What’s your holiday?

cartbirdyLemme see… There are at least three holidays going on today. There’s Mardi Gras / Fat Tuesday / Pączki Day. The first time I ever heard of a pączki was sometime back in the day when the beach urchins were small and The Westgate Kroger was still on my beat. What the heck is a pączki? They looked like jelly donuts to me. I like a good jelly donut once in a while but I couldn’t figger why people were getting so excited about these things. I didn’t buy pączkis today. I ate a half bowl of Cheerios and some yogurt. I am all *for* celebrating every single little thing a person can do to celebrate a holiday so, if you did buy them, go for it!

Lincoln’s birthday. (“Liiiinncoln, oooonnnn his deathbed.” (aka “leeeeeevin’ on a jet plane.”)) Way back in the day, there used to be Lincoln’s Birthday on February 12th and Washington’s Birthday on February 22nd. I don’t remember getting a day off school for either of those back then but my old coot got both of those days off from his job at the bank. Nowadays, we’ve morphed those days into “President’s Day” and the Planet Ann Arbor Schools gives students the whole week off as what they now call “mid-winter break”.

The State of the Union address is not a holiday but I have to include it in this list because the last time I watched it, I watched it with The Commander, in her beautiful room at Freighter View. She was under hospice care at that point and bed-bound but she really wanted to watch Obama that night. (She liked Obama and did not like the Not-My-Dad’s GOP…) I sat next to her bed throughout the speech. She watched it with great attentiveness. I don’t remember any of it, in fact, I eventually dozed off…

If I were to celebrate a holiday, it would be Darwin Day. Yes, Charles Darwin shares a birthdate with Abe Lincoln. There are lots of interesting things you can do to celebrate Darwin Day, including phylum feasts. I am not celebrating Darwin Day (or any other holiday) tonight. But I am promoting Darwin Day because I am horrified that people like Todd Akin and Paul Broun (Google them) were actually assigned to he *House Science Committee*. Say what? I believe in the evolution theory that Charles Darwin first documented. I cannot believe that there are people in our country who still believe that the earth was formed 6000 years ago (or whatever) and that some state education systems are allowing public dollars to fund charter schools that teach that crap.

3 Responses to “What’s your holiday?”

  1. Margaret Says:

    Is there now freedom in this country to be stupid and ignore facts? I guess so…sigh. Charles Darwin was the bomb!

  2. Sam Says:

    Also, it’s Bob’s birthday today. The guy with the Scottish name. Dr. Burns’s papa. Complicated date—you are right!

  3. Pooh Says:

    When I was student teaching, I drew a top hat on the board next to the Feb. 12 date. A lot of the students asked me why I’d drawn a cup of coffee.
    I explained that it was Lincoln’s birthday, and Dr. Cohn, my supervising teacher added that it was also Darwin’s birthday. “One man freed men’s bodies, the other freed their brains!”

    (When I was typing the last clause, I almost typed ‘fried’ instead of ‘freed’.) LOL