May Days and Salad Months
Workers of the world, dress your salads!
Apr. 30 - Tomorrow is May Day. Depending on whom you ask, it’s either an innocuous holiday that Marxists keep trying to usurp or a Marxist holiday that’s been watered down for the general population.
The Venerable Old Moron’s Almanac covered May Day like this:
May Day
May 1 is recognized as May Day pretty much everywhere but the United States, Canada, and South Africa. Modern May Day celebrations throughout the world typically feature huge outdoor gatherings of people, brightly colored signs and banners, and varying amounts of tear gas.
The holiday has its root in the American labor movement of the 1880s, specifically the Haymarket tragedy of 1886. Depending on whom you ask, the Haymarket tragedy was either caused by overzealous cops with way too many guns, or overzealous anarchists with way too many bombs (i.e., one).
Actually, it no longer matters whom you ask, because all eyewitnesses would give you pretty much the same answer (i.e., none—they're dead).
Either way, nervous, well-armed cops and edgy, bomb-throwing anarchists are not a combination one encounters often in the annals of the Nobel Peace Prize. As a result, Americans ignore May Day and instead celebrate Labor Day, which features plenty of beer and barbecues and very little tear gas. We may be complacent, but dammit, we know what to do with a steak.
(Yes, I’d write that differently today.)
May Day is celebrated enthusiastically in Denmark. There's a big rally out in Fælledparken that can draw as many as a hundred thousand participants when the weather obliges. (I've heard a lot of Danes complaining about the waning of this old tradition, but most of them are bemoaning the festive atmosphere, not the fading of fiery Marxist rhetoric. And to a lot of them, I’m sure, it’s merely a case of pining for the snows of yesteryear.)
There'll be music, speeches by red and pink politicos, and lots and lots of beer out at the park this year. Things being what they are, there’ll probably also be a lot of Hamas supporters, environmental extremists, and “trans rights” activists, because that’s just how the workers of the world roll these days.
The celebration in Fælledparken has its own website, which includes a graphic of this year’s program:
It’s a left-wing affair through and through, a mix of political talk and silly-ass nonsense. For political talk, there’ll be speakers from three of Denmark’s leftist parties (the leftist Social Democrats, the far left Social People’s Party, and the way-the-hell-out-where-the-left-meets-the-horizon Unity List Party). For the silly nonsense, there’ll be all those speeches and the “working man’s yoga” with Sebastian Rosted Lochmann at 15:15.
(In most contexts, håndværker—literally “hand worker”—is better translated as contractor or blue-collar worker, but given the venue I went with working man.)
The Copenhagen chapter of Antifa will be having an event of their own, which they’re calling Grænseløs solidaritet—borderless solidarity.
Their poster shows a pair of flaming wirecutters cutting through barbed wire. You know, like Hamas did on October 7. Because that was just so totally dope, man!
And just look at that lineup: TBA! My favorite band!
The small text on the bottom promises “political booths - speeches - activism.” I’m curious what that means, that “activism.” I’d almost like to show up just to ask one of the event managers to show me the activism.
“Thanks for coming, guys! The political booths are there on the left, the speeches will be made from that podium over by those trees, and that little area to your right is for all the really cool activism.”
Even going to their website and reading their pitch (provided in both Danish and English), I’m not sure what form this promised activism of theirs is expected to take:
Borderless Solidarity! Antifascism, freedom struggle and class struggle.
Come to Antifascist May 1, 2024! With music, politics and good comrades, we will celebrate the International Workers' Day behind the lake in Fælledparken.
It would be so much more appropriate in a van down by the river. . .
We stand in solidarity with all the oppressed and call for a freedom struggle all over the world. As antifascists, we are closely connected to the class struggle because the state and capitalism stand in the way of a free and sustainable world. Our solidarity is borderless because no one is free until everyone is free.
Leading up to May 1, we will invite our comrades from Denmark and the rest of the world to send us political texts which we will publish.
No discrimination based on e.g. body, background, gender, and sexuality!
No violent behavior!
No hard drugs!
Just how desperate and lonely does a person have to be to find an invitation like that coherent, let alone appealing?
The post-Cold War appeal of communism and socialism are a bafflement. I understand the appeal of western leftism generally, because although I disagree with its proposed means I certainly concur with its ends: a better, safer, happier life for all of us, with liberty and justice for all. But communism and socialism—are these words just being used as code for something else? How can people still get behind the only ideology that's killed more people than Nazism? (Which was itself, you may recall, National Socialism.)
