by Topic – Page 4 – every day's a holiday!

March 12, 2012March 18, 2012

Chinese Tree-Planting Day

March 12

We tend to think of the environmental movement as something recent, that came along when the city passed out those big purple or blue recycling bins. But Tree-Planting Day is an ancient ritual in many cultures.

Arbor Day in China was originally a seasonal holiday observed during the Qingming Festival. Qingming means “Clear and Bright” (and no, it is not Scrabble eligible). Qingming falls 104 days after the winter solstice, on April 4th or 5th. During this time families remember and visit the graves of the dead, as well as enjoy the outdoor activities and the greenery of Spring.

Branches

In 1979, March 12th was officially designated as Tree Planting Day. But according to Cultivating the nation in Fujian’s forests: Forest policies and afforestation efforts in China, 1911-1937, the March 12th date went back to the 1920’s. Chiang Kai-shek, then leader of China, removed Tree Planting Day from the Qing Ming Festival in 1929 in order to establish it as a patriotic holiday rather than a traditional one.

Just as Yuan Shikai had previously linked Arbor Day with the Qingming Festival, Chiang Kai-shek…severed Arbor Day from the Qingming Festival and relocated it on the anniversary of the death of [former leader] Sun Yat-sen, March 12…
…By choosing the anniversary of Sun’s death as the date for the new national day, Chiang Kai-shek transformed the activity of tree planting into a more explicit celebration of the nation.

Also doing so, Chiang Kai-shek “established a symbolic link between himself and Sun Yat-sen.”

So who was Sun Yat-sen?

One of China’s most influential leaders.

He established the Three People’s Principles of China in 1923, which became part of the founding ideology of not only Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China, but was also adopted by Mao Zedong’s Communist government.

The 3 Principles are the Principles of Minzu, Minquan, and Minsheng. Roughly translated, they refer to ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’

Minzu: that there would be a government uniting the ethnicities of China through a constitution, rather than one dominating imperial monarchy.
Minquan: that the people of China would have a voice in government through voting, recall, initiative and referendum.
and Minsheng: that the government would serve the people, not the other way around.

In 1920s China this was a revolutionary concept, literally. Sun lived a remarkable life, starting out as a small-town doctor before becoming politically active, and ending up President of the Republic of China. He died of liver cancer in 1925.

Sun’s experiences with Confucianism and his education in the West, (He attended school in Hawaii) lent to his ideological formations. He walked a fine line, speaking against both laissez-faire economics and Marxism, though he reached a cooperative agreement with the Communists as leader.

Sun Yat-sen is unusual in that he was revered by both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China. Parts of the 3 People’s Principles were incorporated into China’s National Anthem.

China’s Arbor Day

Sun Yat-sen

Tree-Planting Day

March 9, 2012March 16, 2012

March 9, 2009: Barbie turns 50

March 9, 2009

amerigo_vespucci prophet_mohammad barbie_at_50

(Amerigo Vespucci, the Prophet Mohammad, and Barbie at 50)

Today’s a big day for holidays.

March 9, 2009 is the start of Purim in the Jewish calendar. It begins at sundown.

In the Sunni Muslim calendar, March 9, 2009 is Mawlid al Nabi, the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad.

The second Monday in March is also the holiday formerly known as British Commonwealth Day (now just “Commonwealth Day”) across the former British Empire.

March 9 is the birthday of America. Or rather the birthday of its namesake Amerigo Vespucci. The mapmaker was born on this day in 1454.

But most important, March 9, 2009 is the 50th birthday of the Barbie doll.

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The Barbie doll, conceived by Ruth Handler in the late 1950’s, has been mass-produced 800 million times since March 9, 1959. That means, if there were a country solely inhabited by Barbie and her pals, it would be the third most populous nation on Earth.

I had the opportunity to meet the “real” Barbie — the doll’s namesake, Ruth Handler’s daughter Barbara — many years ago at a friend’s Bar Mitzvah. I remember being disillusioned that she had red hair at the time. As she has had to explain on countless occasions, “I am the name behind it, but I’m not the doll, you know…It was never made to look like me.” (The Oprah Winfrey Show)

The lack of life-like dolls for Ruth Handler’s daughter to play with once inspired the Barbie doll’s creation. However, by the time the doll came out in 1959, Barbara was 17, a Hamilton High School student in Los Angeles, California, long past the age of playing with dolls. She once told People Magazine, “Much of me is very proud that my folks invented the doll. I just wish I wasn’t attached to it.” (People Magazine, March 6, 1989)

Mattel received criticism from women’s groups in recent decades regarding the unrealistic bodily proportions of the doll, and the effect this had on young girls’ self-esteem and body image. In the last few years, Barbie sales have taken a hit, largely due to competition from the newer Bratz Dolls, created by former Mattel employee Carter Bryant. The top-heavy Bratz Dolls have also come under fire in recent weeks for their alleged effect on girls’ self-image, a controversy (ingeniously) exposed by the Onion News Network:

Bratz Dolls heighten girls’ insecurity about head size

Links

Cougar Barbie video

Quiz: Which Messed-Up Barbie Are You?

