Editor's Desk

When it comes to ceremony, pomp and circumstance, no one does it better than the United States Marine Corps.

The Thanksgiving Day holiday is an American tradition dating to the time of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Mass., in the early 17th century. What was once a singular occurrence of thankfulness among a colony of strangers in a new land for the blessings of Providence in their first year in New England has since evolved through multiple cultural changes as each new generation survived the last to become akin to a bridesmaid in the shadow of the commercially popular Christmas holiday season.

We’ve all seen them, those items of armament from wars fought long ago displayed in the public squares of small towns in rural America. They can be seen in courthouse lawns, at meeting houses of Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion organizations, airports, etc. They are visible reminders of battles fought, victories won, adversaries overcome, sacrifices made and “heroes proved through liberating strife,” as Katherine Lee Bates so skillfully memorialized in the lyric of “America, the Beautiful.”

Recently I have heard some rumblings about a contest to name the new version of the Milton-Madison Bridge.

We’ve always called the current Milton-Madison Bridge the “Milton-Madison Bridge.”

That is, unless you are a died-in-the-wool Indiana resident who hates anything blue and white or anything associated with Kentucky and the proliferation of Wildcat memorabilia everywhere. THOSE people insist on calling it the “Madison-Milton Bridge.”