Take one look at the tone of all of the political commercials broadcast in the past month during local and state primaries, and you’d easily think that we’re a country torn apart by petty bickering.
Yet a new poll says that nearly a third of Americans describe themselves as “extremely patriotic,” a number that’s actually on the rise.

Even an important holiday like Memorial Day can still expose ridiculous political double standards.
President Obama, as you have likely heard by now, isn’t holding the traditional Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. Instead, he has passed that responsibility on to Vice President Joe Biden, and Obama is in Chicago with hism family.
Obama will be honoring vets at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois, but that’s not good enough for many vets (and, naturally, many Republicans).

This morning at church, most of us in the congregation learned that one of our families suffered a terrible loss: this morning, one of our older members, a mother and grandmother, passed away after several years of illness.

It started with an idea from a mom: a day designed to honor one’s mother. This particular mom’s daughter, Anna Jarvis, of Grafton, West Virginia, proposed the day in 1908.
Ironically, by the time her idea became reality, she’d grow to regret it.

I’d been a little absent here at the blog over the past few days, which isn’t normally my style. In fact, I try to post at least one, and ideally two posts per day just to keep the content fresh.
But I had a really good excuse.

If you saw first thing this morning the news that search engine giant Google had renamed itself Topeka and the timing of the announcement didn’t speak volumes to you right away, you probably deserved a little ribbing from co-workers around the water cooler.
If, by now, the significance of the announcement happening on this particular day still hasn’t dawned on you, you deserve someone slapping you upside the head.

The April 1st tradition of prank playing and joke telling sometimes leads to awkward moments when real bad news happens and no one believes it because of the day itself.  And believe it or not, people have actually lost their lives because of not heeding warnings they assumed to be nothing more than typical April Fools’ pranks.

One might think so when one considers the annual celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. At least, the way we do it.
The first organized celebration of St. Patrick’s Day in America dates back to Boston — not a surprise there! — in 1737. The first parade to mark the day happened twenty-five years later in the Big Apple.
Organized St. Patrick’s Day celebrations along the lines of what we do here only started in Ireland in 1996, when the annual St. Patrick’s Day festival kicked off.
So what gives? 

Though the actual day doesn’t hit until Wednesday, this is the day many will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, and by “celebrate,” I mean, “get drunk out of their mind with no regard for anything Irish or the significance of St. Patrick himself.”
I’m not a huge fan of beer, green or otherwise. Recently I had dinner with a friend of mine here in Charleston, and we dined at a restaurant that has its own microbrewery. I ordered one of their lighter concoctions, and it actually wasn’t bad at all. …

I decided to temporarily redecorate the blog in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. It’ll go back to its normal garnet after the 17th, but I don’t think the green looks all that bad if I do say so myself.
When your first name is Patrick, it’s hard to ignore St. Patrick’s Day. It’s just sort of expected that you’re Irish and that you must be an enthusiast of green beer and shamrocks.

A few notes to interested parties:
To 2010:  Welcome.  You have been long-awaited, and I can only hope you do a better job than your predecessor.  A lot of us are downtrodden; don’t take it personally.  It’s not that we’re happy to see you.  It’s just that we feel a little beaten up and burnt out.  (Some of us are far more so than I can imagine being.)  Treat us kindly, please.
To 2009:  You sucked.  You really, really sucked.  Not that you didn’t have some special, even really good moments, like …

For those of you who celebrate Kwanzaa, the first candle in the kinara will be lit this evening.
Kwanzaa is a cultural celebration rather than a religious one, invented in the 1960s by a California college professor and social activist.  Kwanzaa was designed as a way for blacks to reconnect with and celebrate their history and culture.
Each night between December 26 and January 1, a candle is lit on a seven-slotted kinara, to commemorate the  Nguzo Saba, the seven guiding principles:  Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity …