So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Hat and Rehat]

The tradition of the "Hallmark Holiday" started with Mother's Day, which was a scheme to sell greeting cards and flowers. And guilt.

Hallmark made the cards. They didn't buy them. They may have mined the guilt, but I suspect it was already there just waiting for the right shovel. After all, a card and a stamp is pretty easy penance.

 

[ChrisB]

McLuhan was far ahead of his time. If he had lived to see the gutter tribalism of Twitter, he'd have shaken his head and said "I told you so."

Whatever happened to “e pluribus unum”?

It might never have been reality, but at least it was a good ideal.

 

[Edward]

What's with the watered down green beer? I've not heard of that one. What I do have a whinge with though is the way Coors bought the distribution rights to Caffrey's then ceased to distribute it throughout the US. At the same time Caffrey's on draught started to disappear from UK pubs. You can get it in pressurised cans, but that's a pale imitation of the original. Is it one of those General Motors Street Car conspiracies?

Watered down is something that (allegedly) happens in all cheap pubs / where they think punters don't notice. Green beer - the regular swill with a bit of green dye in it - is something that a lot of places sell for St Patricks. I beleive it's one of those Old Oirish traditions invented by the US-based diaspora and now, sadly, imported to the old country itself (much like the accursed pumpkin replacing the true, turnip-based Jack O'Lantern for Samhain. A pox on whomever is to blame for that, and doubly so on those that sell out their true tradition by playing along!).

It has come to my attention that we have yet another commercially exploitable annual observance: Siblings Day, which, as it happens, is this very day, April 10.

I trust my surviving siblings will forgive my having overlooked it.

I remember when "Grandparents' day" was first mentionedi n Northenr Ireland in around 1984. My Dad snorted and said "Well, we won't be sucked into starting that one, they just want to sell cards." I'm guessing he wasn't alone because it never took off on this side of the Atlantic.

The tradition of the "Hallmark Holiday" started with Mother's Day, which was a scheme to sell greeting cards and flowers. And guilt.

Interestingly, here in the UK, while Mother's Day successfully transplanted from the US, it glommed onto the much older Anglican tradition of Mothering Sunday (hence the difference in dates), which was the day on which servants and other domestic staff were given leave to return to their "mother church", tat being the one where they were born or, typically, baptised, or in some cases where that was not practical, the local Cathedral (being the 'mother' of the diocese). This dates back to at least the early 1600s. Significantly, it was dying out by the 20s, when Mother's Day - celebrating mothers rather than the church - took over. Notably, Fathers' day, honouring fathers, has been marked across Europe since the middle ages, while mother's day was invented to sell cards. Patriarchal capitalism, eh?

Hallmark made the cards. They didn't buy them. They may have mined the guilt, but I suspect it was already there just waiting for the right shovel. After all, a card and a stamp is pretty easy penance.

Like Hitler and anti-semitism (though I believe these days we're meant to say he invented it, otherise we might have to acknowledged ho widespread it was in allied nations.... nobody say "MS St Louis").

 

[ChrisB]

Store bought sentimentality is the cheapest form of love. Try being a caregiver for a disabled adult, that will say more than 1000 cards.

 

[The Jackal]

That's why if I buy cards, they are always the funny variety. I'm trying to poke fun at the event in question. Birthday? Cause you're f'in old. Mother's day? Cause you should be celebrated for giving birth to me. So on and so forth.

I don't subscribe to the idea that a single day should be set aside for any significant showing of emotional connection. If you weren't willing to call me the day before my birthday, don't bother doing it on my birthday either. If I loved you on Feb 13, I should tell you then, not wait and tell you on Valentine's Day.

 

[tonyb]

Whatever happened to “e pluribus unum”?

It might never have been reality, but at least it was a good ideal.

Tell it, Brother.

The words themselves are pretty darned straightforward (once they’re translated), but what they mean in practice is subject to wildly varying interpretations.

 

[tonyb]

September 28 is Good Neighbor Day. The notion of creating such an observation had reportedly been around for some years prior to Jimmy Carter signing a presidential proclamation making it so.

