It is Sunday, February 26 and there are only 92 days until Memorial Day. Start shopping now before the hot dogs and hamburgers run out.  Today we remember the birthdays of Wenceslas of Bohemia, Victor Hugo and Jackie Gleason.  On this day in 1732 the first mass was celebrated in an American Catholic Church, St Joseph’s Church, Philadelphia, in 1848 Marx and Engels published “The Communist Manifesto” and in 1929 President Calvin Coolidge established Grand Teton National Park.  Throughout the world there are no holidays, but in the US it is National Pistachio Day and National Tell a Fairy Tale Day.

For those of you who are wondering, yes, the Wenceslas mentioned above is Good King Wenceslas.  Wenceslas was a 10th-century Catholic Duke of Bohemia also known as Vaclav the Good, and was martyred after being assassinated by his wicked brother, Boleslaw the Bad.  Wenceslas' remains are interred in St Vitus' cathedral in Prague, and he was recently made patron saint of the Czech Republic. His Saint's Day is September 28.

The verse is the invention of J M Neale (1818-66), and it was first published in 1853.

The charitable giving which the carol promotes is an old part of Boxing Day tradition (now supplanted by a spree on the first day of the sales).  But nobody has ever understood why Neale makes Wenceslas feel impelled to take pine logs to a peasant who already lives next to a forest, nor is it clear what significance should be ascribed to the footprint in the snow mentioned in the last verse.

The tune selected by Neale, "Tempus Adest Floridum", comes from a collection Piae Cantiones, published in 1582, where it is a spring hymn, clearly intended to accompany energetic dancing.  Its roots are thought to be Scandinavian.

It was famously parodied by Spike Milligan in Goonish voices as "Good King Ecclesias" and has been covered by musicians including Joan Baez and REM.  On the Beatles' first Christmas flexidisc, sent to their UK fan club members in 1963, the group performed several brief renditions of the carol, in a variety of arrangements, with John Lennon at one point singing a satirical set of lyrics, incorporating the names of several Hollywood stars.  That should satisfy your need for useless information this week.

Recently, the weather here in my neck of the woods has been on the warm side.  For the past couple days it has been in the 70’s, far warmer than it should be in February.  Everyone has been enjoying it, but we all know that just when we get used to it, it will get cold and it will snow.  I still think we need to consider putting back the moon rocks in an effort to get the weather back under control.  I also still ascribe to my theory that the world is turning and at some point, we will be where Australia is and our winters will be in June, July and August.  It will probably take several hundred years, so most of us will not have to run out to get winter clothing to keep us warm while we watch fireworks on the Fourth of July.

An unfortunate aspect of this weather is that people are pulling out spring and summer clothing and wearing it before they have had the opportunity to shed their winter weight.  I have seen some terrible sights these past couple days.  I saw a woman in the grocery store the other day who should really have given some thought to the outfit she had on.  She was wearing a top that was very revealing and on a woman about 75 pounds lighter would have been quite attractive.  On this person – no.  Now add to it the fact that the top did not quite reach her waist.  I think it was supposed to, but there were too many rolls of body preventing it.  And, of course there were the requisite stretch marks.  To make things worse she was wearing tights, and I mean tights!  I think she may have mistakenly picked up her 10 year old daughter’s clothing.  I wanted to go over to her and suggest that she cover up, telling her that no one wanted to see that, but I was concerned that she may have been able to take me.  So I averted my eyes and spent the rest of my shopping time trying to unsee what I had witnessed.

I cannot help but wonder how some of these people get dressed, look at themselves and think, “Yeah, this looks good.”  I don’t want to know what they would have to look like before they thought an outfit was not a good idea.  I think towns should have appearance monitors to help people get ready to go out in public.  The monitor could come by a house, meet with the person and say, ”Oh no, you are not going out looking like that, sir.  Denim leisure suits went out of style a looong time ago.  And, by the way, stop ironing creases into your jeans.”  The monitor positions would be a way of providing jobs and would prevent traumatic viewing injuries by an unsuspecting public.

The other issue I have is that people in their 40’s and older should not dress like their kids.  It just doesn’t look right and you don’t usually carry it off too well. Another thing, please guys over 30, wear your baseball caps the right way.  Perhaps it should be pointed out that the purpose of the bill on the cap is to help shade your eyes from the sun, not keep part of your neck from tanning.

