flag day

D begged to go to the beach today in a vain attempt to cool off. After she finished homework we headed down there. We had forgotten that there was a Flag Day Ceremony sponsored by the Town Veterans, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. It was a lovely ceremony with the head of the Veterans Association explaining everything as we went through retiring the old flags.

One large flag was selected to represent the 300+ flags collected for retirement. The field was separated from the flag thereby rendering it not a flag anymore. Then each stripe was cut off and a Scout recited a piece about the State that stripe stood for, when it joined the union and what some of it's historical accomplishments were. Then the pieces were ceremoniously burned.

One of the Boy Scouts played Taps. It sounded really wonderful to hear it echoing across the lake, rather poignant really.

D was very quiet and well-behaved during all of this, I was really proud of her. Afterwards she and the other kids ran around, in and out of the water, up and down to the playground having fun. The highlight of her afternoon though was finding a crawdaddy in the water and scooping him up into a bucket so she and her friends could peer and poke at him for a while.