What Would Jimmy Do?

We all know about Cinco de Mayo on the 5th of May, but March also has a pretty cool holiday (even if it is unofficial or made-up) known as Cinco de Marcho. This holiday has been around since 2007 and is celebrated annually on March 5. It was created to encourage people to get ready for St. Patrick’s Day on March 17. Cinco de Marcho marks the beginning of a 12-day period when “people train their livers for drinking huge amounts of alcohol on St. Patrick’s Day.”

How this day came into being, goes something like this…
First off, Cinco de Marcho is a made-up holiday — it is the invention of a man who goes by the name “Carlos Fantastico,” but whose true identity remains a mystery. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, here’s the story:

In 2007, while dining at a Mexican restaurant, Fantastico was enjoying a margarita and happened to notice the date. It was March 5. A thought came to him — he was at a Mexican restaurant enjoying a Mexican drink, but the decor around him was green St. Patrick’s Day was less than a fortnight away. He imagined a holiday that would celebrate the best of both cultures, and thus, the idea for Cinco de Marcho was born; a holiday with a Mexican name, celebrating the drunken jubilance associated with St. Patrick’s Day. 

So today is widely celebrated by those who are not regular or heavy drinkers, so as to ease themselves into the demands of St. Patrick’s Day. Even though Cinco de Marcho is a celebration of drinking, it’s always advisable to drink safely and in moderation. 

Cinco de Marcho isn’t about excessive drinking — it could be considered as training for light drinkers, and it should be a celebration of finding your limits. Let the countdown to St. Paddy’s Day begin….
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Anyone that’s read this blog over the years may remember that when we first moved to Shepherdstown, we participated in making the Paschal, or Easter, candle for our church. In the past I’ve described a bit how we did it and it’s become an annual activity for us every year. The plan was to turn the candle making over to someone else because the same people have been doing it for quite a few years now. But — you know what they say about plans…. this past past Saturday we once again gathered to perform our candle making routine.

Most of these blog posts have talked about the activities associated with making the candle and not the candle itself — I thought today might be a good day to do just that.

The Paschal candle is one of the most sacred and enduring elements in Christianity. It is made of beeswax to represent the purity of Christ. the candle’s wick signifies Christ’s humanity, and the flame His Divine Nature. 

The word “paschal” is the equivalent of the Greek paschs, derived from the Aramaic pashā and Hebrew pesah, meaning passing over. With the coming of Christianity the word “paschal” took on a new meaning, referring to Our Lord’s passion, death, resurrection, and glorification. 

The use of the Paschal candle has varied over the centuries. Initially it was broken up after the Easter Vigil and fragments were given to the faithful, but from the 10th century onward it was kept in a place of honor near the Gospel until the Feast of the Ascension, 40 days after Easter. By the 12th century, it was common to inscribe the candle with the current year. Over time the candle grew in size to merit its description of “pillar.” By the mid-sixteenth century, some Paschal candles weighed as much as three hundred pounds, and after use, were melted into tapers to use at the funerals of the poor.

Well, our candle doesn’t weight three hundred pounds, but it’s about five feet tall and in a few weeks it’ll be ready to take its place in our church. It’s always nice to see the new candle in place on Easter — it’s a symbol of hope, renewal, and new life….
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Claire got a note from Suzanne asking if I knew there were pirates on the Great Lakes. Being that I’ve always wanted to be a pirate and the fact that Talk Like A Pirate Day is my very favorite holiday, I’m not sure why she’d even ask such a question. But the answer is — of course I knew that!

From what I know about them, the pirates of the Great Lakes generally didn’t have parrots on their shoulder, or walk with a stick for their leg, but they were pirates, nonetheless. Actually, Great Lakes pirates didn’t really fit the popular image of a pirate at all…. but they were practical. They wore wool caps and mittens and sweaters — usually a pullover and probably a turtleneck, because it gets mighty cold around that region in October and November. And when the lakes iced over, the pirates, in their sweaters, would head home until May.

The pirate ships on the Great Lakes looked like every other boat — a schooner or a sloop. No Jolly Roger flags in the Great Lakes. In the time-frame that the pirates operated, there was no phone or telegraph, so it was easy to steal a cargo and take it 20 miles down the road and sell it before word of the heist could get out. The pirates usually stole beaver pelts and timber — and sometimes entire ships. 
One tactic the pirates used was to put up fake port lights so that ships coming in would crash on the rocks. Then they would board the ship and steal its cargo.

