holidays Archives - Page 2 of 6 - Ramblin' with Roger

The new school year

Because Easter is so early, spring break is not until April 25 – April 29,

When the Daughter was in kindergarten, The Wife worked at that school. The holidays, snow days, etc. were in sync. It was great.

Every school year since, the trick is to see where The Daughter’s school schedule fails to coincide with The Wife’s teaching schedule at multiple schools, plus my work schedule. Then we figure out whether we can trade with other parents in child sitting (optimally), or figure out who’s taking the day off work.

The semester doesn’t begin until September 8, the day after Labor Day. Almost immediately, I see the Daughter has both September 14 (Rosh Hashana) AND September 23 (Yom Kippur) off. In previous years, one or the other of these Jewish holidays would land on a weekend. My wife’s schools, more rural, DON’T have either day off, and neither do I.

On October 12 (Columbus Day) and November 11 (Veterans Day), we all have the holidays, and the two of them have November 26-27 off for Thanksgiving. But November 25 is Parent-Teacher Conferences, which means no classes for the child, but one of us should probably ATTEND said conference and stay home the rest of the day.

They have December 24 – January 1 as holiday recess, and of course, I have Christmas and New Year’s off myself. We all have January 18, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

But January 25 is Superintendent’s Conference Day. Another one to suss out.

February 15 (Presidents’ Day), we all have it off, and the rest of the week is winter recess, for the teacher and the student in the house.

This is interesting, though. March 25 (Good Friday), which the Daughter has off, the Wife does not. But because Easter is so early, spring break is not until April 25 – April 29, which, thankfully, meshes for the two of them.

June 23, 24 – 1/2 Days for the elementary schools, but The Wife will figure out what to do.

That’s it, except for May 30 (Memorial Day), which we all have off. UNLESS the district uses none of the three days are provided for snow/emergency closings. “For each day used, the following dates (in order) would become days of instruction: May 31, May 26, May 27.” So I root for snow days for which my daughter’s district and my wife’s districts are in sync.

Presidents Day 2015

Q: Has the gun with which Oswald shot President Kennedy been returned to the family?

President Calvin Coolidge was designated Chief Leading Eagle of the Sioux tribe when he was adopted as the first white chief of the tribe at the celebration of the 51st anniversary of the settlement of Deadwood, South Dakota, August 9, 1927. This designation came as a result of Coolidge signing the Indian Citizen Act on June 2, 1924, which granted “full U.S. citizenship to America’s indigenous peoples.”

The bill happened in part as a result of World War I when “The Indian, though a man without a country…, threw himself into the struggle to help throttle the unthinkable tyranny of the Hun.”

I was unfamiliar with this picture until I saw it on the news around Christmas 2014, when it mentioned the risk of Chief Executives wearing things on their heads other than hats, and cited the headdress that the current President was wearing recently, pictured below.
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Speaking of World War I, from Now I Know:

One of the more positive aspects of American presidential politics is the relatively orderly, entirely peaceful succession process. Every four years, on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, voters across the nation go to the polls and cast their ballots. Those votes are translated into votes for… electors, and a few weeks later, those electors cast the votes which actually determine who is going to be inaugurated into the office of the President… Even though the campaign can be acrimonious, to date at least, no sitting president has ever attempted to disrupt this process.

But there was, almost, an exception. In 1916, incumbent President Woodrow Wilson faced a challenge from Republican Charles Evans Hughes…

Which US presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize?

Secretaries of State who became President:

Thomas Jefferson (3) under George Washington (1)
James Madison (4) under Jefferson (3)
James Monroe (5) under Madison (4)
John Quincy Adams (6) under Monroe (5)
Martin Van Buren (8) under Andrew Jackson (7)
James Buchanan (15) under James K. Polk (11)

And none since unless Hillary gets elected President.

From The Weird, Embarrassing, Fascinating Things People Asked Librarians Before the Internet:
Q: Has the gun with which Oswald shot President Kennedy been returned to the family?
A: No. It’s at the National Archives and Records Administration building in College Park, Maryland.

Lyndon Johnson was a civil rights hero. But also a racist.
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I’ve wondered why Bill Clinton, only the second President in American history to be impeached, got to be so popular by the end of his second term. I think Dan Savage of Savage Love hit upon it:

Here’s the takeaway from the Bill and Monica story: An out-of-control special prosecutor appointed to investigate the suicide of a White House aide wound up “exposing” a series of [sex acts] that President Bill Clinton got from a White House intern. Problematic power differential, yes, but consenting adults just the same. Politicians and pundits and editorial boards called on Clinton to resign after the affair was made public, because the American people, they insisted, had lost all respect for Clinton. He couldn’t possibly govern after the [detailed sex acts], and the denials (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”). Clinton refused to resign and wound up getting impeached by an out-of-control GOP-controlled Congress…

But guess what? The American people weren’t [ticked] at Clinton. Clinton’s approval ratings shot up. People looked at what was being done to Clinton — a special prosecutor with subpoena powers and an unlimited budget asking Clinton under oath about his sex life—and thought, “…I would hate to have my privacy invaded like that.” People’s sympathies were with Clinton, not with the special prosecutor, not with the GOP-controlled/out-of-control Congress.

