Sunday, August 30, 2015

Goodbye August, Hello September...

As I write this at my kitchen table I am reminded by the calendar that September is almost upon us. Where has 2015 gone? It must be true that the older you get the faster the time seems to go. It is, as of this post, only 117 days until Christmas. I write this post a little differently than my others for this blog. It will become a hodge podge of observations and thoughts of mine.

I don't think I can ever think of September again without thinking of 9-11-2001. It is burned into my memories and my association of the month which also houses the beginning of fall, and my oldest brother's birthday. I won't wax poetically or reminence about that tragic day because I am planning on doing that in my next post. When I was younger, I refuse to say "when I was young..." because that is admitting to the world that I am not young. I am young, I may be chronologically old when compared with most of the people I work with and all of the students I have and had. However, even though my age will have a five as at least one of the digits for awhile, I don't choose to act that way. Actually, the aforementioned co-workers and students will agree with that statement. I am a Disney Addict (as another blog I write testifies to) and this is usually the time that I begin planning our family's pilgrimage to Walt Disney World during our Spring Break (usually in April) however, we are planning to go in November of 2016 next time so the official planning process won't begin until after the New Year. I won't explain the planning process in this post because this blog is not necessarily a Disney blog. Just understand that the magic number is 180 days (just like a school year except continuous)

I realized that I failed to finish my "when I was younger..." thought when I began my explanation of my chronological versus my psychological age. When I was younger September felt so far away from Christmas and I can see it still does for the children I care for everyday at work and home. However, for me when we reach September I know that Christmas is just around the corner, not in the materialization manner but in the feeling manner. One thing that has changed since my younger days is the ability to hear the sounds of Christmas. In the 1970's in order to listen to Christmas music in September or earlier you had to dust off the LP's or 45's and hope you had an understanding family. Today all I have to do is tune into my iPod or my Pandora stations and pop in my earbuds and I can hear "White Christmas" "Jingle Bells" and/or any of my other favortite seasonal songs without the scratches or skips of the old records. I can even watch holiday classics on my TV through my iTunes and Apple TV.

For those of you who are still with me I am going to share how I became not a Disney Addict but a Christmas addict as well. I am a firm believer that Christmas is the celebration of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. However, I also view Christmas as a connection to my inner child. My infamous Christmas countdown began as a project at daycare which I worked at one summer. In July it is not uncommon to see Christmas in July ads at stores well at the daycare we were doing a Christmas in July unit with the school-age children and I had them figure out how many days it was until the actual Christmas on December 25th. When we figured it out we began to keep track of it each day throughout the rest of the summer (we would use sidewalk chalk and write on the slats of the playground fence) I kept it up ever since and if you have seen my Facebook page you would already know this. Christmas music year round for me started in the late 1970s, for some reason I wanted to listen to the stereo and play Christmas records, I am not sure why. Since then I have always been accused of jumping the gun on the holiday tunes. I actually do have a rule in which I will not publically play (in my classroom or on my car stereo) Christmas music between January 2-March 1. March 1 is the 300 day mark for those of you who were wondering why March 1. However, any other day is fair game especially after September 16 which marks the 100 day until Christmas mark.

Enough about me here are some events that have made history for the dates August 31-September 6...


This Week in History
August 31:
1864At the Democratic convention in Chicago, General George B. McClellan is nominated for president.
1997Diana, Princess of Wales, dies in a Paris car crash along with her companion Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul while fleeing paparazzi.
September 1:
1894By an act of Congress, Labor Day is declared a national holiday.
September 2: 
1666The Great Fire of London, which devastates the city, begins.
1789The Treasury Department, headed by Alexander Hamilton, is created in New York City.
September 3: 
1777The American flag (stars & stripes), approved by Congress on June 14th, is carried into battle for the first time by a force under General William Maxwell.
1783The Treaty of Paris is signed by Great Britain and the new United States, formally bringing the American Revolution to an end.
1838Frederick Douglass escapes slavery disguised as a sailor. He would later write The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, his memoirs about slave life.
September 4: 
1479After four years of war, Spain agrees to allow a Portuguese monopoly of trade along Africa’s west coast and Portugal acknowledges Spain’s rights in the Canary Islands.
1781Los Angeles, first an Indian village Yangma, is founded by Spanish decree.
1820Czar Alexander declares that Russian influence in North America extends as far south as Oregon and closes Alaskan waters to foreigners.
September 5:
1972"Black September," a Palestinian terrorist group take 11 Israeli athletes hostage at the Olympic Games in Munich; by midnight all hostages and all but 3 terrorists are dead.
1975President Gerald Ford evades an assassination attempt in Sacramento, California.
September 6: 
1522One of the five ships that set out in Ferdinand Magellan’s trip around the world makes it back to Spain. Only 15 of the original 265 men that set out survived. Magellan was killed by natives in the Philippines.
1901President William McKinley is shot while attending a reception at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, by 28-year-old anarchist Leon Czolgosz. McKinley dies eight days later, the third American president assassinated.
Have a wonderful week! The MAD GENIUS signing off...

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