Interestingly, there were boats that sank with gold on them — banks on the East Coast shipped gold to banks in Chicago, Detroit and other cities around the Great Lakes. But the gold was insured, and the people that ensured the gold went to any length to get it back, so the odds are that it’s all been recovered.

If you want to know more about pirates, you can check the entries on this blog on or about September 17 every year — that’s Talk Like a Pirate Day. If you do that, you’ll discover no real pirate probably ever “talked like a pirate.” Unfortunately, they just didn’t go around saying “arrrgh” very much. They sounded just like everyone around them — those from around the Wisconsin area may have had a Scandinavian accent and those from Ohio more of a German-Irish dialect. The pirate talk we’d all like to hear is from the movies…
But yes, Suzanne, there were pirates on the Great Lakes.
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Today, millions of Christians around the world will celebrate Ash Wednesday to mark the start of the Lenten season. You’ll probably notice a lot of worshippers’ foreheads marked with ashes in the shape of a cross today. 
Ash Wednesday is usually most closely associated with Catholicism, but there are many Christian sects that recognize it — including Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and even some Baptists. Some denominations that don’t take part is Ash Wednesday celebrations include Mormons, Evangelicals, and Pentecostal Christians. 

The ashes used on Ash Wednesday are meant to represent dust. When receiving ashes on their forehead, parishioners hear the words: ”Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This is a reference to what God says to Adam when exiling him from the Garden of Eden. (In the Christian Bible, Adam is literally formed from dust.) The saying is a reminder to be humble in the face of mortality.

Today marks the first day of the 40 days of Lent, a roughly 6-week period (not including Sundays) dedicated to prayer, fasting and almsgiving in preparation for Easter.

Ash Wednesday ashes come from palms that were burned from the previous Palm Sunday — the Sunday before Easter. There is no rule about how long the ashes should be worn, but many people wear them throughout the day as a public expression of their faith.
Catholics ages 18 to 59 fast on Ash Wednesday — fasting entails eating one regular-size meal and two small meals. Catholics also abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and Fridays during Lent.

Ash Wednesday is never mentioned in the Bible, but there is a verse in the Book of Daniel that links fasting to ashes — some scholars believe this is the origin of our Lenten practice today. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but in Iceland, the first day of lent, called Öskudagur, is similar to our Halloween. Kids dress up in costumes and tour their neighborhoods singing songs in exchange for candy. 

And I guess it’s a “sign of the times,” but some parishes have started “ashes to go” programs on Ash Wednesday. Priests station themselves in public places, like street corners, parking lots or public transit stops and administer blessed ashes to whoever asks to receive them.
So let the countdown to Easter begin…..

Today is Tuesday — specifically “Fat Tuesday.” You may know that today is Mardi Gras — that means Fat Tuesday in French, and it’s the end of the celebratory carnival that leads up to the beginning of Lent. 

The term Fat Tuesday refers to the practice of consuming all the food forbidden while fasting during Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday. During Lent, meat is traditionally abstained from and that’s where the word carnival was (originally) derived — the Latin expression carne levare  meaning “the removal of meat.”

You may have also heard today referred to as “Shrove Tuesday.” Since tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent — a period of fasting and penitence during the 40 weekdays before Easter, devout people were supposed to go to confession on Shrove Tuesday. In Medieval England, Shrove is from shrive, an archaic verb meaning “to confess one’s sins especially to a priest.”
If you’ve been in England this time of year, you’ve probably heard the day before Ash Wednesday referred to as Pancake Day. 

The Mardi Gras “festival” was first celebrated on what are now American shores in 1699. Carnival “season” begins on Twelfth Night (January 6) and ends on Fat Tuesday. The most famous carnival in the U.S. is in New Orleans — I was there once, and there were more people than I’ve ever seen, far and away the biggest crowd I’ve ever been a part of. Carnivals, on a much smaller scale, are held in other U.S. cities and there are really large, well-known festivities in Brazil and Venice, Italy. 

