What Would Jimmy Do?

Today is Cinco de Marcho — not Cinco de Mayo — that’s on the 5th of May. This holiday has been around since 2007 and is celebrated annually on March 5th.
This “made-up” holiday was invented by a man that goes by the name of Carlos Fantastico. But his true identity is a mystery. 

Cinco de Mayo simply means “the fifth of May” in Spanish. It marks the anniversary of May 5, 1862, when the Mexican army won the Battle of Puebla. It’s recognized in Mexico, but mostly celebrated in the United States. And that’s true of Cinco de Marcho — it’s a mostly U.S. “holiday.” 

The idea behind Cinco de Marcho is that on the fifth of March, Carlos Fantastico was in a Mexican restaurant and realized that St. Patrick’s Day was right around the corner. So why not have a holiday that would celebrate both cultures? A holiday with a Mexican name, celebrating the drinking associated with St. Patrick’s Day — a way to simultaneously celebrate both cultures — what a great idea.

However, contrary to popular belief, Cinco de Marcho isn’t about excessive drinking. Carlos Fantastico views the day as training for light drinkers. Those with low alcohol tolerance can start building their alcohol tolerance starting on Cinco de Marcho to prepare their liver for the upcoming St. Patrick celebrations.

So if you’re out and about today, remember that Cinco de Marcho is a combination of the traditions of both St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo. You may see sombreros, margaritas, four leaf clovers and glasses of Guinness all mixed together — just remember it’s March 5th, and you’ll remember why.
— 30 —

There’s a lot of indicators that I’m getting old, but one of them kind of came as a surprise to me — when I listen to the news, some of the words they use don’t make any sense. This is especially true when I try to understand political “news.” I realize politics has a language of their own, but some of the words they use nowadays apparently have taken on a whole new meaning than when I “learned” them in school.

One word that puzzles me is “woke.” Watching the news the other night, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, pretty much indicated that all the current problems that America faces mostly stem from “wokeness.” 
I think woke means, or at least used to mean, socially aware, or empathetic. Apparently, not anymore.
Governor DeSantis recently signed a Stop Woke Act into law and bragged about it during his “midterm victory speech.” In Washington, there is talk in the House of Representatives of forming an “anti-woke caucus.”
It seems like woke is the blame for everything from deadly mass shootings to increased medical costs.

My extensive research found that “woke” was once used largely by black people, encouraging them to stay mindful of racism in America. Its use was fueled by black musicians, social media and the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the term only entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017 — by then it had become more of a fashionable buzzword than a set of values.

The term is now mostly used by political figures — maybe because it doesn’t actually mean anything. That might be part of its appeal — one can slam “wokeness” to oppose various issues without spelling out any specific objections. 

So after all my extensive research, I’ve decided that “woke” is interesting, but, at least for me, it’s just kind of an unusable word — because it doesn’t actually mean anything. Actually, it obviously means something — I just don’t know what….
— 30 —

Today is a day I always look forward to — the first day of March. No matter what the weather turns out to be, I just seem to feel better knowing it’s March. I realize it’s not quite spring, but winter is certainly in the rear-view mirror. 

March is named for the Roman god of War, Mars. This was the time of year to resume military campaigns that had been interrupted by winter.
Lots of thing happen in March….
The vernal equinox, the return of Daylight Saving Time, St. Patrick’s Day, “March Madness.” Cinco de Marcho, Pi Day, and of course, the Ides of March.
March’s full Moon is called the Worm Moon and reaches peak illumination on the morning of Tuesday, March 7. 

I’ve always heard that if March comes in like al lion, it will go out like a lamb — which means that if the month starts off stormy, it will end with mild weather. However, there is another interpretation of the lion/lamb proverb. The constellation Leo, the lion, rises in the east at the beginning of March and thus the month “comes in like a lion,” while Aries, the ram, sets in the west at the end of the month, and hence, the month “will go out like a lamb.”

