July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
Special days help us make it through (1/24/05)
As I See It
It seems that today is the anniversary of the first canned beer. The calendar I consulted to learn this fact doesn’t specify what the brand was. Personally I can’t stand the stuff.
I once attended a speech where the speaker put forth the theory that civilization arose because of beer. It seems that thousands and thousands of years ago “a piece of bread or grain became wet and a short time later, it began to ferment and an inebriating pulp resulted.” Those ancient people were far more adventurous than I. If I saw a piece of fermented bread I would throw it away, not eat it or try to make it into a drink.
There are supposed to be recipes written in cuneiform describing a process that required one to make bread, crumble the bread into water, add a couple of other ingredients and let it all sit and bubble until it resulted in something drinkable.
They apparently liked this concoction and the way it affected them because the story goes that formerly nomadic people then settled down to grow grain so they could make beer. They fashioned containers to hold the drink and these containers eventually evolved into the beer cans that litter the highways and my lawn. I hope the next step is the biodegradable beer can that disintegrates whenever it remains on grass for more than an hour.
I am looking through the calendar and I find that January 27 is the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. It ended in 1973 but there have been other wars since then equally as deadly. War seems to be something that we can never get away from completely. I don’t understand why we have the overwhelming need to force our beliefs on everybody else but we do.
February holidays are much happier. It is American Heart Month, Bake for Family Fun Month, Black History Month, Canned Food Month, Library Lovers Month, National Cherry Month, National Hot Breakfast Month, and National Pet Dental Health Month. There are weeks dedicated to women’s hearts, pancakes, school counseling, heart failure awareness, Jell-O®, second honeymoons and engineers. That’s a lot of weeks for such a short month. No wonder it seems to linger forever.
The February holidays start off with Groundhog Day on the second. It’s a nice little day marked by dragging an oversized rodent out of its cozy library home so it can see its shadow and predict another six weeks of winter. This is followed by the Super Bowl on the sixth. I consider that day to be the perfect time to go shopping because by then I have had enough of overpaid guys running around after a strangely-shaped ball.
Then comes Mardi Gras on the eighth followed by the Chinese New Year on the ninth. It is the Year of the Rooster. In my experience roosters are cocky, belligerent creatures and don’t deserve to have an entire year for themselves.
Lost penny day is on the twelfth as is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Valentine’s Day is a couple days later. Thank goodness I have outgrown the need to cover a tissue box in construction paper so it can be filled with paper valentines. Poor George Washington seems to have lost his February birthday as President’s Day is the day before we used to remember our first president.
My favorite week comes the first week in March. It is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Week. I don’t see National Milk Week on the calendar but it really should coincide with the cookie week.
All this just goes to show that no matter how frigid and snowy it may be outside someone, somewhere will find something to celebrate. Just be glad it isn’t National Ice Cream Day (July 17) because it is way too cold for that.[[In-content Ad]]
I once attended a speech where the speaker put forth the theory that civilization arose because of beer. It seems that thousands and thousands of years ago “a piece of bread or grain became wet and a short time later, it began to ferment and an inebriating pulp resulted.” Those ancient people were far more adventurous than I. If I saw a piece of fermented bread I would throw it away, not eat it or try to make it into a drink.
There are supposed to be recipes written in cuneiform describing a process that required one to make bread, crumble the bread into water, add a couple of other ingredients and let it all sit and bubble until it resulted in something drinkable.
They apparently liked this concoction and the way it affected them because the story goes that formerly nomadic people then settled down to grow grain so they could make beer. They fashioned containers to hold the drink and these containers eventually evolved into the beer cans that litter the highways and my lawn. I hope the next step is the biodegradable beer can that disintegrates whenever it remains on grass for more than an hour.
I am looking through the calendar and I find that January 27 is the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. It ended in 1973 but there have been other wars since then equally as deadly. War seems to be something that we can never get away from completely. I don’t understand why we have the overwhelming need to force our beliefs on everybody else but we do.
February holidays are much happier. It is American Heart Month, Bake for Family Fun Month, Black History Month, Canned Food Month, Library Lovers Month, National Cherry Month, National Hot Breakfast Month, and National Pet Dental Health Month. There are weeks dedicated to women’s hearts, pancakes, school counseling, heart failure awareness, Jell-O®, second honeymoons and engineers. That’s a lot of weeks for such a short month. No wonder it seems to linger forever.
The February holidays start off with Groundhog Day on the second. It’s a nice little day marked by dragging an oversized rodent out of its cozy library home so it can see its shadow and predict another six weeks of winter. This is followed by the Super Bowl on the sixth. I consider that day to be the perfect time to go shopping because by then I have had enough of overpaid guys running around after a strangely-shaped ball.
Then comes Mardi Gras on the eighth followed by the Chinese New Year on the ninth. It is the Year of the Rooster. In my experience roosters are cocky, belligerent creatures and don’t deserve to have an entire year for themselves.
Lost penny day is on the twelfth as is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Valentine’s Day is a couple days later. Thank goodness I have outgrown the need to cover a tissue box in construction paper so it can be filled with paper valentines. Poor George Washington seems to have lost his February birthday as President’s Day is the day before we used to remember our first president.
My favorite week comes the first week in March. It is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Week. I don’t see National Milk Week on the calendar but it really should coincide with the cookie week.
All this just goes to show that no matter how frigid and snowy it may be outside someone, somewhere will find something to celebrate. Just be glad it isn’t National Ice Cream Day (July 17) because it is way too cold for that.[[In-content Ad]]
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