Heading home to California … a friend and I passed through the Dallas–Fort Worth airport. On the way to the connecting gate, we heard loud patriotic music playing and saw a group, mostly women, wearing colorful hats, cheering, and waving American flags. The troops were coming home, and here was their welcoming committee.

Two women encouraged us to grab flags and join in. We were early for our ...

More and more people want to end life with a bang.

Gordon Bergin was an ordained minister whose funeral arrangements were part of an Independence Day celebration. To the delight of the crowd gathered for the show at Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota, Bergin's ashes traveled several hundred feet into the air and exploded "in a fiery display of post-mortem pyrotechnics. "Far from being an unusual event, ...