This week our fact tells us that pelicans consume around 1/3 of their body weight in a single meal.  I do better than that on holidays.  Unfortunately, instead of flying around and burning off the fat and calories, I unbutton my pants and take a nap.

It is Sunday, February 19 and there are only 277 days until Thanksgiving, just enough time to start thawing the turkey so it will be ready to cook.  Today we remember the birthdays of Nicolaus Copernicus, Constantine Uschinsky and Paul Dean.  On this day in 356 Emperor Constantius II shut all heathen temples, in 1878 Thomas Edison patented the gramophone and in 1913 the first prize was inserted into a Cracker Jack box.  In Gabon it is Constitution Day, in the US it is National Chocolate Mint Day and tomorrow is Presidents’ Day.

Presidents’ Day is an American holiday celebrated on the third Monday in February.  Originally established in 1885 in recognition of President George Washington, it is still officially called “Washington’s Birthday” by the federal government.  Traditionally celebrated on February 22—Washington’s actual day of birth—the holiday became popularly known as Presidents’ Day after it was moved as part of 1971’s Uniform Monday Holiday Act, an attempt to create more three-day weekends for the nation’s workers.  While several states still have individual holidays honoring the birthdays of Washington, Abraham Lincoln and other figures, Presidents’ Day is now popularly viewed as a day to celebrate all U.S. presidents past and present.

The story of Presidents’ Day date begins in 1800. Following President George Washington’s death in 1799, his February 22 birthday became a perennial day of remembrance.  At the time, Washington was venerated as the most important figure in American history, and events like the 1832 centennial of his birth and the start of construction of the Washington Monument in 1848 were cause for national celebration.

President's Day never falls on the actual birthday of any American president.  Four chief executives - George Washington, William Henry Harrison, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan were born in February, but their birthdays all come either too early or late to coincide with Presidents’ Day, which is always celebrated on the third Monday of the month.

The shift from Washington’s Birthday to Presidents’ Day began in the late 1960s when Congress proposed a measure known as the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.  Championed by Senator Robert McClory of Illinois, this law sought to shift the celebration of several federal holidays from specific dates to a series of predetermined Mondays.  The proposed change was seen by many as a novel way to create more three-day weekends for the nation’s workers, and it was believed that ensuring holidays always fell on the same weekday would reduce employee absenteeism. While some argued that shifting holidays from their original dates would cheapen their meaning, the bill also had widespread support from both the private sector and labor unions and was seen as a surefire way to bolster retail sales.

The Uniform Monday Holiday Act also included a provision to combine the celebration of Washington’s Birthday with Abraham Lincoln’s, which fell on the proximate date of February 12.  Lincoln’s Birthday had long been a state holiday in places like Illinois, and many supported joining the two days as a way of giving equal recognition to two of America’s most famous statesmen.  Realistically, we know that the day is actually a day when fake presidents offer us deals on furniture, cars and mattresses.  That concludes this week’s offering for your useless information file.

As you may recall, last week I decried the use of the word irregardless.  I pointed out that there is no such word and that the word that should be used is regardless.  I have tried to start a movement to ban the use of the word.  Irregardless of my efforts to date, the word continues to worm its way into our vernacular.  Please, if you hear someone use it, correct them.  Be polite.  Say something like, “You know that is not a word. You shouldn’t use it because it makes you sound like a dumb***.”  Or something equally as nice.

I have a number of issues with the way people pronounce words.  Take, for example, the word comfortable.  It is not a difficult word to say – com-fort-able.  Yet just this past week I have heard two different pronunciations and neither was correct.  I heard one person, in a commercial, say the furniture was very comfterble.  I also heard a person being interviewed say that a situation made them uncomftable.  The person in the commercial has no excuse.  They are reading from a script.  How do you see comfortable and say comfterble?  I must be the only person who finds this bothersome.  If so, I apologize for wasting time on it.  If not, then we need to speak up!  Thank you for bearing with me.  I will climb down from my soap box for now.

One more quick point for you to think about.  As I watch TV in the evenings, I see a lot of commercials for new medicines.  It seems that they are churning out medicines as fast as they can come up with names for them.  One of the stipulations they give is that you should not take the medicine if you are allergic to it or its ingredients.  My question is that if I have not taken it yet, how do I know if I am allergic to it?  Another question is have they come out with a medicine in the past five years that does not cause nightmares and suicidal thoughts?  Just wondering.

