Welcome to the porch. The weather is a bit cloudy every now and then the sun will stick out its head and give us a little break, but the rain has been pretty well constant, but we believe it’s going to let up for just a little while. Most of the time porch sitting in the rain is not a bad experience but if the wind gets up, it tends to blow it right in on us, but that being the case pull up a chair or a box and sit down and Ponder a bit. I’ve got one ponder to throw at you this evening and we’ll see what it brings about. I set out to try and determine the number of holidays that we have here in the United States in all categories and I have not had a whole lot of luck. Determining the total number of holidays of all kinds is difficult because the definition of holiday differs  significantly across cultures, countries and even within the same country. Now in “good old boy language” that would simply mean nobody knows. I was able to determine that holidays vary in our country in states, our government and non-government, religious and each has a category of their own you might say, and we celebrate them in different ways. Now remember here on the porch while we’re pondering, accuracy is not always a strong trait so keep that in mind. To the best of my knowledge there are 11 federal holidays and if you add Inauguration Day every four years, you then have 12 federal holidays. Now we all know that there’s a slew more and everybody’s got a holiday for something or some thing but in my research I found something very interesting and that is only because we’re coming up on June 19 and we now have another holiday that we celebrate. It’s called Juneteenth and it celebrates liberation of the slaves in the state of Texas. I will not bother you with a list of the federal holidays, but I found this particular one Juneteenth to be really very interesting because of the circumstances that surrounded it. Now we all know that it was Lincoln who freed the slaves, but the interesting thing about this new holiday Juneteenth is the circumstances in which it came about pacifically. It marks a day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston Texas finally learned they were free two years after the emancipation proclamation. The active recognition by the federal government signifies a broader acknowledgment of the end of slavery and the long struggle for equality faced by black Americans. 

So here is my ponder. Why don’t we by we? I mean all of us declare a Floating Holiday. We will name it Holiday Blank. You may celebrate on any day you wish but only one time a year now. You may do whatever you want on that day. Ignore whatever you want on that day. Or just pretend that it didn’t come around.  So I wish you a Happy Holiday Blank, or whenever. Now ponder that.

Kurt