Presidential Libraries and Museums for every President from Herbert Hoover through George W. Bush

Handsome Franklin Pierce by Nik Durga

Behind the Presidents: at Mount Rushmore

The youngest Presidents: 26, 35, 42, 18, 44, 22, 14, 20, 11, 13
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Lots of different “worst” lists:

Indian-Killer Andrew Jackson Deserves Top Spot on List of Worst U.S. Presidents

10 reasons why Ronald Reagan was the worst president of our lifetime

The Worst Presidents, which includes all the Presidents between #9 and #18, except #11 and #16; plus three 20th century picks

Thanks giving

Thanksgiving. might be my favorite holiday, because it gives me specific permission to focus on being appreciative of others.

Saw this post via ABC Wednesday. The writer, Meenal, from India, posed 15 questions. The first, slightly paraphrased: “Why do we have the Patriotic feeling only on National days? Why don’t we feel the same every day?”

Assuming the truthfulness of the question, the answer, of course, is that people’s thoughts are overstuffed, in the busyness of life. They often need/want special days to remember veterans (Veterans Day), or express love (Valentine’s Day), or the like.

The premise of the question is akin to what I hear virtually EVERY Thanksgiving. “Why aren’t people thankful ALL the time?” Because they are not. I don’t understand why some people take such exception to those “reminder” events. Yes, yes, yes, scold person, we should ALL be thankful ALL the time. But sometimes, we’re tired, or grumpy, or distracted, or overwhelmed.

I like Thanksgiving. Might be my favorite holiday, because it gives me specific permission to focus on being appreciative of others. It gets me out of my own head, and that’s a good thing.

Happy Thanksgiving. In the next week, find, if you can, someone in your sphere that you count on, but who may not know that he or she makes a difference in your life. Say thank you.

World War I doesn’t get its props

Those partitions after World war I have geopolitical implications to this day.

I was reading about World War I trench poetry remembered in comics anthology, and it hit me how relatively little most Americans know about the first World War (1914-1918), the “War to end all wars,” as someone put it, terribly incorrectly.

And it’s not its remoteness in time (1914-1918). We’re in the midst of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War (1861-1865), with a pretty fair breakdown of every important battle.

As the article noted: “Of the two, World War II may be the one explored more often in pop culture…” Indeed, Tom Brokaw’s book title, The Greatest Generation, has been adopted as truth about those post-Depression young soldiers from the US going off to war after Pearl Harbor.

…but World War I… was important as well… More than 16 million people were killed, the war began an era of industrialized warfare, and it caused the redrawing of the map of Europe and the Near East.

Those partitions have geopolitical implications to this day.

Read about the Christmas 1914 truce HERE and HERE.

Shooting Parrots wrote about tunnel master John Norton-Griffiths and Alf Price, who punched a 19-year-old Prince Wilhelm in the nose. Also, Charles à Court Repington may have named the war, back in 1920.

Back in June, Jaquandor noted A Century since the Conflagration.

Of course, what’s now known as Veterans Day commemorates the end of World War I. It’s Remembrance Day in other countries and used to be called Armistice Day. Armistice is such a quaint word.

There’s some melancholy song on the first Paul Simon solo album called Armistice Day.

Memorial Day: revisionist history

Jesus taught us to give comfort to people with dying loved ones. He also gave comfort to the Centurion (Matthew 8).

Almost a year ago, Demeur sent me an article about the history of Memorial Day.

[Historian David] Blight’s award-winning Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001) explained how three “overall visions of Civil War memory collided” in the decades after the war.

The first was the emancipationist vision, embodied in African Americans’ remembrances and the politics of Radical Reconstruction, in which the Civil War was understood principally as a war for the destruction of slavery and the liberation of African Americans to achieve full citizenship.

The second was the reconciliationist vision, ostensibly less political, which focused on honoring the dead on both sides, respecting their sacrifice, and the reunion of the country.

The third was the white supremacist vision, which was either openly pro-Confederate or at least despising of Reconstruction as “Black rule” in the South.

Over the late 1800s and the early 1900s, in the context of Jim Crow and the complete subordination of Black political participation, the second and third visions largely combined. The emancipationist version of the Civil War, and the heroic participation of African Americans in their own liberation, was erased from popular culture, the history books and official commemoration.

Interesting. Not surprising, but interesting to read about revisionist history.
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Last year, when I bewailed what I consider the theological justification for war as anti-Christian, anti-Jesus, and utterly false glorification of war, Chris Honeycutt noted:

I’d say that Memorial Day is 100% a holiday in the real Christian spirit, just like Jesus would want.
Other people make it about celebrating the wars. But it’s really about remembering the soldiers who died.
Everyone who served lost people and had no time to stop and grieve. The war kept coming.
Jesus taught us to give comfort to people with dying loved ones. He also gave comfort to the Centurion (Matthew 8).
So… yeah. Jesus was pretty clear about the war issue. Still think he’d think Memorial Day was a great idea.

I think she might very well be right. Jesus cared for those whose hearts were heavy-laden.

So let us remember our lost ones, even as we redouble our efforts for peace.

Do you know who does really nice Memorial Day posts? Jaquandor. Here’s his post from last year. And here’s a post he did during the last Advent which feels applicable today.
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The Gun Jumpers.