Memorial Day in Bliss

We found ourselves in the small cemetery of Bliss today of all days, Memorial Day.

We come here once each spring to do a laboratory exercise on life tables, or population ecology put another way. Since it is so difficult to get life history information for most populations in nature a cemetery works as a good proxy. Walking the grassy avenues of headstones you can learn about who lies buried there, when they lived and when they died. A view of our own population over time and what, if anything we can gather from it. Usually this doesn't coincide with memorial day where the town comes to pay its respects to its veterans but today it did.

So we walked carefully and respectfully amongst the headstones and chatted with the locals come for the small veterans parade and five gun salute. They seem to enjoy the attention we pay their community cemetery and listen to the students with great interest. Stepping into the old timey general store just down the road is like peeling back decades. Bulk vegetables and canned goods line the cubby hole aisles that reach all the way to the ceiling, jars of 2 and 5 cent candies line the counter top, and an old hound even sits outside the screen door. Katie and I bought some candies for the class and paid our respects before heading home just as they were doing the five gun salute.

Picture perfect day in small town Michigan. Blissville USA.