Thursday, 11 November 2010
Today is Veterans Day. That means it’s been 92 years since the cease-fire ended the War to End All Wars. Damn. 92 years without any wars. It’s been great. Happy Veterans’ Day.
This is one of those holidays that it’s impossible to speak about in anything but reverential tones, but I’ll try to do my best…
Did you know that there is a Librarian Day? If you did know that, do you know when it is (hint: we’ve already past it this year)? Did you know that there is a World Teachers Day, too? Did you know that, like Veterans Day, it’s missing an apostrophe? Do you know when World Teachers Day is (hint: it’s the same day as when Babylonia fell to Persia)?
I appreciate the work so many of our veterans have done, and I applaud them for not getting killed in a war. Even though the United States hasn’t participated in a morally justifiable war since at least my birth, I know that the military does much good, and I am all for protection and preparedness. Still, I think the country would do good to elevate the others who serve us via the government – such as librarians and teachers – to the same level as former military personnel. Does Applebee’s have a free day for Kindergarten teachers? I sure hope they do. Next time there’s a Super Bowl, will the pre-game antics bolster patriotism by having a brass band followed up by a line of librarians waving to the crowd? I hope so, ’cause then I’d watch.
Maybe, instead of singing the first verse of that violent tune of rockets and bombs, we could sing about what an awesome chunk of planet earth we have, and a whole bunch of National Park forest rangers could come out and stand at attention.
Is there a National Park Forest Ranger Day? I don’t even know.
Friday, 12 November 2010
I spent my lunch break at Home Depot today. Wait! Before you stop reading, I assure you, I’m not gonna whine about lousy service. This time. To the contrary, I was helped by Ray (at their Maple Grove location) who was friendly, knowledgeable, and competent – and to his supervisor: give Ray a raise – Home Depot needs to hire more people like him.
I signed up to take a woods class through the local community ed program. It starts tomorrow morning. It’s not so much a “class” as just getting to use the school’s equipment. I was going to build a hutch for our dining room. Just a small one – about 6.5 feet high, and about 18 inches wide. Today, I figured I’d better go buy the wood.
Ray showed me the available stock. I wanted pine, but the planks weren’t tall enough, so I had to decide on either shortening my hutch or combining two pieces. Neither option sounded that appealing. Ray suggested I use some press board, which – despite my prejudices – actually looked pretty decent. But, you know, it’s not authentic. Besides, two pieces of press board would’ve set me back $90, and I’d still need a lot more lumber.
Ray started helping me load my cart and, at one point, he said, “You’re racking up quite a bill here.” He was right. Long story short: it was too expensive. If I could buy a hutch for less money than I can build one, then what’s the point (yes, yes, I know, there are some good arguments for building my own)?
Anyway, despite Ray’s stellar customer service, I left empty-handed. I had Jennifer call and cancel my enrollment in the class.
Oh well.
Saturday, 13 November 2010
Wow! What a great day!
First of all, snow fell. And how! There was a ton of heavy, wet snow everywhere, and since I had nowhere to go (see above) I was just fine with that.
Instead, we all just did a bunch of projects around the house. My wife braved the elements (I’m using the ancient Greek’s definition of ‘elements’ here, not the modern one) and scored us some groceries. Owen, meanwhile, used his art supplies to knock out a couple of coloring books and prepare some artwork for his three out-of-state grandparents. I got three loads of laundry done, organized the files on my computer, and my wife did lots of dishes and made a great soup for dinner.
We polished the night off with an episode of the Muppet Show.
Sunday, 14 November 2010
But wait! There’s more! The inclement weather staycation continued today: I organized the garage by cutting up slices of last year’s Xmas tree and shoving everything I could into the corner. I made room for our car, and driving it into the garage was absolutely the only driving I did all weekend. This is good, because my satisfaction with a day generally drops off the more miles I log in an automobile. There’s an inverse correlation, for all of you smarty-pants out there.
Oh – and in case you’re wondering why I have to cut slices of our Xmas tree, and why it took me ten months to do it, let me explain: We save part of our tree from each year for sentimental reasons, most notably turning one slice into an ornament for future years. To answer the other half of your question, I just forgot to do it. I cut off all the branches way back in January, but the trunk just sat in the corner of our garage, where the bottom two inches slowly rotted into mush. It was only last week, when I began cleaning the garage that I remembered to do it. So there.
Also, my wife hung up a bunch of new photos of our model-caliper children, Owen cleaned his room, we found a good spot for Isla’s toys, and Jennifer whipped up a batch of pearl onion/potato stew. It was awesome. We spent the better part of the afternoon and evening rocking out (or would that be ‘folking out’?) to Mason Jennings and Jack Johnson.
I hope your weekend was at least half as good as ours.
While the World Teachers’ Day article you linked to did not use an apostrophe, the official website, the Wikipedia article, and most other sources I could find do include it.
Meanwhile, Veterans Day is not missing an apostrophe. It is a day FOR them, not a day belonging to them. A simple explanation for this can be found in the Wikipedia article for Veterans Day. Further explanations can be found by doing a search for “veterans day apostrophe”.
Also, I think the honor bestowed on Veterans has more to do with the risk involved with their service as opposed to the actual service they provide. At least, that’s the way I always understood it.
David:
Oops, that’s what I get for not going to the official site. Thanks for the correction.
I still claim that Veterans Day is missing an apostrophe. Unlike Teachers’ Day, I actually have researched this in past years. The use of apostrophes is not based on whether or not something is FOR or BELONGING to someone; otherwise I would have to write “This is Davids gift,” but then, once I give it to you, I would have to write “Now it is David’s gift.”
Apostrophes connote possessiveness, which is more encompassing than simple ownership.
Without an apostrophe, the word VETERANS is simply plural, which just sounds like bad grammar to me (and, evidently, Teachers and Librarians know this, as they have inserted the appropriate punctuation – and they would know!).
Actually, it probably doesn’t SOUND like bad grammar, since the plural and possessive of ‘veteran’ sound the same. To get what I’m saying, let’s compare this to a word in which the plural and possessive do not sound the same…
WOMAN
If there was a day FOR or BELONGING to women, would we call it WOMEN DAY? After all, that’s the plural, just as VETERANS is the plural of VETERAN. Wouldn’t we call it WOMEN’S DAY? In the same vein, the day for a child is not CHILDREN DAY, it’s CHILDREN’S DAY.
Sorry, I was hoping to avoid having to explain further by suggesting that you look it up.
Both Veterans’ Day and Veterans Day could be correct depending on which is desired. In this case, the US Government has decided which meaning they are going for here.
http://www1.va.gov/opa/vetsday/vetday_faq.asp
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/why-doesn%E2%80%99t-veterans-day-have-an-apostrophe.aspx
As far as your examples, both Children Day and Women Day sound just fine to me, but I would argue that they carry a different meaning from Children’s Day and Women’s Day.
Yes, I saw both of those sites a couple of days ago when I wrote the original post. It’s true, if the government states that their day should be termed “Veterans Day,” then that’s the correct spelling. But for that matter, they could’ve ruled that it be called “Vetterenz Dei,” and that would then be the correct spelling.
When I said it was missing an apostrophe, I meant from a grammatical sense, not a legal sense.
Grammar Girl goes one step further and says that if we redefine ‘Veterans’ to be an adjective, then we can correctly leave out the apostrophe. But if ‘Veterans’ is a valid adjective, then I’ve never heard it used as such for anything but the November 11th holiday. On the upside, if it is an adjective, then that means a sentence like this makes perfect sense: “The military insignia and army uniforms made the building look very veterans.”
Couldnt agree more with that