I remember, when in New Orleans, hearing laissez les bon temps rouler (pronounced lay-say le bon tom roo-lay) over and over — it means “let the good times roll” in Cajun French.
Today, Mardi Gras, is the last day of carnival, so make the most of it — you’re about to fast for 40 days… eat everything in the house!
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Hey February, I can’t say it’s been a pleasure, but I’m ready to move on. I must confess that February brought back a little bit longer days, but I’m ready to say farewell to the month with my annual “good riddance, February” blog.

Every month has its ups and downs, but unless you’re a Valentine’s Day or Groundhog fanatic, February is pretty much an awful month. The weather is always pretty crappy, it’s name is hard to spell, unless you’re a sports fan that likes basketball, after the Super Bowl, you’re out of luck in February, and on average, February is the snowiest month in the United States according to the National Weather Service.

But enough complaining — at least February has National Drink Wine Day and National Margarita Day — making it officially a good month for drinking. Tomorrow is March, and the beginning of an eleven month stretch of months without a February.
We’re still dealing with COVID issues, but the weather is getting better and the days are getting longer and we’ve got daylight saving coming up.

So here we go with the third month of the year, or if you’re really old, like born before 150 B.C., it’d be the first month. According to the old Roman calendars, a year was ten months long, beginning with March and ending in December. I’ve mentioned before that originally, January and February didn’t even deserve a spot on the calendar — they were just lumped together and called “winter.” That still appeals to me.

But in addition to better weather and more daylight, I like some other things about March — even though I’m not particularly a basketball fan, I look forward to March Madness, the college basketball tournament. I’m not sure where I read this, but the number of vasectomies surges by 50 percent during the first week of March Madness!! Supposedly the reason is that patients typically need at least a day with ice to keep swelling down, so if they’re going to spend a whole day doing nothing, it’s not hard to figure that they’d want to do it on a day they’d like to be sitting from of the television watching basketball. I guess this falls into the category of “believe it or don’t” but it’s interesting.

While we’re on the subject of strange/interesting things, on the 1st of March, 2007, a detachment of 170 Swiss infantrymen accidentally invaded neighboring Liechtenstein when they got lost on a training mission. Luckily, after explaining the mistake to Liechtenstein, the Swiss army was given directions and returned home safely.

I know May has Cinco De Mayo Day, but March has Cinco De. Marcho – a 12-day drinking regimen for anyone that wishes to “train one’s liver for the closing ceremonies on St. Patrick’s Day.” And we can all look forward to Pi Day, St. Patrick’s Day and the Vernal Equinox — and of course, we can’t forget (even if we’d like to) the day in March that Twitter was founded — March 21, if you’re interested.

As the saying goes, March comes “in like a lion, out like a lamb” — or — the other way around. No matter what tomorrow brings, it’s March — not February.

A few days ago the subject here was Internet “shorthand,” and I pretty much admitted that it was one of those modern trends that I simply didn’t understand. The subject came up because I was “cleaning out” my phone in preparation for getting a new one. That electronic cleaning initiative spilled over to my computer and I ran across an old article that I’d apparently saved because I thought it might help me come up with really “strong” passwords that my computer is always asking me use.

The article discussed something called Leetspeak — a type of online jargon in which a computer user replaces regular letters with other keyboard characters to form words phonetically. I gather that it was originally used by hackers and gamers. According to the article, “leet” is a vernacular form of “elite.”

Leet words can be expressed in hundreds of ways, using different substitutions and combinations. Nearly all characters are formed as phonemes and symbols — for example:
Numbers and symbols often replace the letters they resemble — the term “leetspeak” could be written as “!337$p34k.” The character ! replaces the letter L, “3” poses as a backwards letter E, and “7” is the letter T, etc. 

Here’s another example, and if you follow along, you may figure out that it gets complicated enough that it just got “too hard” for me…. Letters can be substituted for other letters that might sound alike. For example, the letter Z can replace the final letter S  in the word “skills.” With the letter X replacing the letter C or K, the example becomes “sxillz.” Then using numbers and symbols, leetspeakers might refer to their computer skills as “5x1llz.” This might make a good password, but it’s too complicated for me to come up with on the spur of the moment when I need it. 

To use the system, rules of standard English are rarely obeyed. Some Leetspeakers capitalize every letter except for vowels, or drop vowels from words (like converting “very” to “vry.” 
From what I can tell, the result of all this is the creation of a dynamic written language that contains no conformity or consistency. 

