Today is Sunday, September 8 and there are only 108 days until Christmas.  Time to get the Christmas movies out and start getting into the spirit.  This is the birthday of Richard the Lion Hearted, Peter Sellers and Cristy Thom.  St. Augustine, Florida, the first permanent settlement in the US was formed in 1565, “The Pledge of Allegiance” made its first appearance in Youth’s Companion in 1892 and in 1966 “Star Trek” premiered on NBC-TV.  It is National Day in Andorra, Sheriff’s Ride Ceremony in Lichfield, England and Thanksgiving Day in South Korea.

In an effort to try not to be entirely self serving, I will on occasion give information that you may or may not find interesting, but to paraphrase our governor, “I don’t care what you want.”  Today I would like to give you some information on the anniversary of the Pledge of Allegiance.  The pledge was written in August, 1892 by socialist minister Francis Bellamy and was first published on September 8, 1892.  In its original form it read, “I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

In 1923 the words, “the flag of the United States of America” were added.  In 1954, in response to the communist threat of the times, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words “under God” creating the 31 word pledge we say today:

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,

and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

So here we are at the beginning of another school year.  If you talk to most teachers, they will tell you that the year does not begin on January first.  Whenever they speak of the beginning of the year they are referring to September.  Their mental calendar always runs from September to August.  Even retired teachers adhere to that idea.  I never quite got that, but I am not in education.  Here is another issue I have with education.  Why do we tell children that they have to read books during the summer.  I thought summer vacation was an opportunity for children to unwind, not to develop an intense dislike for reading books.  I always thought the goal was to get them to read, not to hate doing it.

Let’s face it – how would teachers feel if they were told that one day a week throughout the summer they had to take a group of children and teach them something.  They would probably be as unhappy as the kids are about having to read while on vacation.  What is the purpose?  If it is to get them to read something they will hate reading and will forget as soon as they can, then the goal is achieved on a yearly basis.  Good Job!  Personally, I think that is something that should be rethought.

Moving on to another issue totally unrelated to education, I wanted to discuss how you can look at signs and come up with different meanings.  I recently went into the mens room in a diner.  When I came out, I explained to my wife that I did not wash my hands.  When she asked me why I said there was a sign in there that said “Employees must wash hands.”  Since I am retired, I am not an employee and do not have to wash them(before you all go “UGH!” I did actually wash them).  She gave me the look and said, “I don’t think that was what they meant.”

Another time, we were driving and I told her to quick throw some garbage out the window.  She asked me why.  I explained that we had just passed a sign that said “No Litter. $200 Fine.”  I was not going to pay $200 just because we did not throw something away.  At this point imagine the hand gestures of my younger grandson as he patiently explains what he just said and says, “Get it?  No litter, $200 fine?”  He usually goes through this with us because he assumes that we need additional help because we are grandparents and; therefore, incapable of understanding things the first time through ... but I digress

When my son was a young boy and we would be out in the car, I used to try and help him understand what the various traffic signs meant.  There was the sign that warned of black deer standing on their hind legs, the sign that warned of cars driving on black spaghetti and the sign that warned of break dancers (deer area, slippery road, pedestrians).  I am pretty sure he did not believe me, but I always thought it was amusing to interpret them differently.  Again this was generally something that only I thought was funny.  This is the problem that we creative people often have.  No one gets us.  Oh well.  And yet - life goes on.

This week’s fact tells us that 160 cars can drive side by side on the Monumental Axis in Brazil, the world’s widest road.  Some drivers try to make this happen when you come out of the toll plaza on the parkway in Union, too.

Well, have a nice week and please obey the signs.