It's not the first time a holiday has become just another Saturday, with home chores and yard chores and no time to celebrate why we have the day off in the first place.
The short time we lived in Groton, Massachusetts, we took part in a Memorial Day observation that ended at the cemetery. Groton is a New England village with big white houses on a hill. The scale of the place, with its graveyard so integral a part of the town, made it difficult to do anything else.
Another argument for small towns. And another argument for flying flags, one small way I could have (but did not!) make Memorial Day matter.