July 26 – National Day of the Cowboy

Posted on July 26, 2014


Today in the U.S.A., it's the tenth annual National Day of the Cowboy.

It's a day all about preserving “pioneer heritage and cowboy culture.” 

Local celebrations vary, of course. Whether it's a parade on horseback down Main Street or a covered wagon trip, a chuck wagon meal or an ice cream social, a historic gun show or horseshoeing demonstrations, choosing a local Cowboy and Cowgirl or holding an Art Spur Writing Contest (in which a piece of Western art “spurs” the writing)...there are a ton of things communities do listed here...


There is a celebration very near me, in Norco, CA, that will include:


Man, I do not know what some of these events are, even! You know what cow chips are, right? It seems icky enough that many festivals and rodeos feature cow chip throwing contests, but what is a celebrity cow chip contest? Do participants try to create celebrity sculptures using cow chips? Or do celebrities compete with throwing the cow chips?



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 National Dance Day







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July 25 – Talk in an Elevator Day

Posted on July 25, 2014

Notice how blank and expressionless
everyone's face is...
Have you ever noticed that many times people ride up elevators together pretty much silently, each person facing forward and not really looking at one another?

Of course, this is not a hard-and-fast rule. Many times people are riding in elevators with people they know, and they enter the elevator talking to one another, and they keep talking all the way up or down. 

 Actually, sometimes I wish that people in elevators were a little MORE silent!

Also, most people murmur quiet polite phrases such as “Good morning,” “Excuse me,” “Floor 3, please,” and “Thank you.”

This is NOT how people ride in elevators.
This looks posed....and WEIRD!
But most of the time, a group of strangers will ride together without looking at or speaking to one another. And even when we are riding with a friend plus strangers, we tend to talk only quietly to our friend or stop talking for the duration of the ride.

The study of “proxemics” tells us about the unwritten rules of society, including how close people get to one another and body-language cues.

Normally, strangers in public keep ten or more feet away from one another, when possible. However, on crowded city streets or enclosed spaces such as elevators, that obviously is not possible.

In an elevator with only a few people, each person tends to stand in his or her own corner, with as much space between them as possible. But when an elevator fills up, people jostle and adjust their positions to maintain maximum space between them.

Ways of coping with too-small of personal space include reducing or eliminating hand and arm movements, lowering voice or not talking, and decreasing eye contact.

Apparently, men tend to not look at others in a crowded elevator at all, but women tend to quickly check out who they are sharing the elevator with—just a quick glance around, usually accompanied by a smile.

Today we are urged to break the unspoken rule about not speaking – and to make polite, light small talk on an elevator. Compliment a stranger, chat about the weather, ask for directions, etc. Does it take courage for you to do this? What do other passengers do when you talk –- do they join in? Look away? Shift uncomfortably?

By the way, if there is a baby or small child – or maybe even a dog – in the elevator, complimenting him, her, or it is probably the easiest way to start a conversation. My husband often tells parents, “You have a beautiful family,” and people warm right up to him.


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July 24 – Anniversary of the Founding of Detroit

Posted on July 24, 2014

French explorer Antoine de La Mothe-Cadillac founded a trading post that he named Fort Pontchartrain on the straits between two of the Great Lakes. (A strait is a narrow passage of water that connects two seas or other large bodies of water.)

In French, the phrase “on the straits” is “de detroit.”

Cadillac's trading post began on this date in 1701, but it was devastated just two years later. However, eventually the trading post grew into a town, which grew into the city of Detroit.


...The city where Cadillac cars are manufactured!


Detroit is...

  • Motor City....the automotive capital of the world. Henry Ford built his first automobile in a rented workshop in Detroit, and he later founded the Ford Motor Company there. In addition, other automobile pioneers took advantage of Detroit's position as a transportation hub..including William C. Durant, the Dodge brothers, the Packards, and Walter Chrysler.

Detroit is so linked in people's minds with American automobile manufacturing, people often refer to the entire industry as “Detroit.”

  • Motown...a hugely popular and influential record company founded in Detroit by Berry Gordy, Jr. The Motown sound played an important role in racial integration of popular music, as it enjoyed success with all sorts of audiences. Some of the biggest names in Motown were Diana Ross & The Supremes, The Four Tops, The Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and The Temptations.



  • The First in Roads...Detroit built the first mile of concrete highway in the world, installed the first 4-way 3-color traffic light, built the first traffic tunnel between two nations (as the tunnel punched through the US/Canada border), and built the first urban freeway.

