Tag: holidays

Memorable Monday III: Memorial Day 2019

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It’s Memorial Day 2020!  We’re still in The Age of The Virus, but even Blue Staters in Maryland are hitting the beaches.  People have had enough of sitting around in fear.  It’s summertime, baby!

It’s fitting that the day when Americans remember those who gave their lives for our freedom, we’re going out in droves to enjoy it.  I don’t wish The Virus on anyone, and prudence is warranted, but it’s time to get on with our lives.

I’m spending time with family, then am going to take in some of our great State on a leisurely drive home.  There’s not much time for fresh material, so today I’m looking back to last year’s Memorial Day tribute.

Here is 2019’s “Memorial Day 2019“:

It’s Memorial Day here in the United States, which marks the unofficial start of summer.  More importantly, Memorial Day is a federal holiday set aside to remember veterans who have fallen in combat.  The United States observes two other days dedicated to veterans:  Armed Services Day, which honors those men and women currently serving in the armed services; and Veterans’ Day, which honors all American servicemen and women, living, dead, retired, active, etc.

We often hear encomiums this time of year about the numbers of men and women who have died to preserve our freedoms.  These tributes are, of course, true (and, one hopes, heartfelt), and are worth reiterating.

I end every year of my American history courses urging my students to remember how precious their patrimony is, and that liberty is a fragile thing that must be preserved.  I, too, mention the “men and women who gave their lives so that we might be free.”  I then follow that up with noting that, while they hear that sentiment expressed often, they now know (having completed a year of American history) how true it is.

Nevertheless, it’s easy to forget the magnitude of that sacrifice.  In an age where wars are so distant and remote they barely register for us anymore (remember:  we’re still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan), it’s easy to take our soldiers for granted.  It’s easier, still, to forget the sheer number of combat deaths—750,000 in the American Civil War alone.

To that end, I’ve elected to spare you any further pontificating, and present instead this Wikipedia entry on “United States military casualties of war,” which breaks down the numbers succinctly.  Yet even dry statistics and bar charts speak volumes.

God Bless America!

–TPP

Lazy Sunday LXIII: Holidays

The Portly Politico8 Comments

It’s Memorial Day Weekend, which means no one is reading self-indulgent posts on third-rate blogs.  While a good chunk of the country is still shut down, lots of the the sensible parts are opening up again.  People aren’t going to let The Virus ruin the official opening weekend of summer.

Since it’s a fun holiday weekend, let’s look back at some holiday-themed posts (note—instead of posting these in chronological order by publication date, I’m placing them in order based on when the calendar would appear in a calendar year):

  • “Phone it in Friday VI: Valentine’s Day” – I didn’t write very much about love or romance in this post, though I was “dreaming of Tulsi Gabbard donning a MAGA hat.”  I also linked to photog’s blog post about matchmaking, which features a detailed rundown of the horrors of modern dating in the comments.
  • “He is Risen!” (and “TBT: He is Risen!“) – A short post about Easter, the most important date on the Christian calendar (with Christmas a close second).  The original post details some of the sobering statistics about religion in decline, but it was heartening to see that 2/3rds of Americans in 2019 believed that Jesus rose from the dead.
  • “Happy Halloween!” – Big surprise—I love Halloween.  This post details why, and includes pictures of my jaunty l’il Jack O’Lantern.
  • “Thanksgiving Week!” – There sure are a lot of exclamation points in these titles.  This post isn’t about Thanksgiving, per se, but more about the nature of the school calendar that ceded the Wednesday before Thanksgiving as another day to the holiday.  I also offer up some reflections on the limits of logic, especially of following ideas to their absurd conclusions.  Practicality plays a role on putting the brakes on some ideas.
  • “Christmas and its Symbols” – This post features lots of French horns, as well as a Daily Encouraging Word devotional about the symbolism of Christmas.  I go after atheists, too, which is always fun.

Enjoy barbecuing and being normal again with your friends and family this weekend!  ‘Tis the season.

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

The Joy of Spring

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Seasons in South Carolina are not the stately procession of one phase of life from one to another, with flowers poking through snow, or a crisp autumnal chill sneaking into the night air in late September.  Instead, it’s as hot on Halloween as it is on the Fourth of July (well, maybe just a tad cooler, but you’d never know from the humidity).  I often joke with out-of-Staters that we get about two weeks of spring and two weeks of fall, with about nine months of summer and two months of winter—and even the winter is interspersed with some summery days.

This year, South Carolina has been blessed with an unusually long and mild spring.  It’s 11 May, and I’m still wearing sweatshirts in the mornings.  We had a brief foretaste of the long summer a couple of nights last week, when the cloying thickness of summertime humidity hung menacingly in the air—the threat of summer’s oppression.  But God has seen fit to grant us at least a few more days of mild springtime.