The vernal, or spring, equinox occurs on March 20 and marks the start of spring (in the Northern Hemisphere.)
The “Ides of March” was a day in the Roman calendar equivalent to March 15th. It was considered a deadline for settling debts. It was also the day Julius Caesar was assassinated.
Every year, March and June finish on the same day of the week.
St Patrick’s Day occurs every March 17th and is celebrated in many western countries to commemorate the day Saint Patrick died.

Statistically, March is the most unproductive Month of the year in the U.S. It’s said that this is the result of “March Madness,” Some companies lose up to $1.9 billion in wages paid to workers who were not productive and instead spent company time betting on the games.
On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made the first-ever phone call. It was to his assistant and he said, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.”
The Eiffel Tower was ascended for the first time during March. Eiffel himself led a group of government officials and members of the press to the top. The elevators were not in operation yet, so the journey was made on foot and took over an hour. 

So I don’t care how March comes in, I’m just glad it’s here….
Goodbye February — Hello (and welcome) March.
— 30 —

Yesterday, I talked about Edgar Allan Poe kind of being the “inventor” of the modern detective story. So I guess it’s only fitting that when he died, his death was kind of “mysterious.”

Most people agree that Poe was a literary genius, but much of his writings were disturbing because his stories were gruesome and involved death and/or injury. His life was short — and mostly unhappy. 
He was alway known as a “hard drinker,” but when his young wife got tuberculosis and died five years later, Poe regularly hit the bottle even harder.

In the late summer of 1849, he was in Richmond, Virginia and he proposed to an old sweetheart, Elmira Shelton. On September 27, 1849, Poe left Richmond, bound for Philadelphia. What happened the next few days is uncertain — his actions and whereabouts are not known. But on October 3, a passerby noticed Poe slumped near an Irish pub in Baltimore. When Poe’s friend, Dr. Joseph Snodgrass arrived, he found Poe in what he assumed was a highly drunken state, wearing cheap, ill-fitting clothes — very different from his usual mode of dress. He was taken to Washington College Hospital, where he slipped in and out of consciousness. He died early on the morning of October 7. He was 40 years old.

Poe’s death left a mystery that hasn’t been “solved.” No death certificate was filed and a Baltimore newspaper reported his cause of death as “congestion of the brain” — a polite way of saying alcohol poisoning. Aside from alcoholism, historians and biographers have suggested alternative causes of death ranging from lesions on the brain, epilepsy and tuberculosis, cholera, syphilis and even rabies. Another popular theory is that Poe may have been a victim of so-called “cooping,” a common practice at the time in which Baltimore’s notoriously corrupt politicians paid thugs to kidnap down-and-out men, especially the homeless. The victims were drugged, disguised and forced to vote over and over at different polling places, then left for dead. Those that support the cooping theory point out Poe’s unfamiliar and ill-fitting clothes, as well as the fact that citywide elections were held in Baltimore the day he was found — and — the Irish pub near where he was found functioned as both a bar and a voting place.

The mystery surrounding Poe’s death would have made a good book to add to his “detective series.”
— 30 —

For some reason I seem to have been doing a lot with books lately. Claire spends a fair amount of time trying to keep the St. Agnes library in some semblance  of order and a few days ago I helped her move some books around in support of that effort. That inspired me to re-arrange the books in my office and I noticed that I seem to have quite a number of mystery books, or what I used to call “detective books” when I was growing up. 

I remember that in one of my literature classes, the instructor was particularly fond of Edgar Allan Poe, and he said that Poe had actually “invented” the detective story. I’m not sure that’s totally accurate, but it appears that Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is considered by many to be the first detective story.

Of course The Murders in the Rue Morgue was required reading when I was in school, and the story is about the extraordinary “analytical power” used by Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin to solve a series of murders in Paris. Dupin is a reclusive character that is contacted by the police when they are not able to solve a crime. He has keen powers of observation and points out to his roommate, who narrates the story, that “the necessary knowledge is of what to observe.” There are clues throughout the story that offer the reader a chance to solve the mystery. Three of Poe’s stories featured C. Auguste Dupin and that led to another feature of future detective stories — the recurring character.

