Penultimate, penultimate, penultimate. That means second-to-last. What a great word. We should have words that identify third-to-last all the way to tenth-to-last. This is the penultimate holidays column. What a ride it has been. Anyway, let’s rank holidays. Honorable Mentions: Daylight Savings – March 12 Don’t forget to spring forward! And call your congressperson to […]
Only two more of this series for me. Seems like just yesterday I started writing about May holidays, and now it’s February. Time flies. 5. Plum Pudding Day – February 12 Plum pudding – made famous by its alter ego, figgy pudding, from “We Wish You A Merry Christmas,” (which, on that topic, is a […]
I’ve always thought that the holidays of the year were poorly distributed. Why do we stack all the major ones (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, etc.) at the end, and leave pretty much the whole first half of the year barren? It just doesn’t make any sense. Presidents’ Day Weekend can’t possibly support all of our mental […]
It’s the holiday season, they say. Well for me, it’s always holiday season – holiday ranking season, that is. Let’s do this. 5. Monday, December 12: International Day of Neutrality I’m sick of neutrality. Pick a side, you darn fencesitter! Well in this case, neutrality is a good thing. The International Day of Neutrality was […]
In 2006, Raymond Two-Hawks Watson’s grandma passed away. She had raised him in PVD and been his principal connection to his Narragansett Indian heritage. Before that, Watson says, he was just tenuously connected to his Indigenous culture, attending an occasional powwow on special days; after her passing, he decided to take his grandma’s example more […]
PAWTUCKET, RI: The City of Pawtucket’s latest effort to reallocate greenspace in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Pawtucket to the Oak Hill neighborhood has found some obstacles. Over the past several months, the Pawtucket City Council and mayoral administration has worked to allow for the expanded footprint of the Blackstone Distribution Center, a trucking center planned […]
There were so many holidays in November worth ranking, I had to combine some. Here we go. 6. Veterans Day, Nov. 11 Remember: Memorial Day is the one where we remember the deceased, and this one is for thanking veterans who are still around. And if you don’t know a veteran, a lot of you […]
I’m not gonna lie, October is a solid month, especially here in RI. The leaves start changing, the go-go-go energy of summer fades away and people get a little more pensive and reflective (hopefully not too reflective, though — stave off the depression at least until December). In a sense, the more temperate weather brings […]
I can’t believe it’s September already, folks. We won. We beat the heat, and the beach traffic, and we arrived at the promised land: fall in New England. Now we can get ready for leaf peeping, the only sort of peeping that is generally accepted by society. When I was first called to this holiday-ranking […]
Folks, it is HOT. I’m writing this in the middle of a stinkin’ heat wave. There are times I wish my apartment wasn’t built before the Great Depression, and this is one of them. Central air really was a great idea. As now you’ve come to expect, I’m here to serve up some more HOT […]