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Spring Break Short Story Recommendations, Part I: “The Judge’s House”

The Portly Politico5 Comments

One of the perks of teaching is all the time we get off.  For my money, it’s not the long summer break that is the best—usually because I spend my summers working—but Christmas Break, which stretches on for two stately weeks.  It’s the ideal amount of time to decompress after the long Fall semester.

Next to that, however, is Spring Break, which at my little school lasts for a gloriously overstuffed eleven days, if you include the weekends (it’s seven workdays in total).  I still contend that Easter should get its full due and, a la a Southern European and/or Latin American country, get a full two weeks.

Nevertheless, the time off gives me a bit more time to relax and reflect (although I’ve been promised quite a few chores from my parents, who I am visiting for a bit)—and to read.  When it comes to books, I have the same issue as I do at buffets:  my eyes are bigger than my stomach (or, in this case, my capacity to read everything).  I always bring too many books with me on any trip, and am lucky to crack even one of them.  I also overindulge in written junk food, like reading various articles and blog posts online.

Further, my parents’ house, like my own, is full of books.  So I often find myself thumbing through their collection while neglecting my own Babel-esque stack of half-read tomes.

Such has been the case this Spring Break.  My own stack of reading sits forlornly to my right, probably feeling (if books can feel) a tad unnecessary.  Instead, I’ve been reading through a short story collection, 11 Great Horror Stories, edited by Betty M. Owen.  It’s a collection my mother picked up from a Scholastic book sale when she was still in school (this particular printing, the fourth, was published in March 1970, though the original copyright date is 1969), and it’s held up remarkably well for a paperback.

The collection itself is not all that horrific.  Several of the stories are only tangentially related, at best, to the horror genre; some of them, like Poe’s “The Oblong Box,” are more properly mysteries.  The collection does open with H.P. Lovecraft’s magisterial “The Dunwich Horror,” which is a must-read, although I skipped over it on this reading because it’s nearly sixty-five pages long.

For a detailed synopsis of all eleven stories, GoodReads.com reviewer Williwaw has written an excellent and useful summary of the collection, without giving away any of the fun and macabre twists.

For our purposes today, I’m recommending one of the better stories from the collection, Bram Stoker‘s (of Dracula fame) “The Judge’s House,” first published 5 December 1891.

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Lazy Sunday LVII: Christianity, Part II

The Portly Politico16 Comments

A Special Easter Notice:  Pick up my latest release, The Lo-Fi Hymnal, for just $4 (or name your own price).

Way back on 17 March 2019, on just the fourth ever Lazy Sunday, the theme was “Christianity.”  I’ve written quite a bit about the One True Faith over the past year, but I haven’t made it another feature of Lazy Sunday since then.

Well, today is Easter, so it’s time to dust off the Christological archives and look at some more Christianity-related posts:

  • “He is Risen!” (and “TBT: He is Risen!“) – Any Easter compilation has to include this post (and its TBT reblog), a simple celebration of the Resurrection.  This one will become a perennial reblog, I’m sure, as long as I keep this self-indulgent blog going.
  • “The God Pill” (and “TBT: The God Pill“); “The God Pill, Part II“; “The God Pill, Part III” – These posts would make a really good Lazy Sunday (like “Lazy Sunday XXXIV – The Desperate Search for Meaning Series“), and out of increasing desperation to cobble together compilations, I’ll likely do it one week, with greater detail about each individual post.  Suffice it to say, though, that these essays reflect on the remarkable conversion of Roosh V to Christianity.  Roosh gave up his life of meaningless romantic trysts—and lucrative book sales—for Jesus.  Pretty amazing stuff.
  • “The Joy of Hymnals” (and “The Lo-Fi Hymnal“) – I’ve been linking to this post more lately as I’m shamelessly turning My Father’s Blog into a den of thieves, promoting my hastily-compiled release The Lo-Fi Hymnal (just $4!).  But I also sincerely enjoy playing hymns at church; it’s one of the things I most miss about The Age of The Virus.  My tentative plan was to record some more cellphone hymns on my parents’ old upright piano, but the key bed is so gummy from lack of maintenance, half of the keys aren’t playable (sorry for calling you out, Mom).

That’s it for today.  Happy Easter!  He is Risen!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Easter Weekend

The Portly Politico1 Comment

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

It’s Easter Weekend 2020!  As I wrote on Wednesday, it doesn’t feel like Easter.  It will definitely be weird not waking up, getting all dressed up, and going to service at a packed church tomorrow morning.  Of course, many faithful Americans are planning on doing that, even in defiance of various States’ shutdown orders—more power to ’em!  No State can constitutionally shutdown religious services.  Naturally, you can elect not to attend—probably advisable.

