FLAG: We received a copy of a poem by Marion G. Mahoney called “Those Honored Dead.”

Today seems a fitting day to include it.

“Why do you fly the flag today?”

My grandson wants to know.

I fly it for the graveyards

where the countless crosses grow.

I fly the flag for children

whose fathers are a name.

A half-remembered memory

of a face within a frame.

I fly it for the families

of sons and daughters lost.

They know the price of liberty

how terrible the cost!

I fly the flag for veterans

who lost their youth in blood.

And saw their comrades slaughtered

in the carnage and the mud.

I fly it for the ones who marched

in cadence off to war

to close their eyes forever

upon some foreign shore.

I fly the flag for grief poured out

upon a granite wall.

The laying-on of hands that heals

the scars within us all.

I fly it for the sounds of Taps

that melancholy tune

that lays to rest those honored dead

who always die too soon.

FLAG: What is the flag etiquette for Memorial Day? Some say the flag should remain at half staff all day long.

“On Memorial Day the flag should be flown at half-staff from sunrise until noon only, then raised briskly to the top of the staff until sunset, in honor of the nation’s battle heroes.”

This came right from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, so we think it’s the one to follow.

As always, do not let the flag touch the ground. Do not fly the flag upside down unless there is an emergency. Do not carry the flag flat, or carry things in it.

Do not use the flag as clothing.