You've got to be bonkers to think the wrong side won the Cold War. To think Stalinism superior to representative democracy (however flawed). To think the Stasi were a model law enforcement organization. Why do so many citizens of communist and socialist states risk their lives to escape their utopias, and so few citizens of oppressive capitalist democracies move to those paradises?
One more time: I'm not knocking leftism generally. I'm knocking communism, socialism, and Marxism specifically. They're bad ideas that had their chance, failed bigly, and need to be discarded for ever. I sort of expect unanimous agreement to that notion, with everyone nodding their heads in agreement or yawning at the superfluity of the observation, as they hopefully would if I had said, “Nazi Germany was a pretty good example of social organization models to be avoided,” or “human sacrifice probably isn’t a very effective method of weather control.”
We don’t use lead paint any more. We don’t insulate with asbestos. But communism killed whole orders of magnitude more people than lead paint and asbestos combined, and we’re still supposed to pretend it’s a viable idea?
“We could save a lot of money by using lead paint on the interior of that day care center.”
“You monster! Be gone!”
“Communism’s actually a beautiful idea, it’s just never been done right.”
“I’m intrigued, tell me more!”
Why is Che cool, and Goebbels square? Because Che was enslaving and murdering homosexuals and other “deviants” out of love for proletarian control of the ways and means of production, whereas Goebbels was doing it out of twisted Teutonic pride? Or what?
I’m sympathetic to anarchists, because at least they have an instinct for freedom, but communists, socialists, and Marxists are basically the flat-earthers of politics and economics. They’re singing from the hymnal of a suicide cult.
I can get behind a holiday to celebrate the working man. If that’s all May Day were, I’d be fine with it. But a holiday that claims to celebrate the working man by celebrating ideas that would enslave or kill him is too stupid even for this moron.
Speaking of Communists and May Day, on May 1, 1961, Cuban leader Fidel Castro decided things were going along so well that he absolved the Cuban people of ever having to go through all the bother of another election.
Viva la revolucion, baby!
Salad Days
Let’s drop all that crap about politics. I’m sorry I brought it up.
May Day is important because it marks the beginning of May. Spring is in full bloom. Tender blossoms exude their sweet fragrance as winter's frosts recede. The warming air and diaphanous mists incite the passions and thoughts turn naturally to the ardor of spring—to love, rebirth, renewal, and salad.
You may not have known it, but in the United States May is National Salad Month. By an astonishing coincidence, the second full week of May is National Herb Week. It's a time to celebrate the verdure of the earth with verdure on a plate. Or in a bowl—salad is just that versatile!
Salad has a long and noble history. The word itself comes from the Latin herba salta, which sounds like “urban assault” but actually means “salted herbs.” They called their salads salted herbs because that's what they were: bits of leafy herbs dressed with salty oils.
The Romans weren't the first people to enjoy salad. Though it's hard to imagine, people were eating herbs and vegetables long before the invention of salad forks. Many of our evolutionary forebears ate leaves and veggies right off the plants, vines, and trees on which they grew. (Our forebears were gross.) In fact, scientists believe our ancient grazing tendencies may explain the popularity of salad bars and our willingness to overlook the inadequacy of sneeze guards.
The salad was not perfected, however, until the development of Bac-O Bits®, a genetically altered bacon substitute whose artificial bacon flavor and resistance to radiation have made it a staple of American salads, to say nothing of its cult popularity as driveway gravel.
According to the Association for Dressings and Sauces, the altruistic sponsors of National Salad Month, salad dressings and sauces have a history as rich and varied as salad itself. The Chinese have been using soy sauce for over five thousand years, the Babylonians used oil and vinegar, and Worcestershire was popular in Caesar's day. (Ironically, however, the Caesar salad was not invented by Julius Caesar. It wasn't even invented by Sid Caesar. It was invented by Caesar Cardini, a Mexican restauranteur, in 1924.)
The ancient Egyptians favored oil and vinegar mixed with Oriental spices. Mayonnaise was invented by the Duke de Richelieu in 1756 after defeating the British at Port Mahon on Majorca (hence Mahonnaise, later corrected to mayonnaise), and this facilitated the invention of creamy dressings. The Duke was best known not for his military victories, however, but his all-nude dinner parties. How a bunch of naked people got the idea of covering their salads in a creamy sauce is a question best ignored. Seriously, stop thinking about it.