March 8, 2012March 16, 2012

International Women’s Day 2009

Intl Women's Day poster, USSR, 1920 — Women's Day poster, USSR, 1920

Over a hundred years ago today 15,000 women in New York City came together to march for better working conditions and universal women’s suffrage.

The following year the Socialist Party of America declared February 28 to be National Women’s Day. In Copenhagen in 1910 an International Women’s Day was proposed and unanimously agreed upon by 100 women representing 17 countries. It would be observed simultaneously by women around the world on March 8, 1911.

Over a million people observed the first International Women’s Day in countries like Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark.

That same month the devastating Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City killed over 140 women workers, mostly poor immigrants, and propelled the appalling working conditions of women laborers to the forefront of national politics.

In 1917, International Women’s Day played a significant part in one of the most important revolutions of the 20th century: the February Revolution, which took place in, of course, March.

Before 1918, Russia was still on the Julian calendar, so Russians observed Women’s Day on February 23 Julian to coincide with the March 8 observances in the rest of the world. On February 23 (Old Style), 1917 thousands of women demonstrated in St. Petersburg, Russia, demanding “Food for our Children”, and for the return of their husbands and sons from the war with Germany. These massive demonstrations and strikes served as the catalyst for the series of events that led to the abolishment of the centuries-old Russian Czardom one week later, and paved the way for Bolshevik Revolution.

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intlwomensdayla2009

Over the past century International Women’s Day has served as a day to address issues of women’s rights in countries around the world, notably the developing world and Europe. The holiday has not garnered as near as much of a following in North America, perhaps because of its communist roots.

This year [2009] Every Day’s a Holiday attended the International Women’s Day Rally in Westwood, California. A Communist Rally “in the heart of Capitalism” as the speakers put it.

The theme of rally was solidarity with Afghani and Iranian women against both Islamic fundamentalism and U.S. imperialism. Afghani and Iranian women have born the brunt of the upheaval in these two nations since 2001, indeed since 1979.

Having just finished reading Jung Chang’s Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China I was dubious about communism being the most ideal route for women’s equality. The book tells the story of three generations of Chinese women, focusing on the author’s mother, who joins the Communist Party in post-war China because it appears to be the best means to bring about long-overdue equality to women. However, once in power, the Communist Party creates an even more brutal and powerful aristocracy than the one it disbanded. The author’s family witnesses party policies that kill tens of millions of men, women, and children, and ruin the lives of millions more families, in the stated aim of achieving a more just society.

Regardless of political and economic ideology, today International Women’s Day fills a purpose long abandoned by another holiday: Mothers’ Day.

The original intention of Mothers’ Day in the United States—as conceived of independently by Julia Ward Howe and Ann Jarvis—was a day for mothers to join together to act as a collective force for social justice.

Having witnessed the brutality of the Civil War, both women sought to bring mothers together on Mothers’ Days of Peace to declare war on war itself.

“Arise then…women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs…”

–Julia Ward Howe, Mothers’ Day Proclamation of 1870

The Mother’s Day we celebrate today in the United States is quite different. It was pioneered by Ann Jarvis’s daughter, Anna Jarvis, after her mother’s passing. Anna conceived of the holiday, not as a day of social activism, but as a day of recognition and gratitude for one’s own mother. And by placing the apostrophe before the ‘s’ rather than after, Mother’s Day became a very personal day rather than a collective one.

And far more commercial. Mother’s Day is a bigger day for the flower industry than even Valentine’s Day.

The greeting card companies haven’t yet figured out how to commercialize upon Women’s Day’s 100 year old tradition of social activism. But give it time.

Likewise, as the holiday grows more mainstream, the creators of Women’s Day rallies have yet to rediscover how to turn the date into one of social revolution.

