Oddball Holidays
This is a big week if you’re a accumulator of esoteric knowledge like me. Monday, of course, was Flag Day. I always liked Flag Day. Never quite understood the point but enjoyed it nonetheless. Turns out it’s the anniversary of the adoption of the Stars and Stripes as our national ensign in 1777.
Today is Bloomsday. That means absolutely nothing to anyone who doesn’t know something about James Joyce and probably still means nothing to many who have actually read Ulysses. I’m reading through the book now and I think this may be one of those instances where something is so deeply obscure that the self-appointed intelligentsia can’t bring themselves to admit it makes no sense and is incomprehensible so they instead enshrine it as genius. Like I said, I’m just thinking. I’ll reserve judgement until after I’ve read the book.
In any case, this is the 100th anniversary of the day Joyce met his wife and the character, Leopold Bloom, took a walk through Dublin. My favorite is the other main character, Stephen Dedalus, who spends his day wandering aimlessly and getting drunk. Suits me. I’d say a pint of Guinness is in my future this evening.
Finally, Saturday is Juneteenth, the anniversary of freedom for slaves in Galveston, TX. Why it took until June 19, 1865 for Federal troops to enter Galveston and inform the local slaves that they had been technically free since January 1, 1863 I don’t know but I’ll chalk it up to the war.
Ah, esoterica. Thou life-defining harlot.
June 17th, 2004 at 10:56 PM
FlAG DAY MAY HAVE SIGNIFIGANCE AS Aunt Lindsey’s birthday 48 same as the number of stars on the flag as when she entered this Union
point of interest did you see that the LAST surviving Civil War widow just recently passed Alberta Martin 97 married a Confederate in 1927 who was 81 at the time
Maybe it was for his $50 a month pension?
After he died in 1931, she upped and married his grandson! NO, it was not as we all would suspect, they were not from VA, but in fact that land of cousins , Alabama
TIME 6/14/04
Take care of yourself
Uncle Pete
June 21st, 2004 at 11:06 AM
Interestingly enough, I met Miss Martin – along with two of the three surviving widows of Union soldiers – when we buried the remains of a soldier found on Seminary Ridge a few years back.
She was a feisty southerner even at her age.
As a sidenote, the caisson used to bear those remains to the National Cemetary is the same caisson used the other week to bear Ronald Reagan’s remains to the Capitol.
-bp