(Around this time each year, well meaning but extremely annoying busybodies feel compelled to warn us about the dangers of mayonnaise exposed to the open air; happily, the good people at the Association of Dressings and Sauces used to feature a mayonnaise safety video on their website. Unhappily, the video has been replaced with a simple Mayonnaise Safety Page.)
In 1896, Joe Marzetti of Columbus, Ohio, opened a restaurant and served his customers a variety of dressings developed from old country recipes. His restaurant might have done better if he had served them actual meals, but his dressings became so popular that he started to bottle and sell them.
It was the birth of a market niche.
Half a century later, in 1950, Americans bought 6.3 million gallons of salad dressing. In 1997, they bought more than 60 million gallons. (This information is indisputable, because it appeared on the Association of Dressings and Sauces's website back at the turn of this century.)
Since the United States had a population of about 260 million in 1997, it looks like the average American bought about 4.3 gallons of salad dressing each year. That's enough to drip a tablespoon per mile from New York to Chicago. (You can do the teaspoon calculations yourself.) I myself don't buy salad dressing, which means that some poor American bastard has to buy 8.6 gallons each year to make up the difference. (It all comes out in the wash: I'm probably drinking his whiskey.)
It's informative to note, however, that the Association of Dressings and Sauces was measuring salad dressing sold, not consumed. We've all seen salad dressing in the final stages of decomposition, the once creamy sauce crusting around the edges and congealing in the bottom of the bottle. Added up nationwide, that's got to be a few million gallons a year.
So it's not like Americans are pigs or anything.
National Salad Month comes but once a year, but celebrated correctly once should be enough.
And celebrated safely, it probably won’t kill you.
Carnivorous readers disinclined to celebrate National Salad Month can choose from any of the following celebrations, all of which last the entire month of May: Allergy and Asthma Awareness Month, Arthritis Month, Better Hearing and Speech Month, Better Sleep Month, Breathe Easy Month, Correct Posture Month, Digestive Diseases Awareness Month, Hepatitis Awareness Month, High Blood Pressure Month, Huntington's Disease Awareness Month, Melanoma/Skin Cancer Detection and Prevention Month, Mental Health Month, National Barbeque Month, National Bike Month, National Egg Month, National High Blood Pressure Education Month, National Photo Month, National Physical Fitness and Sports Month, Neurofibromatosis Month, Older Americans Month, Osteoporosis Prevention Month, Sight-Saving Month, Stroke Awareness Month, Tuberous Sclerosis Awareness Month, and Trauma Awareness Month.
Those who like their celebrations a little shorter can choose from the following, all of which take place on the first full week of May: Be Kind to Animals Week, Goodwill Industries Week, National Family Week, National Pet Week, National Postcard Week, PTA Teacher Appreciation, and Small Business Week.
The second full week of May is not only National Herb Week, but also Nurses Week, Hospital Week, National Tourism Week, and National Historic Preservation Week.
Furthermore, as long as we’re looking at holidays this almanac ordinarily ignores, May 3 is International Tuba Day, May 12 is Limerick Day, May 13 is Astronomy Day, and May 16 is Biographers' Day.
Think how many birds you could kill with one stone by taking a picture of yourself riding a bike cross country under the stars while playing the tuba and juggling barbecued eggs, accompanied by a few nurses, teachers, biographers, pets, and tourists—especially if you're a stuttering old traumatized lunatic with indigestion and good posture.
If you can't find something to celebrate next month, you're just not trying.
That Sinking Feeling
On May 1, 1915, a thoughtful German government took out advertisements warning anyone on ships flying British flags that they did so at their own risk. That very day, the oceanliner Lusitania left New York, flying a British flag.
You do the math.
Birthdays, Holidays, and All That Stuff
Willie Nelson turns 91 today. He shares his birthday with Kirsten Dunst (1982), Isiah Thomas (1961), Jill Clayburgh (1944), Burt Young (1940), Cloris Leachman (1926), and Eve Arden (1908).
Tomorrow is the birthday of Rita Coolidge (1945), Judy Collins (1939), Terry Southern (1924), Jack Paar (1918), and Glenn Ford (1916).
April 30 is Walpurgis Night in Sweden.
May 1 is not only May Day, but also the Pagan holiday of Beltane, Flag Day in Austria, Patriots Victory Day in Ethiopia, and Constitution Day in the Marshall Islands.
© 2024 The Moron’s Almanac