esrosedotblog

Today is one of those manufactured long weekend holidays.

When I was a kid, we had closed school on two days. The birthdays of Washington and Lincoln.

But then they wrapped them together and added other Presidents, sort of like Mount Rushmore, and we are off and running.

So I still stick with the two and try to remember each of them separately on their assigned day.

Washington was the first President and a rich slave owning land owner. I have been to Mount Vernon. It is pretty nice. He needed these slaves.

I also remember about Washington's teeth. That they were wood. Now, I find that is not true. He had falsies but they were made of some other material which now I forget and am not going to look up.

I was told that he never told a lie. A lie as it turns out. And that he threw a dollar across the river. No one is clear which river exactly and now I read that it was not a dollar but something else.

I can hardly pay attention.

Then we have Lincoln's birthday. Lincoln is nothing like Washington. Not an aristocrat. Born in a log cabin. A good orator. I delivered his Gettysburg Address when I was a kid. On Memorial Day.

Patriotic horse shit.

I disavow it.

Then there were the other Presidents. These have been scooped up and including here apparently to avoid having to have any more commemorative holidays for Presidents, dead or alive or future.

For example, no dice on a George Bush day, either George. Imagine that. Some crazed GOoPer might try it.

The term "patriots" also allows a default setting for other guys who did not make presidential timber.

In Boston we had Paul Revere's day. A fabled run to warn the citizens that the British were coming.

And there are others. All cut off from their special day, a Monday holiday or not.

It was smart to lump it all together.

The true fact is that no one, not one person other than me, is meditating on patriots today. They are out doing long weekend things.

And that is the other thing. When they boiled it all down and fused them, they made all the birthday boys be celebrated on the third Monday of the month of February.

And so, here we are.

Basically, a day without mail.

Labels: holidays