This week our fact is one that my Barbara will like.  Every man in Brainerd, Minnesota is required by law to grow a beard.  Once again I find myself wondering what happened to cause that law to be passed?  When I read the fact, I sat and pondered it for several minutes and could not come up with a reason.  If anyone knows, please pass the information on.

Now, go have a chocolate mint and have a good week.

Today is Sunday, February 12 and there are only 285 days until Black Friday.  Now is a good time to start staking out where you are going to sleep in the parking lot.  Today we remember the birthdays of Thomas Campion, Franz Joseph Volkert and Augustin Gonzalez Acilu.  On this day in 1733 Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe, in 1878 Frederick Thayer patented the catcher’s mask and in 1964 the Beatles had their first New York City concert, at Carnegie Hall.  In Burma today is Union Day, in Georgia it is Georgia Day and in the US it is Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday and National Plum Pudding Day.

In past years, I have given lots of information regarding Valentine’s Day.  I have mentioned that none of the Saints Valentine are really associated with love.  I have discussed the giving of gifts and cards and such.  I have pretty much done the holiday to death.  What I would like to mention is how we have decided to pretty much ignore the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.  Here is a man that helped pull our nation back together when the Civil War erupted.  He emancipated slaves and worked to bring an end to slavery.  In the end he was assassinated because of his efforts.

We have chosen to ignore his birthday and fold any recognition of him into a single holiday called Presidents Day.  The only thing that anyone gets out of that is a three day weekend and fake Washingtons and Lincolns trying to sell us cars, insurance, phone plans and more.  On the other hand Valentine’s Day started being pushed on us before Presidents Day was here.  Buy jewelry, flowers, clothing, cars, etc. for the woman of you life.  It is interesting that there are never commercials for gifts for the male side of couples.  No one ever suggests buying him a nice shirt or sweater, or that special tool he has always wanted … but I digress.

I am not suggesting that they should make peanut butter cups in the shape of Lincoln’s head or anything like that, but I do think that we should at least recognize the man and his accomplishments.  I am not going to spend a lot of time on my soap box, but I do feel that we do history a disservice by ignoring him.  That’s all.

This past week, we had a snow storm.  Nothing major, just a few inches, but it had been talked about for several days.  As a result, when I went to the grocery store on Wednesday, the place was crazy.  Let me point out that I go there at least five times a week to get stuff that I forgot to get the last time I went.  So Wednesday was just another trip for me.  There were people there stocking up as if the Apocolypse was approaching.  I saw one store employee help a woman put two cases of water in her cart.  I am not sure how she was going to get them into her house, but that was not my problem.

I have always wondered about the three things that people always stock up on when storms are approaching – milk, bread and toilet paper.  I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out what those three things have in common.  I know it isn’t just that they are things that you would need during a storm.  There are other things you might need like food, batteries, flashlights, etc.  That is assuming the worst will happen.  Regardless of the prediction, as soon as a storm is talked about people rush out to buy those things.

If I may, I would like to digress once again.  There is no such word as irregardless.  The word to use is regardless.  Let’s start a movement to stop using that word.  Please!

Back to the grocery store.  On Wednesday I saw people buying the three necessities, plus ice cream, frozen dinners, meat, cookies and other essentials.  I really wanted to ask them why they were buying all that stuff when the prediction was for a typical snowstorm, not a Nor’easter.  Another thing that it appears they were not taking into consideration was that if it was a bad storm they could lose power.  That would mean that the ice cream would melt, the frozen dinners would thaw and the meat and the milk would spoil.  That would leave them with only bread and cookies to eat.  While that doesn’t sound that bad, after a couple days you would probably get tired of that, too.

Last night I had an opportunity to see someone do something that I wanted to do, but he beat me to it.  I had taken my grandsons out to dinner.  While we were in the restaurant, the people in the booth behind us started a ruckus.  Apparently, one of them took another one’s phone.  The aggrieved person started saying, repeatedly, “Give me back my phone.  I want my phone back.”  He continued saying it, every so often increasing the volume.  Finally, as I was getting ready to get up, a guy across the aisle went over to them and said, “Give him his damn phone so he can shut up.”  I am guessing they did because it was very quiet there after that.  The guy’s wife told him he should have minded his own business.  He responded, “Why?  Did you want to listen to that all night?”  It’s good to see that I am not the only curmudgeon.

This week our fact tells us that the town of Idaho Falls, Idaho forbids anyone over the age of 88 to ride a motorcycle.  Frankly, if they are over 88 and can even lift a motorcycle and get on it, they should be allowed to ride it.  Besides I have seen people a lot younger who should not be allowed to ride one.

