created by Geraldine_VdAuwera
on 2014-05-23
Since this coming Monday (May 26th) is a national holiday in the U.S., we get the day off from obsessing about GATK (some of us under pressure from our significant others). This does mean that starting later today, there won’t be anyone from the team available to answer questions or comments on the forum until Tuesday.
If you’re in the U.S., we hope you get to take the day off too, and have a great holiday weekend! Go hiking or something — anything to get away from the keyboard and get some fresh air. And if you will, give a thought to the men and women that the holiday commemorates, who gave their lives for the freedoms we enjoy. In some cases, more literally than you may think. From the [Wikipedia article on Memorial Day](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day):
> The first widely publicized observance of a Memorial Day-type observance after the Civil War was in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 1, 1865. During the war, Union soldiers who were prisoners of war had been held at the Charleston Race Course; at least 257 Union prisoners died there and were hastily buried in unmarked graves.13 Together with teachers and missionaries, black residents of Charleston organized a May Day ceremony in 1865, which was covered by the New York Tribune and other national papers. The freedmen cleaned up and landscaped the burial ground, building an enclosure and an arch labeled, “Martyrs of the Race Course.” Nearly ten thousand people, mostly freedmen, gathered on May 1 to commemorate the war dead. Involved were about 3,000 school children newly enrolled in freedmen’s schools, mutual aid societies, Union troops, black ministers, and white northern missionaries. Most brought flowers to lay on the burial field. Today the site is used as Hampton Park.14 Years later, the celebration would come to be called the “First Decoration Day” in the North.