Every year we are supposed to spend a day saluting the men and women who died in defense of our country, a tradition which started after World War I.

I was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and I can recall Memorial Day parades in the 1950’s with the veterans of World War I still able to march down Constitution Avenue to where they had some speeches and then everyone stood around and greeted each other.

We still have the parades except the old veterans are from the Viet Nam War. And instead of standing around after the parade, everyone goes shopping because that’s the way we celebrate what makes America great — buy some crap we don’t need and stick it in the garage along with all the other crap we don’t need.

Anyway, on Tuesday there will be a little ‘Orange Day’ event in Gloucester, MA where a brief ceremony will take place to remind everyone about the ongoing war that we have in our streets — the Gun Violence war which seems to be heating up more and more these days. More Americans have been killed by domestic gunfire in the last thirty years than were killed in every conflict since World War I, and we seem hell-bent to add another 30,000 or 40,000 to that total this year.

Maybe what we should do is put together a petition which will make Memorial Day a national holiday not just to remember the men and women who have been killed overseas, but also to memorialize the men, women and children who are gunned down on our nation’s streets or in our nation’s schools, or wherever they are being gunned down.

Enough with the ‘thoughts and prayers,’ okay?