Cindy Sheehan, Women's Day Rally, March 2009

Southern California native Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in the Iraq War, was on hand at the Los Angeles rally to deliver an address to the crowd on Westwood Blvd. Appealing to a more targeted audience than Obama’s “Yes We Can” campaign, her credo was the more direct: “What the F***?”

March 8, 2012March 5, 2012

International Women’s Day

March 8

Over a hundred years ago, 15,000 women in New York City came together to march for better working conditions and universal women’s suffrage.

The first official International Women’s Day was observed on March 8, 1911. Over a million people celebrated in countries including Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark.

That same month the devastating Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City killed over 140 woman workers, mostly poor immigrants, and propelled the appalling working conditions of woman laborers to the forefront of national politics.

Russia, which was still on the Julian Calendar, celebrated Women’s Day on February 23 to observe the holiday concurrently with the rest of the world. On February 23, 1917 thousands of women demonstrated in St. Petersburg, Russia, demanding Food for our Children, and for the return of their husbands and sons from the war. The Women’s Day march led to further demonstrations, and the abolishment of the centuries-old Czardom of Russia four days later.

Today, a century after 15,000 women banded together on the streets of New York, International Women’s Day is one of the most widely-celebrated secular holidays in the world.

March 7, 2012March 5, 2012

California Arbor Day

California Arbor Week: March 7-14

March 7 is Arbor Day in California. It’s the birthday of Luther Burbank, a Massachusetts native who moved out to California in the 1870s, and who used his Santa Rosa gardens for horticulture experiments for 50 years.

Though most states celebrate Arbor Day along with Nebraska on the last Friday in April, California trees definitely deserve their own day of celebration.

For starters, California claims the world’s oldest tree. On the slopes of California’s White Mountains in the Eastern Sierras, stands “Methuselah.” The Bristlecone Pine in Inyo National Forest is named for the Biblical grandfather of Noah. According to “Bishop Ussher’s Bible Chronology” the Biblical Methuselah was born in 3317 BC and died in the year of the flood, 2348 BC.

Assuming Ussher’s Chronology is correct, the tree Methuselah is actually older than the flood. This Bristlecone Pine took root around 2760 BC.

It’s not uncommon for bristlecones in that forest to be over 4,000 years old. Nevada boasted an even older bristlecone named Prometheus that was cut down in 1964. Outside the region, few trees come even close.

The record for the largest tree and the “most massive individual living thing on Earth” also goes to California specimin. “General Sherman” is a Sequoia tree in Sequoia National Park. A mere 2,500 years old, General Sherman is 275 feet tall, and its trunk has a circumference of over 100 feet, with a diameter of 35 feet. The trunk alone weighs an estimated 1400 tons, more than 15 blue whales.

Sherman isn’t the tallest tree in the world though, not even close. That record belongs to a redwood on the California coast called “Hyperion.” At 379 feet tall, Hyperion is five stories taller than the Statue of Liberty, and 9 feet taller than “Stratosphere Giant”, another California Coastal Redwood, previously thought to be the world’s tallest tree.

The new record-holder is apparently under the government’s “arboreal witness protection program.” Its exact location has not been disclosed to the public for fear that increased tourism could damage the forest’s fragile ecosystem.

Can’t imagine why…

March 6, 2012March 5, 2012

Texas Week: Alamo Day

Independence Day: March 2
Alamo Day: March 6

Not all states can boast their own Independence Day. On March 2, fifty-four representatives at the Convention of 1836 seceded from Mexico by declaring that:

the people of Texas do now constitute a free, Sovereign, and independent republic, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations; and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme arbiter of the destinies of nations.

The document was drawn up literally overnight.

Why the rush? As the delegates met, a battle raged on in San Antonio.

About 189 Texians had barricaded themselves inside a former mission. Outside “the Alamo,” as it was called, 2000 Mexican troops under Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna surrounded them. The Texians refused to surrender, and held out for two weeks.

On March 6 Santa Anna’s forces stormed the fortress. The Texians fought to the last man. Among the dead were Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett. Santa Anna spared the life of a slave and a Mexican who claimed to be held prisoner; he also granted the surviving women and their children safe passage and provisions.

The battle, intended to crush the revolution, had the opposite effect. “Remember the Alamo” became the rallying cry of the new Republic, and six weeks later, on April 21, 1836 General Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna at the historic Battle of San Jacinto.

Texas remained independent for just under a decade. It became the 28th state in 1845; Texas’s annexation precipitated the Mexican-American War.

