farmdoc's blog post number 666

The older I get, the more I marvel at how Homo sapiens makes unfathomably complex what should be quite simple. In the US, today’s a national public holiday. My calendar calls it President’s Day. Knowing zero about it, I googled ‘president’s day wiki’. The first Wikipedia page on the search result list wasn’t President’s Day, but Washington’s Birthday. That page confirms my opening premise. And how! Washington’s Birthday is the official name of a US federal holiday celebrated on the third Monday of February. It became a federal holiday in 1885. From the 1980s it’s been commonly (and unofficially) known as Presidents Day (also spelled Presidents’ Day or President's Day). It’s the first US federal holiday to honour an American citizen. At first it was celebrated on Washington’s actual birthday, i.e. 22 February. In 1971 it was shifted to the third Monday in February by the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. Thus it’s always between February 15 and 21, and so it’s never on 22 February. In the 1968 Uniform Holidays Bill, it was renamed Presidents’ Day to honour the birthdays of both Washington (22 February) and Lincoln (12 February). But the proposal failed, and so its official name’s still ‘Washington’s Birthday’. Though seemingly its main role today is to honour all US Presidents and the presidency itself, it’s also a day when car dealers have sales. What would George made of all this? Anyway, happy 278th birthday to you.

farmdoc's blog post number 539

The capitalism paradigm intrigues me [1, 2]. Whilst I see the imputed logic of free market competition, I’m blind to how lots of competition’s rational at this time on this planet. For almost all products, our supermarket shelves boast not one or two, but several choices. That’s overkill. Inefficient and wasteful. As is just about everything society concocts for our alleged benefit. Too much. Too much. Too much. Research reveals the clear benefits of a simpler life. But society – whatever and whoever that is – exerts massive pressures on us that make simplification difficult, and complexification all but irresistible. And so it is too with Days, Weeks, Months and Years. Of the commemorative and promotional type. Aimed at raising consciousness, changing attitudes, improving behaviour. Every day, week, month and year’s a Day, Week, Month and Year of Something. They even overlap and clash. There are too many of them. Way too many. Probably this is just another instance of free market competition. But over a period of years, the primary determinant of survival in the calendar of commemoratives may not be worthiness. Did you know Mental Health Week [3, 4, 5, 6] ended yesterday? Mental health’s way up there among worthy causes. But Mental Health Week gained nary a skerrick of media attention. Why? The media – and so the public – is blasé about commemoratives. Too many. Too many. Too many. Ho hum.