Juneteenth

So, 145 years ago it was, summer of 1865. Future writers W.B. Yeats & Rudyard Kipling; a future president [Wm. Harding] and a future king [Geo. V of the Brits] and Laura Ingalls big sister Mary, were newborn or about to be. Lewis Carroll & Mary Mapes Dodge were fixing to publish their adventures of Alice and of Hans Brinker. Lincoln, along with his murderer, J.W. Booth, and hundreds of thousands of other souls had gone to their reward, courtesy of the great & terrible Civil War. It was finally over & had been for a little while now, but only now, the 19th of June, 1865, did the news finally make its way to Galveston, Texas, that people, heretofore held in bondage, were free, as far as the U.S. government was concerned. It's said that these folks were the last to be told the great, long-yearned-for news. So it is that, "Juneteenth," as the great day was dubbed, is commemorated and celebrated. Properly so.

With this, I am off to a memorial service for a friend who took me in for a while, back in the day.