Tag Archives: holiday

Happy Native American Day!

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September 28 is an official holiday in the state of California – Native American Day. Established in 1998, it is celebrated in our schools and government offices, but mostly ignored everywhere else. Only a few states (South Dakota, Tennessee) have a similar holiday, and there is no Federal recognition.

That’s really sad – we should have a nationally recognized day to celebrate Native Americans.

If you live in California there are some festivities to enjoy. San Diego is hosting a series of events, here is one:

Running Grunion storytelling

Abel Silvas will combine comedy, storytelling and mime, offering an interpretation of Native American history and culture from past to present.

And just outside Los Angeles:

To experience the distinctive cultures of California Indian people firsthand, we invite you to attend a free public celebration, featuring traditional Native American bird songs, music, art, and food.

Finally, in Sacramento Valerie Taliman will receive the Native American Women in Leadership Award:

An award-winning journalist, Taliman received the Richard LaCourse Award from the Native American Journalists Association last year for her groundbreaking investigative series on missing and murdered First Nations women. She continues to highlight violence against women and the racism inherent in violence against Native families. in her articles for ICTMN.

 

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Legoland shuts down for day – time for some cleaning (in pictures)

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Every year Legoland gets dirty and it has to shut down for some toothbrush scrubbing. Getting all that grime off those blocks isn’t easy, but neither is dusting the top of the House of Parliament. And while it’s quiet we might as well trim the hedges.

For more pictures – The Guardian

 

source: The Guardian

 

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Seaside living – “doesn’t anybody around here work?”

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As a coastal resident I found this piece humorous and apropos:

 

Seaside living and the illusion of leisure

…in short, we work. This is the dirty little secret of seaside living. Everyone around us may be on vacation, but that doesn’t mean we get a holiday. People move here imagining that life is just one long afternoon under a beach umbrella. They stop for lunch and look out onto our sidewalks and think, “Don’t people here need to earn a living?”

Yes, we do. Those window-shoppers? Other tourists.

 

This rings even more true for me since I work from home. I set my schedule around the crowds and that means I tend to work on Friday nights and all weekend long. I have my fun on a Tuesday afternoon and run errands at 10am on a Wednesday.

It beats the hustle and bustle, but also prompts the question, “Don’t you work?”

 

 

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July 1 is the national day of Canada – Happy Canada Day!

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Canada Day is the national day of Canada, a federal statutory holiday celebrating the anniversary of the July 1, 1867, enactment of the British North America Act, 1867 (today called the Constitution Act, 1867, in Canada), which united three colonies into a single country called Canada within the British Empire.

Frequently referred to as “Canada’s birthday”, particularly in the popular press, the occasion marks the joining of the British North American colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Province of Canada into a federation of four provinces (the Province of Canada being divided, in the process, into Ontario and Quebec) on July 1, 1867. Canada became a kingdom in its own right on that date, but the British Parliament kept limited rights of political control over the new country that were shed by stages over the years until the last vestiges were surrendered in 1982 when the Constitution Act patriated the Canadian constitution.

Most communities across the country will host organized celebrations for Canada Day, usually outdoor public events, such as parades, carnivals, festivals, barbecues, air and maritime shows, fireworks, and free musical concerts, as well as citizenship ceremonies for new citizens.

Via – Wikipedia

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Pixar’s newest movie – Día de los Muertos

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Pixar’s “Toy Story 3″ is the highest-grossing movie of all time in Mexico, where the animated adventure tale collected $59 million at the box office in 2010.

The follow-up from “Toy Story 3″ director Lee Unkrich and producer Darla K. Anderson is also likely to have strong appeal with Mexican audiences — and to boast more authentically Latino characters than a Spanish-speaking Buzz Lightyear doll.

The duo’s next movie is a still-untitled project about Día de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday of the dead, which Disney and Pixar first announced at CinemaCon last month.

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On the Day of the Dead, which has its roots in indigenous Aztec culture, families in Mexico and many Latin American countries pay tribute to deceased loved ones by creating graveside altars with treats like candy and bottles of Coca-Cola, and donning elaborate skull masks and costumes for processionals.

“This is a very different view of death than the American one,” said Unkrich. “It’s not spooky. It’s celebratory.”

via The Envelope

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Why is Cinco De Mayo not celebrated in Mexico, only the U.S.?

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UCLA professor David Hayes-Bautista stumbled upon the answer to a question that for years had puzzled scholars and amateur historians alike:

Why is Cinco de Mayo so widely celebrated in California and the United States, when it is scarcely observed in Mexico?

As Hayes-Bautista explains in “El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition,” his new book on the origins of the holiday, Cinco de Mayo isn’t Mexican at all.

Rather, it is an American holiday, rooted in the Civil War and commemorated today because a network of Latino groups in California known as the juntas patrióticas mejicanas (Mexican patriotic assemblies) deliberately created a public memory of it.

“We have had a lot of conjecture, a lot of guessing, but no one actually really knew,” he said. “Now we know why it’s celebrated.”

 

Keep reading – to learn how France invaded Mexico, for slavery and the Confederacy, only to be defeated on May 5, 1862.

Or, listen to Professor Hayes-Bautista explain it himself:

Spanish version of the talk