After reading the article, I realize why I saved it, and I think it would be a good system to create passwords — in fact, Claire, who is much better at coming up with good passwords than I am, uses some kind of a modern version of this system.

So leetspeak is a good system and I had a valid reason for saving the article at the time, but I’ll probably just continue to use my own system to choose passwords — ask Claire to make one up for me.
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Both regular readers and some others know that we we celebrate OTBN every month and it’s something we enjoy and look forward to. 
But officially, OTBN only occurs once a year — it is officially celebrated on the last Saturday in February. It’s also one of those special events that is proclaimed as an evening event. 

This special day night was created in 2000 by the The Wall Street Journal “Tastings” columnists Dorothy J. Gaither and John Brecher. It is not celebrated on a set, fixed day night every year — the creators specifically established this day night on the last Saturday in February, so the date changes every year. 

Open That Bottle Night has a very special purpose. Dorothy Gaither and John Becher created this day night to encourage people to re-connect with each other over a good bottle of wine or champagne. Short of that, a bottle of Scotch or Bourbon will certainly suffice. But importantly, it is not a day night to drink alone or to binge drink. Rather, you should open a bottle with your spouse, lover, family members, or good friends.

We tried this and thought it was such a good idea, that we make the last Saturday night of every month OTBN — if you’d like to find out more about our experiences with OTBN over the years, you can use the search function  for OTBN on this blog.

So tonight, we may be joined by lots of people around the world that only celebrate the last Saturday night in February…..
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We’ve got to get new iPhones — we have iPhone 7’s and think the current generation is iPhone 13, or maybe 14. Anyhow, in anticipation of getting around to upgrading, I was deleting a lot of old text and e-mail messages. 

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but reading through them, I’m still amazed at how our method of communication has changed. If you just glanced at the messages you’d think they were written in some kind of code or something. Actually I read an article not long ago that said most electronic communication today used some sort of “shorthand.” 

That may be true and I may be quibbling over terminology, but in the old days (and that probably means maybe the 1970s) shorthand referred to a system of rapid handwriting using symbols to represent words, phrases, and letters. People in offices used to dictate, and only secretaries knew how to write in abbreviated or symbolic form. 

Today, shorthand refers to the abbreviated messages typed back and forth via messaging or e-mail. Today’s “shorthand” can look like acronyms, but they’re a little different. The difference between acronyms and shorthand is that with acronyms, you pronounce the letters as a new word — for example, SNAFU is pronounced “sna-foo” and RADAR is pronounced “ray-dar.” In shorthand, the letters are pronounced one-by-one — not pronounced as a word. FYI is pronounced “F-Y-I” and GMA is pronounced “G-M-A.”

On the Internet, there seems to be little difference between shorthand and an abbreviation. I always though that an abbreviation referred to the shortening of a word — like, “esp” for “especially.” And just to mess things up more in  my mind, some of the shorthand/abbreviations aren’t even shorter than the original phrase.
Here’s some things I found looking through some old texts and e-mails:
buhbye — apparently means “bye;” c ya — means see ya; dewd — dude?dunno — I don’t know; girl — girls; guvment — government; i h8 it — I hate it; kewl — cool; sok — it’s ok; ur — your

So whether you call these things abbreviations, acronyms, shorthand, or whatever, their use has evolved into a language of its own. 
I wonder what some of my old English teachers would think about this….
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There are a lot of reasons that I don’t particularly like February — it’s certainly near the bottom of my list of favorite months. But even so, there are a few reasons to keep it around, like Chinese New Year, Super Bowl and maybe Valentine’s Day. 
But I particularly like February 18 — National Drink Wine Day and today’s one of my favorite February days, too. Today, February 22, is not only my Friend George’s real birthday, it’s also National Margarita Day.

Margarita’s exact history is hard to pin down, but it seems have originated, or at least started to become popular back in the mid-1900s. Needless to say, it’s a popular drink in the US and pretty much around the world.

I think it’s appropriate that margaritas get their own day — after all, they’ve always been there for us — many times, along with a good friend, they’ve helped us solve our problems, without seeking the guidance of a licensed therapist. 
So we should recognize that and pay them their due respect….
Happy Margarita Day.
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