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Mayday, Mayday! — 6 Comments

  1. My grandmother told me that it was traditional on May Day, when she was a little girl in the early 1900s, to make May Baskets — pretty little beribboned baskets full of spring flowers — and hang them on the doors of friends and family. After hearing about it, I tried to do it myself one year but, as a not especially crafty or skillful child, in a climate where not all that much is blooming yet in early May, didn’t get very far. I didn’t realize that I should have employed my brothers to do the hard part of finding the flowers. Here’s Louisa May Alcott in “Jack and Jill” on the subject:

    “Spring was late that year, but to Jill it seemed the loveliest she had ever known, for hope was growing green and strong in her own little heart, and all the world looked beautiful. . . . The job now in hand was May baskets, for it was the custom of the children to hang them on the doors of their friends the night before May-day; and the girls had agreed to supply baskets if the boys would hunt for flowers, much the harder task of the two. Jill had more leisure as well as taste and skill than the other girls, so she amused herself with making a goodly store of pretty baskets of all shapes, sizes, and colors, quite confident that they would be filled, though not a flower had shown its head except a few hardy dandelions, and here and there a small cluster of saxifrage.”

    It appears there are places where the tradition still lives: http://journalstar.com/news/local/may-basket-tradition-lives-on—-in-memories/article_e876dafd-ccf7-5a1e-b96b-8b25a8921150.html

  2. I was near Ground Zero a few hours after the towers collapsed and found myself in conversation with total strangers as we surveyed the new skyline of lower Manhattan. An older man nodded towards the Woolworth Building and said, “That’s a view that no one’s seen in 40 years!”. Meaning the Woolworth viewed against the western sky rather than the Twin Towers.

  3. I’m not sure, but the Woolworth building looks a lot like the building in the climax of Ghostbusters. Anyone know whether it is?

  4. Hangtown – nope
    but they do have a great tiffany stained glass ceiling you cant see any more as visitors are not allowed in the lobby… (its in the back by the stair case)

    May Day coincides with International Workers’ Day, and in many countries that celebrate the latter, it may be referred to as “May Day”. Dances, singing and cake are usually part of the celebrations that the day includes

    International Workers’ Day (also known as May Day) is a celebration of laborers and the working classes that is promoted by the international labor movement and occurs on May 1 every year.

    In the United States, efforts to switch Labor Day from September to May 1 have not been successful.

    In 1921, following the Russian Revolution of 1917, May 1 was promoted as “Americanization Day” by the Veterans of Foreign Wars and other groups in opposition to communism.

    It became an annual event, sometimes featuring large rallies. In 1949, Americanization Day was renamed to Loyalty Day. In 1958, the U.S. Congress declared Loyalty Day, the U.S. recognition of May 1, a national holiday; that same year, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 Law Day as well.

    so we lost a national holiday that protested communism…
    [edited for length by n-n]

  5. Chapter IX
    The Surprise
    this is the surprise of the enemy. It lies more or less at the foundation of all undertakings, for without it the preponderance at the decisive point is not properly conceivable.

    meaning that the general state of disbelieve in what is going to happen is a necessity of what is going to happen. its a pre-requisite…

    that is. IF your mind is of such that it will happen, you prevent it from happening as you wont be surprised…

    but IF you take on the current idea of it not happening, that is precisely what is required as a precondition to work towards making it happen!!!!!!!

    so, if you refuse to discuss it, lay it out, and see whats going on, your complicit, and assisting the other in attacking!

    The surprise is, therefore, the medium to numerical superiority; but it is besides that also to be regarded as a substantive principle in itself, on account of its moral effect.

    When it is successful in a high degree, confusion and broken courage in the enemy’s ranks are the consequences; and of the degree to which these multiply a success, there are examples enough, great and small.

    yes.. the minute the real war breaks out, and the imposition of war time stuff happens, what will happen in the street? the economy? the food supplies? crime?
    [edited for length]

  6. I never realized the significance of May 1, until one year I flew on May 1 to Bolivia for my work. I was surprised to find out that Bolivia had shut down for the holiday.

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