  • Home of the Only Floating Post Office in the U.S....The vessel J.W. Westcott II is America's only floating zip code. The Westcott Company was originally formed to inform passing vessels of changes in orders, but now it delivers mail and freight and even the occasional mid-river pizza.

  • Birthplace of Techno... Motown isn't the only contribution Detroit has made to music. The electronic sound of techno was originated in the 1980s by three young men who were friends in a Detroit high school. Techno gained success in Europe before it did in the U.S. – but it started here.

  • The Sports Capital of the Midwest...With teams like the Pistons, the Lions, and the Tigers, Detroit is home to some great sports. But one of Detroit's nicknames is Hockeytown—and the Red Wings hockey team has appeared in many Stanley Cup playoffs (including 28 out of the last 30 seasons) and has won more Stanley Cup championships than any other team based in the U.S.



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Cousins Day















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July 23 – Revolution Day in Egypt

Posted on July 23, 2014

I read that today is the largest secular public holiday in Egypt. It is the anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 – the revolution that led to the abdication of King Farouk.

Military parades and televised concerts are among the celebrations, according to multiple sources on the internet.

It may be that "Revolution Day" now refers
to January 25, commemorating the 2011
mass uprising.
This photo was taken onJan. 25, 2012.
However, I couldn't find word one about what Revolution Day has been like since Egypt's peaceful uprising in January, 2011, and the four days of mass revolt last July. The mass demonstrations removed two different presidents, Mubarak and Morsi, but so far, at least, they have not led to the hoped-for democratic transformation, but instead to more personal-power politics and military rule.

I imagine that today's Revolution Day - if it is acknowledged at all - is acknowledged with bitter thoughts from many Egyptians.

Did you know...?

There are many interesting things about Egypt, especially about the ancient civilization that flourished there thousands of years ago. Here are a few facts about modern Egypt:

  • It's official name is the Arab Republic of Egypt. It used to be called Kemet (Black Land), Deshret (Red Land), and Hwt-ka-Ptah (House of the Ka of the god Ptah). It was the Greeks who changed the latter to Aegyptus.
  • In addition to the official language of Arabic, many people speak French and / or English.
  • The longest river in the world, the Nile River, famously flows through Egypt and floods nearby lands every year, making the strip of land on either side of the river fertile. The rest of the country is dominated by the Sahara and Libyan Deserts.
  • Cairo, Egypt's capital, had the first subway system in Africa. (Actually, now that Algiers opened its metro system in 2011, there are only two subway systems in all of Africa.)
  • Almost a third of Africa's bloggers are Egyptians.

And I can't help myself – I have to include a little bit of ancient stuff:

  • The Sahara Desert, which today gets an average of less than one inch of precipitation (rain and snow) PER YEAR, used to be a lush green grassland. Global climate change around 8,000 B.C.E. changed it from a savannah perfect for large grazing mammals to barren desert.





  • Egypt's pyramids are not only the oldest of the “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,” they are the only ones still remaining.



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July 22 – Spoonerisms Day

Posted on July 22, 2014


“Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things.” – George Carlin


“It is kisstomary to cuss the bride...” – mistake made (probably) by the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844 – 1930)

Reverend Spooner
Spoonerisms are slips of the tongue, mistakes made occasionally when people mix up the sounds of words. Reverend Spooner made this sort of mistake A LOT, and some of his mistakes were hilarious...so this sort of mixed-up mistake is now called a Spoonerism.

Sometimes people deliberately create Spoonerisms as a sort of play on words. That is the case in the joke by George Carlin, above.

Other times a person makes a slip, and then as people tell (and retell, and retell a retelling) the Spoonerism, it gets longer and sometimes funnier.

Here's a long Spoonerism. I think you can tell that this must surely have been added to, over the years:

Usher: “Mardon me, padam, you are occupewing the wrong pie. May I sew you to a new sheet?”

Lady: “Thank you. Chewtiful birch you have here.”

Usher: “Many thinkle peep so.”

Apparently Reverend Spooner's obituary quoted a lot of his most memorable mistakes, like these:

On his visit to a port to see the British fleet, he said that he wanted to see the “cattleships and bruisers.”


One time he scolded his class for “hissing my mystery lectures.”

Some characters in books and movies talk consistently in Spoonerisms for comedic effect. Try to use some Spoonerisms today – it's actually pretty hard to do so! – and see if anybody can understand you.


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