Where’s The Maypole?
May Day Lily
It seems like it was only yesterday when this flower was just a pod. Oh yeah, it was yesterday! Well then, how fitting that this red day lily decided to open on May Day.
Dean’s Colorado Columbine
I guess
some traditional days of celebration are being pushed aside for a more
homogenized, commercialized, marginalized, mediocre series of three day
weekend celebrations that have little more meaning than, “pack everybody
in the car and go somewhere to eat, drink, recreate, and return”.
One of our resident western mockingbirds
For example; When I was a little kid living in eastern Pennsylvania, we celebrated a lot of unique ‘Days’, like Fasnacht Day, (also called Fat Tuesday ,or in French, “Mardi Gras”). I miss the German ‘fasnachts’ that my Mother used to make for us on that day.
Yellow rose on May Day
It seems that
the May Day of old, with young ladies in spring frocks, dancing around
weaving ribbons on a pole, and voting for a May Queen is no longer
fashionable in the U.S.
This could be
because May Day is also a day to honor labor. Since labor involves
unions, ...well, you can imagine how distasteful that is to the captains
of industry, so they got their paid, pet politicians to change “May
Day” to ‘Loyalty Day’.
Sporting his springtime red mating feathers
Loyalty Day
didn’t really catch on, (probably because it sounds too totalitarian),
so we are expected to simply turn a new page on the calendar and move
along.
There were May Day demonstrations throughout the world today, including some U.S. cities. As it was with the Haymarket Riot , (the event that ‘International Workers Day’ commemorates), right wing agitators disrupted some of the marches on this May Day, too.
In Washington D.C. it was a group calling themselves The White Student Union,
that instigated fighting, bottle throwing, and vandalism in an attempt
to discredit the march for workers rights in our nations capital.
Rose that survived the gusty winds
I prefer
to ponder the images of gaily dressed women dancing a choreographed
weaving of ribbons around the Maypole and crowning the May Queen. Or,
for the more pious, May 1st is also, “St. Joseph the Worker Day”.
Today’s Pet Video;
Spacebound from Spacebound on
http://vimeo.com">Vimeo
.
Plenty Of Space Left, Right?
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