Ironically, the most cherished landmark in Texas was almost razed just prior to the battle. Sam Houston had asked Governor Henry Smith for permission to

“remove all the cannon and other munitions of war to Gonzales and Copano, blow up the Alamo and abandon the place, as it will be impossible to keep up the Station with volunteers, the sooner I can be authorized the better it will be for the country.”

James Neill and Jim Bowie however saw the strategic importance in holding the fort and wrote the Governor:

“Colonel Neill and myself have come to the solemn resolution that we will rather die in these ditches than give it up to the enemy.”

Neill left on February 17 to gather supplies and volunteers, unaware the battle would begin in just a week. Bowie held true to his word.

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Just to be clear, the Texas Legislature wants you to know that Texas Week is NOT a holiday. Even though it is.

To ensure employers that workers wouldn’t use it as an excuse for time off, the proclamation also declared:

…under no condition, is Texas Week to be looked upon as a week of holidays; but on the other hand and quite to the contrary, it is hereby alleged that during Texas Week every citizen of this State is encouraged to work, insofar as he is able, and to do his work a bit better than he does it during other weeks of the year.”

— Texas Week Civil Statute, Title 106, Article 6144a

The Battle of the Alamo

Texas Declaration of Independence

March 5, 2012March 13, 2013

Emulate Lei Feng Day

March 5

“A man’s usefulness to the revolutionary cause is like a screw in a machine. It is only by the many, many interconnected and fixed screws that the machine can move freely, increasing its enormous work power.”— from the Diary of Lei Feng

Since 1963, March 5th has been known as “Emulate Lei Feng Day” in China. Under Chairman Mao Zedong, schools would study Lei Feng’s diary, create Lei Feng teams to serve their communities, and teach children to be perfect citizens all around, all in the hopes of being just like the legendary Lei Feng.

Jung Chang recalls in Wild Swans:

Every afternoon we left school to “do good deeds like Lei Feng.” We went down to the railway station to try to help old ladies with their luggage, as Lei Feng had done…I stood on the street with an umbrella, anxiously hoping that an old lady would pass by and give me an opportunity to escort her home—as Lei Feng had done…

(Propaganda posters of Lei Feng)

Who was Lei Feng?

Lei Feng was born into a poor family in Wangcheng, Hunan. He was orphaned at an early age, and taken in by the Communist Party. He started grade school just after the Chinese Revolution. After six years of school, he worked a number of ordinary jobs—a messenger for a local government office, a worker for the Anshan Iron and Steel Company; a truck driver in the People’s Liberation Army. During his service he was known for doing good deeds and donating part of his paycheck to social causes. Until one day at age 22, he died while helping a truck to back up.

So why was Lei Feng—one in a billion—chosen to be canonized by the world’s most populous nation?

In 1963 the babies of the Revolution of 1949 were hitting their teens. Born in 1940, the 20 year-old Feng was among the last generation that would recall life under the old capitalist regime of Chaing Kai-Shek.

Like millions of others, life before the revolution had not been kind to Lei. His father—according to Time Magazine—“was buried alive by the Japanese, his two brothers starved to death, and his mother hanged herself after being raped by a landlord.”

Lei Feng’s tragic life story entailed all the evils of pre-Communist China. The Japanese, the capitalists, the corruption, the landlords. After his mother’s death Feng was literally raised by the Communist party. One official write-up on Feng would bring this point home with the title: “My Mother was the Party.”

Lei Feng: "China's Favorite Screw" — Lei Feng: “China’s Favorite Screw”

Another reason for Lei Feng’s posthumous popularity may have been the convenient existence of so many photographs of him doing good deeds. As Jung Chang pointed out, “Lei Feng’s good deeds were miraculously recorded by an official photographer.”

The book “Lei Feng Spirit” by Shi Yonggang states that government propaganda on Lei Feng started in 1960 when a photographer named Zhang Jun was assigned to do a story on a “model soldier who had donated 200 yuan to disaster relief.”

http://www.danwei.org/trends_and_buzz/a_lei_feng_twofer.php

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-03/04/content_526502.htm

Other photographers followed suit.

After his death, Lei Feng’s 200,000 word diary was published and schoolchildren were encouraged to study it. It includes such entries as “I am all for the Party, Socialism and Communism.”

Jung Chang writes:

“Gradually, during the course of 1964, the emphasis began to shift from boy scoutish good deeds to the cult of Mao. The essence of Lei Feng, the teachers told us, was his ‘boundless love and devotion to Chairman Mao.’ Before he took any action, Lei Feng always thought of some words of Mao’s. His diary was published and became our moral textbook. On almost every page there was a pledge like: ‘I must study Chairman Mao’s instructions, and be a good solider of Chairman Mao’s.'”

