In addition to Veterans Day being a Federal holiday it is also a official holiday for Wisconsin. However, public schools remained in session today and as far as private businesses go only banks were closed. That said their was more in the way of observance in the small town I currently reside in than I ever saw when living in large urban areas or surrounding suburbs. The weekly paper that came out on Friday had a nice presentation of past military service for all the major conflicts that the US has been involved in starting with the War for Independence. One thing I found interesting in that was how the total casualty rate has fallen over the years, especially for recent wars, as well as the dramatic decline in service member deaths not from combat. It was sort of funny that the most recent wars were listed by the official PR names: Operation Enduring Freedom & Operation Iraqi Freedom. I suspect that by the time these make it into the history books they will have more descriptive names like the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War. The latest listed was something called Operation New Dawn . Apparently another war was snuck in there while I wasn't looking ?

I don’t find the Nook promotion in bad taste or exploitative. I am actually more turned off by so many of the big box retailers who will be forcing their employees to work full days on Thanksgiving Day. Black Friday now obsolete and replaced by Black Thanksgiving?