Tag: holidays

Presidents Day – coins and candidates

We may have other chances at a candidate born in the fifties, but Paul will certainly be our last chance to select a Depression baby.

 

They blew it. The US Mint is dropping the $1 US Presidential coin. Well, not entirely. Those entities that sell them to collectors will receive some, but I can’t, in good conscience, BUY a $1 coin for $3 or more. Lost history, plus a chance to drop the dollar bill missed. Plus they ended the public run with an assassinated President, James Garfield, and dissed poor Chester A. Arthur, who would have been released this month. Hey, if you happen across any of them, post-Garfield, please let me know.
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I was looking at the 2012 Republican field for President and realized that I should be supporting Ron Paul!

I jest about that, but if Ron Paul were somehow elected, he would have a quality that no other U.S. President has had: he would be born in the 1930s; his birth was in 1935. We’ve never had ANY President born in the 1930s, OR the 1950s, for that matter. Barack Obama was born in 1961, both Bush II and Clinton in 1946, both GHW Bush and Carter in 1924, and Reagan, Ford, Nixon, and Kennedy all in the 1910s.

Looking at the potential field, some of which never got traction, and others who dropped out, we have, besides Paul:

Newt Gingrich, Buddy Rohmer 1943
Herman Cain 1945
Willard “Mitt” Romney 1947
Rick Perry 1950
Gary Johnson 1953
Michele Bachmann 1956
Rick Santorum 1958
Jon Huntsman 1960

We may have other opportunities to select a President born in the fifties, but Paul will certainly be our last chance to pick a Depression baby.

Lists of best and worst Presidents tend to engender partisan debates. Here, then, is Salon’s Who’s the worst president of them all? It’s really difficult not to have Buchanan in the bottom three, at least.

Richard Nixon’s Watergate grand jury testimony. Watergate was a pivotal moment in both my life and the country’s.
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A little off-topic: This year is the 100th anniversary of “Melody in A Major” by Chicago banker Charles G. Dawes, later Vice-President under Calvin Coolidge. You might recognize the song, with lyrics added decades later, as It’s All In The Game.

Christmas 2011

The Bells of Christmas may be my favorite recording of a Christmas song ever.

Merry Christmas! It’s a Sunday morning and I’ll be going to church, but our choir is not singing; we sang on Christmas Eve, but not Christmas Day, which is fine by me. Besides, Santa is probably tired from putting presents under the tree.

Somebody I once met was born on Christmas Day 1924, and that’s the late Rod Serling. My blogger buddy Gordon has been trying to institute his and Humphrey Bogart’s birthdays (b. 1899) as alternative holidays for “those who may be atheists, agnostics, or just plain tired of the usual thing.” Don’t know how that’s working out.

Speaking of Serling, I reviewed his bio back in October, and I was thrilled to find that the book’s author, Joel Engel, commented on my post! Check it out.

And as for that OTHER holiday today, here’s The Bells of Christmas and Joy to the World, both sung by Julie Andrews. The former may be my favorite recording of a Christmas song ever; the latter recording pops as though it’s from that original Firestone tire LP that I owned as a kid, and in fact still own.

St. Nick, the Real One

Is Saint Nicholas Day celebrated where you are?

I’m so fascinated by the various iterations of Christian gift-giving days, which stretch from about December 6, St. Nicholas Day in parts of Europe (it’s flexible) to January 6, Three Kings Day. Those dates, BTW, are the very earliest AND the very latest I’ll play what’s come to be known as Christmas music. Also intrigued by the guy who, at least partially, inspired Santa Claus.

From the Wikipedia:

“Saint Nicholas of Myra is the primary inspiration for the Christian figure of Santa Claus. He was a 4th-century Greek Christian bishop of Myra in Lycia, now in the Antalya Province of Turkey. Nicholas was famous for his generous gifts to the poor, in particular presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious man with dowries so that they would not have to become prostitutes.

A great gift, indeed.

He was very religious from an early age and devoted his life entirely to Christianity. In Europe (more precisely the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, and Germany) he is still portrayed as a bearded bishop in canonical robes. In 1087, the Italian city of Bari, wanting to enter the profitable pilgrimage industry of the times, mounted an expedition to locate the tomb of the Christian Saint and procure the remains. The reliquary of St. Nicholas was desecrated by Italian sailors and the spoils, including his relics, taken to Bari, where they are kept to this day. A basilica was constructed the same year to store the loot and the area became a pilgrimage site for the devout, thus justifying the economic cost of the expedition. Saint Nicholas became claimed as a patron saint of many diverse groups, from archers and children to pawnbrokers. He is also the patron saint of both Amsterdam and Liverpool, among many others.

The Turkish Government announced that it would be formally requesting the return of St Nicholas’s bones to Turkey from the Italian government. Turkish authorities have cited the fact that St Nicolas himself wanted to be buried in his episcopal town. They also state that his remains were illegally removed from Turkey.

Is Saint Nicholas Day celebrated where you are? I vaguely recall that, when I was growing up in upstate New York State, the kids of central and eastern European ancestry had another holiday before Christmas, which made me jealous, but I did not yet have the intellectual curiosity to get the details.
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Oh, and remember You’re never too old to sit on Santa

Cookie Monster’s Letter to Santa

Thanksgiving 2011

While one ALWAYS ought to give thanks, one just doesn’t.

I think Thanksgiving is my happiest and saddest holiday. I have spent it, dumped at the last minute, home eating Chinese food and watching football, alone. I have spent it with 20+ people, only two of whom I knew before that day. I’ve gathered with a handful of other “orphans”. I’ve hosted family meals. But I haven’t celebrated it with my birth family since 1972.

I have no Thanksgiving tradition. There’s nothing I ALWAYS do. The year of the Chinese dinner, I didn’t even eat turkey.

Still, I like it. I like it because it’s not tied to any specific theology, only a general sense of appreciation. Giving thanks. And while one ALWAYS ought to give thanks, one just doesn’t. The reminder doesn’t hurt.

The Census Bureau has its Facts for Features for Thanksgiving, which, as a data geek, I enjoy.

Whatever you are doing, thank you for having come by this little corner of the blogosphere.

Father’s Day 2011

I appreciate the fact that the Daughter makes me something each of the last couple years.


The interesting thing about my mother’s internment this year is that it became the first time that my daughter had had the opportunity to see where my father was buried. She has seen pictures of him, and she talks about him fairly regularly, surprising considering the fact that she never in person. Somehow, it seems as though he became a bit more real to her. And this made me happy.

I also appreciate the fact that the Daughter makes me something each of the last couple of years, and takes pride in creating it. Maybe it’ll be a craft or a drawing – she’s actually a quite talented artist – but it comes from her own initiation. That makes me happy too.


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From the Census Bureau:
The idea of Father’s Day was conceived slightly more than a century ago by Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Wash., while she listened to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909. Dodd wanted a special day to honor her father, William Smart, a widowed Civil War veteran who was left to raise his six children on a farm.
A day in June was chosen for the first Father’s Day celebration, 101 years ago, June 19, 1910, proclaimed by Spokane’s mayor because it was the month of Smart’s birth. The first presidential proclamation honoring fathers was issued in 1966 when President Lyndon Johnson designated the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. Father’s Day has been celebrated annually since 1972 when President Richard Nixon signed the public law that made it permanent.

Pictures c 2009 Alexandria Green-House

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