Nowadays many Americans have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At cemeteries across the country the graves of the fallen are sadly ignored and worse neglected.

While there are towns and cities still planning Memorial Day parades many have not held a parade in decades. Some think the day is for honoring anyone who has died not just those fallen in service to our country.

I am going to take something I learned over in Israel. Their Independence Day is preceded the 24 hours before with Memorial Day so it gives them a chance to serve and reflect and then celebrate. I am going to try to start that tradition here in America.

On Memorial Day I don't want to only remember the combatants. There were also those who came out of the trenches as writers and poets who started preaching peace men and women who have made this world a kinder place to live.

I spent some time at White Memorial Medical Center as a senior medical student doing a rotation in surgery however I felt I wasn't getting enough time assisting.

On our plane knowledge and ignorance are the immemorial adversaries.

Memorial Day this year is especially important as we are reminded almost daily of the great sacrifices that the men and women of the Armed Services make to defend our way of life.

137 years later Memorial Day remains one of America's most cherished patriotic observances. The spirit of this day has not changed - it remains a day to honor those who died defending our freedom and democracy.

For famous men have the whole earth as their memorial.

From time immemorial artistic insights have been revealed to artists in their sleep and in dreams so that at all times they ardently desired them.

So the premise of 'The Submission' is that there's an anonymous competition to design a 9/11 memorial and it's won by an American Muslim an architect born and raised in Virginia and his name is Mohammad Khan.

On Memorial Day I was out floating on Lake Norman and came across Denny Hamlin. We struck up a conversation and one of the first things we were talking about was how much it helped him when he started racing the Cup car and how much it helped his Nationwide program.

It is curious how from time immemorial man seems to have associated the idea of evil with beauty shrunk from it with a sort of ghostly fear while at the same time drawn to it by force of its hypnotic attraction.

But we cannot rely on memorials and museums alone. We can tell ourselves we will never forget and we likely won't. But we need to make sure that we teach history to those who never had the opportunity to remember in the first place.