Looking at my calendar, I realize that March has many interesting dates. A true hi-lite
is the 9TH , on that Sunday we will adjust our clocks marking the beginning of Daylight Saving Time. This will give everyone an extra hour to be out in our gardens, whoopee !
This is also a traditional reminder to change any batteries in our smoke alarms.
The planet Uranus was discovered on the 13TH, 1781, by British astronomer William Herschel. The planet was named after the mythological god of the skies, but lets put Uranus behind us and move on .
On the 15TH Julius Caesar ignored the warnings of his fortune tellers to stay in bed during the ides of March. In public he taunted them “The ides of March are come”, but they retorted “Ay Caesar, but not gone”; foretelling of,perhaps, the three most memorable words in Shakespearean literature….”Et tu, Brute?”. To paraphrase from the play, the winds of March have come, but they have not passed.
I might be repeating myself each year when I mention that March always brings to my mind the image of Howard Keel singing the lively “My Defenses are Down” during
his performance in the timeless “Annie Get Your Gun”. He laments that he went into the fight (his potential romantic conquest) like a lion, and came out like a lamb. This is the same often repeated metaphor that the TV meterologists use for March weather trends. I remember asking my mother what all this colorful language meant.
March 19TH ( also St. Joseph’s Day, plant your peas, please), will find the beloved cliff swallows coming back to Capistrano. It seems that the Mission in San Juan,southern California, was severely damaged by the earthquake of 1812. The open towers made it easy for the birds to build their nest of mud in the ruins of the old stone church. By the way, writer Leon Rene, not Pat Boone, is held in very high esteem at the San Juan
Museum for the song that also returns to the lips of many people every year.
Spring officially arrives on the 20TH, the day of the Vernal Equinox, when the Sun will cross directly over the Equator. Because of the tilt of the Earth’s axis we will have more of a direct hit from the Sun’s rays, contributing to better rose and tomatoe growing but also increased danger of skin damage to those gardners who should know better.
R.L.Ruzicka’s (look him up) contrbution to American Literature is as follows :
When March goes on forever, and April’s twice as long,
Who gives a damn if Spring has come, as long as Winter’s gone.
The date for Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. Therefore Easter Sunday is on the 23RD. Happy egg hunting !
I deliberately left March 17TH for last. Everyone who is Irish and those who are Irish for just one day a year, know that the 17TH is St. Patrick’s Day. Every year our house vibrated with traditional Irish music, the apparel of the day was GREEN, and the food was always Irish Soda Bread and Corned Beef and Cabbage. Soon I became a “kool” rebellious teenager who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing green, only listened to “top 40” music and probably went to Burger King rather than eat any “corn beef and garbage”.
But now, as Dennis Day, Phil Regan, Carmel Quinn, the Clancy Boys, the Irish Rovers
and the Three Tenors sing along with me all day, I wish that I could sit down once more with Ma and have one more plate of her corned beef and cabbage. Kiss me, I’m Irish !