PRESIDENT'S DAY...PLUS

When I was a kid, February was a cool month, and not only because my childhood was spent in New England.  Every four years the month would fatten to include an extra day -- a neat trick for the shortest day of the year..  And we had Groundhog Day and Valentine Day and two  no-school holidays:  Lincoln's Birthday (February 12) and Washington's Birthday (February 22; February 11, old style).  Lincoln's Birthday was not a federal holiday but Massachusetts and many other states celebrated it; Washington's Birthday had been a federal holiday since 1879 for offices in Washington, and 1885 for all federal offices, and was celebrated under the Gregorian calendar on February 22.  In 1971, the Uniform Federal Holiday Act shifted the holiday to the third Monday in February.   The day soon became known as Presidents' Day as a way to honor all presidents; it was placed between Lincoln's and Washington's birthday as both a nod to those two great men,  but also to avoid any single president of choice.  Officially, however, the day is still recognized  by the federal government as Washington's Birthday.  (For those who do not wish to honor our 45th and 47th president on this day, there's your out.)

Needless to say, all of our presidents have been flawed in one way or another, but several -- Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelt come to  mind -- have far more chalks in  the plus column than in  the negative; others (Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, for example) have come close.  Historian are constantly changing their rankings of American presidents, but over the years we as a country have moved ever closer to the ideas that make us distinctly Americans.

Today is a day to reflect on our past, our present, and our possible futures.

Today is also the day that, 103 years ago, Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of the Pharoah Tutankhamun.  I think that should also be celebrated, of sorts.  So here's a link to the 1964 Hammer horror film The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, starring Terence Morgan, Ronald Howard, George Pastell, Fred Clark, and Jeanne Roland, with Dickie Owen as Ra-Antef the Mummy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0akpPDBEQcs