All that death

Every year an organization puts up 37,369 US flags on the Boston Common for Memorial Day weekend. It is supposed to represent every Massachusetts war fighter killed since the revolution (still approximate, I would think).
My usual MD observance is to look at the flags, sigh, and take a photo. Since my parents are gone, I have no need to watch the PBS Memorial Day concert so that I can chat about it with them (they were annual viewers).



This kind of decoration (it started as Decoration Day after the Civil War, said to have been invented by Black people remembering Union soldiers) also happens at national cemeteries. A couple of days ago there were photos of Barack Obama being one of the volunteer flag planters in Alexandria, VA.

I do not think it means what you think it means

I was looking up plank, knowing that what would pop up in the Korean was the word for board, not for the ab-strengthening exercise, which is what I was hoping for. There was an example of using it as a verb:
"He planked down the package." Do they mean plunk?