Almost forty-five years after Poe’s death, the detective story was popularized by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when he created Sherlock Holmes.
And if you bother to check, you’ll see that Sherlock Holmes peculiarities are very similar to those of Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin.
— 30 —

Yesterday’s topic discussed how some people believe a rabbit’s foot can bring you good luck. But there are a lot of “good luck charms” and some of them don’t seem to make much sense. But they’ve all earned their place in the “lucky” category for various reasons.

In the past I’ve mentioned our Friend Anne. She has a horseshoe over the inside of her front door. I’ve never asked her about it, but it’s there for luck. We’ve all had good luck charms in our lives — I remember having a rabbit’s foot (like we talked about yesterday) on a key chain when I was a kid and believed that it brought me good luck. People have four-leaf clovers, lucky pennies, lucky shirts, etc. Your don’t see them so much anymore (maybe because horses aren’t as common as they once were) but when I was growing up, it was commonplace to see a horseshoe somewhere in or on the house. 

So how did horseshoes become a lucky charm? Like a lot of these things, no one really knows for sure but one of the more popular theories is that horseshoes became synonymous with luck when St. Dustan, the patron saint of blacksmiths in the Catholic Church, tricked the devil. The story goes something like this….
When a man came into Dustan’s blacksmith shop asking to be shod in horseshoes, he realized that the request was unusual, and then saw that his customer had a cloven foot — he was shoeing the devil himself. Dustan, who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury, tortured the devil with hot irons and nails until the devil promised that neither he nor any of his demons would enter a building protected by a horseshoe. 

The basic metal makeup of horseshoes contributed to it becoming a lucky charm. Most of the early horseshoes were made of iron, which is a durable metal but is also thought to have mystical powers — it has magnetic properties and runs abundantly through human bodies. Witches were said to be so fearful of the iron-made horseshoes that they decided to take flight on broomsticks instead of riding on horses for transportation. 

Even the number of nail holes made the horseshoe lucky. Seven holes were made in the shoe to hold it in place on the hoof. It just so happens that seven is one of the luckiest numbers on earth, because it appears so often in nature. There are seven days in a week, seven seas, seven continents, seven colors in a rainbow, etc. 

Most all the horseshoes I’ve seen hung over doorways are hung with the open area up — like the letter “U.” But apparently some people think it should be hung with the opening facing down. Hanging a horseshoe “heels up” means it keeps all the good luck from running out of the shoe. Hanging it “heels down” means it flows good luck down on everyone who walks underneath it. I guess they both make sense, so if I can find some horseshoes, maybe I’ll hang two — one each way…. couldn’t hurt.
— 30 —

On June 4, 1951, the Cleveland Indians played the New York Yankees — in Cleveland. The Indians were major underdogs. In fact, the Indians prospects were so dismal that the Plain Dealerr distributed lucky rabbits’ feet to the Indian fans. The Indians won 8 – 2!! Was it the rabbits’ feet that did it? What’s with those rabbits’ feet, and why are they lucky?
There is an old superstition that on the first day of the month, if your first words that day are “rabbit rabbit,” you’ll have good luck for the rest of the month. 

There’s no clear answer as to how rabbits became associated with good-luck superstitions, but rabbits and their wild cousin, the hare, have been associated with the favorable aspects of spring, renewal, and fertility since pagan times. In the Middle Ages, hares were associated with magical witches who were said to be able to change themselves into rabbits.

Despite its association with witchery, the rabbit was still considered a lucky animal because of its many offspring and its burrowing habits. People feared what was buried under the Earth, so they admired the rabbit’s ability to live underground and still survive.

Eventually, the legends surrounding rabbits including fertility, the ability to survive evil and magical powers became associated with “luck” — specifically, in the left hind foot of a rabbit. Of course I guess rabbits have a different view of that….
— 30 —

I know, a few days ago we celebrated “President’s Day,” but officially the day that we celebrated was not President’s Day, but Washington’s Birthday.

Neither Congress nor the President has ever stipulated that the name of the holiday observed as Washington’s Birthday be changed to President’s Day. And — Congress has never declared a national holiday that is binding in all states. Each state has the freedom to determine its own legal holidays. 