Today is Sunday, February 5 and there are only 326 days until Christmas so get started on those cards and letters and avoid waiting until the last minute.  Today we remember the birthdays of John Witherspoon, Belle Starr and Christopher Guest.  On this day in 1644 the first US livestock branding law was passed, in Connecticut, in 1850 the adding machine employing depressable keys was patented and in 1969 the US population reached 200 million.  In Finland it is Runeberg Day, in San Marino it is Liberation Day, in Mexico it is Constitution Day and in the US it is National Shower with a Friend Day.

It was rather uneventful this past week.  I was suffering from a bad cold and spent the week sneezing, blowing and suffering through the miseries of being sick.  One of the biggest problems with being sick when you live alone is that there is no one to suffer with you.  Of course, you can talk to friends and family on the phone and they can commiserate, but unless you have someone there with you there is no joy in being sick.  For example, when you moan that you don’t feel good and would like some chicken soup, there is no one to sigh heavily and then get up to make soup for you.  You are on your own.

During the week, I read a letter to the advice columnist from a woman who complained about when her husband gets sick.  “Men can be terrible babies when they are sick.  It is a COLD!  He’s not dying.” She writes.  This sounds like a woman with no heart.  She doesn’t know for sure that he is not dying.  She continues, “Also I am not his mother.  When he whines, I shut down or become touchy or crabby.”  Obviously this woman doesn’t understand that when a man gets sick it is upsetting to him.  It means that he is not able to fulfill his responsibilities as the hunter gatherer and he is distraught.  She does not realize that this is something that is deep seated in the nature of man.

Then she goes on to say, “If he doesn’t whine I’m happy to take care of him, but I can’t take the time during the day to lie in bed with him to keep him warm, I can’t stay up until midnight rubbing his back and I cannot tolerate the sappy whining.”  The columnist suggested keeping a supply of chicken soup on hand, having over-the-counter meds available and getting a heating pad.  The columnist is obviously a woman.  Here is a poor guy who is not feeling well and he turns to his spouse for comfort.  Her response is, “Great.  I made a big bucket of soup.  Help yourself.  Take some aspirin and lie down on the heating pad.  By the way, stop that infernal whining.”

As a husband, I always doted on my wife when she was sick.  I made her soup when she wanted it.  I made tea for her and took care of her needs.  If she wanted something special to eat, I prepared it and made sure she was comfortable.  I did this because I was a loving husband.  I also did it because it was simpler than listening to her whine and I could use the favors as leverage for when I wanted something.  The woman who wrote in complaining apparently hasn’t been married long enough to see the benefits to doting once in a while.

One of the other issues I had while I was ailing was that none of the food I had in the house was appetizing, but I didn’t feel like going shopping to get something else.  I went out a couple times to help my son out.  My older grandson had the flu and I took him to the doctor and then drove over to check on him later in the day.  While I was out, I stopped at the grocery store to get some of those over-the-counter meds that the columnist was talking about.  I got the meds and was headed for the checkout when it occurred to me that I should get something to eat.  I found a couple things that I thought would be good and went home to whine to myself.

A part of me has to agree with the woman in the letter.  Even I got tired of hearing me after some time.  The worst part was when it came time to make dinner, I really didn’t want to eat the things I had purchased for dinner.  They were just not that appealing anymore.  I ended up having chicken soup a couple of times.  The more I think about it, the more I realize that that woman may be right.  Men can be terrible babies when they are sick.

While I was suffering, (okay, no more whining) I had the chance to watch more TV than usual.  I happened to see a commercial several times and started to pay some attention to it.  It was a jewelry commercial and, for the most part, it was okay.  There was only one part that puzzled me.  The couple is standing on a dock at a lake and in an effort to appear carefree and spontaneous, they decide to jump in the water.  They take off their shoes and socks and then jump, fully clothed, into the lake.  I understand taking your shoes off, I guess, but why your socks?  Maybe it’s just me.  I am going to have to stop trying to make sense out of this stuff.

This week our fact tells us that in West Virginia you cannot fly a red flag in front of your house if you are disappointed in your sheriff.  Several questions come immediately to mind – how would anyone know the reason for flying a red flag, can you fly it anywhere else around your house, why can’t you express your dissatisfaction with an elected official?  I could go on, I don’t want to raise too many red flags.