Daughters and other distractions
Don Coldsmith
Originally published 01:59 p.m., October 1, 2007
Updated 01:59 p.m., October 1, 2007
I’m sure that sometimes in the past I must have written about holidays and Mondays. But each year, columnists, especially those whose weekly efforts are published on Mondays, are confronted with the same predicament. There are 52 weeks in a year. Hence, four weeks in a month, except that such a math problem can never come out even. Any way we shake it up and revise, on any once-a-week event, we’ll always have four extra days at the end of the year. This has been a problem in calendars for all time and many prehistoric calendars are based on the moon’s cycle rather than the sun’s. This throws the calendar off by a day or two.
Our calendar is corrected (or at least repaired), by tossing in an extra day or two here or there, making a longer month. In February, the month is shorted anyway, but is consoled by letting it have an extra day every four years. This is fine, except that people born on a Feb. 29 only get a birthday to celebrate once every four years. The bad news is that they keep aging just like the rest of us, anyway.
As I mentioned above, this is especially tricky, not only to those with fourth year birthdays, and to Monday columnists. Mostly, those columns can be moved to another day and it won’t be noticed. Well, we’d like to think it will still be noticed.
Sometimes, we’ll never know. On the other hand, sometimes we’ll step on somebody’s toes with a columnist’s remark that some may find offensive. It’s sometimes useful to deliberately toss in something that will rouse a little wrath. For instance, in a few weeks, we’ll be having an election. There will be quite a bit of attention to the moral implications of our votes. But, by whose standards? I’m afraid that we will, by the time you read this, find ourselves bombarded by what I’ve come to think of as the “righteous right wing.” There will be talk about a “Christian Nation.”
Just a moment, here — Obviously, a “Christian Nation” would be a violation of our own Constitution, wouldn’t it? (See FIRST AMENDMENT, to the Bill of Rights, “To worship as we please” — NOT, as some self-ordained Christian minority pleases. That would obviously be a violation. Freedom to celebrate our OWN religious beliefs. I’ll touch on this again as we draw nearer to election time. I’ve voted in every election since my first chance in 1947. We had facilities to vote in combat areas in the Pacific Theatre, in WWII. However, I couldn’t vote — I wasn’t old enough, being merely a teenager with a combat medic’s job.
Rarely have I voted a “straight ticket,” since I vote the candidate rather than the party. Several times, I’ve attended the rallies of both parties. I have FRIENDS in both parties and I can’t find it in my conscience to vote for ANY inferior candidate because of party labels.
Voting is a privilege not to be disregarded and is to be cherished. It’s only a few generations ago, since in some cultures wives were listed as property, quite as saleable as livestock, especially in some European cultures.
The woman on the American frontier became a new sort of female. She was quite capable of working shoulder to shoulder with her hard-working spouse, pausing only long enough occasionally to give birth to a member of the NEXT generation of tough frontier women.
I came to appreciate the women of our West in the process of raising five daughters. Pretty tough and capable ones, as it turned out. They have a strong and capable mother. They are all different, of course, expressing their independence in quite a variety of ways. One is a United States Marine, one of the first women Marines. Another raises buffalo. She’s a master teacher and the buffalo herd just something that needs doing.
We lost one to cancer, far too young. Another is a capable nurse and yet another is in banking. But, yes, we’re proud of every one.
See you down the road.