older veteran’s. I like watching the High School Band, it brings back memories from when the baby boy and the baby girl had their band responsibilities, we went from town to town to participate in all seven hill town parades for Memorial Day. Those days were fun but exhausting for the babies as well as for us. I watched the band members today thinking that I was very happy to pass the baton onto others.

We were very lucky with the weather today; Saturday and Sunday were so cold and wet, a parade would have been miserable. Today we had bright sun, a coolish breeze and the temperature in the low sixties. It was infinitely better than the rain and 40’s of Saturday and Sunday, I can promise you that.

I do appreciate the small town feel of very many things, especially parades.

Preparations for tomorrow’s Memorial Day celebrations

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baking, Historical Society, Memorial Day, postday2013, veteran's

As the curator for the Blandford Historical Society, I have taken over my mother-in-law’s responsibilities, in particular, her role in preparing and organizing the Blandford veteran exhibit at the Historical Society which is open prior and after the Memorial Day parade. I spent two hours cleaning up and vacuuming the Historical Society upstairs and downstairs so that all of our exhibits are at their best when everyone comes to see their service men in picture frames and all the war time memorabilia that the Historical Society has collected over the years.

Of course as usual, part of my responsibility is to provide beverages and homemade goodies, so as soon as I got home from cleaning and setting up, I got to baking. I made small French cakes called financiers. These little cakes are really very tasty and quite easy to make, I bookmarked the recipe. I had to translate the recipe and the measurements from French to English which wasn’t too hard. The recipe itself is interesting; it’s mostly egg whites, chopped walnuts, melted butter, confectioner’s sugar and a little bit of flour. My hubby and the baby girl loved them and got a little peeved when I announced that these little cakes were for the Historical Society. I told them that I was going to make a banana walnut bread for them and I did. Hopefully that will keep them happy.