So you’d think that Neighbor Appreciation Day would be a redundancy at best. But no. In the city of Seattle the Sunday prior to Saint Valentine’s Day is designated as such. A woman living on Phinney Ridge is credited with coming up with the idea and the city’s Department of Neighborhoods was charged with spreading the word.

The very existence of a Department of Neighborhoods, and a Neighbor Appreciation Day, betrays just how contrived this brand of “neighborliness” is. In Seattle, one of the least “childed” (a measure of the percentage of children per capita) cities in the country, where half a million bucks might buy you a tear-down on a small lot in a less-desirable district, where residents who actually grew up there (let alone their parents or grandparents) are fewer and fewer, the more organic sort of neighborliness is a rare commodity indeed.

I take some comfort in knowing that neither Good Neighbor Day nor Neighbor Appreciation Day have ever gained much traction. Indeed, I’d wager that most people have never heard of either, or, if they have, they couldn’t say when on the calendar they fall.

 

[GHT]

I take some comfort in knowing that neither Good Neighbor Day nor Neighbor Appreciation Day have ever gained much traction. Indeed, I’d wager that most people have never heard of either, or, if they have, they couldn’t say when on the calendar they fall.

It's not surprising Tony. What exactly do neighbours have in common, other than they live in close proximity? If a neighbour needed real help most wouldn't be so callous as to close the door on them, but it seems to me that the authorities that run communities have an agenda to make us all mix.

The late Dave Allen, an acerbic Irish comic put it into perspective with a joke that still makes me smile.
"We haven't seen you at Mass for a while David."
"It's all that: Peace be with you, Father."
"Peace be with you? David."
"Yes Father, you have to shake the hand of some ba***rd who you wouldn't give the time of day for in the street."

For those not familiar with Catholic tradition, there's a point in the service of The Mass where the priest invites the congregation to offer peace to one another. In doing so a handshake is offered.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I would appreciate my neighbors more if they hadn't clearcut every tree in their yard in order to turn it into a parking lot for their stinking AirBnB. Get used to seeing my baggy old drawers blowing on the clothesline every day this summer, and I hope your guests enjoy the view.

 

[tonyb]

I’m on remarkably good terms (by modern standards) with the neighbors in the properties immediately abutting ours.

Ellen, the widowed, two-time cancer survivor in the house to the south of us is a retired Ph.D. educator who likes making quilts. She and my wife are active in the same Presbyterian church. She’s been in that house maybe seven or eight years.

Steve and Fran have been in the split-level to the north of us long enough to have retired the mortgage. He’s a retired electrician who is often found puttering about the yard in his “Vietnam Veteran” cap. Matthew, Fran’s kid from an earlier relationship, lives with them. He’s pushing 40 now, I’d guess. His fairly mild intellectual disability becomes apparent within a few minutes of conversing with him. Steve and Fran know lots of stuff I don’t about gardening in this less-than-forgiving climate, so I’m always picking their brains.

Derek and Barbara bought the house to the west of us a year after we bought ours. We share a backyard fence with them. They’re maybe 10 years younger than me. They lost a house they bought in 2007 to the crash of ’08. They were much more careful this time around. They lived in a cramped apartment long enough to save a 20 percent down payment on a house (so as to be spared buying private mortgage insurance) and to repair their credit enough to get a good interest rate.

We have no Department of Neighborhoods here. We don’t observe Neighbor Appreciation Day. No need for either.

 

[tonyb]

I would appreciate my neighbors more if they hadn't clearcut every tree in their yard in order to turn it into a parking lot for their stinking AirBnB. Get used to seeing my baggy old drawers blowing on the clothesline every day this summer, and I hope your guests enjoy the view.

What they have is more akin to a hotel than anything that might called a “home share.”

I’d fault the municipality for allowing that use in a single-family residential district. But, as you’ve noted before, the local elected officials are largely in the pockets of the tourism interests.

Many districts, mine among them, are stocked with freestanding houses built for families of five or six or more. In the three homes of the neighbors I named in the post above, plus ours, reside a total of eight people. There’s a total of 13 or 14 bedrooms (depending on how you count them) in those four houses. It makes sense to allow those houses to be converted to two-unit structures, as regular rentals or as short-term rentals.