The final aspect of Lei’s life that allowed him to become the symbol of China’s youth was his death at age 22. In 1960s China, collectivity and conformity were the qualities of the day—hence the screw analogy. Feng’s death allowed him to break free of the conformity that bound his living compatriots. Not only would he be frozen in time as a young man, but there was no danger of him or his deceased family benefiting from his near sainthood. He was perfect symbol: young, selfless, loyal, and dead.

Reports of Lei’s death make it hard to separate the man from the myth.

“Lei died in the line of duty…”
“Lei died after being hit on the head by a wooden pole that was accidentally knocked over by a fellow solider.”
“Lei Feng: PLA soldier who died in a car accident…”

The truth may be a combo of all three. According to Qiao Anshan, the man driving the truck that killed Lei, he and Lei were cleaning the truck at Fushun Army base when Lei asked Qiao to back it up. “A rear wheel struck a pole from which barbed wire hung, but I didn’t realize this and hit the accelerator hard, pushing over the pole and killing Lei Feng.”

Lei Feng’s popularity has waxed and waned over the past 40 years, depending on political trends. He disappeared in the ’80s after it was noted that Feng wore a leather jacket and Omega watch—symbols of the Western bourgeois capitalism he was supposed to disdain. But he made a comeback in 90s during a government-led return to conservative communist values.

Today the Party has found a new way to get in touch with China’s youth: video games. One video game offers players the nail-biting adventure of following in the “Lei Feng Spirit”:

“For beginners, sewing and mending socks is the only way to increase experience and to upgrade,” said Jiao Jian, a six-grade pupil in Yuexlu District, quoted by the newspaper. “Every time you are promoted to a higher level, your clothes will become more average.”

World of Warcraft, watch out!

March 2, 2012March 5, 2012

Battle of Adwa – Ethiopia

March 2

In the 1890s, Italy, once the seat of an Empire that stretched through three continents, held only two small colonies on the Horn of Africa, which it had won with aid from Ethiopia.

Apparently the amity treaty between Ethiopia and Italy, signed by Menelik II of Ethiopia in 1889, contained a discrepancy in the Amharic and Italian translations, the latter of which established Ethiopia as an Italian protectorate.

Menelik denounced the treaty, prompting Italy to invade. Menelik had built up an arsenal of weapons from Britain and France, and even Italy over the previous years. Menelik appealed to France for support, but France refused to negate Italy’s territorial claims.

It was at the Battle of Adwa on March 1, 1896 that Menelik’s forces of approximately 100,000 met with a surprisingly outnumbered Italian army of 17,000 under Oreste Barratieri. Barratieri had completely underestimated the opposing army’s numbers as well as their armed capabilities. Due to this and tactical mistakes on part of Barratieri, Menelik’s army completely obliterated the Italian forces in one of the most stunning defeats of any European power in Africa. After news of the humiliating battle hit Rome, the Prime Minister was forced to resign, and Italy forsook further territorial ambitions for 4o years.

Ethiopia would not be successfully invaded until 1936 when Benito Mussolini, anxious to prove Italy a superpower to its European neighbors, set his sights on Africa’s yet unconquered nation. Mussolini had seen the League of Nations’ impotence at handling border clashes between Italian Somalia and Ethiopia, and European powers were vying for Italian support against Adolf Hitler and Germany. This time the Italian army was much better equipped and had no qualms in using chemical weapons.

The League of Nations Geneva Protocol (signed by Italy) banned the use of mustard gas, but “on 10 October 1935, Rodolfo Graziani first ordered his troops to employ chemical weapons against Ras Nasibu’s troops at Gorrahei.” Italy continued to do so throughout the Italian-Ethiopian war. British and Ethiopian troops forced Italy out of Ethiopia in 1941. Two years later “London created the United Nations War Crimes Commission, but excluded Ethiopia for fear it would initiate proceedings against Pietro Badoglio,” who, as Italy’s new Prime Minister, had become a valuable asset to the Allies when Italy switched sides.

— (Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia by David Hamilton Shinn and Thomas Ofcansky)

The Battle of Adwa remains to this day a symbol of African resistance against colonialism.

The Battle of Adowa: www.rastaites.com/Ethiopia/adowa.html

Ethiopia Celebrates 112th anniversary of Battle of Adowa Victory