A Cage of Words

I know that some of you have feared that this blog had gone silent. Perhaps you feared that like Aquinas, I too had a vision from God and concluded all my words are but straw. What would has stirred my cage enough to bring me out of my over a year long silence? Leap Day!

That's right this over 2000 year old tradition has awoken this dumb ox to once again delight my followers with poor spelling, bad word usage, fragmented sentences and generally terrible writing. Let me being with the history of Leap Day.

Basically we have leap day because it actually takes the earth 365.2425 days to travel around the sun not 365. So this means that if we didn't have a leap day every 4 years we would eventually not see the same stars at the same time each year (I know, I don't care either). Also the seasons would slowly move around in the calendar such that months traditional associated with winter, like December, would become warm the summer months. Oddly enough there was a group of people who said, "No," to leap day when it first came on the scene. They now own all the Hobby Lobbies and candy distribution companies, explaining why we have Christmas in July and the red, white and blue M&Ms already on my desk.

Over the centuries leap day has had many fun traditions associated with it. Here is one such tradition that I blatantly copied and pasted from a website. Sorry ethics.

According to an old Irish legend, or possibly history, St Bridget struck a deal with St Patrick to allow women to propose to men – and not just the other way around – every 4 years. This is believed to have been introduced to balance the traditional roles of men and women in a similar way to how Leap Day balances the calendar.

In some places, Leap Day has been known as “Bachelors’ Day” for the same reason. A man was expected to pay a penalty, such as a gown or money, if he refused a marriage proposal from a woman on Leap Day. In many European countries, especially in the upper classes of society, tradition dictates that any man who refuses a woman's proposal on February 29 has to buy her 12 pairs of gloves. The intention is that the woman can wear the gloves to hide the embarrassment of not having an engagement ring. During the middle ages there were laws governing this tradition.

I would leave this one alone but come on, 12 pairs of gloves to hide the embarrassment! You know what the woman had to buy a man if she said no every other day of the year? Nothing! Clearly a woman has never had to go back to Jared to explain why she needs to return a ring that she should have never gotten in the first place because she was Irish and she had a Claddagh ring that all she had to do was not move to the other hand and nobody would even notice! That's embarrassment! Beside the point, maybe, ok yes it is. (By the way I think the Claddagh ring is a beautiful tradition and I am sorry I drug it into the same conversation as the ugly leap day.)

Why did I join the leap day nattering nabobs of negativism (thanks Safire)? Well let me be honest, this is a long year for me. So far it has provided a lot of hard times alone in the apartment. Of course there have been some great times as well, but I am really getting a good dose of humility. The hard times have given me a lot of great revelations about myself and my future, but going through the rough times are never really fun. That's ok, if there are never any lows you will never know when you have reached a high. The main point is: I am not really all that thrilled to have an extra day in this year.

Moving on. Happy feast day St. Oswald. May you rest in peace and thank you for your service to York, not the new one, the old one. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Speaking of NASCAR, let's turn to the bible, Psalm 118:24: "This is the day which the LORD has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it." That's right my friends, this day is truly a gift and all belligerent rants aside I do thank God for my life and for all that he has given me this day. I am just looking forward to leaping into March.

Keep up the fight