That’s a point that people often miss about the Constitution.  There are tons of activities and laws that are constitutionally admissible—really, our entire legal system is built on the premise of “ask forgiveness, not permission,” as nothing is considered illegal unless explicitly forbidden (that’s the very simple explanation, anyway)—but that doesn’t mean every constitutional action is also a smart one.  The late Justice Antonin Scalia quipped that he wished he’d had a giant rubber stamp that read, “Stupid, but Constitutional.”

But I digress.  In the wake of this decidedly un-Eastery Easter, I thought I’d write a bit about my family has been celebrating in lieu of the traditional observance.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

The Lo-Fi Hymnal

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Pick up my latest release, The Lo-Fi Hymnal, for just $4 (or name your own price).

Last October, I wrote a piece call “The Joy of Hymnals,” in which I waxed rhapsodic about, well, the joy of playing hymns!  They are fun, singable, and challenging, but not so difficult that they can’t be figured out with some judicious plunking at the keys.

Sometime earlier this year, I began making very short recordings of myself playing hymns on the piano at church, mainly during offertory or the invitational—or occasionally during what I call the “walk-off,” the time when the choir members walk back to their seats—as I can usually get through one verse and chorus without (too many) mistakes.  These were mainly to send to friends (you’d also be surprised how much Christian girls like a man who plays piano at church) and for my own edification.

It occurred to me that, albeit the qualities of the recordings were fairly low, I could package them together into a short little EP release.  So I set about compiling my meager collection of four cellphone recordings into The Lo-Fi Hymnal.

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TBT: He is Risen!

The Portly Politico4 Comments

A Special Easter Notice:  Pick up my latest release, The Lo-Fi Hymnal, for just $4 (or name your own price).

Happy Maundy Thursday!  As I noted yesterday, it sure doesn’t feel like Easter right now.  That said, our present difficulties pale in comparison to the overwhelming sacrifice Christ made for us—and we didn’t deserve it at all.

The late Reverend Pete Cooper, who was once the ornery, cantankerous, and thoroughly lovable chaplain of my little private school, once made the point that Christ’s Crucifixion wasn’t merely excruciating in a physical sense.  In that moment, He took upon Him the weight of every sin ever committed, before or since.  Whoa—talk about a sobering realization.

Imagine—as impossible as it is—being completely without sin, and then assuming ALL of it—undeservedly.  It’s the greatest act in all of history.

So, let’s not let The Virus get us down.  Christ endured far worse.  Humanity has endured far worse, for that matter.  But we can be secure in our knowledge that our Savior watches over us, and is always with us.

Here is East 2019’s “He is Risen!“

Happy Easter to everyone!  Today’s post is another short one for this important holiday weekend (it also marks sixteen weeks of daily posts—shew!).

Jesus Christ died for our sins around 2000 years ago, and was resurrected three days later.  Today, Christians all over the world celebrate His death and resurrection, and eagerly await His eventual return.

According to Scott Rasmussen, 74% of Americans will celebrate Easter today, but only 40% of Americans will attend church (but, hey, that’s better than nothing).  He also writes that 67% of Americans believe Jesus Christ arose from the dead—one of the more heartening statistics I’ve read in awhile, considering Pat Buchanan’s recent piece about our declining public morality.

This Easter, I’m praying for national and spiritual renewal for America and the West.  Part of that is the need for revival across our nation.

Enjoy a day of fellowship and family.  And if you have time, check out my old “Lazy Sunday” compilation of pieces about Christianity.

Happy Easter!

–-TPP

Lazy Sunday LI: Just for Fun

The Portly Politico22 Comments

I got back from my trip to Universal Studios just a few hours ago, so I’m slamming out this week’s Lazy Sunday before midnight so as to appease the WordPress Counter.  In the spirit of the fun-filled trip, here are some fun blog posts:

  • “Happy Halloween” – Boy, I sure do love Halloween.  It’s even more exciting that it will fall on a Saturday this year.  What’s more fun than carving pumpkins, dressing up in weird outfits, and eating lots of candy?
  • “The Joy of Autumn” – Speaking of Halloween, the whole autumnal feel—sweaters, crisp cool nights, college football, staying indoors—is inspiring and reassuring.  I find the coolness intellectually enlivening, and it’s a welcome break from South Carolina’s oppressive summers.  It’s still hot on Halloween here most years (and, I have found, oppressively muggy), but it’s not too far from the crisp cool nights.
  • “Joy to the World” – One of several posts I wrote about Christmas carols, “Joy to the World” is one of my favorite Christmas tunes.  One plan for this summer is to expand my Christmas carol posts into a short eBook, hopefully to be available this fall.
  • “Dawn of a Decade” – On the subject of long-term plans, this post kicked off 2020, spelling out my plans for the blog.  Talk about a rapidly-advancing year!  It’s already March 1st, and the year continues to zip along.

Well, that’s it for a hasty installment of Lazy Sunday.  Here’s hoping you have a fun week!

