St. Patrick (néeMaewyn Succat) was a 5th century Brit, abducted as a teenager as a forced laborer and trafficked as a swineherd to Ireland, where he got religion. He later escaped, went to France, and became a priest (at either Lérins Abbey or Auxerre) before returning to proselytize in Ireland. A millennium later, North America’s early Irish immigrants and their descendants began to celebrate the day of his death as a joyous holiday, which seems a wee bit ghoulish.
The party ramped up after the Potato Famine increased Irish immigration to the US in the mid 19th century. St. Patrick’s Day became a celebration of parades, corned beef and cabbage, fiddle music, soda bread, and green beer rather than the solemn saint’s day it had been in the Auld Sod, but that’s America for you. US tourists in Ireland expected a big bash on March 17th, and the host country was glad to oblige, in celebration of greenback dollars. The holiday has now gone global. Faith and begorrah!
Today is officially Washington’s Birthday (observed) according to the federal government. This date is also known as Presidents’ Day in some states, combining observance of all your favorite chief execs (Millard Fillmore?) into one holiday.
Birthday boy and first president George Washington enslaved 319 human beings in Virginia during his lifetime, but the state’s current governor, Glenn Youngkin, won’t let that be taught in the Old Dominion’s schools. Virginia’s kids will need a field trip to Mount Vernon to learn about it. President Washington also signed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, requiring authorities in free states and territories to allow slave-catchers to seize escaped refugees and transport them back into bondage.
Happy Black History Month.
More:
“George Washington, Slave Catcher,” Erica Armstrong Dunbar, New York Times
Related:
“More than 1,700 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped the nation.” Julie Zauzmer Weil, Adrian Blanco and Leo Dominguez, Washington Post
Image (“George Washington Observes Black History Month”) by Mike Licht. Download a free copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Groundhogs (aka woodchucks, whistlepigs, and marmots) are insecto-vegetarians and confirmed locavores. If you plan to plant this spring, harvest those hairy beasts now. Celebrate Groundhog Day with critter cuisine.
Happy Lunar New Year (Spring Festival). It’s the Year of the Rabbit in China, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Korea, but the Year of the Cat in Vietnam. Either way, the holday lasts until the Lantern Festival on February 5th. If that’s not enough partying for you, the Mongolian Lunar New Year is February 21st (same for Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and parts of India). It’s the Year of the Rabbit (“Water Hare”) there, too.
More:
“Lunar New Year: What to expect as we hop into the Year of the Rabbit,” Adela Suliman, Washington Post
“From Chinese to Tibetan, all the most delicious Lunar New Year dishes explained,” Eileen Cho, NBC News
“While many ring in the Year of the Rabbit, Vietnam celebrates the cat,”Suzanne Nuyen, NPR News
Top Image (“Lunar Year of the Rabbit, after Georges-Louis Leclerc”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) planned a Poor People’s Campaign for May 1968 to demand jobs, unemployment insurance, a fair minimum wage, affordable housing, and education for poor adults and children, an Economic Bill of Rights. The effort was to involve poor people of all races from all parts of the country, urban and rural, but the historical roots of racial economic disparity could not be ignored:
“At the very same time that America refused to give the Negro any land, through an act of Congress our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest, which meant that it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor.
But not only did they give the land, they built land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm. Not only that, they provided county agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farms.
Not only that, today many of these people are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm, and they are the very people telling the black man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” delivered at the National Cathedral, Washington DC on March 31, 1968 (full text here).
Related:
“Four ways Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to battle inequality,” Ned Resnikoff, MSNBC
“MLK called out income inequality,” James C. Harrington, Houston Chronicle
“American Dream Deferred: Wealth of Richest 400 Equals that of Nation’s 44 Million African Americans,” David Harris-Gershon,Tikkun Daily
“For women, economic justice a civil rights issue,” Maya L. Harris,CNN
“Martin Luther King’s Case for a Guaranteed Basic Income,” Matthew Yglesias, Slate
“Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Solution to Poverty,” Jordan Weissmann, The Atlantic
“Martin Luther King Jr. Celebrations Overlook His Critiques of Capitalism and Militarism,” Zaid Jilani, The Intercept
“How the 1% profit off of racial economic inequality,” Dedrick Asante-Muhammad and Chuck Collins, Guardian
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