Better to more efficiently use existing infrastructure than to sprawl half way to Kansas. That’s why I, unlike some local loudmouths who profess to speak for the neighborhood, had little objection to the new apartments — roughly 800 units in all — nearing completion about a quarter mile from here on what had been 15 acres of open land. There’s a new light rail stop RIGHT THERE, plus easy freeway access, and retail space is going in on the ground floor of one of the new structures. There are several hotels right nearby, numerous eateries, a couple-three or four mid-rise office buildings, and a post office.

Unless we impose population controls, there will continue to be more and more of us, through at least the next few decades. People are moving here. Gotta put ’em somewhere.

 

[Harp]

To which if The Bard had been born unto The Emerald Isle he may, or may not have said:

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. ----I;i A Midsummer Night's Dream

---Such verse could only have penned by an Irishman; the Bard's Celtic paternity thus proven... Pax vobiscum.

For those not familiar with Catholic tradition, there's a point in the service of The Mass where the priest invites the congregation to offer peace to one another. In doing so a handshake is offered.

 

[tonyb]

I just learned, thanks to an email, that this in National Pet Day, not to be confused with National Dog Day, which is August 26, or National Corndog Day, which falls on the first Saturday of the NCAA Division 1 basketball tournament. So I guess we missed it this year.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Under the Code of Hammurabi the punishment for watering beer was to be drowned.

 

[tonyb]

Under the Code of Hammurabi the punishment for watering beer was to be drowned.

Hammurabi is my homie.

 

[Bushman]

I saw somebody misspell the word "misspellings" and it took all my willpower not to be a Grammar Nazi and correct them. Sometimes you just have to sit back and enjoy the irony.

 

[Zombie_61]

...I don't subscribe to the idea that a single day should be set aside for any significant showing of emotional connection. If you weren't willing to call me the day before my birthday, don't bother doing it on my birthday either. If I loved you on Feb 13, I should tell you then, not wait and tell you on Valentine's Day.

My wife and I have had this mindset throughout our relationship and have never seen the point of making grand gestures on a specific day just because someone somewhere at some point in time thought it would be a good idea. We express our love for each other daily, and don't need some marketing schmuck reminding us to do so.

For four or five years in a row we met with her sister and her husband at a local restaurant on Valentine's Day (her sister does like the grand gestures and it was her idea), but it was really nothing more than an excuse to spend time with them and we could have chosen any other day of the year to do the same thing; we stopped when it became more problematic than it was worth with the traffic and the reservations and the crowds.

 

[Edward]

I just learned, thanks to an email, that this in National Pet Day, not to be confused with National Dog Day, which is August 26, or National Corndog Day, which falls on the first Saturday of the NCAA Division 1 basketball tournament. So I guess we missed it this year.

At least Greta Cat won't expect me to make a fuss over that. Chiefly because she believes every day revolves around her....

 

[LizzieMaine]

Every day is National Cat Day. Which is as it should be.

I'm also a big supporter of National Cheese Week. "Serve Cheese -- And Serve The Nation!"

 

[Hat and Rehat]

My understanding is that it is a holdover from when “Paddy” was something of a slur aimed at Irish immigrants. (That, and “Mick” were the most common disparaging terms.) It appears that the Irish adopted it, after a fashion, and that took the sting out of it.

I have no recollection of anyone taking offense at “Paddy,” although my birth post-dates the famine by about a century, so there’s a fair amount of New Country history at play there.

Ballard, the historically Scandinavian district in Seattle, was once colloquially called “Snus Junction,” a reference to the habit of some workers in the cedar shingle mills that lined Salmon Bay to chew their tobacco, as smoking was prohibited in the mills. The phrase is rarely heard anymore, and even when it was, no one in my memory ever took offense at it.

I think there was a time not so long ago when those words that began as slurs lost most of their sting. I'm lucky, being of Swedish heritage, because the Danes (being a nation of bastards themselves) couldn't come up with a better slur than one meaning "Danish ba***rd", and nobody else seemed to bother with us. Most of the words had evolved into descriptors, but that one N-word for blacks carried too much baggage. It launched the politically correct self censorship we have today. I'm glad the N word went out of common usage, but the fact we can't say it at all, no matter the context, is peculiar.