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

TBT: Brack Friday Bunduru: Workers Need a Break

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I’m on vacation this week, burning through my precious personal days in order to spend some time in Florida with the family.  Normally, I wouldn’t feature such a recent post for TBT (I try to do posts that are at least six months old), but when going through my archives for vacation-themed posts, this was the closest fit I could find… even if it’s not Thanksgiving.

Regardless, I increasingly believe that workers need time off.  I understand the economics of time off—it’s only possible with a great degree of efficiency and wealth—so I’m not unrealistic about it.  It just seems that people should be able to take off Christmas and a few other key days.  Just as folks will “unplug” from social media for twenty-four hours, shouldn’t we be able to escape work, even for a day?

Speaking of social media, it does seem that cell phones and e-mail have made it impossible to escape work.  I have never worked a job that truly stopped at 5 PM.  That’s likely true for most Americans.  The ability to be connected constantly means that people expect you to be available constantly—there’s never truly a moment that I feel at rest.

Perhaps that’s a person problem, and my pathetic generation is particularly anxious and afraid of a ringing phone, but Lord knows I hate getting a call during my free time, limited as it is.  There’s always the fear that it’s going to be some tedious, work-related issue.  Such issues always seem to pop up right before, or even during, a break.

Oh, well.  I can’t complain—or, at least, I shouldn’t.  Work is a blessing.  But like all good things, you can have too much of it.

With that, here’s “Brack Friday Bunduru: Workers Need a Break“:

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and Christmas‘s time—an ever-expanding season that stretches into September—has finally arrived.  Today is Black Friday, the consumerist threshold that formally inaugurates the Christmas (shopping) season.

Black Friday, much like the holiday season it ushers in, has slowly stretched beyond its one-day window.  First, the expansion went into Small Business Saturday, then Cyber Monday.  Next came Giving Tuesday—a bit of charitable giving to close out the mad dash for savings.  Once you’ve spent all of your money in big box stores on Friday, at the dying mom and pop joint in your town, and everything else on Amazon on Monday, whatever is left goes to the United Way.

Now Black Friday even bleeds into Thanksgiving Day itself.  Doorbuster sales with lines forming up at 2 AM on Black Friday is spectacle enough; now, stores opening Thanksgiving afternoon or evening try to squeeze more revenue from zealous shoppers.

As a schoolteacher, I’m spoiled:  with the exception of two years of my life, I’ve been involved in education in some way, which means I’ve always gotten a glorious Thanksgiving holiday.  It rankles me, though, when service folks are denied even one day to relax and spend with their families (until I need to buy something at 8 PM on a Thursday, and that Thursday turns out to be Thanksgiving).

“They should get a better job, Portly.”  Okay, sure, a perk of teaching, for example, is all the crazy days off; a perk of a professional job is to vacation or flex-time.  Federal employees have to work on Black Friday, but they get every second- and third-tier holiday on the calendar as a paid vacation day, so I don’t feel much sympathy for them (plus, they work for the federal government).

But even taco jockeys and the weird, pushy old gay sales clerk at Macy’s need a day off to spend with their families (or, in the case of the weird old gay guy at Macy’s—an actual person I have in mind—his little lapdog, Snickers—that part is pure speculation on my part).  There will always be those who want to work on Thanksgiving for that sweet golden time, of course, but wouldn’t it be worth it to shut everything down for a day or two?

Yes, if you work in retail, you’re going to work Black Friday.  All the more reason—before clocking in for a twelve-plus-hour shift—to have the day of Thanksgiving completely off.  Gotta have time to sleep off that turkey and dressing, at the very least.

Christmas is another one where I often forget—cozy in my cosseted bubble of quasi-academia—that most people work the day before and/or after Christmas.  The idea of working the day after Christmas seems like a death sentence, but that’s not as bad as working on Christmas itself.  Whatever Ebeneezer Scrooge is forcing his employees to work on Christmas Day should probably be imprisoned.

The folks in Medieval Europe had the right idea—dozens of feast days to celebrate this or that minor saint or hero.  They probably went too far in the other direction, going overboard with merriment.  I’m sure there’s a happy medium.

Today, we modern Americans work our fingers to the bone.  That’s one reason we’re great, and I’m a firm believer in hard work.  All the more reason, then, to take a day or two during this time of year to slow down and relax a bit.  We hustle and bustle through the Christmas season with such rapidity and motion, we don’t take the time to savor it.

Shutting down everything but essential services—God Bless police officers and emergency medical personnel for being there on Christmas and Thanksgiving—would be an admirable goal for at least Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, as well as Thanksgiving.  Open your store up at 12:00 AM on Black Friday if you want, but don’t make your employees come in until right at that moment.

These are just some stream-of-consciousness thoughts I’ve had as I’m wrestling with questions about the proper balance between work and life.  But hard workers could use a little downtime with their families during the Christmas season.