A Year of Blogging: July 16, 2011

July 16 is Juggling Day. I knew this was a repeat, so had to go back through my blogs to April 18, which was International Juggling Day. There's really no need to repeat this, so I thought I'd see what else is available. The website I've been using to supplement the newspaper column, www.holidayinsights.com lists nothing for July 16. Seriously- it's blank. Was this a day we were just supposed to ignore? So I turned to history.com . There were a lot of things that happened on July 16 throughout history. In 1918, the Romanov family was executed in Russia. In 1945, the first atomic bomb test was successfully exploded in Alamogordo, New Mexico. This would lead to the dropping of the bombs on Japan in August, and to the end of WWII. The initial budget for the Manhattan Project was $6,000. The final cost was $2 billion. In 1935, the world's first parking meter was installed. You would think it would have been in New York or Chicago or Paris- a big bustling city. The first parking meter was installed in Oklahoma City, OK. The first parking meters cost a nickel for an hour of time. I haven't used a parking meter in a while, but I know Cincinnati just installed meters that take credit cards, so I think an hour costs much more than a nickel! Finally, on this day in 1999, John F. Kennedy, Jr. died in a plane crash off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. I remember this clearly. I have always had a fascination with the Kennedy's. I'm not sure why. I was born long after the days of Camelot. Maybe it's because I grew up just a few hours from Boston. Maybe it's the Catholic connection. I'm not sure. I've just always found the family fascinating. As have many others. I was getting ready for work that morning, and had the tv on as I got ready. I heard the news, and the blood in my veins seemed to turn to ice. It was another tragic blow for this family. I'm currently reading 'True Compass', which is Senator Edward Kennedy's memoir. I'm about half way through it. As he talks about attending school 'seasonally' (his parents wintered in Palm Beach, and so when they went south, he was pulled out of school and moved to one in the south), you kind of feel badly for him. He was bullied in schools. You wonder why his parents couldn't see that giving him a stable education was important. They seemed to value education, so why were their attitudes so lax with their youngest? At one point, he says he has no resentment towards his parents for sending him to boarding school, because it's what 'everyone' did back then. Wow. At that point he lost me. Everyone didn't go to boarding school. Some, like my grandfather, had to drop out of public school in the eighth grade to help support their families. The thing that strikes me again and again with this book is that the Kennedy's truly had a privileged life (yes, I knew that, but the book keeps reinforcing it). Yet they seemed to think they were 'everyman'. It's left me with a different impression of the family, and I think much of the mystique has worn off. It seems the big events in history today are sad. Perhaps today should be 'It's a Sad World' Day. Or maybe, everyone can enjoy their own part of the world and make it a great day!