It is Sunday, May 24 and there are only 186 days until Thanksgiving, so start thawing that turkey now.  Today we remember the birthdays of Oliver Cromwell, Victoria Alexandrine and Bob Dylan.  On this day in 1626 Peter Minuit bought Manhattan from the Indians for trinkets valued at $24, in 1830 “Mary Had A Little Lamb” was written and in 1954 IBM announced the vacuum tube “electronic” brain that could perform 10 million operations an hour.  In Bulgaria it is Education Day/Enlightenment and Culture Day, in England it is Victoria Day/Empire Day and in the US tomorrow is Memorial Day.

Quick question for you – when you read about “Mary Had A Little Lamb” being written, you started humming the tune didn’t you?

As you may have realized by now, I do not usually let holidays like Memorial Day go by without talking about them.  I will try to be brief.  Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in service of the United States of America.  Over two dozen cities and towns claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day.  Regardless of the exact location of its origins, one thing is clear – Memorial Day was borne out of the Civil War and a desire to honor our dead. 

It was officially proclaimed by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic.  “The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land,” he proclaimed. The date of Decoration Day, as he called it, was chosen because it wasn’t the anniversary of any particular battle.

So tomorrow, take a moment to bow your head in silence to remember those who gave their lives in service to our country.  You don’t have to agree with the wars, but you should recognize the sacrifice.

“All gave some, but some gave all.”  Thank you.

Last week, we went down the shore to meet up with our kids and walk the boardwalk.  Yes I said down the shore.  For those of you who are not from around here, “down the shore” is how we refer to going to the various communities that are on the Jersey coastline.  We go to the beach, but only after we go down the shore … but I digress (and possibly confuse).

It was on the cool side but it was fun to be there and enjoy the time with the kids.  We walked the boardwalk and tried something that my son had told me about, but I had not done before.  We went to a stand that sold fried stuff.  My son and I got two different items and then shared them.  He got fried creamed corn nuggets and I got fried chocolate covered bacon, which was like having chocolate covered bacon in a zeppole.  OMG!  Both were incredible. 

This place did so many things that I am going to have to go back many more times.  They had fried Oreos, Snickers, Milky Ways, Twix bars and on and on.  One of the things I want to try is the Fried Elvis, which is a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich.  One of my grandsons had fried cheese balls.  Give me a glass of wine and a plate full of those and I would be good.  My cholesterol would sky rocket, but you only go around once.  You might as well enjoy some fried foods in the process.

Our younger grandson went on several rides.  He is amazing.  He goes on rides that I get nauseous just looking at, especially after eating fried bacon.  He gets on these rides and just goes, no hands, laughing and having the time of his life.  God bless him, he knows how to enjoy being a kid.  We went into a couple of the arcades and the boys played the various games to win tickets for the prizes.  I am amazed by what a rip-off that deal is.  It took 100 points just to get a piece of gum.  If Peter Minuit had to get his trinkets to buy Manhattan at the arcades on the boardwalk, it would have cost him several hundred dollars for the $24 worth of trinkets.

I won’t go into the details of the sights we saw on the boards that night, because you probably have been there and seen them for yourself; or, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.  I will say, at the risk of repeating myself, there should be a law that requires people to look in the mirror and see themselves the way they are seen by others.  There is no way some of them could look in the mirror and think, “Yeah, this looks good.”  I saw one woman wearing an outfit that would have been too small and too tight for a woman half her size.  All I could think was, “Put on a caftan or something.  No one wants to see that.”  I think every group should have a designated critic who will tell people honestly what they look like.  Someone had to tell that woman that she looked like a hippo in her baby daughter’s sun dress.

 This week, our fact is a list of more obscure laws that I thought you might find interesting.

It is against the law to doze off under a hair dryer in Florida.

It is against the law to slap an old friend on the back in Georgia.

It was once against the law to have a pet dog in the city in Iceland.

It was once illegal to slam your car door in the city in Switzerland.

It is illegal to be a prostitute in Siena, Italy if your name is Mary.

It is illegal to eat oranges while bathing in California.

It is illegal to hunt camels in the state of Arizona.

It is against the law to water a garden in the rain in Montreal, Canada.

It is against the law to sell an ET doll in France.  They have a law forbidding the sale of dolls that do not have human faces.

My questions are what could have happened that required these laws and are they ever really enforced?  I imagine you could generate some income if you did actively enforce them.

 

Happy unofficial first day of summer!