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by Teresa Martin

Hey, Happy Memorial Day! I always wonder if it is appropriate to append “happy” to something that should be serious and sober, don’t you?

Memorial Day is for us to remember those who have served us and protected our country. (And of course, here on the Cape, we start counting the cars pouring over the bridge, but that’s another ritual altogether!)

One of the interesting things about Memorial Day is its origins – and what they say about our continuity of human interaction.

Many towns claim to be the first place Memorial Day was celebrated, but the tale is strikingly similar no matter who is telling it. Change names and faces, modify dates and location a bit and what you see is a story of community action.

"Committee Appointed to Study Memorial Day Formation"

I bet that was a local headline in Waterloo NY sometimes in 1866. Could be a headline today in any community paper - online or print - for that matter. But right now we're getting in the way-back machine thanks to some online archives...

In 1865, Henry C. Welles, a druggist in the village of Waterloo, NY, mentioned at a social gathering that honor should be shown to the patriotic dead of the Civil War by decorating their graves.

In the Spring of 1866, he again mentioned this subject to General John B. Murray, Seneca County Clerk.

General Murray embraced the idea and a committee was formulated to plan a day devoted to honoring the dead.

Ah, the committee!

Now, this was before the web you understand, and all the committee work happened in face to face meetings. The funny thing is, right now, at this very moment, I'd be willing to bet that there are hundreds upon hundreds of committees working out a plan remember and acknowledge something of significance to them.

The only difference between then and now is that we have some different tools than they did in 1866.

For example, we embrace the telephone and the fax (yes, dear readers, these are tech tools for community organization), email, email blasts, list serves, forums, Yahoo groups, and other related techniques. These applications didn’t emerge because they could – they emerged because community action is a core need for human groups.

Townspeople adopted the idea wholeheartedly. Wreaths, crosses and bouquets were made for each veteran's grave. The village was decorated with flags at half mast and draped with evergreen boughs and mourning black streamers.

Organization is a killer app for communities – and for the community application of technology.

Everything from yellow ribbons to pink ribbons to rainbow flags have spread like wildfire through the online connective power of community. Memories can be placed in the real world, or in the virtual world, as is appropriate to the cause and the community.

The organizational power of online tools has barely begun to be tapped. We saw hints of it in organized mobs, where an online call can gather a crowd together on a few hours notice.

We see signs of it in the last presidential election and the role web organization played in all parties and the way it drove financial contribution as well.

We see it in organizations like MoveOn, which with a few keystrokes can generate hundreds of thousands of emails from cause-focused individuals to their legislators.

We see it the organization of real time salons, grouped by and meeting in real world geography but developed through online interaction.

On May 5, 1866, civic societies joined the procession to the three existing cemeteries and were led by veterans marching to martial music. At each cemetery there were impressive and lengthy services including speeches by General Murray and a local clergyman. The ceremonies were repeated on May 5, 1867.

Today, we’d have podcast, vcast, streamed, and made available for future downloading this momentous occasion. We’d still gather in a real space, but we’d use our technologies to let people who couldn’t be there join us virtually or to share in it after the fact. And, to record it for posterity.

Would our works have been impressive and lengthy? Yeah, I think that’s a core part of human nature too!

The first official recognition of Memorial Day as such was issued May 5, 1868, exactly two years after Waterloo's first observance. That year Waterloo joined other communities in the nation by having their ceremony on May 30.

The local movement goes national. Today, that process would be online aided. Within a day or so, communities with like thoughts would have connected with each other and been exchanging notes, tips, and ideas.

A whole other community – a community of Memorial Day organizations – would have formed, with its own listserve and website and pr plan.

Would it still take two years to form a national ceremony? Yeah, probably. We can use our technology to enable communication and make quicker connections, but as a society we still move at pretty much the same speed as always. Perhaps it is a healthy and inherent constraint.

I guess what I’ve been thinking about on this start of the 2006 Memorial Day weekend is how things really don’t change that much.

Technolgoy brings us new tools, but they don’t change what is within ourselves. They might let us express it in different ways or build a new process to reach it, but fundamentally we are who we are – humans, connecting, interacting, and being communities.

I was out and about this week to Eastham Elementary School. I was there the day the school was celebrating Memorial Day – as the bell rang at noon, the students, who were dressed in red, white, and blue, gathered and as a group marched to the cemetery.

They heard presentations that were probably very much like those “impressive” ones of 1860s Waterloo. They were exhorted to remember the same values of country and remembrance. And they had been following this routine for at least 35 years, said one teacher. As long as anyone could remember.

Happy Memorial Day. Maybe the happy stands for the sense of communal memory and the communal glue that holds us together, and the tools that let us make it so.