Historically, Americans began celebrating George Washington’s Birthday just months after his death — long before Congress declared it a federal holiday. It wasn’t until 1879, under President Rutherford B. Hayes, that Washington’s Birthday became a legal holiday, to be observed on his birthday, February 22. Today, George Washington’s Birthday is one of only eleven permanent federal holidays established by Congress. One of the great traditions that has been followed for decades has been the reading by a U.S. senator of George Washington’s Farewell Address in legislative session. That remains an annual event to this day.

I know I talk about George’s birthday and President’s Day every year and if you didn’t know the story before, you certainly would by reading this blog — I realize I seem to be harping on George sort of “losing” his birthday, but it just seems kind of unfair that it gets “lumped” with others, and primarily just to give us all another three-day weekend.

But today is George’s real birthday — well, kind of, at least. I’ve also talked about this before, but it’s still a bit confusing….
To recap — although the federal holiday is held on a Monday (the third Monday of February,) George Washington’s birthday is observed on February 22.
Now to complicate matters, Washington was actually born on February 11 in 1731. Here’s how this all played out….
George Washington was originally born when the Julian calendar was in use. During Washington’s lifetime, people in Great Britain and America switched the official calendar system from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar (most of Europe had already made the switch in 1582.)

As a result of this calendar reform, people born before 1752 were told to add 11 days to their birth dates. Those born between January 1 and March 25, as Washington was, also had to add one year to be in sync with the new calendar. 
By the time Washington became president in 1789, he celebrated his birthday on February 22 and listed his year of birth as 1732.

Needless to say, poor George Washington has had his birthday jerked around enough. Let the other presidents have their day and give February 22 — or maybe February 11 — back to George.
Happy two hundred and ninety first (?) birthday to my friend George.
— 30 —

Boy, talk about being one busy day — besides being Washington’s birthday and Ash Wednesday, it’s also National Margarita Day. Today’s the day we pay tribute and honor the margarita.

How did the first margarita come into existence? It’s a question we all have. There are many theories, legends and stories as to how margaritas came about.
One theory or legend about their origin began in 1934 in Mexico City when a bartender named Willie claimed to be the inventor. That story was later countered by Carlos “Danny” Herrera who boasted that he developed the drink at his restaurant in Tijuana in 1938.
In 1948, the margarita became popular after Dallas socialite Margarita Sames introduced the drink for her surprised party guests — one of whom, Tommy Hilton, later added the drink to the bar menu at his hotels.
And then singer Jimmy Buffet made the margarita even more famous with his mega-hit Margaritaville…an ode to the famous cocktail.

The reason there’s salt on the rim of the margarita glass isn’t just decoration or garnish — the purpose is is to bring out the sweetness of the drink. The salt intensifies the aromas and flavors of the margarita. 
The world’s largest margarita was mixed in Las Vegas. The drink was 8500 gallons. It was served in a 17-foot tall tank and took 300 hours to create. It was called a “Lucky Rita” and was made to celebrate the Flamingo Hotel’s casino opening.
The most expensive margarita cost $1200. It was created in Manhattan at the 230 Fifth Rooftop Bar and Penthouse Lounge. The ingredients used were super high-end, with the tequila costing $180 a bottle. The ice was made of $450 bottles of Rogederer Cristal Champagne. The margarita was eventually poured into a Ralph Lauren hand blown Hungarian Crystal glass. The glass could be taken home, afterward. Half the money was donated to charity.
On Valentine’s Day in 2015, the Iron Cactus in Austin, Texas offered a $30,000 margarita that came with a very expensive pair of diamond earrings. It was set up by the bar’s “romance” expert.
At the Texas State Fair, a margarita was served up “fried.” A funnel cake was run through a margarita mixer, fried, and later soaked in a margarita again, and all of this was served with whipped cream and in a salt-rimmed glass. 

National Margarita Day was founded by Todd McCalla because he believed that there was a need “to spread his love for margaritas around the world.”
There is a national saying for National Margarita Day — “One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.”

I’m not sure how National Margareta Day plays out this year, falling on Ash Wednesday. I guess you have to give up something besides Tequila for Lent…..
— 30 —